Janine and Charles – serving up Marilyn, James, Old Blue Eyes, Manhattan and Mad Men at Wise Guys.
“I find it very important to have music going at all times. I went to school for music business, and I want people to have a nice, cold beer and enjoy the music, because no one wants to sit in a bar in silence,” said Janine Quaile, co-owner of Wise Guys Social Club in downtown Spring Valley, sitting at a table overlooked by a poster of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Frank Sinatra enjoying some very “New York, New York” drinks as her partner, Charles Barbera, explained, “This bar was cowboy, old timey-themed and we changed the theme to a New York social club where people gather to watch live music.”
The building Wise Guys occupies was last known as “Outsiders Rockabilly Saloon,” though the sign outside might’ve still read “Old Tyme Saloon,” as it was never changed to show the rockabilly theme it acquired five years ago.
Now, just inside the door, there’s a change in atmosphere, from the candle-lit evenings and the table drink menus that list the “Wise Guy Manhattan,” “Mad Men Martini” and the “Red Snapper Bloody Mary,” to name a few, to the stage Barbera credits Quaile with building to invest in the bar’s future, specifically remodeling the deejay and karaoke booth to become a stage on which they plan to present live music.
“She built the stage – it used to be a karaoke booth. Janine built the stage by herself and set up the equipment by herself, did all the lighting and flooring,” noted Barbera.
Quaile anticipates a diverse range of musical guests performing on the new stage. “Our first band was a variety cover band, and we’ve had American rock and roll, and we’ll have a lot of originals, solo artists – singer-songwriters,” she said. “There’ll be quite a variety of different stuff, and we’d like to get a blues band sometime.”
The backstory to how Wise Guys — a place that might seem out of place in downtown Spring Valley — is one that’s first told about how Charles met Janine. Quaile graduated from Kingsland High School after spending her senior year here, then went on to attend college for music business at McNally Smith College in St. Paul and then to Hennepin Tech.
Barbera helped fill in the blanks, saying he met her in Washington in February 2014. They lived on a sailboat in Tacoma and decided to move back to Spring Valley where her uncle had a house. He is originally from the New York-New Jersey area, and lived there until he was 21.
“I had a car dealership before I went to Washington state, and I met her, sold all my cars, and we moved back here to Minnesota in 2014,” he said. “This was a spur of the moment decision to buy the bar.”
Quaile registered, “I also always wanted to own a venue where there’s music every weekend.”
She and Barbera used to go out on the town – as in “on the town in Spring Valley,” she said – but with the fire that decimated Johnny Ringo’s, that pared the number of downtown places to stop and sip cocktails to just Valley Lanes, where they still enjoyed meeting other people. Offering a cabaret in addition to the chatter and “clunk” of bowling balls rolling down the lanes just felt like the right thing to do.
“People like to come here, go to the bowling alley, come back,” Quaile said. “When Ringo’s was open, we’d hop around town, but now that Ringo’s is gone, that left just the bowling alley downtown. This is just a different place to hang out.”
But turning it into a different place to hang out and trading out the Old West theme for a classier kind of establishment meant elbow grease and dedication, as Barbera pointed out the décor was the first thing to change, followed by the seating arrangements and improved lighting. Quaile spent hour upon hour planning how her music venue would look and what it would do to welcome people, such as expanding a back-bar area and dimming the lights for ambiance.
“Things are constantly evolving. This place was in disrepair pretty severely, and it’s still a work in progress,” she said.
Barbera agreed, “We’ve added a back-bar area, we do a lot of candlelight, serve some traditional New York drinks and cocktails, and on any given weekday, we have music on and old gangster movies playing on the TV over the bar. Janine had made a lot of sacrifices because she’s been pretty hands-on. She put in a lot of hours each week, about 30 hours a week here and raising two kids and working a full-time job. People have seen my mom visiting here, with New York plates, because she came to help with the kids.”
The couple held a grand opening of their business on Friday, April 26, complete with live entertainment, and they plan to provide more music and food as time goes on. Presently, alongside its signature drinks, the bar serves snack foods and Pasquale’s pizza, described as “authentic New York pizza” and prepared by Pasquale’s in Rochester, owned by chef Pasquale Presa, who used to work at the Kahler Hotel.
“We’ll be adding to the menu, working to update the kitchen, and as time goes by, there will be New York foods, like cheesesteaks,” Barbera said. “We’ll be starting a pool league at the end of August. We’re also the only people in town who have touchscreen games like Vortex and Mega-Touch, and we have big plans for Ag Days.”
Quaile and Barbera have learned quite a lot about themselves as they’ve worked to open Wise Guys.
Quaile stated, “I’ve learned that I don’t need as much sleep as I thought I did. It takes a lot of patience, that it’s a learning curve, but seeing the whole thing come to fruition is really satisfying.”
Barbera remarked, “I’ve learned that consistency and hard work have really been something that has been essential to realizing success in a business. It’s bringing the community together, and people like the environment that we’ve created, the ambiance.”
The pair expressed their appreciation to the community for its support of their new business venture.
“We appreciate the support of the local businesses and the town people, and we hope to continue to provide a valuable service for Spring Valley,” Barbera said.
Wise Guys Social Club is open daily Monday through Thursday from 1 to 11 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from noon to 1 a.m., closed on Sunday, as Quaile noted, “The hours are evolving. We’re currently closed on Sundays, but there are a few other good places in town.”
