So the saga continues with the Minocqua Brewing Company being sued by misogynist publisher of the alt-right fish wrapper otherwise known as the Lakeland Times, Gregg Walker.
This time, the buffoonish “Boss Hogg” of Minocqua, aka the “Jabba the Hutt of Obnom” (the old Boys Network of Minocqua) is suing Oakfire Pizza, the outfit that bought the old Minocqua Brewing Company building.
That’s right—this bully is not content to merely file a SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) against us, but wants to hurt another small business in Minocqua for being associated with us. Here’s the story.
We finalized the sale of the old Minocqua Brewing Company building to David Scotney of Oakfire Pizza in March of 2021. The sale was a “stock sale,” which enabled David to keep our name and apply for the second round of PPP loans that would allow him, in the midst of the restaurant-crippling Covid pandemic, to rehire many of our old staff and make the building improvements necessary to have a successful summer.
We thought that temporarily giving him our name was the right thing to do, given that he was going to employ more workers than us this summer and needed the loan more than we did.
We signed a contract that David could use our name for legal purposes but would allow us to keep using our name publicly for the 60-day period he needed to apply and get the loan, after which he would change the name back to Oakfire Pizza.
We know it’s a little complicated and doesn’t exactly sound above board, but that’s what the PPP was designed for—to get restaurants back on their feet—and that loan enabled David to essentially get our old restaurant back on NEW feet, which ultimately helped the community by backfilling the jobs lost when we shut our doors.
Fast forward to our favorite misogynist’s lawsuit against us. By including the Minocqua Brewing Company in the lawsuit claiming we made fun of him too harshly last summer, he essentially sued both Oakfire Pizza and the Minocqua Brewing Company, because Oakfire Pizza WAS the Minocqua Brewing Company for two months.
Our lawyer quickly alerted the Lakeland Time’s lawyer that they had accidentally caught up an innocent party in this lawsuit, and as of this writing they have refused to remove Oakfire Pizza from the suit, forcing David Scotney to pay a $5K retainer to hire his own lawyer to untangle his company.
So yes, the community newspaper in Minocqua that exists solely due to the First Amendment allowing free speech is suing two small businesses in Minocqua to suppress their speech completely out of spite with zero legal grounds, and one of those two parties has absolutely nothing to do with the pissing match that they started a year ago.
So let’s be honest, this Gregg Walker guy really sucks.
Isn’t it time that our community #upnorth and in the state of Wisconsin realize what a menace Gregg Walker and his paper are to this area and stop funding it through subscriptions and advertisements?
They’re dying anyways because of their disastrous and dishonest writing. Let’s hasten that process, shall we?
Feel free to express your distaste of this paper in your own letter to the editor and send it here: editor@lakelandtimes.com
And what the hell, since hundreds of you are taking pictures DAILY in front of our beautiful aspirational progressive garage door art located DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM THE LAKELAND TIMES, we suggest you send them to the paper to get some good local press. And you might as well go right to the source and send them to Gdubs himself gwalker@lakelandtimes.com, with a little love note to our good friend.
And last but not least, here’s a link to buy some special merchandise commemorating our favorite local misogynist:
All the profits from the purchases will go to our legal defense fund, where we’ve already raised $15K.
If you would like to build that fund even further, feel free to donate here directly: