Another Round for the Red Shed
The campus-favorite hangout preserves old memories in a new location.
One of Madison’s oldest bars made its new home on historic State Street. Althea Dotzour
If the phrases “White Willy,” “nickel taps,” or “Nerd shot” mean anything to you, you’ve probably been to the Red Shed. From its foosball table to its shoestring French fries, not much has changed at the beloved bar since it opened on Frances Street in 1969 — other than its address.
When the Red Shed’s lease came up in 2023, owner Lynn Dieffenbach ’90 wasn’t ready for last call, so she made like a college kid and moved the Red Shed to its new home at 508 State Street. Dieffenbach met her late husband, Joel, at the Red Shed in 1990, when he was a bartender and she was a student at the UW. Joel worked at the Red Shed for 30 years before buying the business in 2019. He died of cancer in 2020, and in 2022, Dieffenbach retired from her job as a respiratory therapist to manage the bar.
“I feel like just a small blip in the Red Shed’s history, but it’s fun to hear people’s memories and, as an alum, to be part of the tradition of going to the UW,” she says.
Dieffenbach likens the Red Shed to “your uncle’s basement,” unfussy and unfazed by the passage of time. The worn-wood booths, neon signage, and iconic covered wagon from the original location are right at home in the new one. The TVs are few, and the tabletop games are plenty. Patrons have played checkers with bottle caps since the original game pieces went missing. And when it’s time for another round, the bar caters to every generation with trendy hard seltzers, timeless labels like Pabst and Schlitz, and the Red Shed’s signature mason-jar Long Island iced teas.
“You can gauge by what a customer is asking for, and what memories they’re bringing up, where they fall in the history of the Red Shed,” Dieffenbach says.
Like your uncle’s basement, the ties that bind Badgers to the Red Shed are less about a place and more about the people they shared it with. Photos that once plastered the beams of the old space fill an entire wall in the new one, a gallery of loyal customers sporting Red Shed T-shirts — at their weddings, underwater, on Mount Everest. At the center are two framed collages of even earlier patrons sporting the fashion and facial hair of the ’70s and ’80s.
It’s hard to forget a place that never forgot you.
Megan Provost ’20 is a staff writer for On Wisconsin.
Published in the Winter 2025 issue
Comments
John Widdifield December 8, 2025
It was early May of 1981 and I had just walked out of taking my last final to complete my MS in business degree at UW,, knowing I had passed. It felt like such a milestone, and sort of surprised me that here it was still early May and I was done! I had gotten a Master’s degree at vaunted UW! I didn’t have a job yet but it was a beautiful spring day, my lease in Madison was not up until the end of the month, and I had nothing to do but… enjoy for a few weeks. Not sure what to do with myself, I wandered into the Red Shed, and had a beer alone to celebrate my achievement. Seems that it was a Saturday…? as I remember watching the Kentucky Derby on the TVs with a combination of feelings. Excitement that I was done… and had completed a Master’s Degree, melancholy that the wonderful days of college were over, gratitude at how wonderful they were, and nervousness about a future without yet a job. Celebrating all alone, but surrounded by patrons of… The Shed. After a beer (maybe 2) I walked out into the 72 degree sunny, spring day, and into my future.
(oh… I eventually got a job…)