Animatronic rats and all-night diners: 5 places not to spend New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve is a night when major cities across the world play host to countless parties, packing their streets with drunken revelers and propping up the exhumed corpses of Dick Clark and Regis Philbin. And while not exactly New York or Sydney, our fair burg is no slouch: From Spoon and Jay Reatard at the Riverside to the promised “100-percent bust-free” Get Down Dance Party at the Bay View Brew Haus, New Year’s Eve in Milwaukee is the perfect time and place to celebrate, let loose, and swap precious bodily fluids with complete strangers.

But like other hard-partying holidays—Halloween, the annual Toyotathon—New Year’s Eve can suffer from inflated expectations. The pressure to have a memorable night is high, and the sheer number of places to go and parties to attend can be a little overwhelming. Therefore, in order to keep your list of New Year’s destinations a bit more manageable, The A.V. Club highlights five places in Milwaukee that should be avoided at all costs during the final hours of 2009.

1. Chuck E. Cheese (2701 S. Chase Ave., 483-8655; 2990 S. 108th St., 546-3600)
With an atmosphere somewhere between a pawn shop and a shooting range (albeit with more plastic balls), Chuck E. Cheese’s is where a kid can be a kid and a parent can get jumped in the parking lot. Childless adults looking for an ironic New Year’s destination should proceed with caution: Sure, there’s beer and wine, and watching the surly teenage employees take their first unwitting steps toward a lonely future of furry conventions is always a hoot. But it’s only a matter of time before you realize you’re eating Lunchables-quality pizza and listening to a band fronted by a feral rat plow its way through another medley of lousy Beach Boys songs.

2. Walgreens (various locations)
A necessary evil by day, a hangout for the drunk, lost, or bleeding by night—a 24-hour Walgreens should never be on anyone’s short list for holiday fun. Though it is possible you and a significant other may find yourselves at one on New Year’s Eve shopping for certain, um, supplies, the sad truth is that you’ll most likely be alone, picking up some smokes and wandering the cluttered aisles in a glassy-eyed stupor while the rest of the world celebrates in less soul-crushing, fluorescent environs.

3. Denny’s (various locations)
Despite recent ad campaigns positioning it as some sort of all-night haven for famished musicians (try the new Rascal Flatts’ Unstoppable Breakfast!), a 24-hour Denny’s will always be the domain of chain smokers, goateed dudes in trench coats, and drunks who think the phrase “moons over my hammy” is the absolute height of hilarity. It’s also a place to avoid on New Year’s Eve: Stop in sometime after 2 a.m. and brace yourself for something resembling the Attica prison riots. Not quite as depressing as IHOP, and not quite as giddily dangerous as George Webb, a Denny’s is the perfect place to publicly display your complete and utter indifference to the holiday while choking down a reasonably priced Lumberjack Slam.

4. Behind the wheel
There’s nothing more dispiriting than watching the clock finally strike midnight while driving to a different bar, party, or church-sanctioned sock hop. In fact, it’s a bad idea to be driving at all: The Milwaukee Police Department will once again be out en masse throughout the evening, doubling the number of foot patrols in the Water Street area alone. It’s as good a time as any to experience the magic of the Milwaukee County Transit System (bus rides are free all night long), or, for the masochistic, American United Taxi Cab Services. (A call to 220-5000 will net you a cab, maybe.)

5. City Tow Lot (3811 W. Lincoln Ave., 286-2700)
Assuming you ignore the above advice and spend the night on the road, you’ll still have to deal with parking. And even if you’re stone-cold sober, the city will have no problem towing your ’94 Ford Escort if you’re parked illegally. While not technically a New Year’s Eve destination, the City Tow Lot could nevertheless be the first of many wonderful places you’ll visit in 2010. The lot’s closed on New Year’s Day, and only open from 8 a.m. to noon the following Saturday, but nothing bodes better for your new year than spending one of its first days surrounded by dirty plastic chairs, bullet-proof glass, and barely contained murderous rage.