Michael "Spike" Krouse/Madrone Art Bar, Part 1 (S6E21)

Michael "Spike" Krouse's arrival on this planet was something of a miracle for his parents.

 

In this episode, get to know the founder of Madrone Art Bar (currently one of my favorite places in San Francisco). Spike's dad, a fighter pilot who flew missions in World War II, was much older than his mom. He flew for the Navy when the U.S. went to war with Korea as well. He ended up stationed in Alameda. When he retired from the Navy, in 1967, he took a job in Las Vegas, where the pay was good and the housing was affordable.

 

His dad was director of operations for a nuclear test site in Nevada. Over the years, he dealt with his share of PTSD, and to cope, started gambling.

 

Spike's mom was born in Paris during the German occupation of that city. Her father was "on a train," meaning he was headed to a concentration camp. He ended up being liberated from Dachau years later, but the experience took a toll on him—mentally, physically, and spiritually. He passed away and his family was devastated.

 

Spike's mom, then an infant, was sent to live in the basements of different churches. Her earliest memory is of Allied troops liberating Paris in 1944. US troops handed out chocolate bars to French kids along the Champs-Elysees.

 

When she was 13, she followed her older brother to Israel. After that, she migrated to Italy, where she was recruited to do TV commercials. With that success, Spike's mom moved back to Paris, where she danced for a living. She got into some movies, also. With that, travel picked up—New York, LA, and eventually, Las Vegas.

 

In Vegas, she ended up doing a one-woman burlesque dancing show. Maybe you can see where this story is headed, but Spike's dad was in the audience at one of these shows. Soon after this, the two headed up to San Francisco and got married. Spike was born about a year later.

 

By his dad, Spike has a half-brother and a half-sister, who was close to his mom in age (his sister has since passed away). But it was his mom's first marriage and Spike was her first, and only, kid.

 

Spike says that the Vegas where he grew up was more like a small town where everyone knew each other. It was nothing like it is today, in other words. Among other activities, Spike and his friends would lock up their bikes and go pool hopping at the various casino resorts back in the 1980s.

 

His family traveled around a bit when Spike was a kid. They visited his aunt and uncle (his mom's siblings) in Paris several times. Because his mom was born in France during German occupation, she hadn't been given citizenship at birth. But in the early 1990s, thanks to a reparations trial, that happened. And it extended down to her offspring and their offspring. Today, Spike's kids enjoy French citizenship, as does he.

 

The family also visited San Francisco, when Spike was around nine or 10. He remembers riding cable cars and going to Fisherman's Wharf. They'd travel places in their pop-top van that was equipped with an RV hookup. They also went to San Diego, where his dad received cancer treatments around the time Spike was 13.

 

In his high school years, he and his friends threw lots of parties, and Spike was the one who made flyers for these shindigs. There'd be illicit boxing matching between rival schools. There'd be kegs, there'd be gambling.

 

He was into New Wave and metal, but his taste was really all over the board. Thanks to his parents, there was jazz at home, Serge Gainsbourg, Edith Piaf. And he'd go to all-ages clubs in Vegas. Spike never really played instruments, though. His talents around music were mostly visually artistic.

 

He played sports—football, baseball, golf. As a kid, he and his friends stole golf balls from a nearby course. His punishment was to hit balls at a driving range for two months. Thanks to this, he got pretty good at the sport.

 

But, especially by the time he went off to college, sports took a backseat to throwing parties. College meant Marquette University in Milwaukee. Spike talks about the art scene in Milwaukee and how much he liked it. His school didn't offer any art degrees, otherwise he would have majored in that. But someone at Milwaukee's art museum had amassed quite a collection of German Expressionist art, and Spike liked to check that out. He says he chose the school partly because it was so far from Las Vegas.

 

He shares the story of a ballroom in Milwaukee that he rolled into looking for work. It was his first foray into the business side of parties. He was only 18, but that was OK back then. He got a job barbacking, and three months in, got promoted to bartender when someone called in sick. There was a Vegas connection to the place—it was part of a money-laundering ring that involved cash from casinos in Nevada. So, in a sense, Spike was right back where he started. Sort of.

 

The place had big-name acts at its upstairs, 2,500-seat venue. Acts like Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the up-and-coming Smashing Pumpkins. Spike worked those events, and ended up making enough money from this job to pay for everything other than his tuition. He'd fully caught the nightlife bug.

 

After he graduated, Spike went back to Vegas and got a job with Mirage Resorts in their executive casino training program. Within six months of this, though, he realized it wasn't for him. He was 21. He had a college degree. He was trying to figure out what his path would be. He wanted to travel. He wanted to foster his creative side, but also wanted to find a way to make money doing that.

 

So he hopped in his car and drove up the West Coast, starting in San Diego, then LA, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, shopping for a city to put down roots.

 

Check back next week for Part 2, and the last episode of Season 6 of this podcast.

 

We recorded this podcast at Madrone Art Bar on Divisadero in May 2024.