It’s the island bar in a concrete ocean.
That’s how Andy Wilson describes Zoxx Social Club, the Janesville, Wisconsin bar he owns and operates with his wife, Desiree Wilson. The concrete ocean is the gigantic vacant lot that once hosted General Motors’ Janesville Assembly Plant from 1919 to 2009.
The factory stood empty until 2019, when it was demolished. Now, 240 acres of rubble surround Zoxx on all sides.
Zoxx Social Club is situated next to the former General Motors assembly plant in Janesville, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Andy Wilson’s path to Zoxx led directly through that rubble. It was just after the plant closed, when he and a friend crossed the property — just to check it out — while test-riding lowrider bikes they’d built. GM security chased them out.
“We knew that this bar was here. We came back in here, we asked the owner if we could bring our bikes inside,” Wilson said. “He said, ‘Yeah,’ and we sat here ’til bartime.”
Looking to freshen up his GM worker clientele, the owner, Andy Sigwell, offered Andy Wilson a bartending job. He took it, opening the door to a younger crowd.
Zoxx Social Club co-owner Andy Wilson hangs up some of the pin stripe art that was created at the booth outside his bar Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Janesville, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
“It was very much a goofy bar,” Desiree Wilson recalled. “You came in here to be goofy and have fun.”
She remembers people running around in hot dog suits. She still has photos of her mom drinking beer with a Chuck E. Cheese head on. There was a costume box. The bar — with its unique backdrop of weeds and idle train cars — became a bucket-list item of Janesville’s nightlife.
“You didn’t come in here to pick up chicks,” Andy Wilson said. That didn’t mean it couldn’t happen — he and Desiree Wilson had known each other, but grew closer at the bar.
Desiree Wilson, an owner of Zoxx Social Club, stands in her bar Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, near the former General Motors assembly plant in Janesville, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Zoxx’s then-owner Sigwell often joked that Andy Wilson would buy the bar one day. In 2020, about a decade after the young biker on the lam from GM security first walked in, Sigwell invited Andy and Desiree Wilson to dinner and made it clear he had been serious.
“We can’t let that go to somebody else who might just bulldoze it and turn it into another parking lot,” Andy Wilson remembered them thinking as they drove home from dinner.
“Within three months, we bought a business, got married, and had a baby,” Desiree Wilson said. “It was terrifying!”
The Zoxx scene, then and now
The Wilsons invented new traditions for Zoxx. One was the monthly open mic-vendor night, which happened most recently on Oct. 9, 2024.
In the parking lot, vendors sold homemade salsa, mobiles made out of deer bones, heavy metal-themed coffee, hand-painted skateboards and apple pie-flavored soul food egg rolls. One woman glued decorative gemstones on people’s teeth.
Gretchen Hanson of Janesville gives a customer a tooth gem outside of Zoxx Social Club on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Janesville, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Inside, Gustav Baltes — also known by his stage name Goose McCluskey — warmed the crowd up with his original songs.
“This mask you see is not the one for me, I’ll be changed by the end of my journey,” McCluskey sang as his song, “The Journey,” began.
Some performers played covers — Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Sublime. According to open-mic hosts Andy Glass, also known as Stranded Andy, and Marty Morgan, better known as Party Marty, the event focuses on “energy,” not talent.
“Andy’s a professional-level bassist and I went to school for drums. So, anybody that comes up as a singer-songwriter, we can complete their band,” Morgan explained.
Marty Morgan, also known as Party Marty, plays music for the crowd at Zoxx Social Club on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Janesville, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
That helped Tonyiel Partee, who ran inside from helping in her mother’s soul food truck, to perform a set. She’s wanted to sing since childhood, but had “the worst” stage fright.
“As soon as you walk in, the atmosphere alone, it just brings home you are welcomed here, none of us are perfect,” Partee said. She’s been singing at Zoxx for about seven months now, and said her performances were “bad” initially.
“But over time, after weeks of getting to know people … (we) keep it going, practicing our songs, learning each other’s rhythm,” she said. “I was able to really find myself out there on the stage.”
“It’s always been love here at Zoxx,” Partee added.
She snarled through a rendering of Oliver Anthony’s song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” singing, “I’ve been selling my soul, working all day, overtime hours for bulls*** pay.”
Once Partee wrapped up, she went back out to the food truck in the parking lot.
Gustav Baltes, also known as Goose McCluskey, performs live music Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, at Zoxx Social Club in Janesville, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
The Zoxx of the GM era didn’t host open mics. It served a different purpose.
Because it sat on an unusual parcel inside the plant’s parking lot, assembly line workers could file in for hot lunch, down a couple beers, and march right back through the factory gates. When the plant closed on weekends, Zoxx did, too. According to the Janesville Gazette, the bar was a nuisance to management, so they built a fence around it. Later, they tried to buy it out. On the day GM closed, Zoxx opened at 6 p.m. and stayed open until 6 a.m. as workers sat there through the night.
Many of Zoxx’s regulars today have GM workers in their families, uncles and grandfathers who drank at the bar. Andy Wilson is one — his stepfather worked at the plant. He remembers hanging onto his mom’s shirt, collecting his stepfather’s paycheck from the Zoxx bartender.
“If she didn’t come get it, he would just cash it here, and God knows how much of it he would spend,” he said.
He said there used to be pink slips hanging on the doorframe — getting sent home from work means getting a free drink at Zoxx.
“I can just remember seeing nothing but blue jeans in front of me, and it was loud,” Andy Wilson said. It was so crowded that, as a kid, he couldn’t see more than a couple feet in front of him.
More than just a GM bar
When the GM plant closed in 2009, many Zoxx regulars took relocation offers to other cities. Others just stopped going to the bar. The Zoxx Social Club that Andy Wilson stumbled into years ago was emptying out, just hanging on. By agreeing to work there, he started a process that made Zoxx into more than just a GM bar.
“We’re not sitting here trying to benefit off of all these people, we just want a space for them,” Desiree Wilson said. “We want to provide the space.”
The bar at Zoxx Social Club features photos of the original family who started the bar located near the Janesville General Motors assembly plant. Angela Major/WPR
Andy Wilson grew up in a deaf family, with ASL as his first language. So when the Janesville Deaf Society approached him about a place to have their monthly meetings, he said yes. The group hosts “Deaf Night Out” at Zoxx now — sometimes with live punk bands.
“Come to find out, the deaf community loves live music,” Andy Wilson said. Some would stand with their hands placed on the speaker, something that made Desiree Wilson “almost” cry.
The Deaf Nights Out have inspired some of Zoxx’s hearing regulars to start learning ASL. One even met a date, standing huddled in the corner, texting back and forth.
People often approach Zoxx to host benefits, to raise money for relatives who had house fires or cancer diagnoses. Sometimes, old GM workers stop by on trips through town, just to reminisce. The bar hosts a dart league — and deaf teams have formed to participate.
Desiree Wilson believes the tight, U-shape of the bar itself encourages these community ties.
“People from across the bar that don’t know each other will end up in conversations,” she said. “People that don’t know each other end up becoming friends.”
Drinks are poured at Zoxx Social Club on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Janesville, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
The prices don’t hurt — PBR is $2, apple pie shots are $1.
“You can afford to buy a round for the bar, and it doesn’t kill your wallet,” Andy Wilson said. “And that’s one of the best ways to get to know people in the bar.”
Zoxx is also a reason to visit Janesville’s south side, he argues, where there’s little retail besides “liquor stores, cigarette stores, Check Into Cash.” Since GM moved out, the area even lost its only grocery store.
That trend has not gone unnoticed at City Hall. In a step towards redeveloping the GM site, the city condemned the privately-owned 240-acre expanse earlier this year through eminent domain.
Zoxx was one of four tiny, non-GM parcels included in the condemnation order. Janesville has applied for a federal grant to begin redeveloping the southern edge of the site, over a mile from Zoxx. The area immediately around the bar is slated for environmental assessment in later years, pending more federal grants.
At the moment, the Wilsons are negotiating a sale price with city officials, who connected them with a relocation agent, as required by law. But the Wilsons are concerned about whether Zoxx’s motley crew of regulars would migrate to a new location — not to mention the loss of the bar’s historic, GM identity.
“As of right now, there really have not been a lot of options for relocation, especially if we want to continue the brand and identity that we have,” Andy Wilson said.
People gather outside of Zoxx Social Club on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Janesville, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Providing fellowship and community for regulars is a big part of that identity.
“I want to help,” Desiree Wilson summed up her attitude towards her community, saying, “It’s just what you do.”
Wandering through the bar all evening was Tyler Swenson — but everyone at Zoxx calls him ‘Scrape’. He draws, he skateboards and he’s a roofer in Edgerton, Wisconsin by day. At night, he often comes to Zoxx, helping carry equipment for open mics. On Deaf Nights Out, he and his girlfriend come to learn ASL.
Swenson said he spent a big part of his childhood down the street from Zoxx, in an apartment above his grandfather’s bait shop.
“Everyday I could be playing video games, come out to the bait shop and stick leeches on my fingers,” he said.
He’s seen small businesses come and go around his grandpa’s shop — Geri’s Hamburgers, Stop N Go, the Sinclair Service Station.
“I grew up on this river and around here with a lot of these people,” he said.
He believes its regular clientele rely on Zoxx for more than just drinks and entertainment.
“If they were to lose this place, they might not have anywhere else to go,” he said.
Around Swenson, motorcycles roared. The concrete ocean receded into a dark horizon. Buzzed patrons wobbled out through Zoxx’s flapping door, letting out amplified bursts of music.
It was getting late, and the band played Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” — “They said you were high-classed, that was just a lie,” the old song went. “You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.”
Musicians perform during an open mic Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, at Zoxx Social Club in Janesville, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
