I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

If you walk into a bar in Des Moines, Iowa, it is likely you will see a distinct beer tap.

Seriously, this tap is everywhere, and if you're from out of town,

you might be kind of like, whoa.

Because the handle depicts a woman with brown hair

balancing two pints of beer on her boobs.

I know. Doesn't seem great. But there is a story here. The woman on the tap was a real person.

And she was connected to a very real, very popular place. Her name was Ruthie Fontanini,

and she ran her own bar in Des Moines in the 1950s, and this balancing

thing that she did made her kind of famous. So this beer tap I'm talking about, it's for a

beer called Ruthie. And like I said, it is popular. It's the number one selling Iowa-made beer in the state.

But until recently, Ruthie's story was mostly forgotten.

Mandy Neglitch is an author and a beer expert. She's actually an advanced cicerone,

which is kind of like a top-tier Somalié but for beer.

She dug up Ruthie's story for an article in Vice Magazine, and she is here with me today.

Hey, Mandy.

Hi, good to be here.

So what was your first thought when you first saw this beer tap?

So, yeah, I first saw it at the Iowa State Fair, which is already a little bit overwhelming coming from New York City, going to Iowa, just seeing the culture. And I was like, I cannot

believe. Our Midwest state fairs are no joke. Yeah. Exactly. And I was like, I can't believe

this is everywhere behind every bar. This woman, I thought it was sexist, thought it was, you know,

do we need beer and boobs to be the only time that we see beer and women together?

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