He's the life of the party

From wearing a salsa-loaded sombrero to owning a downtown club, Steve Vento keeps finding new ways to have fun

By JAMES H. BURNETT III jburnett@journalsentinel.com, Journal Sentinel

Friday, September 5, 2003

On a recent Saturday night, Steve Vento navigated a crowd in Ripples on Water, his very own glass-bottom boat.

Ripples, 530 N. Water St., with its walls painted to look like a fish-covered ocean floor and an ocean-blue dance floor called the "shark pit," is the latest edition to downtown Milwaukee's nightclub boom.

Vento -- all 4-foot 4-inches of him -- is probably best known for his stint a few years ago at the now-defunct Nacho Mama's restaurant and bar, where he wore a sombrero loaded with chips and salsa for bar patrons with the nibbles. In that same period, Maxim Magazine gave him props for his gig as "house pimp," his job title for a year at Have a Nice Day Cafe, where in stylish '70s gear he led the pep rally, keeping the parties lively and the rowdies under control. The legendary little person also has appeared on several syndicated television talk shows, publicly declared "I hate midgets" and dubbed himself "the Michael Jordan of Midgets."

"If I've learned nothing else in my life, it's how to have fun," said Vento, who opened the club about a month ago. "A place like this? When I was younger, people might know me here for all the different characters. But even back then, when the costumes came off and I was just Steve the short guy, one thing everyone could say is 'He's fun. He enjoys life.'

"I'm still that short guy and even without the costumes and the roles and the characters, I'm still that fun guy," he said.

This night at Ripples, true to his word, Vento wore no funky hats or pimpish suits, just his trademark hustler's smile. The music was pumping top 40 tunes, bubble gum pop, classic rock and some old school hip-hop.

Vento never demanded attention and didn't speak much -- just a "What's up, my man" here and a "How are you tonight, sweetheart" there, as he floated from one end of the club to the other.

There were high-fives and handshakes with droves of guys in their early 20s, who lined up to pay homage as if he was a rock star. Women as young as 21 and as old as 50 winked and flirted, grabbing Vento's sleeves and insisting he take a moment to dance with them in the pit.

And other patrons just waved or called out to him as if he was their old friend.

Later, as he stood behind the bar -- over which he could barely see -- Vento would admit that he didn't know most of those people.

"But they know me, and I appreciate that," he said with a smile -- one due mostly to the fact that as he surveyed his latest creation, he was satisfied that once again he had successfully reinvented himself.

Conventional wisdom says many people would be happy with one or two interesting twists in their career paths during over the course of a lifetime, but the 43-year-old Vento, known to fans as "Milwaukee's Favorite Midget" has been remaking himself for more than 25 years.

Since the age of 16, Vento has: acted, marched in parades as the Hamburglar for McDonald's and as the Big Boy for that restaurant chain, owned and worked in a number of taverns and restaurants, done stand-up comedy, dealt blackjack in Las Vegas casinos, sold cars, processed credit cards worked as house pimp and worn the chip-filled sombrero.

Today, Vento, the east side Milwaukee native, laughs about his self-deprecating digs throughout the years.

"I never did hate midgets. Of course not, I am one. I just like messing with people," he said with a sly smile. "To tell you the truth, I don't discriminate against anyone. Tall people? I hate them all just the same."

Getting a rise out of tall people is something Vento's made an art of since he was a young child, Ron Vento, his father, said.

When Vento was 6 or 7 years old, due to lack of physical growth "he was the size of a 2-year-old. What a lot of people didn't know though was that he had a big vocabulary even back then," Ron Vento said.

"So when he and I would be walking down the sidewalk carrying on a conversation, people would be in awe, 'cause they saw this kid who looked to them like a toddler, talking so well. Steve would play along with me and pretend like he was that young to mess with 'em," he said.

Taking on tall challenges

Messing with people hasn't always meant practical jokes for Vento though.

He's also gotten a kick out of trying things tall and short people alike assumed he couldn't do, like owning a bar at age 18, acting in a movie last spring and beginning sky diving a month or so ago.

"When I was 18 -- drinking was legal in Wisconsin at that age then -- I wanted to own my own bar," he said, "so I joined up with my uncle and we opened Spanky's on Brady.

"Then, the issue might've been that I was so young. Would I be able to run a business? Well, I did, and we had that place for several years."

Last spring, Vento took a turn on the big screen in Chicago, where he played the role of a bookie in the as-yet unreleased indie comedy film "Paint My House."

And last month, he started jumping from planes with the Sky Knights sky-diving club in West Bend.

"He really did try everything he could," Ron Vento said.

During a stretch in the mid-1990s when role playing bored him and the bar and restaurant business burned him out, Vento decided to sell cars.

Friends say he merged the art of persuasion with brute force and racked up decent sales records.

Asked to explain that merger, Vento answered: "I had a guy leaving the lot one day, without buying a car, and I wrapped my arms around his legs and wouldn't let go. I got dragged halfway across that lot. But by the time the guy finally left, he'd bought a car."

Not everything Vento tried worked out, though.

"We had talked about him being a jockey at one time," Ron Vento said with a laugh. "But the only thing he learned about the horses was how to bet 'em."

A series of painful shots

All jokes aside, life hasn't always been fun and games for Vento.

"When I was little, I went to Madison every month for experimental hormone shots," he said. "Back then, I spent about 80% of my time in University Hospital. They still don't know what causes this condition. But the treatment was something they wanted to try."

From age 10 to 16, Steve received more shots than he's ever taken, visiting the hospital weekly.

The shots "were really painful," Vento said, adding at that at 16 he said enough was enough and refused to go for more treatment.

"The difference in getting those shots and not was about 1/4 inch (in height) a year, and look what they've done for me," he said with a wry laugh.

"But it really is important though, especially for younger people to understand why I can laugh about this stuff: Being short is not a handicap, as far as I'm concerned. Sure, there have been rides at Great America I couldn't get on. But if you can't laugh at yourself . . ."

Vento's best friend since childhood, Angelo Farina, a stand-up comic, knows what it means to laugh about things not always obviously funny.

It may have been fate that brought the pair together in the first place.

A few years ago, Farina, who uses a wheelchair, lost both his legs to vascular disease.

"I've learned from him how to roll with the punches," Vento said. "He has shown me so much that when it comes down to it, we could all find something to complain about. But if we look hard enough, we have more to laugh about than we have to complain."

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