..."Oh my goodness, we won," cried Marcy Skowronski, the always colorful 87-year-old owner of the south side bar. "We're going to have a party to throw the bras back up."

I'll let Skowronski explain what happened when a city inspector stopped in recently.

"We've had bras hanging here for 45 years. It's been a charm of the place. So here comes this gal, and she's walking in here like Lady Astor's pet horse, you know, and she says she wants those bras down because they're a fire hazard. Now how can a bra be a fire hazard unless someone is wearing it? Honest to God."

Actually, I don't know about Lady Astor or whether she had a horse, but I do believe that bras rarely ignite, either when worn or if repurposed as tavern art. Ald. Bob Donovan, who jumped in on Skowronski's side, said, "I'm no expert, but aren't bras flame resistant anyway? I know some of them are awfully hot."

You get a sense of the bawdy but beloved tradition at the Holler House. Female customers, particularly first-timers, are encouraged to remove, autograph and leave their bras behind because, well, just because. Typically, they modestly wriggle out of them right there on a bar stool, or they retire to the ladies room.

It's a practice that Skowronski herself began one crazy night in the 1960s.

"We all got bombed, all these girls. And we just decided to take our bras off and hang them up," she said.

Dozens of bras dangled from skis, a coal bucket and other odd objects attached to the ceiling. Men's underwear was up there, too. But this week, Skowronski's son-in-law took them down for fear that city inspectors would return and slap them with a fine, which according to the official "order to correct condition" can run from $150 to $10,000 a day.

The Holler House, 2042 W. Lincoln Ave., was founded in 1908 by Skowronski's in-laws. She has worked there 59 years. Besides its uplifting decorating style, the bar is known for having the oldest certified bowling lanes in America. To this day, the two lanes require the pins to be reset by hand. Sports Illustrated gave the place lots of ink in a 1988 article, and a sticker on the front door says Esquire magazine named it one of America's best bars.

The Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services has inspected the Holler House many times in the past but has never before deemed the bra display a potential inferno. The written order from last month's visit said "curtains, draperies, hangings and other decorative materials suspended from walls or ceilings shall meet the flame propagation performance criteria of NFPA 701."

Ah, yes, the dreaded NFPA rule on non-propagated brassieres. You'd think that every bar in town would have something hanging up that's decorative and flammable.

Realizing its straps were twisted on this one, the department Thursday dismissed the order. The official explanation for the DD-sized mistake says something about the bar having a smaller occupancy rate than originally thought, and therefore a less stringent fire code.

Skowronski had gone downtown this week to appeal the order but was told she missed the deadline. Common sense finally prevailed once Donovan and I started asking questions.

When I stopped at the bar earlier this week, everyone was burned about the bras. Randy Romans, who was there servicing the jukebox as he has for 34 years, said most bars are braless, but these decorations at the Holler House are a harmless conversation piece.

"This place is so old that the bras should be grandfathered in. Or grandmothered in," he said.

Skowronski said the bar got a thorough cleaning for its 100th birthday, and many of the old, tattered, smoke-stained bras were discarded. Since then, a new collection has been growing.

I asked Nina Hunter, a regular customer and friend of Skowronski, if she ever donated a bra to the cause. "Personally I have not, but I have talked many into doing it," she said. The number one excuse for not leaving a bra behind? They're expensive.

Skowronski sorted through the bag o' bras removed from the ceiling and pulled out a wide assortment of colors and styles. Many had been initialed by the donor, and some included a smiley face or a short message like, "Sue M. Awesome time! April 2010." One polka dot bra, donated by a regular a week before she died, is framed with her photo. Larry the Cable Guy stopped in one night, and he was given a bra to go as a souvenir.

"We've got a bunch of crazy people who come in here," Skowronski said.

But no crazier than the city's short-lived ban on the frilly things they leave behind.