Bubbler is also something similar to a bong: http://www.jokerzwild.com/glass.htm
Growing up in Eastern Massachusetts, I always heard it called a “bubbler”. I didn’t realize that other people called it a “water fountain” until college. A water fountain is a big thing in the central square of a town with statues n’ stuff. 
manhattan, Im not quite sure what the OP intentions are either because the post seems to be a multi-part question without much clarification.
The dictionary reference is quite right for my state, California.
However, BUBBLER can mean a few things: OED 1. One who gets up bubble-companies; a swindler, cheat. (1720 POPE Let. to Digby 20 July, All the Jews, jobbers, bubblers, subscribers, etc. c1778
Conquerors 9 Bubblers and bubbled meanly Take their stand.) 2. 2. ‘A fish found in the Ohio river.
I was born and raised in Georgia and never heard the term “bubbler” used as a synonym of “water fountain”.
It isn’t a Wisconsin term, it is an Eastern Wisconsin term. I grew up in Hudson, Wisconsin near the Twin Cities and had never heard the term Bubbler until I went to Madison and the Milwaukee area kids called it that. And it is really just around Milwaukee, I am pretty sure, not even the entire Eastern part of the state.
It is quite clear that the OP’er knew what a bubbler was and was doing a study to find out who else knew what it was and where those people live.
I first heard the term in Charleston, SC. I was on my way out of the hotel and asked the girl at the front desk if there was a water fountain anywhere around. She looked at me as if I has asked permission to put my finger in her nose. She turned and looked at another girl next to her and they exchanged puzzled looks for a few seconds. She turned back to me and repeated what I had said in slow motion, possibly hoping that some ray of light would shine down on her.
“Wah-der fown-dun?”
She was deeply puzzled. Fortunatly, another hotel guest translated my request into the local lingo, and a sudden look of enlightenment came over her face as she pointed towards the elevators- the location of the nearest bubbler.
The amazing thing is not that such an oddball term as bubbler exists, but that any person with an IQ higher than a small bar of soap couldn’t figure out what a “water fountain” was, even if they had never before heard the term. It seems to me that if you know what water is, and you know what a fountain is, you should be able to figure out what a water fountain is.
Before I headed off to my first day of kindergarten, my Wisconsin-born father warned me not to put my mouth on the bubbler.
Since I had no clue what a bubbler was, I was absolutely paranoid about letting my mouth touch anything that wasn’t obviously food for the first month or two of school. Maybe that was what my father had in mind?
It’s a very regional term. It wasn’t common in Marquette, UP, which is about 90 miles from the Wisconsin border, or in the Twin Cities. But I know my cousins who grew up in Green Bay use it all the time. I think it’s endemic to a small portion of northwestern Wisconsin.
My dictionary helps in the effort. This is from the American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition:
bubbler n. Northern U.S. A drinking fountain. Used especially in Wisconsin.
I was quite surprised to hear that the term is so common in Boston, as well. I wonder if this is reflected in American Heritage Dictionary’s fourth edition.
I live in what would be considered the “Northern U.S.” (Minnesota), and the term is never used here, unless you are some sort of freak from Milwaukee :p. That device is always called a drinking fountain here. (A water fountain is one of those big things in the park with statues, etc. that spurts water.)
I grew up in a town 30 miles south of Green Bay and it was always bubbler. I finished my high school career in a small town southeast of Madison and it was bubbler there as well.
I would venture to guess that perhaps the east-west bubbler/water fountain line could be placed along the Wisconsin River. Can anyone report what they call it in LaCrosse? I can imagine that up in Eau Claire it is probably a “water fountain”.
Grew up in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, where I drank from the bubbler at school.
When I moved to southeast Missouri in the seventh grade, they looked at me like I had two heads when I called the water fountain a bubbler.
Also, of course, setting a kid on a water fountain in Menomonee Falls and turning on the water (soaking said kid’s pants) was called a “bubbler ride.”
We drank from “bubblers” at summer camp in Wolfeboro, NH when I was a kid. That was the first and only time I heard the term. I always thought it was a New England-only thing, but I guess I was wicked wrong.
As recently as 1987 I saw “Pitcher of Tonic,” meaning what I would call “soda”, on a restaurant menu in Sanbornville, NH. Even most New Englanders I’ve met aren’t familiar with that term.
Then you aren’t talking to the right New Englanders. Of course, if you were at the Poor People’s Pub, I hope you got a Tshirt.
[hijack]Are you recommending the Poor People’s Pub? I’ve driven past it a dozen times but I’ve never been in.[/hijack]
Smack dab in the middle of Wisconsin, near Stevens Point it was a bubbler. Water fountains are big things in parks with statues in the center.
[slight hijack] Another Wisconsin term: traffic lights are called “stop ‘n’ go lights” which to me has always sounded kinda quaint. How widespread is this term? [/slight hijack]
Here in Massachusetts, it’s considered sort of an old-fashioned or quaint way to say “drinking fountain.” These are the same people who call a pen an “ink pen” or the curb the “curbing.”
(But, no, we don’t drink “frappes” or “pop” here, just milkshakes and soda.)
Despite the fact that you’re clearly from western Mass, which everyone knows isn’t really Mass at all, NOBODY in Mass says pop. It’s either “tonic” or soda. And I’ve never considered bubbler to be quaint. It is in VERY frequent usage on the North Shore, to the point that signs in public places will point you towards the bubbler.
And yes, bibliphage, I’ll reccomend the Poor People’s Pub. It’s passable food, but you’ve just gotta stop in once for the T Shirt. It’s like Wall Drug or a Hard Rock Cafe.
Amen to that! I once saw a fountain in Europe that included statuary depicting the youthful Bacchus sticking his thumb over the opening of the fountain to direct the stream of water away from the pool (while an elderly Silenus above him was “spitting” Bacchus with a mouthful of water).
A bubbler is to a cheese head what a fluffer is to the rest of the world. Why the difference? Think long and hard about the term cheese head.
Now THAT’S exactly what I’m talking about! They give that “look”, you know the look don’t you Palandine. It’s that “what in the hell is a bubbler” look.
By the way, I grew up in West Bend, Wisconsin (32 miles north of Milwaukee) and you got a drink of water at the “bubbler”, booze at the “Beer Depot”, gasoline at a “filling station”, traffic signals were indeed “stop-n-go lights” and the ice cream truck was the “Dilly Wagon”. How wide spread are those terms?