Why are we doing this?
Why did we start this little adventure? Why did we decide to go out and walk into smoky, old, stale-smelling gin joints across Michigan and write about what went on inside? Because you can never judge a book by its cover. Because you can always be surprised at what life can offer. Because striking up a conversation with a total stranger drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon can lead you to find out more about yourself than you could sitting in front of your flat-screen TV and watching Swordfish on TNT. Because there are too many Applebees, Chilis, Logan’s, and other copycat chain restaurants that are stealing the soul of the American spirit. The mentality of the modern generation is to disconnect – disassociate yourself with your neighbor, get a booth in a restaurant so you can be ‘alone’, separate, do all your banking on the internet, on, and on, and on. The corner bar is a place that draws you, nearly forces you to engage, to associate, to connect. You can’t help to talk to Hank, the retired mill worker who comes into the pub at 3PM every day and stays until 11PM, while drinking only three Bud Lights. Gladys gets you your 22oz. Moosehead, and asks you where you’re from – what are you going to say – go away? No, you’re not – you’re going to tell her, and she’s going to say that she’s got a cousin that lives on Pine St., and the connection will be established.
There are exactly three million of these stories out there, and we want to hear all of them. But we’re not going to be able to. But we are going to find as many of them as we can. The other ones are up to you to find out. These stories aren’t at Applebees or Chilis or Logan’s – they’re at the Main Street Pub, they’re at Murphy’s, they’re at Delaney’s in Fountain. They’re everywhere. Find them so they don’t go away. Find your own story, and that story will be found by another traveler, another seeker…and the chain continues…
People wonder why we do this. What possible good could it do? You know what we tell them? What if someone reads the story of the Kopper Top, and wants to see what it’s all about? Then they have a beer, then another, then they call their friend and gets him down there, and there’s more business for Mark and Mike to pay the bills come crunch time. That’s what we want. We want the world to know there’s more out there than the cookie cutter bar/restaurant in the strip mall in the suburbs – there’s Frank’s Place that Frank bought in 1967 after his divorce that got him a second marriage to Patty that has produced 6 grandkids and a 30-year anniversary. Is 26-year-old Jessica going to tell you that when she tells you about the Margurieta specials at Logan’s? Do you care? We don’t, and we think there’s a lot of people out there that don’t either.
There’s a lot out there. Find it with us….
