Drinking on $11 a Night: Detroit

A very special “Drinking on $11 a Night” as Kevin Downey, Jr. returns to the dive bars of his early years!

Welcome back. My dreams were my ticket out of Detroit, specifically the Warrendale section, though the real estate people now refer to my neighborhood as the (gulp) Herman Gardens region. Warrendale was still a mostly Polish section of Detroit when we moved in back in ’69 or’70. I had cousins and both sets of grandparents within a 3 minute drive, and when I was older, an easy bike ride. We lived on Ashton, on the first block off of Southfield Freeway.

On the other side were the Herman Gardens projects. In the fall of ’70 my 20 year old mother walked me to kindergarten through the now razed projects (I think the school remains). After that I had the pleasure of attending Saints Peter and Paul Catholic school, where Sister Rage would throw erasers at me when I was deep in ADD mode (I guess they have medicine for that now?).

Detroit is odd in that the night before Halloween is “Devil’s Night” where we’d soap windows and knock over garbage cans. The next night the same people gave us candy.

I thought my neighborhood was full of idiots. Equally bizarre, every spring was “riot season” in Detroit. My mother told us we had to play inside after school and keep the dogs from barking at the roving gangs (one night when we weren’t home one such gang threw a rock through our front window).

Behind our house was a bar called the Tipperary Pub. We played baseball in their parking lot everyday until the drinkers showed up and parked in our outfield. I’m certain there are years worth of “home runs” littering their roof, though if you were REALLY cool you’d hit it over the bar and onto the freeway. When riding in the car, The Tipperary Pub was the landmark telling me we were 30 seconds from home. On St. Paddy’s Day, the bar would be packed before noon. The parking lot filled quickly and drunks would park in front of our house. They’d get hammered and sneak through our yard back to their cars. Some would fight behind our house. The next day we’d find broken blades in our right field. I had my first racially motivated beating at 4 years old behind our house and near the bar. I thought I’d had my ass kicked by the Jackson 5, though there were actually only three, and one appeared to be Janet.

The first time I was inside the bar was to chase my grandparents and my grandfather’s brother Andy, (henceforth referred to as the Mod Squad), out for lunch, circa 1972. It was dark inside the bar, (I‘d find out why decades later), and I was blinded by the change of light for the first 5 seconds. My eyes adjusted and I scanned the dark Irish pub. I saw my quarry and told them it was time to eat, and then I left. I was thrilled to finally be in “The Tip”!

I went in to have my first drink there after my Uncle Tim’s funeral about 5 years ago but left because my mother tripped and had to go to the hospital. So, despite the fact that this bar played such a significant part in my early days, my drink during this excursion for “Drinking on $11” was actually the first I’ve ever had at the Tipperary Pub.

Friday nights my family would go to Warren Ave bars for fish fry with the Mod Squad to places like the Blue Room and the Iron Horse, (my grandmother always ordered frog legs, which I found repulsive to look at). On Saturday afternoons the Mod-Squad would take Pat and me to Warren Ave again for bar crawls. They’d drink “boomba“ glasses of PBR, Altes or Blatz. Grandma drank Canada Dry ginger ale with Kessler’s whiskey, “smooth as nails”. We’d go to Pete’s, and back to The Iron Horse and the Blue Room. The Mod Squad would assassinate brain cells while Pat and I drank bottles of “pop” and played shuffleboard (kids weren’t allowed at the bar; to this day Pat and I are still maestros of the game and painfully arrogant about it as well).

If it wasn’t too hot, we’d go down to Chick’s. I liked going to Chick’s as this meant we’d get to take a cab back to the Mod Squad’s house on Minock. The Mod-Squad didn’t like long, hot walks when they were full of cheap booze.

Footnote - I got drunk for the first time in my life at The Mod Squad’s house when I stumbled upon Uncle Andy’s bottle of PBR which he left on the floor next to the TV he and my dad were trying to fix. I was 2 and half years old.

Suffice to say, as most kids spent their summers and weekends at the beach or taking piano lessons, I was in a dive bar drinking Faygo “red pop”, eating potato chips, and learning how to throw “leaners” in shuffleboard. To me, the smell of a urinal cake is a breath of fresh air, and seeing a drunken grandma brings a tear to my eye.

Enough reminiscing, it’s time to return to the places that defined my love of all things divey. With the exception of going into “The Tip” for 5 minutes after my uncle’s Funeral, I haven’t been back to this section of Detroit to hang out since we moved to the ‘burbs in 1977. I’ll even include some of the bar lessons I learned early on which have helped me immeasurably over the years.

My mother said, “The old neighborhood is too dangerous. Why don’t you and Tommy drink on $11 in Sterling Heights?” Sorry ma, that’s for pussies. I gotta keep it real, yo. It’s MY neighborhood and I won’t be scared away from it by the nation’s highest murder rate.I’ll need an amigo for this trip to the motherland. Someone who knew the neighborhood back in the 70s, but also knows the terrain today. The old neighborhood ain’t what it used to be and I could get shivved for walking into the wrong place. Cousin Tom Downey is the perfect cat for this mission. He also lived nearby on Ashton for awhile and has been known to frequent the Tipperary Pub. Even better, he knows which bars to avoid. Our old stomping ground is really REALLY ugly now. My mother said, “The old neighborhood is too dangerous. Why don’t you and Tommy drink on $11 in Sterling Heights?” Sorry ma, that’s for pussies. I gotta keep it real, yo. It’s MY neighborhood and I won’t be scared away from it by the nation’s highest murder rate.

However, just to be sure Tommy and I aren’t tearfully dispatched execution-style in a ladies room, we’re going during the day.

Destination- Home!

Bankroll: $11!

Tipperary Pub

8278 Southfield Freeway

I picked up Cousin Tom and we made a bee-line to the Tipperary Pub. I can’t wait to actually, finally, for once, have a drink inside.

First, we drove around the block to see my old house. It’s now green and a sheet doubles as a curtain. The houses two doors down on both sides are burned out. Several other lots are completely void of homes. Many houses are empty. Its official - my home turf is a full-fledged ghetto. My old house today:

We swung around the block and into the Tip’s parking lot. Ours is the only car in it. The sign suspended high above the door says, “Tipperary Pub” and has 4 shamrocks on it. A huge chunk is missing or covered with tape, I’m not sure which. Finally, after waiting over 30 years, I’m going to get to drink in one of the bars I knew so well as a kid.

The door is locked. Tom has had many a Guinness in this place. On St. Paddy’s Day he has attended mass here and THEN drank Guinness. He’s pretty sure they are usually open at this time, but the locked door isn’t a good sign. It looks like the Tip is dead! Tom knows the previous owner sold it recently. If only I’d listened to my mother I’d be happily drinking in Sterling Heights. This is a crushing blow for both of us. We headed to Warren Ave for solace.

Warren Ave is the “strip” of the neighborhood. Our 2nd stop of the day was the Blue Room. As we got close, Tom said, “We’ll be killed in there now. Keep going.” Damn, I used to love that place. It was unusually dark (like almost every bar in Detroit), moody, with lush blue carpet and a sunken dining area, and one of those really cool 70’s juke boxes. A neighbor of the Mod-Squad was here once and tried to bet my Uncle Andy that he had more money in his wallet.

Bar lesson #1 - NEVER bet a man in a dark bar that you have more money in your wallet than he does.

Next stop, The Iron Horse: a rare sunlit bar with a wood floor. Grandpa Herb and his brother, Uncle Andy, drank PBR from the huge, aforementioned “boomba glasses”. This is where Brother Pat and I honed our shuffleboard skills.

Bar lesson #2 -When your shuffleboard opponent has a puck in the 3 point range, hit it dead-on, not from an angle. This will knock his puck off and place yours almost exactly where his was.

No food at this bar, just chips. This was always the 2nd stop with the Mod-Squad. They knew the bartender and we’d kill most of the afternoon here. If there was a Detroit Tiger game on, the jukebox was off and we’d listen to the game on the radio (no high-falootin’ televisions here).

Again, Cousin Tom waves us past. “We’ll be killed here, too.” This seems to be the theme of our tour. It’s getting disappointing. My old haunts are gone, or are crime- scenes-in-waiting.

Up two blocks to Pete’s Tavern. Great fish n chips. Also very dark. The first stop on the Mod-Squad’s afternoon pub crawl. Dark, with a dining area separated from the bar by a wood and frosted glass wall.

Bar lesson #3 - If bikers are shooting pool, and Pat and I run up to the table and start pushing the balls into pockets, our father will spank us despite the bikers calling for mercy on us.

We pulled up to the place and I saved Tom the effort: “We’ll be killed here, wont we?”

“Yep.”

Strike 4! The Tip appears to be closed down and the Warren Ave joints are not looking friendly. On the other hand, we successfully dodged 3 potential murder sites. It’s all about how you look at it. Let’s try Chicks.

Chick’s

18550 W. Warren Ave.
1:36

Chick’s is open. The outside hasn’t changed at all. It has what I’ll assume is the same yellow sign announcing, “Chick’s Detroit”. Under that is says “Fish Fry F .” There is a matching awning. The facade is white bricks with blurred windows. Behind the windows are two red neon signs. One says “Chick’s” and the other says “Bar”.

Who knows what dangers lurk inside. Peeking in, we noticed the only thing that’s changed since 1975 is the Red Wings schedule. It’s probably the same crowd since I was last here but with more wrinkles. The dining area has a mirror with Chick’s on it in a font not found in Microsoft Word, and it runs along an entire wall, just over the padded seating and just under a sign announcing “Lion’s Games - $1.25 Domestic btles”

There are probably 7 people in the bar. The most notable is a man about 70 who stood at the bar the entire time we were there. He wore a Salmon pink blazer that he has probably had since buying it at Crowley’s in ’72. Everyone else is pure Dee-troit blue collar.

We were lucky enough to walk in on Friday, and as the sign outside states, it’s “Fish Fry F”. We correctly suppose the “F” means Friday”. I haven’t been here in 31 years but I’m about to order up a plate of perch. Most likely the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandson of the perch I ate last time I was here. Tom is getting the walleye. We are both loving Pabst Blue Ribbon at $2 a bottle. The only thing missing from this scenario is a Tiger game.

The perch was great and the walleye was greater. We each had another PBR. I asked the bartender what colors the Chicks T-shirt came in. A patron yelled “pink”. I yelled, “That’s the same color as my ass you’re about to kiss”, but it came out, “Ha. You got me”.

We left Chicks after only spending $4 each for beer. All the other Warren Ave joints are killing halls. Our only hope is to take another shot at the Tip.

Cost: $4 for two PBRS, (and we also had great fish but we aren’t counting that).

Remaining Bankroll: $7

Tipperary Pub

(Pt 2- this time it’s personal)
8278 Southfield Freeway
2:42

We had to take another shot at the Tip. This time there is a car in the parking lot, but alas, the door is still locked. Just as we were about to leave the bartender opened the door!

“I keep it locked” she said. “This isn’t a great neighborhood”.

Apparently we are white honest-looking enough to enter. I’m beyond excited to finally drink here!

The Tip is decorated way better than I’d anticipated. They have Irish chocthkies all over, including an impressive collection of Tullamore Dew jugs. Almost every inch of the walls are covered with something relating to Ireland or booze. The hanging lights are dimly lit and it took a few minutes to adjust to them. They have t-shirts (with and without expletives), but not our size. The back bar is covered in bar lights and hooch signs, as well as CCTV monitors to keep an eye out for shotgun wielding yay-hoos that have taken over our former home.

I’m thrilled to be finally having a Guinness in the Tip! Tom ordered the same. The bartender tells us how the burned out house near my old house became a crack den and was torched a few weeks ago, and how she saw the firebug run through her parking lot on a security camera.

We told the bartender we grew up around here. She tells us, repeatedly, how bad the neighborhood has become. As we were discussing the demise of Warrendale a man walked into the range of a camera out front. The bartender watched him and said, “Keep going… if he appears on THIS monitor, he’s walking by. If he doesn’t, he is standing outside the door for too long… keep going…” And he did just that.

She also told us, “its real dark in here. If someone comes in to rob us, he’ll be blinded for a few minutes. That’ll give me time”.

Time for what? We aren’t sure and we don’t ask. I’m hoping temporary blindness isn’t the only defense against a Downey family double funeral.

She then went on to tell us how someone tried to break into the bar, and then switched gears and closed by saying, “It’s not that bad of a neighborhood.”

Huh?

The Guinness is lovely but I spied a bottle of Stroh’s! I haven’t had that since high school and I didn’t know they still made it. The Guinness was $5 and the Stroh’s is $2.50, which puts me .50 cents over budget. But it’s a homecoming and I can’t be cheap today.

Tom and I spent our time at the Tip talking about old times and dead Downeys. My $11 is gone, perch swim in my stomach, and it’s time to head to safer ground.

Tipperary Pub:

• Guinness $5
• Stroh’s $2.50
• Total for the day- $11.50
• .50 CENTS OVER BUDGET

Recap: There is no place like home-turf bars, even if your old neighborhood sports a 7.9% unemployment rate and a world record murder-rate.

Tom Downey is a musician as well as a DJ extraordinaire. He spins for thousands of people every year, including the Detroit Red Wings. He can be found at:

http://www.myspace.com/tommytoony

Kevin Downey Jr. has a Funk and Wagnalls-like knowledge of dive bars across the U.S and Krakow, Poland. You can learn more about him at www.kevindowneyjr.com or www.myspace.com/kevindowneyjrsucks

Tags: Bars • detroit • dive bars • Drinking