VNO: Burgers, beer, a Skrewball on the rocks, quiet, a dash of New Age, a happy Sue - and wine, lots of wine

VNO: Good place for reading

The hairy guy’s report:

Before the world went haywire, I was in a silent book reading club -- a friendly group that met in the side room at VNO, the wine-inspired joint on Midland Street. The idea was to quietly read for an hour. It’s like, if you can imagine it, high school study hall with an open bar.

It turned out that reading for an hour was no problem but keeping quiet was. At one session, I ate potato chips left over from dinner. Nobody stared, but I became obsessed with keeping my mouth shut while chewing and it was hard to concentrate on the book. Ordering a drink required making hand signals to the waitress – who politely avoided saying anything (or laughing).

It’s an odd thing to do in a bar but not so out of place at VNO, which is a rather quiet place anyway with good food and a full bar. In a hectic world, calm prevails here.

At VNO, an inconvenient (and New Age) veritas

Doc’s report:

“In vino veritas,” as the Latin aphorism has it: “In wine, truth.” The booze goes in, the truth comes out. Practical tip: Don’t talk to your wife’s sister when you’re drunk.

That aphorism was affirmed, in ways both hopeful and ridiculous, on a mid-August visit to
VNO Wine Warehouse & New Age Restaurant by Harry, the G-Man and me.

We like to get the bad news out of the way up front. That way, we can enjoy ourselves and get around to distracting ourselves from the world’s problems. Simply put, our bodies are crumbling, and our lives have become a sort of Bataan Death March to McLaren financed by Medicare. There are enough bad reports from every gland, organ and system in our three bodies to send Dr. Deborah Birx scarf shopping.

As bars reopen, we find masks, no masks, open space, foamy taps, everywhere a sign - and a lot of smiles

Sign at the Green Hut

The hairy guy’s report:

What happens when bars suddenly reopen after being closed for – gee, how long was that, anyway?

People walk in and smile a lot, it turns out.

We can tell that because mostly they’re not wearing masks, though it’s tough to drink or eat with a mask on anyway. Life is full of risks, and time will tell whether this will come back to bite us in a few weeks. In the meantime, we’ll enjoy it.

But every bar now has an assortment of signs saying to do this and don't do that. "Do you feel sick?" asks one. (It almost invites you to act like a wiseguy and think, "Yes. I need a beer.")

The Rathskeller: Plenty of beer, burgers and TVs (even outdoors). Call it the Rat, but don't expect to find one

The Rat: TVs out front

The hairy guy's report:

The printed bills at the Rathskeller, a stalwart presence on Midland Street, have a note at the bottom: "Thanks for being part of our Rat family." The menu includes a Rat Dog for $4.25. And for dessert ("desert," the menu calls it), there are Rat Tails, described as "warm breadsticks sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar drizzled with chocolate caramel."

This is all in good humor, though it raises an ominous question. But we're happy to report that county Health Department inspections of the Rathskeller as far back as 2012 include no mention of actual rodents or other vermin or critters there.

They also fail to mention that this is a friendly place. Many bars on a Monday afternoon are all but deserted. This one is abuzz.

An afternoon of street-level fun and games at the Rat

Doc’s report:

Sing along with me, gentle reader, to the tune of “Ode to Billy Joe”:

"It was the third of June, in our historic city by the bay.
Well, I met Harry at the Rat, and the G-Man was on his way."

OK, you’re right. This is a bar blog, not karaoke night. Let’s get on with it.

Since last we three met, Harry’s daughter has married; as a result, a young man has asked to call Harry “Grandpa.” It was the G-man’s 62nd birthday; he’s 31 pounds lighter and his Social Security has kicked in. So I treated the G-man to a shot of Hot Damn, a red cinnamon schnapps; our bartender toasted him with another.

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather: Our bartender was Breanna, whom the loyal and attentive reader will remember from our April 2015 review of Hooligan’s.

The Crowne Pub: Cheap beer, a bear to be named later, free games and a deep-fried Ding Dong (till 1:30 a.m.)

Crowne Pub, despite what the sign says

The hairy guy's report:

When someone asks which bar is our favorite, we say there really isn't one. But Duso's, on Midland Street, always gets a mention for its $1 pints of PBR anytime. That's tough to beat.

Or was.

Now the Crowne Pub has opened directly across the street from Duso's, throwing down a beery gauntlet with $1 pints of Hamm's anytime and free bar games to boot.

Perhaps it all boils down to whether you prefer PBR or Hamm's (though it might be tough to tell the difference) and whether you care about the looming presence of a large stuffed bear in the Crowne Pub.

A day at the new West Side free-game wildlife preserve

Doc’s report:

I met Harry and the G-man recently at the new Crowne Pub on Midland Street and settled into the late mid-summer afternoon. As I often do in a new place, I tried something I’ve never had before. In this case, it was a beer-battered, deep-fried zucchini.

Not a plate of sliced half-dollar zucchini fried in olive oil with minced garlic like I do at home; it was a whole zucchini. It was perfect: crunchy on the outside but yielding to the bite and moist in the middle, with two side sauces: ranch and an eye-opening sriracha.

Hooters: Wings in bacon, salt on a napkin, a great view, a Big Daddy and a Royal Flush. But sorry, no vermouth.

Hooters at the end of Midland Street: Lots of orange

UPDATE: This place has gone out of business.

The hairy guy's report:

Reading an occasional western helps keep things in perspective.

For instance, in one of his many novels, "The Lonely Men," Louis L'Amour describes a rough bar in Tucson: "The men who hung out there were hard cases, men with the bark on, men who had been born with the bark on. There were men came into that place so rough they wore their clothes out from the inside first."

Now that's a rough bar.

The hairy guy thought of that on the year's first truly summerlike day, when he strolled into the Hooters at the end of Midland Street and noticed a balding guy at a table near the door glaring, scowling at him. 

Branding at Hooters: An owl and orange (lots of it)

Doc's report:

Hooters, a “breastaurant” where Midland Street meets the Saginaw River as you drive or amble east from the west side of town, is not, in the conventional sense, an “unsung bar of Bay City.” It’s one in a chain of some 430.

But my pleasant midweek mid-afternoon there with Harry recently affirmed my conviction that, in our historic city by the bay, all is pleasant, civil and, above all else, even in the face of the oppressive forces of conformity, authentic. 

The panorama east from Hooters’ pristine windows or capacious deck presents a view of  downtown, including St. Laurent Brothers and Jennison Place not available from any other perspective. The Saginaw River flowing north to the bay is affirming in its constancy; and Megan, our waitress, was as competent and pleasant as the late-May afternoon breeze.

JT's Pub: An old place with a new name, a great burger, fancy fries, a nameless drink and a useful ladies' room

JT's: Around the corner from Midland Street

The hairy guy's report:

Midland Street isn't as hopping as it once was. 

O'Hare's, one of the stalwart bars of the entertainment strip, has closed, with little notice as best we could tell. (We peeked in the front window and found the upside-down Christmas tree still on the ceiling, fully decorated.) The River Rock is open but actively for sale. A couple of recent stops at VNO down the street (including a Saturday night) found it far from packed.

Maybe nighttime rowdiness has led people to look elsewhere, such as newer restaurant/bars across the river. A serious street reconstruction project last year likely didn't help.

The street work did widen the sidewalks, cutting parking but adding space for outdoor tables -- though we wonder how many there'll be. (Maybe Unclaimed Freight, the big hardware store, could set up nice seating to serve nuts and bolts. At Cops and Doughnuts, where workers wear "inmate" shirts, those considered low flight risks could serve coffee and doughnuts out front.) 

So it was a surprise to notice last fall that a new place, JT's Pub, had opened around the corner.

10 things (mostly) about JT's: Inventive drinks, great food, college football history, good hosts and more

Holly behind the bar at JT's

Doc's report:

A recent question at bar trivia asked: "Which of these drinks does not belong with the others?":
    a. Tanqueray and tonic
    b. Jack and Coke
    c. Cranberry juice and vodka
    d. 7 and 7

The answer is "c," a cosmopolitan. The other three are call drinks, so named because the waitress "calls" a specific brand of spirits, like Jack Daniel's. One of the 7s in a 7 and 7 is Seagram's 7 Crown.

Holly, our bartender on a recent trip to JT's Pub, knew that. Like Harry and me, Holly is an alum of SVSU, and, like my mother, of Reese High School. With that pedigree, you'd expect her to have the competence and personality that will serve her well in a coming job in sales.

River Rock: Beer, food, pool and rock-and-roll history starting at 7 a.m., complete with a car bomb anytime

River Rock: A cozy corner bar

The hairy guy's report:

It's the middle of winter. The hairy guy is doing his best to look ahead to warmer days.

Mrs. Hairy Guy has been lobbying for a trip to Florida. Harry has been studying the Burpee plant catalog that came in the mail, with its flowery prose. A hardy fig tree, for instance, is said to "bestow a luscious cavalcade of golf ball-sized deep-purple figs." Figs and golf, together at last.

And on a snowy weekday afternoon, everything was going well at the welcoming River Rock Cafe on Midland Street -- until those warm thoughts were blown away by an Irish Car Bomb.

Harry has to admit that he asked for it. But it was staring out at him from the menu. And after some beer, it sounded, well, intriguing.

At River Rock Cafe, the history of rock is on the walls (with thoughts of a Virgin Mary and Marilyn Monroe)

Henry at the bar

Doc’s report:

Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, who owns the Kwik-E-Mart on “The Simpsons,” venerates an icon of Ganesh, which he keeps on the store’s roof. He shows Bart Simpson the secret passage to the roof through the beer cooler, behind the non-alcoholic beer.

Bart: “But what if someone wants a non-alcoholic beer?”
Apu: “You know, it never comes up.”

Indeed, if, whether by responsible choice or medical necessity, you say goodbye to a half-century of alcohol abuse, the frigid and seductive mistress of non-alcoholic beer may well be your first stop. And your last.

Lucky's Pub on Midland Street, where you can get a Train Wreck, foosball or some kind of screwdriver

Lucky's and the Westown

The hairy guy's report:

A neighbor tells about moving to town awhile back. She and her then-husband unloaded stuff, then went to Midland Street for the sort of thing people do there.

Eventually driving home from Lucky's Pub, an officer pulled her over, somehow sensing a DUI. After checking her out-of-state driver's license, he announced, while snapping on the cuffs: "Welcome to Bay City!" 

Just recently, Harry had a fine afternoon at Lucky's, meeting a bunch of friends for a feast of chicken wings and beer before heading to a poker game. He had no run-ins with the law. But he did have a lousy night at cards. Meanwhile, the friends went off to play trivia at another local bar -- and they lost.

There seems to be a pattern here, raising an ominous question: Is a visit to a place called Lucky's pushing your luck?

It's a great bartender who makes a bar great, as one shows again in a visit to Lucky's and the Westown

Amber behind the bar at Lucky's

Doc’s Report:

A recurring observation of this blog, now in its third year, is the importance of a good bartender.

Nothing else -- not location, atmosphere, food, entertainment, culture, the make-up of the crowd -- is as decisive to the bar experience as the bartender’s competence and personality.

So Harry and I were the lucky ones when we visited Lucky’s Pub on a recent weekday afternoon --  thanks to Amber, a veteran of bars from Bay City to Port Huron. Along with a pleasant insurance sales rep, we had Amber’s undivided attention for two hours.

Duso's: An old Midland Street bar with new lingerie, old signs, games, no food but $1 pints any old time

Duso's: It's been around

The hairy guy's report:

It was 2:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, or very close to it. We were on Midland Street in front of the Sawmill, long known as the Bon Ton.

The Sawmill's Facebook page says its winter hours have begun, opening at 6 p.m. except for 2:30 on Wednesdays. But the front doors were locked, and it was too cold to hang around outside. Looking for a place to grab just one beer while we waited, we surveyed the street's embarrassment of barroom riches.

Something about Duso's Bar called out from the next block. And there we found, mounted on a back corner wall, the slightly worn but still classy old outdoor sign from the Bon Ton. Maybe Duso's is where we intended to be all along.

The heat was on, the taps were working, dozens of brassieres were on display and the bartender's name was Leda. Clearly we wouldn't be going anywhere for awhile.

Duso's Bar: You do that voodoo that you do so well

Leda at work

Doc's report:

Well, I'm piggybacking on Cole Porter to get “Duso” into my headline. It's a stretch, but worth the effort, because an afternoon there was drenched in holiday season magic.

A friend whose opinion I respect suggested just before his death in April that my copy was long-winded and my references obscure. I reminded him, citing “Hamlet,” that “Brevity is the soul of wit” and underscored the point with a familiar Latin aphorism: “Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.” (“When I labor to be brief, I grow obscure.”)

So I'll limit my remarks on a simply delightful visit to Duso's to four points.

One is that, having grown up on the east side, I expect a trip to the west side to bring with it some of the pleasures of travel abroad. Duso's didn't disappoint.

O'Hare's: A bar with Scooby Snacks and deep-fried s'mores, and you should plan to dress accordingly

O'Hare's, or is it O'Hares or O'Hare?

The hairy guy's report:

O'Hare's, in the Midland Street bar district, has a rather complicated dress code posted in the front window. Among lots of things, long shirts must be tucked in. Geez. It sounds like Catholic school (which the hairy guy never attended) but with beer and hard liquor. How strict can it be?

As it happened, Harry's shirttail was hanging out and he thought for a fleeting second that he might have to tuck it in and dash to the resale shop down the street to buy a tie. After all, he couldn't very well report on the bar without getting inside.

But being a rebellious type, he boldly walked right in -- shirt hanging out for all the world to see, dress code be damned. He even tried putting his hat on sideways (also prohibited) but it didn't fit that way. Of course, his old-guy pants might be deemed too baggy (ditto). And there's the ominous "Other items at management's discretion" to worry about. Maybe they don't like sandals.

You could sense a hush falling over the street. Was he going to get tossed out?