Bemo’s by day: A quiet corner bar with game shows, Liquid Marijuana and a reminder that disco still sucks

Bemo's: Live music at night, quietude by day

The hairy guy’s report:

A few weeks back, Harry found himself in the Old Miami, a bar in Detroit’s Cass Corridor. By day, it’s a mild-mannered place long known as a hangout for Vietnam vets. At night, the music brings a different crowd.

Harry, showing up for an old friend’s evening retirement party, asked for a PBR and got a curt lecture about hipsters. He ended up instead with a can of Carling Black Label (once brewed in Frankenmuth), which he’d have happily asked for if he’d known it was available.

Back in Bay City on a Friday night soon afterward, Mrs. Hairy Guy wanted to see a poet who was reading at Bemo’s on south Madison. In the interest of marital bliss, Harry agreed.

The poet, Marc Beaudin, is a local guy now living in Montana who was in town for a high school reunion. He talked of “trout and transcendence” and “the erotic pull of gravity,” among other things. The mostly full house listened without talking, applauded at appropriate moments, and nobody left when the music started. It was good, though not Bemo’s usual nightly music fare.

And it got Harry to wondering about Bemo’s by day.

Shot & Shell: Clean beers, pool tables and burgers, and a wrathful drink you've (luckily) never tasted

Shot & Shell: Clean inside and out

The hairy guy's report:

Suppose you wanted to come up with mixed drinks based on famous books. For "Gone With the Wind," you'd have something red (for Scarlett). "Call of the Wild" could include Wild Turkey. "Catcher in the Rye" would have rye whiskey. "Fahrenheit 451" could have three shots of Bacardi 151. (Yes, that adds to 453, not 451. But after three shots of it, who would notice?)

Maybe this would be cute in, say, a bar called The Library that had walls lined with books. Not so much in a place called the Shot & Shell, which sounds like either a joint for straight-up drinking or a cocktail lounge at a hunt club.

Unfazed by this, the Shot & Shell on Woodside in Essexville -- which is an otherwise very sensible and good bar -- offers a $3 house drink called Grapes of Wrath.

A Google search turns up a drink by this name that includes blue Curacao liqueur and vodka, and maybe one involving grape juice. The Shot & Shell folks picked another, made of that 151-proof rum, Grape Pucker schnapps and Sprite. "Prepare to feel the wrath," says a website.

We weren't prepared.

A visit to the Shot & Shell conjures fond tales of boilermakers, bumps and more. Oh, the etymology!

Angie behind the bar

Doc’s report:

Our unbroken string of happy visits to Bay City’s bars continued at the Shot & Shell, thanks in large measure to bartender Angie, a  veteran of Hooter’s, Bemo’s and the Circle Bar.

Angie knows where to aim the ice cube when you’re getting too bossy. 

She presides over a long straight bar in a clean bright room, with three 50-cent pool tables, perfectly balanced cues, and trophies awarded to such local billiards teams as “Chix and Dipstix.”

Like any modern existentialist, Angie thrives in an environment of contradiction and ambiguity.

It starts with the name -- or names -- of the bar: “SHOT&SHELL” on the sign outside; “Shot ‘n’ Shell” on the handwritten sign inside; “Shot N Shell Bar The” in the phone book.