It’s a Midwest tradition to have some form of entertainment to accompany a beer (or three) while whiling away those long winter nights. Euchre and bowling have deep roots in Michigan. Plenty of bars offer dart leagues and shuffleboard, and numerous drinking venues have dedicated game spaces — from pinball arcades to axe throwing and cornhole setups.
But it’s the oddball sports, the ones unique to their venue or the people who founded the bar hosting them, that really capture my dedication. That’s why my first stop on my quest to chronicle the weird, silly, and random was to visit Chris Hutt. Back in 2001, the metro Detroit native was tailgating with some friends at the Indianapolis 500. They had brought a portable bowling alley, but the balls kept rolling off course and careening into neighboring spots. They replaced the bowling balls with footballs and made up a game on the spot: The team that knocks down all the pins first wins. From there, in Hutt’s own words, “Sometimes day drinking pays off.”
From that happy accident emerged the sport of fowling and Hutt’s business, Fowling Warehouse, which has two Michigan locations — in Hamtramck and Grand Rapids — and several more throughout the country, many of which have franchise partners. In addition to being a place to fowl and drink, each location has open play and team outings, as well as fowling leagues (except for Atlanta and Omaha). The activity’s growing popularity, says Hutt, is because the sport and the players don’t take themselves too seriously. “It’s silly fun,” he says. “The most unathletic people can be quarterbacks.”
On Detroit’s east side, there’s a long-standing league that goes back many years. Only, its members don’t play tennis or golf, or toss darts, or even bowl. Instead, devotees gather to roll a wooden wheel down a sand-lined alley at a single feather peeking out of the ground.
This is feather bowling, and it happens in just two places locally: Bath City Bistro in Mount Clemens and the Cadieux Cafe in Detroit near Grosse Pointe. For the uninitiated, says Cadieux Cafe owner John Rutherford, feather bowling is like “a big combination of shuffleboard and bocce ball.”
The Cadieux Feather Bowling Club was established in 1933, following the arrival of Belgian immigrants, who brought the sport to Detroit.
As with fowling, “anyone can play it,” Rutherford says. “It’s easy to catch on to, and a lot of it is the luck of the draw.” Nothing pairs as perfectly with feather bowling as a crisp, golden Belgian ale. Fortunately, Cadieux Cafe has plenty on tap and in bottles. Rutherford recommends the Feather Bowler’s Belgian Dubbel, a rich, malty brown ale that evokes warm nights in the Belgian countryside. The recipe was created by the well-respected late brewer Brad Etheridge of Dragonmead Brewery using traditional methods and ingredients.
If the folks at Cadieux are sipping traditional Belgian brews to accompany their games, over at the Fowling Warehouse lanes, players might try their hand at the Mystery Beer Machine, a vending machine that pops out a random selection of budget or craft beer. After all, why not add another element of chance to one of Detroit’s own homegrown alley sports?
This story originally appeared in the June 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
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