I was driving up the Lodge not long ago, and as he often does as I get close to the Wyoming exit, Ron Gurdjian came to mind. Ron passed away in 2018, but before that, he presided over Tom’s Tavern, a gorgeous ramshackle dive bar made of plywood and held together by spilled whiskey and stubbornness. To me, Tom’s was the Platonic dive: that perfect, absolute, and eternal dive bar that is somehow the exemplar and reflection of all dive bars everywhere. It was dark. It was off-kilter in more ways than one, with not a single right angle in the place and a floor that sloped steeply downward no matter where you were standing. Like our own Mystery Spot, Tom’s was a place outside of time and the rules of physics. It was magical.
But then again, so many real dive bars are magical — rough around the edges (and, in some cases, the center as well) without being truly scary. The customers are as varied and chaotically interesting as the characters in any Venetian opera, from factory workers to academics to frat boys. If you want to get a good understanding of a city, look at its dives. To my mind, they’ll tell you more about the character of a town than the five-star hotel restaurants will. To reach the soul of a city, you have to look at the unpretty places, too.
And despite our new shininess on the global stage, Detroit has plenty of unpretty left. The glitz and glamour of downtown’s revitalization hasn’t spread equally to every corner of the city, and the echoes of a violent police raid on a blind pig in 1967 still ring out on some sweltering July nights. Economic uncertainties and layoffs hit harder at the canned beer level than they do at the Aperol spritz.
So I worry about our precious dives. Tariffs, changing consumer behavior, and inflation make it harder and harder to eke out a living on that razor-thin profit margin. We lost Tom’s when Ron passed and no one stepped up to put in the long hours and fix up the place for the inevitable inspections. When that happened, we lost generations of rockabilly, jazz, first dates, and late nights. Cigarettes, sticky floors, college kids skipping class, and a bride dancing on the bar: I’ve seen all of these at Tom’s, and I’m guessing you have at whatever bar is your Platonic dive.
Then again, I know the stubbornness and resilience behind the smiles of most of the folks who run these places. They’ve weathered recessions. They’ve stood ankle-deep in water to fix a boiler and then cleaned up, gone upstairs, and comforted a grieving patron. Dealing with thieves, drunks, tax collectors, and fire inspectors is no job for the weak of heart. There’s an honesty to an unassuming corner bar; the regulars and staff suffer no fools or poseurs. So I have faith, too, that come what may, somewhere in town, I’ll always be able to swing open a crooked door into an ink-dark room, shutting out the blinding light of day and taking my place on the rail, elbows propped in the same spot that generations of elbows have been, and order a can of beer and a shot of well whiskey. The dive abides.
This story originally appeared in the July 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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