This past Friday was the end to an incredibly busy week. Right after I got home from work, my roommate and I drove downtown for my second Tigers game in three days. LA was already leading four to nothing when we got there. Being behind often makes the game more interesting, but aside from a Brennan Boesch home run the Tigers didn't put up much of an effort. The most exciting part of the game was when Tori Hunter started arguing with the umpire and the Angels' manager ran on the field and literally shoved him out of the way so he could get in the ump's face. After several minutes of face-to-face yelling, a bag of baseballs came flying out of the dugout which scattered across the the infield around home plate. I likened it to a child who couldn't get his way and decided to throw his toys. Having such a strange occurance take place made up for the Tigers' loss, which put them so far behind in the standings that making the playoffs is practically impossible. Plus, there were fireworks after the game and I captured some pretty cool video. What it doesn't show is that, being downwind of the display in the right field bleachers, we kept getting pelted with debris. Throw a handful of sand into your face if you want to get the full effect:
My friend's old roommate from Michigan State was in town, so when we got back to Ferndale we picked up my other roommate and drove to Ye Olde Saloon. Word of mouth about the place had correctly set me up for my first experience there. It was nothing special (unless you like shuffleboard - which we didn't play) but not the kind of place I would refuse to return to. It felt like a cheap bar to go to when all of your favorite places are getting old. Ye Olde Saloon will give you a good time, but at the same time it will remind you of why other places have more potential as long as you don't wear them out. While we were there, the girl we had come to meet up told us a story of recently going to the Cadieux Cafe. Some clients had brought it up recently as one of many interesting places around Detroit that I should visit. They noted that the Cadieux Cafe is the only place in America that hosts feather bowling. Several times I've had it described to me, but really the best thing to do is see it for yourself. If you want to try, imagine rolling a big, clay doughnut down a dirt path about the length of a bowling lane and trying to get it to come to rest as close as possible to a feather sticking out of the ground at the other end. Somewhere between curling, horseshoes and bocce ball, it sounded like just the kind of thing I would love to do someday. She told us how a bachelor party had invited her to join in their game last time she was there, and while she was in town she really wanted check it out again. Our mutual interest in going got her to stay in town and crash at our place so we could all hang out the next day. Conversation continued on for most of the night about our favorite places in Detroit and how awesome the city is. A fun night indeed.
Saturday I rode with bike club for the first time in weeks. There were six of us and we spent most of the time taking over a lane of traffic on Woodward, the 696 service drive, Greenfield and Nine Mile. At one point a cop pulled up behind us, flashed his lights and told us not to ride in the road. He seemed to direct us into riding on the sidewalk, which is ironic since that's illegal. Once back in Ferndale we stopped at the Dairy Queen and went to a few garage sales. One guy was giving away tons of VHS dubs and I took a handful of potential B-movie night candidates including Plague of Zombies and Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla.
After the ride we made our trip out to the east side of Detroit and to the Cadieux Cafe. While we didn't actually try feather bowling, the building itself was really cool, and I had some delicious fish and chips. Because she lives so far away from Detroit, our friend wanted to take us somewhere else we had never been and decided on Ye Olde Tap Room (not Saloon), a fairly small bar that has more than 250 beers from around the world. We all made it a point to try something new and different. My first choice was a Scottish ale that I got simply because it was called "SkullSplitter". While the name was awesome, I've discovered that I don't enjoy beers that are heavy (both alcohol-wise and malt-wise) and sweet. My second was Gulden Draak, a similarly sweet and heavily-malted chore to drink. The bottle, however, was awesome and the bartender told me he'd wash it out and let me take it home. While were playing darts (another thing I'd never done which was a lot of fun), he came back to where we were with three shots, set them down and said "these Washington apples just showed up on the bar." If we weren't on our way to see my friend's band we could've spent the entire night there. Before leaving we thanked him and he introduced himself as Wally and said he's there every Saturday. It was really great to find somewhere out-of-town that I'd really like to return to. Our night was capped off with a great show at New Center Park, one of my new favorite places to spend a summer evening. Detroit really needed an outdoor venue and the grassy hillside and modern architecture are a great fit for the area, nestled just beneath the Fischer building. Being surrounded by people I knew from bike club and around town made me feel at home. I look forward to when they start showing movies and laying down a blanket in the grass.
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