St Andrews Hall

Visit: 12.23.2011

Who is Troy Gregory?

I was standing at the back of St. Andrews Hall in downtown Detroit, surrounded by my Electric Six loving brethren, sipping a beer and searching the walls for posters.  The opening band had just finished up.  I actually liked their set, too, which is a small miracle for opening acts.  The lead singer was a little mealy-mouthed and the keyboardist was decidedly uninterested in what was going on but hey, it's rock.  Those were probably choices. 

My sister and I wandered around the hall in between sets, collecting what evidence we could to help us piece together the mystery of the opening act.  We checked by the bar, a long classic wooden affair running the length of the west side of the hall, and by the pop-up merch tables on the opposite side of the room.  Nothing but t-shirts, and none for the act that had just left the stage.

Finally, I resorted to desperately searching the Internet from my phone, looking for some trace of information that would lead me to an answer.  My sister, watching me as I stared into my palm for ten minutes straight, suggested that I maybe, you know, ask somebody who worked there.

“No.  I’m going to figure this out, and I’m going to do it without talking to anyone.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.  “Because you could just ask him.”

I spun around to see the mealy-mouthed lead singer leaving the stage door, lugging a guitar and some other assorted equipment with him.  It seemed there was no other way to figure it out, so I broke down.  Given the situation, I kind of had to talk to him now, right?

“Hey!  I really liked your set!”

“Oh, thanks!” he said, flipping his scraggly hair to the side to look at me.  Once he decided I wasn’t a threat, he set his guitar down and extended his hand.  “Troy Gregory!”

“I’m Nat.  This is my sister.  Yeah we really liked that.  What’s your band’s name?”

“Troy Gregory” he said, smiling.

I wasn’t sure if he hadn’t heard me, given the noise from the thumping soul music the house was playing while the next band set up.  “Right, I’m Nat Topping.  What’s your band’s name?”

“Troy Gregory.  That’s it.  It’s my name.”

“Oh.  Awesome.”

You get that sometimes at the smaller concert halls.  You go to an arena or a stadium or something and you’re going to have to snoop around and hope to find where the band enters and exits the building.  Here?  They just come out through the hall.  They carry their instruments through the crowds.  They sidle up to the bar and have a beer.  Even if their name is Troy Gregory and they have their own Wikipedia page!

It’s like they’re actual people.

St. Andrews is about a big a venue you can get while still keeping that same feeling of closeness.  Now that I’ve moved away from the Detroit area, I’ve come to regret not taking better advantage of the place.  I grew up in the suburbs next to a gigantic concert venue that I stubbornly call ‘Pine Knob’ despite the fact that it now has a shiny new corporately-funded name.  For me, concerts were always something to witness from the lawn at the way back, and the performers were barely seen at all even when they were on stage.  I remember casually watching what I supposed was Weezer (at least that’s what the tickets claimed) doing what I imagined to be something remotely musical down at the bottom of the bowl and that’s pretty much all I remember.

Only later did I come to appreciate the claustrophobic feeling of The Blind Pig and places of its ilk, of plastering yourself up against a stage with a bunch of other sweaty bastards and losing your collective minds.  St. Andrews must certainly have been the place to do just that when I was growing up, and it’s a shame I missed out on it for so long.

But that’s partly the point of the Baedekerer, isn’t it?  To catch some of what I missed.

You might not normally think to associate the devil's music with a saint, much less the brother of St. Peter.  Yet there he is in cartoon form plastered to the back wall of the stage, his saltire cradled between his arms, a cigar butt hanging from his mouth. 

The hall itself takes it's name from the St. Andrew's Society of Detroit, a benevolent society of do-gooders of Scottish descent who like so many other organizations fled downtown Detroit.  Starting in the early 1980s, the former meeting place began hosting bands and voila.  The building has hosted everyone who is anyone from the Detroit music world (INSANE CLOWN POSSE WHAT UP), and even has a basement venue called The Shelter where Eminem got his start.  You know, the guy from that Chrysler commercial a while back.

Electric Six, also a Detroit band, was awesome.  I highly recommend them, particularly live.  And if you have a chance to say hi to a performer, I highly recommend that too.  If you're lucky, they might have their own Wikipedia page!

I know.  It's like I'm famous now.

There he is!  St. Andrew!  Photo courtesy of Wunderphone.

ST ANDREW'S HALL

431 E Congress, a block or two west of I-375
Detroit, MI
Phone: 312-961-8961
Website here.

In brief:

Music? Awesome - No accounting for taste, but I quite like my selection in bands
Drink? Good selection of beers, hard liquor, etc.
Cost? Tickets were cheap, beer wasn't any more expensive than you would expect at a show.
Atmosphere? Good.  There's a cartoon St. Andrew on the wall for chrissake.
Haunt-worthy? Yes.
Do You Approve?  Yes.

Motor City Brewing Works – Tap Room

Visit: 12/23/2011

Yeah I know I'm like two months behind and I haven't even started doing anything yet.  I've had a couple of sketch shows and some other things pop up.  Get used to random posting.

Don’t expect to walk into the bar and order the beer you always get everywhere else.  Unless you are a devotee of the Motor City Brewing Works, they won’t have it.  No Schlitz tallboys for you, my friend.  This is a brewery.  You will drink their brews.

No, instead you’ll have to ask the nattily dressed bartender what they have on tap.  He’ll point to a giant blackboard above the wall of windows peering out into the parking lot and then he will embark on an explanation of the different types, the bizarre names, and the impossibly detailed litany of enticing flavors you can expect when you take your first sip of whatever you decide to get.

I resisted the urge to buy a take-home jug for myself to just drink immediately (they’re available if you’re just looking to make a night of it at home) and instead ordered a pint of Ghettoblaster because, I mean, with a name like Ghettoblaster how can you not at least try it? 

I turned to my sister and asked ‘what do you want?’ to which the bartender, dressed in his dark jeaned, t-shirt and vested uniform replete with a rakishly askew fedora, replied mysteriously ‘oh, I know what I want.’ 

We were both taken aback a little.  Luckily, I had already ordered so I could just kind of look at him strangely without saying anything.  It took my sister a second to decipher it though – was he hitting on her or was he simply privy to some great existential knowledge that left him certain of his place in the universe? – before giving up and placing her order. 

It was an odd moment, but in a good way.

That ‘odd but in a good way’ serves as a nice description for the Motor City Tap Room in general.  Located off of Canfield, itself a side street off of Detroit’s main drag, is a parking lot.  At the back of that parking lot is another smaller parking lot adjacent to the restaurant.  From there you enter what feels like the back of the building into the cozy bar area.  It’s an affable atmosphere, even if it seems a little out of place among the cinderblocks.  Dark wood next to colorful tiles; tasteful decorating against the somewhat industrial feel of the walls; old fashioned gears and carefully crafted beers; and a wait staff apparently willing to ask the tough questions.

If you had never been to Detroit before, you might think the existence of such a place would be impossible.  ‘Detroit is a series of casinos, stadiums, and bombed out buildings’ you might think.  And yet here we were, sitting at the bar surrounded by a pack of other twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings enjoying a beer and a pizza.

My sister had been there before since she works downtown and could vouch for the food, though to her regret she had never tried the wood-fired pizza before.  Determined to remedy that, we ordered two.  The nattily dressed bartender brought us a Mediterranean, covered in olives, spinach, cucumbers and feta, and the second, which amounted to a very high-class opened face gyro.  Weird?  But in a good way.

Having spent most of the day hung over and trapped on the Megabus, I devoured my share with a ravenously eager fervor that might have frightened a few of our neighbors.  I didn’t care.  I was starving and the pizza was delicious.

My sister ate her portion with infinitely more class, grace and manners, and was kind enough to mistake my grunting and paroxysms of delight for polite conversation.  For desert, we sampled the seasonal pumpkin ale, which struck the right balance of beer taste and pumpkin flavor. 

We were late for our concert at St Andrew’s Hall, though, and with that ended our stay at the Motor City Brewing Works.  We paid the bill and I gave the room another quick look, resolving to spend another evening here sometime to ponder the deeper questions over another pint of Ghettoblaster.

See what I mean?  Back of a building.  Source for this photo is here.

MOTOR CITY BREWING WORKS

470 W Canfield (just off of Cass Ave)
Detroit, MI
Phone: 312-832-2700
Website here.

In brief:

Food? Great - Pizza in particular
Drink? Great - Craft Beers primarily
Cost? Not bad at all, given the value
Atmosphere? Good, but I don't know that I would have found the place without my sis
Haunt-worthy? Eh.  Don't know about that.  But worth the occasional trip.
Do You Approve?  Yes.

Chicago: Christkindlmarket

Sometimes you luck out.  My day job (the thing that actually, you know, feeds me) is in telecom, which is just a horrifyingly dumb industry.  Anyone in telecom will adamantly confirm this for you, unless they are new to the job, delusional, or some sort of executive.  But sometimes, you’ll work at a company that realizes this inherent dumbness and, as a means of apologizing to you for dumbing you down in a horrifying manner, they will occasionally end the work day at 11:30 to let you go hang out on Michigan Avenue for the day.

This half-day of respite has become a tradition of sorts at the company.  During the weeks leading up to Christmas, the powers that be will pick a day where they feed us, make us drink beer, and turn us loose to go “shopping for Christmas gifts.”  As a bachelor about town, “shopping for Christmas gifts” translates roughly to “buy drinks for me.”  And so it goes.

However, this year I decided I would take the opportunity to visit downtown’s Christkindlmarket for a change.  And then go to the bar.

If there’s one thing that Chicago does really well, it’s the street festival.  This is particularly true during the summer months, when you can’t throw an empty can of PBR without hitting a beer tent or a port-a-john.  Christmastime has Christkindlmarket, and I had never been previously.  And lord knows I wasn’t going to make a concerted effort on my weekend to do anything other than laze about the apartment, so I knew this would be my only chance.

For those unfamiliar with this German tradition, the Christkindlmarket is a big open air marketplace devoted to the celebration of Christmas.  The original markets originated in the collection of tiny duchies, principalities and sausage factories we now know as a united Germany.  The first known market opened in Bautzen in 1384, and featured such German mainstays as the Nussknacker, Gebrannte Mandeln, Magenbrot and Zwetschgamannlam, which are figures made out of dried plums if Wikipedia is to be believed.

You won’t find Zwetchgamannlam at the downtown Chicago Christkindlmarket.  In Chicago the rule is that if nobody in the entire city of nearly three million people can pronounce it then it’s not going in the festival. 

If there are two words we do know, though, they are “brat” and “beer.”   And with these two words in mind, my coworkers Anne, Adam and I set off from Michigan Avenue in search of Christmas.  I’m thankful that they let me tag along, despite the fact that my name starts with a consonant.  

I spent the bus ride down Michigan Avenue wound up with Christmas anticipation.  We got off at Washington and walked the few blocks past Macy’s (formally Marshall Fields) up to Daley plaza.  Under normal non-Christmas circumstances, the menacingly abstract Picasso sculpture scowls over the expanse of gray stone that paves the plaza.  Today, the sculpture seemed begrudgingly resigned to the collection of red and white striped awnings huddled around its base.

We entered the small maze of stalls and headed directly to the beer tent where I rewarded myself with a delicious Spaten Optimator, the most formidably named beer I could find.  I suppose if I had it to do all over again I would have gotten the spiced wine, which is apparently a staple of Christkindlmarket.  Regardless, the beer was dark and tasty (this is where you would insert a “just how I like my men” joke if you were so inclined) and perfectly suited to perusing Christmasy knickknacks.

Unfortunately, knickknacks aren’t really my bag.  And of course, the Christkindlmarket booths are replete with little ornament, nutcrackers (hey!  Nussknackers!), and other pieces of Germania.  I did enjoy the cuckoo clocks, which I can appreciate for their inherent silliness and the sheer amount of work it takes to craft them, but for the most part I just sipped beer and wandered.

The king of the ornament shops was Kathe Wohlfahrt, a branch of the international Christmas juggernaut based out of Rothenburg, Germany, which in its Chicago incarnation you could actually go in and walk around.  Though when I say ‘walk around’ it implies the freedom to wander, and that was not the case.  The store was set up in a folded line in the shape of a big 'u', which you patiently worked your way through along with the other ornament shoppers.  Here was cold German efficiency combined with the warmth of holiday spirit – a veritable assembly line for Christmas cheer.  As I shuffled my way through, a little pickle shaped ornament caught my eye – I was attracted to the absurdity of putting a pickle on your tree – so I bought it.  It’s the first Christmas ornament I’ve ever owned.  Now I just need a tree.

We ended our excursion at the brat and potato pancake tent.  We ate at one of the standing tables and took in the crowds of people milling about, fondling ornaments and sipping spiced wine from little ceramic collector boots.  I’d say we spent about a half an hour there, and the festival was a little sterile for my taste.  I prefer my German street shindigs be a little more raucous, with more beer toting fraulein-types and various feats of strength and drunken daring.  But for what it was – a family affair for Christmas cheer – it was nice.

We finished off our brat and the potato pancakes, both delicious, and in fulfillment of our company obligations headed directly to the nearest dive bar where we met up with more coworkers, some with names that even begin with consonants, and proceeded to spend the day doing what we do best.  Merry Christmas to one and all.



Christmas with Picasso.  (Source)



Christkindlmarket Chicago 

located at Daley plaza, Clark and Washington in downtown Chicago. 

Admission is free and the festival ends December 24^th. 

Hours of operation: Sun – Thu 11am – 8pm, Fri – Sat 11am – 9pm, Christmas Eve 11am – 4pm

http://www.christkindlmarket.com/en/



Added: About Baedekerer Page

General info about the blog, the project, what a 'Baedekerer' is, etc.  I'll continue to update as I go, and more postage to follow.

For now: Hi!