Hail the Drinking Club!
Tonight, I drink. The drinking club awarded my son a scholarship, and they're hosting Marie, Alex, and me to a steak dinner. I'm really looking forward to it. I always refer to it as "the drinking club," which I intend as a compliment. Years ago, I heard the establishment referred to derogatorily as "just a drinking club," and I thought, "What's wrong with that? I think I'll join."
What would you rather have in your town, a community online chat room? Besides, the club takes a chunk of those alcohol profits and plows them into community projects, elderly assistance, and youth scholarships. That's alcohol doing good, both going in and going out. It doesn't get much better than that.
Glasses
I saw this article last night about beer ware. It discusses the effect of different glasses on appearance, aroma, etc. That kind of stuff bores me, but I really enjoy a good drinking glass.
I like mugs and pilsners, but I prefer pilsners. Maybe it's because I have extremely small hands (my wife is 5'2", and her hands are as big as mine). I hate mugs without handles because it always feels like it's going to slip out of my hands. It's always possible to drop a beer during a healthy night of drinking, but the risks go up dramatically when you can get your hand around only 55% of the glass.
My favorite drinking glass, however, is probably the little six-ounce glasses that a bar east of town (the Hillcrest Lounge) uses. I like taking my beers in small doses, even if the doses are repeated at a rapid pace.
Detroit
The Detroit area is shrinking. The 2010 census figures shows that swaths of Detroit itself are turning into ghost towns, with entire regions of the city occupied by crumbling buildings, urban prairie, pheasants, and the occasional wino. Michigan as a whole lost 210,000 households between 2000 and 2010, and the vast bulk of that lost was located in SE Michigan (i.e., the Detroit area).
It's sad, but in a metropolis that massive (Detroit used to be the fourth biggest city in the U.S.), you can find a lot of neat stuff, and this article lists five of them: Best Beer Selection Near Detroit.
I'm sorry to say that I've never been to any of them.
