Barguide: Shifting times

He opens the doors to the typical clientele at 7 a.m.: Third-shift nurses from Sparrow Hospital, police officers and factory workers who come to unwind after a hard night’s work. But with the decline in manufacturing jobs, it just isn´t what it used to be.

“It used to be more consistent,” Cardwell said. “(Fifteen years ago) you´d always count on at least 20 people, every morning. And they stayed and drank longer.”

Now, usually about 10 people stop by on a typical morning. And while it´s rare, sometimes nobody comes for an early after-work beer, Cardwell said. It´s the kind of portrait that data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics paints nicely: In 1990, Lansing boasted roughly 32,000 manufacturing jobs. But by 2013 the number slumped to 18,500. Still, a handful of people were inside LeRoy’s this morning. They all seem to know Cardwell on a first-name basis, like loyal customers who´ve been coming for years.

The bar — like any characteristically “divey” dive bar — is dimly lit, but it´s not gritty or grimy. Dartboards hang on the wall in the other room. A soft glow from a few neon signs paints the wood-paneled floor. Cardwell scrapes the griddle and refills people´s drinks every so often.

It doesn’t have the pulsating music and sweaty, grinding twenty-somethings you´ll find in the East Lansing college bars. And you won´t find suited lobbyists and politicians meeting for drinks here. These are working-class bars full of hard-working people trying to unwind after work.

Miguel Sanchez and his friend Terrence Burl were enjoying a drink just as a pale sun was peeking through a rainy twilight at Leroy’s. Sanchez used to work at a nearby blinker stamping plant where his friend Burl works now, the Regional Steel Distribution Center. He´s said he´s been coming for years, though he used to stop by a few times a week when he worked as a team leader at the center.

“At 7 in the morning, there´s not a whole lot of people here,” Sanchez said. “So I come in the morning and say, ´Hey Joel, hey let me get the usual.´ He just throws it on the grill for me, hands me a Blue Moon and I usually have a good day.”

The Unicorn Tavern, a few miles north in Old Town, is another neighborhood shift bar with its distinct characters and history. Brandon Hiller III was smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk outside recently.

“This place used to be the Wild West,” he said. He said he heard it secondhand from the owner, Auastasio “Tommy” Malvetis, that there was a murder there in 1982.

“This is the bar everybody came from, from the factories on third shift,” Hiller said. People would play pool and dance and sometimes get in fights, at 7 a.m.

“You know, it got really rowdy in here first thing in the morning until like noon,” he said. “Then it died off and people came back again.”

Malvetis still opens this bar around 10 a.m.

“That building right there used to be the biker clubhouse,” Hiller said, pointing to the local organic market across the street. “That used to be the biker hangout, and there was also a lot of Mexicans coming here. And basically the bikers and Mexicans would have it out every day.”

That´s when Malvetis renamed the Shamrock as the Unicorn, though the 91-year-old (who turns 92 on Halloween) will clarify it was called, “The Shamrock Motherfucker!” Many patrons revere Malvetis as a kind of grandfather of Old Town. He has a decidedly grumpy demeanor that makes him all the more endearing.

But what sets the working-class bars apart from the others is not the setting or even what everyone does for a living.

“The difference is that this is a community,” Hiller said. “A lot of people that are in here came in as little kids.

“It´s a tree house with beer and a pool table,” he laughs. “And girls are allowed.”

“And weirdos,” Linda Ancira, 63, mocks from the other end of the bar.