A city that exported a sound to the world twice, in sequins and then in drum machines. The testimony runs from the oldest bar in town to a piano-shaped bar that has heard everyone. Michigan gates its liquor register against machines, so the proof here is the city's own parcel rolls, the national and state registers, and operators caught trading on their own dated pages.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Two Way Inn
Colonel Philetus Norris, later the second superintendent of Yellowstone, founded the village of Norris here in 1873 and lived in this building before his grand house up the street. It served the village as general store, post office and jail before it settled into pouring, and the bar dates its innkeeping to 1876, a claim it toasted with a 150th year in 2026. The village became North Detroit, then just Detroit in 1924, and the inn is one of only three buildings left from it. The Malak family has kept it since 1973, and Harry's daughter Mary Aganowski runs it now, cooking cottage pie and kielbasa pop ups on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Order what the room was built for, a shot and a cold beer under the low tin ceiling. The ghosts are folklore; the deed history is not.
the building by 1873, the innkeeping claim 1876; the courthouse story did not survive checking and is gone · Tue 11am till 5pm, Wed and Thu till 10pm, Fri and Sat noon till midnight, SHUT SUN AND MON · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Cadieux Cafe
A Belgian speakeasy of the early 1930s that grew into the home of America's only feather bowling league: the club that rolls wooden wheels down packed clay troughs was founded in 1933 and still plays September to April. Sports Illustrated wrote up the regulars in 1994 and ESPN came back for champion Steve Gosskie in 2015. The Devos family kept it Belgian from 1962 until Paul Howard of Cliff Bell's and musician John Rutherford took the keys in January 2019 and changed almost nothing. Order steamed mussels and a Belgian ale; the list runs past forty Belgian bottles before it starts on the rest of the world. Between ends you eat frites and hear whichever Detroit band holds the corner stage. Utterly Detroit, utterly not.
- 3 · The Anchor
Baker's Keyboard Lounge
Chris and Fannie Baker opened a sandwich lunchroom in May 1933; their son Clarence started booking piano players in 1934 and never stopped, which is the spine of the claim, widely repeated and carefully hedged, to be the world's oldest jazz club. The art deco room and its piano shaped bar came with a 1952 remodel, and Art Tatum spent his last two years playing the Steinway he chose himself in New York. The state flagged the club a historic site in 1986 and the city districted it in 2016. Owner Jackie Vaughn Whitaker went dark in May 2026 for a hundred thousand dollar refresh and reopened that June with a new stage and patio. Order a Dizzy Gillespie from the cocktail list of jazz names, with the catfish dinner, at the keyboard bar. Ninety three years in, it is still 99 seats.
- 4 · The Wildcard
Marble Bar
The techno city's working room: a resurrected corner bar on the old Holden strip where the genre Detroit invented is treated as a craft rather than a museum piece. The sound is custom Void and AIS rigs inside and out, and the courtyard is where the city actually dances, seventy nine parties deep this year by August. The first Saturday of August 2026 put Ectomorph, Detroit In Effect and Keith Tucker on one electro bill; the next put Mike Servito and Lauren Flax back to back till late. Order a cold drink in the courtyard and stand where the system can reach you; nobody crosses town for the cellar list. Nights run on the calendar, not the clock, so check the listings before you set out. This is the deep end of the city's own sound.
- 5 · The Last Call
Cliff Bell's
John Clifford Bell ran Detroit speakeasies through all fourteen years of Prohibition, then opened his signature room on Park Avenue in 1935, mahogany and brass in a building credited to Albert Kahn with a club interior by Charles Agree. Bell held the floor until 1958; the room slid through other names and closed in 1985. It sat dark for twenty years until Paul Howard, Scott Lowell and Carolyn Howard relit it in 2006, and the same Howard now keeps the Cadieux Cafe too. The street around it is on the National Register as the Park Avenue Historic District, listed in 1997. Come late, order a last cocktail while the trio plays standards to a room that dressed for it. Sunday closes at nine; Fridays and Saturdays the bar holds till midnight.
est. 1935, dark 1985 to 2005, relit 2006 · Wed and Thu 5pm till 11pm, Fri and Sat till midnight, Sun 4pm till 9pm, SHUT MON AND TUE · verified Aug 2026