You know how a few years back Thursday became the new Friday? It occurred to me recently that Monday is the new Thursday, which is to say Monday and Tuesday are the new weekend.
This Monday a ClandesDine dinner was held. I would normally not speak of this publicly or otherwise actively promote it because it is not a "legal" event in the strictest sense of ... being legal. But since New York Mag already blew up Detroit's spot in a number of ways, not the least of which being ClandesDine, I suppose I can at least make reference to it after the fact.
For the uninitiated: super-secret(-ish but everyone in my circle seems to know about it so maybe not all that much; see also New York Mag) fancy dinner party with 150 people, 5 chefs, 5 courses, 5 wine pairings and music all for $100 per ticket that goes entirely to a charity. Oh, and it's held in a vacant (but owned) building/space. I know, soooooooo Detroit right?
Usually these things sell out and people go all nutso for tickets begging their contacts for any extras. Not so this time around. A friend of mine had some tickets to sell and last-minute I reached out to several people I thought for sure would jump on them ... and they would have, if they didn't ALL, every single last one of them, have a conflicting engagement. On a Monday! Dinner parties, private events, other plans ... on a Monday!
I've long preferred going out on Mondays and Tuesdays over Fridays and Saturdays. Mostly because I hate crowds and lines and amateurs, but there are other advantages to Monday drinking as well: CHEAP BOOZE. Like, even cheaper than usual. Why? Because nobody ever goes out on Mondays! So bar owners try to incentivize people with deeply discounted drinks. $2 pints of Michigan craft beer, $5 cocktails, half off bottles of wine - if you plan your week out well enough you could cut your monthly bar expenditures in half (or drink twice as much, either way).
And, added bonus, the bars are practically empty. Me? I like being able to belly up to the bar where there is ample seating, have the immediate attention of the bartender who will beer me post-haste, be able to have a civilized conversation with friends without having to scream over music or white noise from the masses, and otherwise not be inconvenienced by the presence of other people. Maybe it's an only child thing, idk.
Once upon a time the whole entirety of Detroit was like that, even on weekends. On a Saturday night you could have Foran's or the Bronx Bar or the Old Miami mostly to yourself, back before Detroit was "the official cool kids destination." Then EVERYTHING GOT RUINED. (Oh yeah ... I'm that hipster colonizer.)
But not Mondays! Mondays (and Tuesdays) are still blessedly un-busy. At least for now. See, the reasons these days are always so dead is because people have jobs. (I know, it's like ... WHAAAAAAA? and then LOL, and then ROFLMFAO.) But not in Detroit. Oh sure, the Quicken/DMC/Henry Ford/GM/Chrysler people, all those people have jobs, but those are the people for whom the dream of the '90s is dead and gone, forsaken for the sake of healthcare and a 401k. I'm talking about (mostly)childless partially-employed twenty(and thirty)-something hipster colonizers who have nothing better to do than hit the bars at noon every day of the week.
Depending on the bar, Mondays are starting to look a whole lot more like Thursdays (which in turn look a whole lot more like Fridays), and afternoons are starting to look a whole lot more like evenings. Basically Detroit is college for people who never went to college (or did but got a lib arts degree). The dream of the '90s also means that every day is the weekend and time has no meaning, so here we are: right here in this sweet spot where enough people have discovered the many advantages of Monday drinking to make it fun but not so many as to make it awful. Besides, anyone who's anyone in Detroit knows that Thursdays are soooooo 2005.
On a sidenote, now that Mondays are cool I think I might start going out on Saturdays ironically. It's so hard being an early adopter.
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