An Ongoing Tale

It's hard to say where or when it really began. I think it was in the fall winter of 1971-72. We were probably in the apartment Martin and Christopher shared on Oak Street. It would have been late at night after a shift at The Cave of the Candles. Somehow through the fog the realization came over me that we really could do it. We could open our own place and we'd show em. I think we had all read CATCHER IN THE RYE and felt the need to expose "the phonies". We felt that fancy and good did not have to go together. Too often pretention was the rule and style prevailed over substance, and, there was no good place to to get a good or interesting brunch on Saturday morning in East Lansing. Anyway, that's where I think it all started. Martin Richard, Jr., C. E. Rose, Christopher Blunt and I had an idea, enormous ambition, monumental egos, and the energy of the young. After all, this was the Age of Aquarius, anything was possible and all we needed was location, menu, kitchen, tables, chairs, a few hundred other miscellaneous items, and money. What did we know, "hell, how hard can it be?" We sat up late all winter talking about "our Place". We planned. We dreamed. We made up menues. We had endless sessions that started with "if Only" and ended with "what if". The one thing we did not have any of was money. Lots of people said they were interested in investing but on one could come up with any money, and time was moving on.

In the summer of'72, I was becoming somewhat discouraged. We had come up with several plans, schemes really, but nothing was happening. Traverse City seemed like a possibility, but it fell through. A place on Clippert looked good, briefly. We chased locations everywhere. It was hot. I was still working at the Cave but that was about to end and something had to happen soon. As I sat at the bar at the Cave one evening thinking about how we were going nowhere, it hit me. We would never get what we wanted if we continued to wait for someone to do something for us. If we didn't make it happen, it wouldn't happen.

I walked up the stairs to Grand River, turned the corner and walked past The Best Steak House. I stopped. It hit me again, only this time, just like in the comics, the idea appeared as if in a little balloon above my head. This was the place! I should have known all along. I walked in the door, looked around, and sure enough, there was Bob Lewis in his usual spot. I went over and asked him if he had a few minutes to talk. He said "sure" and we went into his very small

office, (which is the walk-in cooler where we keep beer and wine now), I told Mr. Lewis I was interested in buying his restaurant. He said that many people had asked him in the past and he had always told them he wasn't interested, but since he knew me, he would listen to what I had to say.

Bob Lewis was a wonderful man and The Best Steak House was a very special and different kind of place. After work at the Cave, we would often hang out at TBSH, drink beer and play pool. The beer was cheap and so was the pool. TBSH was a place where many different kinds of people hung out. There was a cafeteria style food line where the bar is today, with a beer tap at the end. There was a jukebox, tables and chairs in the back. There were three pool tables in the next room (now the middle room at BB), and that pretty much was it. The Best Steak House had a Tavern license and could only serve beer and wine, no liquor.

Bob Lewis was concerned for his regular customers. Many of TBSH regulars were hippies and local street folk, an eclectic lot to say the least. The local members of SDS and the White Panthers were rumoured to hamg out there. I assured Mr. Lewis I had no intention of making anyone feel unwelcome in the place I wanted to build. Indeed, I with many others, had gone into TBSH th get away from the tear gas that had floated down the stairs of the Cave of the Candles during the protest of the bombing of Cambodia and the National Guard shootings at Kent State and Mississippi State Universities. Mr Lewis agreed to think about my proposal for a day and I would come back the following night to talk further.

B&B Adler 9/3/97 to be continued