Whether you go there because “everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came,” or you sit down at a place where “it’s quarter to three and there’s no one in the place except you and me,” watering holes play a major role in the life of any campus. Wayne State University is no exception.

Among the “Wayne State Watering Holes” students should know (and alumni remember) are:

• The Gold Dollar (pictured, right), which opened in the 1930s as a beer garden and closed in 2001 … but not before hosting the White Stripes’ first-ever live performance at an open mic night on July 14, 1997. According to author Armando Delicato in his book Detroit's Cass Corridor (Images of America), "in a previous incarnation, the bar was infamous for drag shows and was a hot spot for Detroit’s gay nightlife from the 1950s to the 1980s."
• Bill’s Recreation — a pool hall located on Third Avenue north of Martin Luther King Boulevard. Delicato’s book noted that the joint was named after the original owner, Bill Epps, who “knocked down interior walls of the 1921 three-storefront building to create a house of recreation.”
• The Comet Bar on Henry Street, which started life as the Pantry Bar in 1923 and morphed into The Comet Bar & Grill in the mid-1950s. It’s now closed, and sits in the footprint of the Ilitch family’s under-construction entertainment district anchored by a $450 million, 20,000-seat hockey arena for the Detroit Red Wings.

• The Temple Bar (pictured, left), opened and operated by the Boukas family since the 1920s and still very much alive and kicking from its location across the street from the new Red Wings arena.
• The Old Miami Bar, which Delicato’s book describes as “originally built in 1923 on Cass Avenue as a service station” and twice the victim of fires/firebombs. The Old Miami still stands — well known for its lively dive bar scene as well as music and rap battles — and laughs in the face of fate: the outdoor patio with fire pit is a popular gathering space.
• Others are Jumbo’s Bar on Third Street and Honest(?) John’s (pictured, right) — a Detroit institution since 1990 that moved to Selden between Cass and Second into a 1938 building that was once home to Elmer’s Bar and Selden Barbecue — and The Bronx Bar, originally built in 1921 on the corner of Second Avenue and Prentis as a grocery store. Nearly 100 years later, it’s still serving some good groceries and is home to one of the city’s best burgers, which happens to be as big as your head.

Perhaps one of the most famous of Wayne State watering holes is Alvin’s Finer Delicatessen — the gathering space founded by Alvin Stilman and known informally by thousands of alumni as "Alvin’s" — now known as Tony V's (pictured, left). As Alvin’s, it was an institution in the 1970s, a hangout for students as well as artists, musicians and hippies. But mostly musicians. According to the website Cass Corridor Tribes and Forums, “every band that played in the Corridor played at one time or another at Alvin’s, or its later back-of-building-manifestation, the Twilight Bar.”

Then there’s Circa 1890 Saloon — a campus diner and dive bar that the website Core Detroit notes has a name that “hearkens back to a day when horse-drawn trolleys and gas lighting were mainstays in the Motor City, nearly two decades before the Model T ever made it onto the scene.”

Core Detroit adds, “Step under that odd white awning and you’ll find a wood panel and red brick exterior that gives way to one of the most kitschy-fabulous interiors in Midtown. Everywhere you look there’s something to marvel, from the old timey signs to taxidermy animals to the retro stained glass lamps and other vintage embellishments (snowshoes and a wagon wheel adorn the walls, among other oddities). It’s eclectic bordering on weird, but that’s why we love this place so much. Circa has a character all its own.”

Part of that character comes from longtime patrons and folks like waitress "Diane," who says she started working at Circa more than a dozen years ago. “Everybody around here knows me as Diane — that’s about all anyone needs to know anyway,” she says with a laugh.

Circa and Tony V's are definitely popular Wayne State watering holes, perched as they are just a short walk from WSU administrative buildings as well as the Art Building, State Hall and Prentis Hall. The variety of watering holes are a mix that’s making more Wayne State memories every day. It’s a shame that buildings don’t talk … oh, the stories they could tell.

This story originally appeared in the summer 2015 Wayne State alumni magazine.