The El Chapparal Lounge
Excerpt from the below story:
"It was at this point that I truly began to appreciate this incredibly perfect dive. The El Chaparral Lounge isn’t your standard issue dive bar. It’s a completely surreal experience in its own right. The atmosphere, the weird and wild characters, and the unexpected chain of events is a total mindfuck. To walk into this bar feels as though one is being transported into a scene in a masterfully crafted, classic Mexican gangster movie, the kind of movie in which at the end, there’s a bloody gunfight in a seedy bar in the bad part of town, and every last motherfucker gets blown."
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Every once in awhile it’s possible to stumble upon an experience or adventure so surreal, that it makes me fall in love with life all over again, if only for an hour, a day, or a year. Friday was such a night.
With little worthwhile happening at the 2500 Club, A and I had run out of reasons to stay any longer. Only being about 11:30, we needed to find another source of entertainment.. A’s random remark regarding heading down to Mexicantown soon became a mission for the night: Find the dirtiest, nastiest, , most rundown and potentially dangerous Southwest Detroit shithole bar, and walk inside for a beer or two. We left the 2500 and headed toward Michigan Central Station, passing under the rails and into Mexicantown. We headed down the main drag and past the area that white folks from the burbs visit on Cinco De Mayo.
Away from the nicer parts of Mexicantown, we started scanning the streets for neon ‘Open’ signs. We passed a couple ghetto insurers with flashing lights and neon, a pawn shop, the “Country Western” bar, and some liquor stores with a body or two hanging out front. There must be a lot of money in overcharging for basic insurance, because LA Insurance seems to be found on every street in the ghetto. Our prospects were looking good, and it was just a matter of finding a bar that stood out as being worse than all the rest.
As we passed a strip of rundown buildings, we came upon a short, fat, older latino man stumbling down a couple stairs underneath a beat up sign reading “El Chapparal Lounge”. His woman was close behind, and the bouncer secured the door as they made their exit. El Chaparral was the place to be.
We spotted a parking lot next to the bar, nearly at capacity with mid 80s model year domestic vehicles and rugged day laborer work trucks. After parking, we headed for the door. The bouncer looked as though he was about to question our intentions, but let us inside. Upon stepping inside the door, I had no doubt that the remainder of the night would be quite unlike anything I’d experienced before.
The walls were dirty and the room poorly lit. Toward the back of the bar, an iron, arched gate that you’d expect to find in an outdoor Mexican cantina separated us from some activity in another larger room. A and I walked up to the bar, passing by various patrons and catching bits of different conversations in Spanish. We each grabbed a stool and sat at the bar. The old place has probably served a million drinks over the course of its existence, likely a conservative estimate based upon on how well worn the top of the bar appeared. A leathery, wrinkled, Caucasian woman stopped to take our order. Don’t bother trying to order Labatt, Heineken, or Guiness here. They’re serving Tecate, Modelo, and Gallo out of the can and imported from Mexico, not the stuff bottled in Illinois.
“Beers three dollars whens the musics playin”, she said.
We paid and looked around a bit. No two barstools looked a like and the carpet had seen better days. Mexican music was starting to play from behind the iron gate. Most of the drinks were kept in an old household refrigerator, with the exception of some two liter bottles of generic cola and lemon & lime soda kept in a fridge with sliding glass panes. Taped to one of the glass panes was a notice to the bartenders and wait staff:
“Employees get ONLY ONE free drink after their shift is over. There are no free drinks during your shift! Employees not following the policy will be fired. Remember that you are easily replaced! – TINO”
Tino is a bad motherfucker.
A youngish, cute Mexican girl with a big round ass crammed into tight jeans and sporting tattoo on her neck, just below the cheek, came from the next room over and walked behind the bar. She grabbed a few cans of Modelo, dropped some cash in the register and walked back to the other room. Curious to find out what was going on in the next room, A and I followed.
Beyond the iron gate was a large room with water damaged dropped ceiling, stained carpeting, cracked linoleum dance floor, and a stage with a three piece Mexican band playing a dance tune. Christmas lights hung from the ceiling; garland laced the walls. Sure it’s almost Christmas, but I doubt that these decorations ever change. We passed a table of well dressed black gentleman and a fine Blacktino woman in her 40s, dressed in a short red skirt and revealing top. We made our way to the back of the room, passing a Mexican man wearing paint covered clothing. He was clutching two bottles of bud, one in each hand, smiling and mumbling to himself in Spanish. We stopped at the next table over and took a seat.
The band started playing an uptempo groove and the dancefloor filled old MommaCitas, young thuggish latino men, the aforementioned Blacktino woman, and a wide variety of men and women of various ages. Throughout the night, damn near everyone danced with everybody else, though it wasn’t apparent that too many people actually knew the people they were dancing with. The band occasionally stopped playing, usually just long enough for the singer to announce that the waitress needed to tend to the other half of the hall.
The incoherent smiling, mumbling Mexican man the next table over started trying to grab our attention. Holding his beers high above his head, laughing and pointing, he eventually came over to our table and sat down. He talked at A for quite awhile, but A could only make out the words ‘Mexico’, ‘USA’, and ’30 dinero’. A, being an enabler, bought our new friend a beer and he hung out at our table for the rest of the night, occasionally trying to talk to both of us, or raising his beer in toast, spitting on the ground, or pointing to the girls on the floor and making comments about the MommaCitas.
Another man, sitting behind us, approached a few times and suggested that we should dance with the MommaCitas on the dance floor, but I was just getting into my third Modelo and not quite drunk enough to entertain the idea. Three Modelo was, however, enough to warrant a visit to the restroom.
I crossed the dance floor and headed toward the restroom. The steel door to the restroom was rusted out and appeared to have been kicked in a few times. The door knob was conveniently missing, forcing one to stick their hand into the hole in order to pry the door open. Upon entry, the smell hit me like a rancid brick wall and was enough to cause eyes to burn and water. I’ve seen some disgusting toilets in my travels. The border towns separating different Latin American countries have some particularly disgusting feces caked, piss splattered restrooms with a can on the ground and hose for washing hands. Even these experiences were relatively tame compared to “The Most Disgusting Toilet in Detroit.” Neither faucet nor toilet worked, and my shoes stuck to the floor when walking. I did my thing and headed back toward the table.
No sooner than I sat down, the Blacktino woman started hardcore bitching at a tall, awkward looking white guy that she had been dancing with earlier. She cussed and yelled and ranted in Spanish and reminded me of how hot pissed off foreign women can be. This guy simply wasn’t having it though and he started getting right back in her face. You could tell he’d just as soon kill the woman as he would listen to another second of her yapping. The other parties at his table convinced him to let it go, and he did. A few moments later, the woman was back on the dance floor as though nothing had happened.
It was at this point that I truly began to appreciate this incredibly perfect dive. The El Chaparral Lounge isn’t your standard issue dive bar. It’s a completely surreal experience in its own right. The atmosphere, the weird and wild characters, and the unexpected chain of events is a total mindfuck. To walk into this bar feels as though one is being transported into a scene in a masterfully crafted, classic Mexican gangster movie, the kind of movie in which at the end, there’s a bloody gunfight in a seedy bar in the bad part of town, and every last motherfucker gets blown.
The music stops and suddenly there’s a skirmish near the iron gate. The gangly old white guy that was about to lay into the Blacktino had pushed a young black man to the ground and appeared to be kicking him while he was down. The kid got up and tried to lunge at his attacker, but was held back by a couple patrons. The kid wasn’t backing down though, and was somewhat forcibly removed from the building. Just moments later, the old guy that couldn’t seem to stop fighting stands up and starts yelling at everyone in the room, “Bars closed! GET OUT! GET OUT NOW! Bars closed! Finish your drinks and GET THE FUCK OUT!”
That Tino sure is a bad motherfucker.
Patrons started making their way to the door; A and I followed and made our exit. Reflecting back on the night makes me realize that this is the stuff I live for. The odd and unusual, extreme and uncomfortable, basically anything out of the ordinary. Life is far too bland otherwise. I know I’ll be going back to El Chaparral in the future.....
"It was at this point that I truly began to appreciate this incredibly perfect dive. The El Chaparral Lounge isn’t your standard issue dive bar. It’s a completely surreal experience in its own right. The atmosphere, the weird and wild characters, and the unexpected chain of events is a total mindfuck. To walk into this bar feels as though one is being transported into a scene in a masterfully crafted, classic Mexican gangster movie, the kind of movie in which at the end, there’s a bloody gunfight in a seedy bar in the bad part of town, and every last motherfucker gets blown."
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Every once in awhile it’s possible to stumble upon an experience or adventure so surreal, that it makes me fall in love with life all over again, if only for an hour, a day, or a year. Friday was such a night.
With little worthwhile happening at the 2500 Club, A and I had run out of reasons to stay any longer. Only being about 11:30, we needed to find another source of entertainment.. A’s random remark regarding heading down to Mexicantown soon became a mission for the night: Find the dirtiest, nastiest, , most rundown and potentially dangerous Southwest Detroit shithole bar, and walk inside for a beer or two. We left the 2500 and headed toward Michigan Central Station, passing under the rails and into Mexicantown. We headed down the main drag and past the area that white folks from the burbs visit on Cinco De Mayo.
Away from the nicer parts of Mexicantown, we started scanning the streets for neon ‘Open’ signs. We passed a couple ghetto insurers with flashing lights and neon, a pawn shop, the “Country Western” bar, and some liquor stores with a body or two hanging out front. There must be a lot of money in overcharging for basic insurance, because LA Insurance seems to be found on every street in the ghetto. Our prospects were looking good, and it was just a matter of finding a bar that stood out as being worse than all the rest.
As we passed a strip of rundown buildings, we came upon a short, fat, older latino man stumbling down a couple stairs underneath a beat up sign reading “El Chapparal Lounge”. His woman was close behind, and the bouncer secured the door as they made their exit. El Chaparral was the place to be.
We spotted a parking lot next to the bar, nearly at capacity with mid 80s model year domestic vehicles and rugged day laborer work trucks. After parking, we headed for the door. The bouncer looked as though he was about to question our intentions, but let us inside. Upon stepping inside the door, I had no doubt that the remainder of the night would be quite unlike anything I’d experienced before.
The walls were dirty and the room poorly lit. Toward the back of the bar, an iron, arched gate that you’d expect to find in an outdoor Mexican cantina separated us from some activity in another larger room. A and I walked up to the bar, passing by various patrons and catching bits of different conversations in Spanish. We each grabbed a stool and sat at the bar. The old place has probably served a million drinks over the course of its existence, likely a conservative estimate based upon on how well worn the top of the bar appeared. A leathery, wrinkled, Caucasian woman stopped to take our order. Don’t bother trying to order Labatt, Heineken, or Guiness here. They’re serving Tecate, Modelo, and Gallo out of the can and imported from Mexico, not the stuff bottled in Illinois.
“Beers three dollars whens the musics playin”, she said.
We paid and looked around a bit. No two barstools looked a like and the carpet had seen better days. Mexican music was starting to play from behind the iron gate. Most of the drinks were kept in an old household refrigerator, with the exception of some two liter bottles of generic cola and lemon & lime soda kept in a fridge with sliding glass panes. Taped to one of the glass panes was a notice to the bartenders and wait staff:
“Employees get ONLY ONE free drink after their shift is over. There are no free drinks during your shift! Employees not following the policy will be fired. Remember that you are easily replaced! – TINO”
Tino is a bad motherfucker.
A youngish, cute Mexican girl with a big round ass crammed into tight jeans and sporting tattoo on her neck, just below the cheek, came from the next room over and walked behind the bar. She grabbed a few cans of Modelo, dropped some cash in the register and walked back to the other room. Curious to find out what was going on in the next room, A and I followed.
Beyond the iron gate was a large room with water damaged dropped ceiling, stained carpeting, cracked linoleum dance floor, and a stage with a three piece Mexican band playing a dance tune. Christmas lights hung from the ceiling; garland laced the walls. Sure it’s almost Christmas, but I doubt that these decorations ever change. We passed a table of well dressed black gentleman and a fine Blacktino woman in her 40s, dressed in a short red skirt and revealing top. We made our way to the back of the room, passing a Mexican man wearing paint covered clothing. He was clutching two bottles of bud, one in each hand, smiling and mumbling to himself in Spanish. We stopped at the next table over and took a seat.
The band started playing an uptempo groove and the dancefloor filled old MommaCitas, young thuggish latino men, the aforementioned Blacktino woman, and a wide variety of men and women of various ages. Throughout the night, damn near everyone danced with everybody else, though it wasn’t apparent that too many people actually knew the people they were dancing with. The band occasionally stopped playing, usually just long enough for the singer to announce that the waitress needed to tend to the other half of the hall.
The incoherent smiling, mumbling Mexican man the next table over started trying to grab our attention. Holding his beers high above his head, laughing and pointing, he eventually came over to our table and sat down. He talked at A for quite awhile, but A could only make out the words ‘Mexico’, ‘USA’, and ’30 dinero’. A, being an enabler, bought our new friend a beer and he hung out at our table for the rest of the night, occasionally trying to talk to both of us, or raising his beer in toast, spitting on the ground, or pointing to the girls on the floor and making comments about the MommaCitas.
Another man, sitting behind us, approached a few times and suggested that we should dance with the MommaCitas on the dance floor, but I was just getting into my third Modelo and not quite drunk enough to entertain the idea. Three Modelo was, however, enough to warrant a visit to the restroom.
I crossed the dance floor and headed toward the restroom. The steel door to the restroom was rusted out and appeared to have been kicked in a few times. The door knob was conveniently missing, forcing one to stick their hand into the hole in order to pry the door open. Upon entry, the smell hit me like a rancid brick wall and was enough to cause eyes to burn and water. I’ve seen some disgusting toilets in my travels. The border towns separating different Latin American countries have some particularly disgusting feces caked, piss splattered restrooms with a can on the ground and hose for washing hands. Even these experiences were relatively tame compared to “The Most Disgusting Toilet in Detroit.” Neither faucet nor toilet worked, and my shoes stuck to the floor when walking. I did my thing and headed back toward the table.
No sooner than I sat down, the Blacktino woman started hardcore bitching at a tall, awkward looking white guy that she had been dancing with earlier. She cussed and yelled and ranted in Spanish and reminded me of how hot pissed off foreign women can be. This guy simply wasn’t having it though and he started getting right back in her face. You could tell he’d just as soon kill the woman as he would listen to another second of her yapping. The other parties at his table convinced him to let it go, and he did. A few moments later, the woman was back on the dance floor as though nothing had happened.
It was at this point that I truly began to appreciate this incredibly perfect dive. The El Chaparral Lounge isn’t your standard issue dive bar. It’s a completely surreal experience in its own right. The atmosphere, the weird and wild characters, and the unexpected chain of events is a total mindfuck. To walk into this bar feels as though one is being transported into a scene in a masterfully crafted, classic Mexican gangster movie, the kind of movie in which at the end, there’s a bloody gunfight in a seedy bar in the bad part of town, and every last motherfucker gets blown.
The music stops and suddenly there’s a skirmish near the iron gate. The gangly old white guy that was about to lay into the Blacktino had pushed a young black man to the ground and appeared to be kicking him while he was down. The kid got up and tried to lunge at his attacker, but was held back by a couple patrons. The kid wasn’t backing down though, and was somewhat forcibly removed from the building. Just moments later, the old guy that couldn’t seem to stop fighting stands up and starts yelling at everyone in the room, “Bars closed! GET OUT! GET OUT NOW! Bars closed! Finish your drinks and GET THE FUCK OUT!”
That Tino sure is a bad motherfucker.
Patrons started making their way to the door; A and I followed and made our exit. Reflecting back on the night makes me realize that this is the stuff I live for. The odd and unusual, extreme and uncomfortable, basically anything out of the ordinary. Life is far too bland otherwise. I know I’ll be going back to El Chaparral in the future.....
Labels: blacktino, el chapparal, mexicantown, tino
