We stopped for the antique store. We
stayed for the cocktails – and because, if you want to see everything that serves
as décor at the Alli Bar in Port Sanilac, you need to invest a few hours.
The downtown area of this little town on Lake Huron midway up Michigan’s thumb is little more than a couple of blocks. A post office. A hardware store. Smalltown typical. Even still, it’s easy to pass by the Reemarkables antique storefront, even easier to completely miss the sidewalk that leads along the north side of the building and takes you back to a place unlike any you’ve seen before, in Port Sanilac or elsewhere.
The Alli Bar is a mostly open-air space showcasing a unique collection of modern artwork, a pea-gravel floor, and furniture made of just about anything the owners could get their hands on. We might have settled immediately at the table made of an old “Stop” sign but there’s just too much to walk around and look at.
We start with a stop at the bar, essentially a counter, perhaps modeled after a high school football game concession stand. Drinks in hand, we roam the property, from the small shed filled with an old kitchen table and shelves of boardgames, to the large bonfire pit at the rear of the property. Along the way we pass by an eclectic assortment of statues, sculptures, wall hangings, and artistic creations, most of which are made of virtually anything capable of collecting rust. Overhead, a classic rock station plays softly.
And somehow this works. Over the next few hours, the locals wander in and out as if stopping by the neighbor’s backyard, because basically they are. The concession stand keeps serving and the conversation keeps rolling and as the evening spreads slowly over the Alli Bar, folks begin gathering around the bonfire, the flame already jumping. Off to the side, we discover another statue that had eluded us to that point. Always something new to look at.
We stopped for the antique store, in search of that rare treasure.
And we found it.
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