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Everybody loves having a good time with their family and friends. It doesn’t matter whether it’s spending time with each other during the holidays, birthdays, parties or weddings. How about going out together on the busiest bar night of the year? It’s been rumored that Thanksgiving Eve is the biggest night that bars make their most money.
Britton, MI consists of a library, fire department, gas station, school and a bar. When driving from Dundee to Tecumseh you could miss it if you blink. In Britton the small bar in town is called The Whistle Stop (this is due to its location next to the railroad tracks that go through town). When you walk into the bar that is located in between an antique store and a building that’s for sale, you can feel the small town energy take over. There are booths on each side of the building with tables down the middle of the room. It’s very dimly lit and quiet in the afternoon with only a few students and retiree’s eating lunch. The four televisions that are lining the walls have sports, the weather or Keno on.
“Thanksgiving Eve is one of our busiest nights of the year. With everybody coming in with family and friends that night we can increase our business by 50 percent compared to a weekend night,” Diane Straits answers about what night is the busiest for them. Straits knows the bar business considering she’s been a waitress for 27 years with the last three spent at The Whistle Stop. “I think it’s mostly because people know that they don’t have to work the next morning and want to get out. I do think that it’s also because people want to get together with their family that night.”
Britton is a very small town (it’s actually considered a village) that has only about 600 people within the city limits. You would never know it was there unless you were from the area or you knew someone from town. “Most of the people that come out that night are usually locals, we don’t get very many people from out of town,” Straits continues.
The bar hours for The Whistle Stop are consist of staying open until only 11 pm Monday thru Thursdays, 2 am on Friday and Saturday and then only until 8 pm on Sunday nights. Straits said that Thanksgiving Eve they usually keep the bar open until 2 am though, even though it’s a weekday night. When asked if she thought they would get more business if they were located in a bigger town Straits answers, “I think the only way we would get more people is if we were located in Ann Arbor. But my guess is that we would have about the same amount of people whether we were located here or in Tecumseh. We do have to prepare for that night though. We order extra of everything and we have specials that go all night.”
When doing a search for the best bar to be at on Thanksgiving Eve I run across nightclubvip.com. This website holds six bars advertising for all of their specials that they are going to be having on the night before Thanksgiving. Three floors of music, open bars for an hour, dinner buffets and DJ’s are just some of the perks that they’re going to hold that night. These are facts that it’s not a rumor that Thanksgiving Eve is the busiest bar night of the year.
Waiting at the bar for more people to talk to about bar nights Thanksgiving Eve, Clinton, MI resident Emilie Cadmus walks in with a couple of her friends. “I do usually go out the night before Thanksgiving with my mom and some of my other family. We like to drink so when we’re all together that night it seems like going to a bar is the thing to do.”
When looking for something to do the night before Thanksgiving, grab some friends or family members and go to your local bar. They’re most likely having a lot of specials and you might even run into some people that you haven’t seen in awhile. Cadmus goes on saying, “It’s always good to catch up with people that you haven’t seen in awhile. My friends are usually coming back into town that night for the holidays and they just also happen to be at the bar also.”