The night before Thanksgiving. Halloween. St. Patrick's Day....
Often hailed as the biggest bar night of the year, Thanksgiving eve has made a mark on the metro Detroit nightlife scene so large it rivals heavy weights like New Year’s Eve, Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day. But what makes this pre-turkey night of debauchery so appealing?
“Everybody comes home for the holiday, so you have the reunion factor,” says Detroit musician Ty Stone who will be performing at St. Andrew’s Hall the night before Thanksgiving. “Everyone has the next day off to recover with a table full of turkey and a mound of mashed potatoes. It basically comes with a built-in hangover day.”
Bar and club owners take full advantage of the substantial increase of bodies, particularly college students, returning home for the holiday and looking to hit the town the night before the big family meal.
“More and more people are getting into this business,” says Clutch Cargo’s owner Amir Daiza who’s been on the club scene for more than a decade. “Every group that does parties throughout the year and one-off parties is doing parties on that night. If you look back about 10 years ago, there were only a few promoters that were doing this.”
While New Year’s Eve undoubtedly ranks right up there, Daiza says, “Thanksgiving Eve doesn’t have the big-ticket price tag. New Year’s Eve is more expensive. New Year’s is more for newbies. It’s more of the people that kind of go out once a year.”
With the modest cover prices (usually under $20), bar and club owners are attempting to get as many bodies into their club as possible, says Sean Davis, co-owner of Reliv (formerly Elysium Lounge), who is holding a grand opening party at the downtown Detroit club on Wednesday. “By Thanksgiving eve being the biggest bar night of the year, a lot of bar managers try to take advantage of it. They want to get every dollar they can get.”
You probably won’t be able to walk through downtown in Detroit or the ‘burbs without seeing some sort of pre-turkey day celebration, and though the parties will be abundant, Tom Thankachan a.k.a. DJ Tom T. notes that the festivities this year seem to be lacking a little when it comes to the pomp and circumstance.
“This year is definitely shorter on celebrities, personalities, etc. I think that’s a function of the poor economy and also that Thanksgiving Eve is a slam dunk night for most venues. It’s not really advantageous for most venues to spend the money to bring in a personality when you can instead use those dollars to market your particular event to a much larger base of people and get a bigger impact.”
Tatiana Grant, founder of Infused PR & Events, which is hosting NBA star LeBron James at Eden Tuesday says, “I feel like this year stacks up fairly with year’s past. People can go to Neptix, Facebook and Metromix to find out all the various activities going on that evening. However, I will admit that the black-tie, celebrity-focused events are at a minimum this year. I believe that has a lot to do with budgets.”
