One Year of Hidden Bars and Speakeasies Tour

By Aali Qureshi, founder, Deadly Company

Short answer: There are 34 verified hidden bars and speakeasies across Metro Detroit and Windsor, unmarked doors, bank vaults, bars inside liquor stores and barber shops, and a determined couple, or a crew of friends, can visit thirty-two of them in a year.

That’s roughly three doors a month.

The full month-by-month route is below: downtown first, the suburbs by season, Windsor in August for Prohibition Week, and a New Year’s Eve finish in a bar that was a real blind pig.

Key takeaways

• The map is real: 34 operating hidden bars, verified door by door in The Detroit Speakeasy Scene, every door, code and house rule documented.
• The pace is human: about three doors a month, clustered by neighborhood so no month is a road trip.
• Three doors are bosses, not bars: Johnny’s (a code texted the day of), The Viridian Room (open six hours a week), and the event-driven pair, Miss Eva’s and Hidden at Parlay, whose calendars you have to catch.
• August is the expedition: Windsor during the city’s official Prohibition Week, drinking where the whisky actually came from.
• December is the victory lap: the ghosts you can still drink in, ending in a basement that served illegally for thirteen years.
• You can start any day: the route is a circle, with three fixed stars, Prohibition Week, the September Stop, and New Year’s Eve at Frank’s.

The Rules of the Tour

It would be simpler to take a picture of your drink and post it. But this is a keepsake: the photos prove you were there.

The book is the year you can hold, drinks and memories both.

Every quest needs rules, and this one’s run on paper. One: before door one, buy a small pocket notebook. It’s the tour’s only official equipment, and it’s incorruptible, because of rule three.

Two: a door counts only with a witness. Nobody does a door alone; this is a thing you do with your person or your people.

Three: at every door, the notebook entry must carry four things: the date and the time, what you drank, a signature or endorsement from the bartender or your server, and the ring.

The ritual: dip a finger in your whiskey, wet the bottom of your glass with it, and press the glass onto the entry, over the words: the mark left on the page is a coaster ring print from a wet glass. The hour, the drink, the signature, the ring: a door isn’t done until its page carries all four.

And one more mark, when it exists: if the establishment has a door stamp of its own, collect it in the book, on the same page. Most doors keep none, and no door needs it to count.

Four: three photos a door, a picture of the door, a selfie at the door, and the notebook page, posted to the story with your account of the night.

The story wall and the share board are the group, and a door is not done until its post is up there: no post, no door. If you do it, you post to the group. That is not paperwork. That is the tour.

That takes an account: create one, verify your email, and post from the share page. From your phone, at the bar, while the ring is still wet.

Five: the house rules are the house’s: hats off where hats come off, dress codes where they exist, two-hour limits where they apply, phones away in the houses that ban them. You’re a guest in rooms that survive by discretion.

Six: somebody drives sober, every time, no exceptions, no negotiations, and on the Windsor run, nobody drives back across the bridge after drinking. The tour takes a year because it’s supposed to be enjoyed, not survived.

The Aali Drop-In

The tour’s wildcard. Post where you’ll be and when, your next door, the night, the rough hour, on the share page board. Aali reads the board, picks doors at random, and joins participants at their own tables, at one of their thirty-two doors.

Coordination is by text: text the Deadly line once a drop-in is on.

And the teeth are real: if Aali shows up and you don’t, that door’s entry doesn’t count: hour, drink, signature, ring, all of it void. Post plans you intend to keep.

Start Where You Stand

The route is a circle, not a line. You can start this tour any day of the year, and Door One is the day you buy the notebook. Start with the doors of the month you are in, then run the month-groups in order from there, wrapping from December back to January, until all thirty-two are done.

Your year is any twelve consecutive months. Nobody is late to this tour.

The circle has three fixed stars, though: appointments that belong to the calendar and not to your route. Every runner keeps all three, whenever they started.

Prohibition Week. Windsor is not a month. Windsor is a week. The three Windsor doors are run during the city’s official Prohibition Week, August 17 to 23, the one that falls inside your year, and only then.

If your route reaches Windsor early, you wait for the week. If the week arrives first, you cross anyway and the route bends around it.

There is no off-week Windsor window, and the week cannot be skipped.

The September Stop. One night in September, when the evenings turn cool, the whole cohort gathers in one room, and nobody can tell you where, because the Stop is invitational. You are invited if you are registered for the tour.

Registered runners are texted twice: two weeks out, a hold-the-date with no venue, and on the day, an address nearby the spot, never the spot itself.

The spot is picked each year from the list, one of the guide’s verified doors, and from that nearby address you work out which listed door is closest. That is the room.

It is an open secret by design: the address is never shared, but the door is on the list and near, so finding it is easy.

Aali is there, and if you want, he signs your book. A door done that night under the full rules counts like any other.

The December Convergence. Through December, everybody runs the Ghost Lap together, and it closes on New Year’s Eve at Frank’s.

Founding runners and rolling runners alike: if you are mid-year, you join the lap at whatever door count you hold, and your route resumes in January where it left off.

Your own finish is still yours. The night your thirty-second door falls, whenever in the year that happens, is your finish. The December night at Frank’s is the whole tour’s homecoming, and the finishers are honored there.

The Levels

Level one, the walk-ins. Most of the 32: find the door, walk in, order. Shelby, The Standby, Sugar House, The Eastman and two dozen more run on nerve and wayfinding alone.

Level two, the reservations. Johnny’s Speakeasy is the famous one: book it, and the entry code is texted to you the afternoon of your reservation, the real Prohibition mechanic, still running. The Best Kept Secret holds your table for ten minutes past the hour and not a breath longer.

Level three, the calendar bosses. Miss Eva’s opens on event days only. Hidden at Parlay stages its speakeasy night on Saturdays. The Viridian Room pours six hours a week, Friday and Saturday, 6 to 9. Blind Owl opens three nights a week. These four doors set the tour’s rhythm: you don’t visit them when you feel like it, you build the month around them.

The Route

January: The Vault and the Alley (3)

Start where the scene is densest. Shelby: down through the coffee shop into the bank vault.

The Standby: through the elevator-shaft door in the Belt.

The Skip: the open-air bar hidden in the alley itself. Winter in Detroit, three doors within a mile: the tour begins the way the Funnel did, in the cold.

February: Capitol Park (3)

Bad Luck Bar: the gray door with the snake and the hand; knock or call.

Café d’Mongo’s: order the Detroit Brown in the room that invented it.

Evening Bar: through the Shinola lobby, or the Parker’s Alley way, like you know something.

March: Behind the Curtain (4)

The month of hidden interiors. Willow: under the soul-food restaurant: golden door, doorbell, hats off.

The Aladdin Sane: behind the curtain in the Book Tower basement.

Saksey’s: down the Parker’s Alley stairs.

Room 1904: up the stairs inside Jacoby’s. Four doors, four different ways of disappearing indoors.

April: Midtown and Corktown (3)

Ghost Bar: up the Whitney mansion’s main staircase.

Sugar House: the storefront that started the city’s craft era, named for the gang that trained the Purples.

Jolly Old Timers: ring the bell at the Victorian house, watch for the red light, and understand you’re being let into seventy years of Black Detroit social history.

May: Nine Mile (3)

The Oakland in Ferndale, behind the Art Novelty Company door.

Mai Tiki: through the unmarked door inside TigerLily.

And the spring boss: Johnny’s Speakeasy in Royal Oak. Book it early in the month, because the code only comes the day of, and a missed code is a missed month.

June: The Elevator and the Alley (3)

Weiss Distilling in Clawson, walk through the working elevator.

The Viridian Room: hidden inside the brunch bistro, Friday or Saturday, 6 to 9, booked by DM like a secret.

The Eastman in Rochester: down the alley, under the coffee roasters, no reservations taken from anyone.

July: The Barber and the Liquor Store (2)

A light month, on purpose: summer is long. Baus Barber: a haircut by day, a cocktail by night.

The Best Kept Secret in St. Clair Shores: inside the liquor store, ask a clerk for the secret entrance, collar up, this one has a dress code.

August: The Windsor Expedition (3)

The pilgrimage, timed to the city’s official Prohibition Week (August 17 to 23). Cross the river the legal way, passport or Michigan enhanced driver’s license, and drink where the whisky came from.

Blind Owl: the unlabeled door beside the hotel.

Funky Chow: downstairs in Walkerville, where the Prohibition Week pour is a cocktail called The River Runner. Hidden inside Funky Chow is a second bar, IKTO, behind a secret entrance: it is not a tour door, and finding it earns you nothing but the finding.

Maiden Lane: in the mural-covered lane, drinking Walkerville whisky in Windsor. Stay the night. The men who ran this route in reverse did it in Model Ts on ice; you get a hotel and a festival. Progress.

September: Ann Arbor (2)

The Last Word: book the Tock window; the namesake cocktail was invented in Detroit in 1921 and revived behind this plain door.

Babs’ Underground: down the stairs on Ashley Street, no reservations, free pool on Sundays. Two doors, one college town, home by midnight if you’re disciplined, which by September you won’t be.

October: Banks and Murals (3)

The Ebenezer in Plymouth, a First National Bank basement, the vault now a tasting room.

2FOG’s Pub in Howell: around the back, left of the farm mural, down the stairs.

NOMI Lounge in Northville, follow the beat to the red light and the velvet ropes.

November: The Calendar Bosses (3)

The month the tour tests you. Miss Eva’s on Grand River, pick your event day and commit.

Hidden at Parlay: a Saturday, under the sports bar, phones away.

Knock Twice in West Bloomfield, reserve the 90-minute seating. Three doors that don’t care about your schedule. That’s why they’re November’s.

December: The Ghost Lap

Thirty-two doors down, the tour ends where it should: in the rooms that started it. The victory lap is the ghosts you can still drink in, Frank’s Eastside Tavern in Mt. Clemens, pouring legally in the same basement that poured illegally for thirteen years, on Macomb County liquor license No. 1.

Two Way Inn: behind its dentist’s-office legend.

Abick’s: where the barrels were found in the wall in 2016.

Nancy Whiskey: holder of one of the city’s oldest licenses.

And across the river, the Dominion House in Sandwich, licensed since 1869. Finish on New Year’s Eve at Frank’s if you can.

Rolling runners join the lap at whatever door count they hold, mid-year or finishing, because December belongs to everyone on the road. A year of hidden doors, closed out in a blind pig that never actually closed.

What You Need

A pocket notebook, and a pen that works in the dark. A phone, for the three photos. An account on this site, for the story: make it before door one, because the first entry is easier posted from the bar than reconstructed at home.

A group chat with a name worth keeping. This page as the route, and the map as the reference: doors, codes, hours and house rules, because scenes move and a tour built on a stale list is just a series of locked doors.

And one person in the crew who is constitutionally incapable of letting a plan die. Every group has one. If you can’t name yours, it’s you.

Deadly Company is a Detroit lifestyle company. The tour is free, the doors are real, and the only prize is the year. If your crew runs it, we want to hear about door 32.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you really visit every Metro Detroit speakeasy in one year?
Yes. There are 34 verified operating hidden bars and speakeasies across Metro Detroit and Windsor. Clustered by neighborhood, that’s about three doors a month: the route above runs January to November, with December reserved for the historic ghost bars.

What are the hardest speakeasies to get into on the tour?
Johnny’s Speakeasy in Royal Oak (reservation-only; the entry code is texted the afternoon of your visit), The Viridian Room in Clawson (open Friday and Saturday, 6 to 9pm only), and the event-driven rooms, Miss Eva’s Detroit and Hidden at Parlay, which open on their calendars, not yours.

Do you need a passport for the Windsor leg?
Yes, U.S. citizens crossing to Windsor need a passport or, at the land border, a Michigan enhanced driver’s license. Plan the Windsor run as an overnight: nobody drives back across the bridge after drinking.

When is the best time to start the tour?
Any day you like. The route is a circle, not a line: start with the doors of the month you are in and wrap around, and your year is any twelve consecutive months. January is only the founding cohort’s start. Three appointments are fixed for every runner, whenever they begin: Prohibition Week in Windsor in August, the September Stop, and the December convergence at Frank’s.

What if I miss Prohibition Week?
You cannot skip it. Your Windsor leg runs in the Prohibition Week that falls inside your year, August 17 to 23, and there is no other Windsor window. If life truly takes that week from you, your year stretches to the next one, because Windsor is the one leg the calendar owns.

What are the September Stop and the December convergence?
The two gatherings every runner shares. The September Stop is one invitational night in September, when the evenings turn cool: the spot is picked each year from the list, registered runners are texted a hold-the-date two weeks out and a nearby address on the day, and you work out which listed door is closest. The December convergence is the Ghost Lap run together through December, closing on New Year’s Eve at Frank’s. Rolling runners join both at whatever door count they hold.

The map: The Detroit Speakeasy Scene. The full verified directory this tour is built from, with the history of the Windsor-Detroit Funnel and the Purple Gang.