I had a beer in Kalamazoo. Actually, a bunch of them -- at six different taprooms. "Kalamazoo" is fun to say. And the city's newspaper sounds like a prestidigitator's magic word: "Kalamazoo Gazette!" My wife and I went there in mid-July and made it our base for visiting her uncle and attending a wedding in Holland. But mainly we went for the beer culture. Kalamazoo has about 75,000 people and a dozen or so small breweries (the MSA has about 335,000 people, and a few more micro-breweries) -- the largest and best know of which is, of course, Bell's.

 

It's an interesting and lively town to come upon after passing through Jackson and Battle Creek. Smaller than Ann Arbor and with a much smaller university (Western Michigan, plus Kalamazoo College), it seems to be a tidy town with some strong neighborhoods, but also some rough edges, particularly north of downtown. The northern and western edges of downtown have that bombed-out, parking-lot vibe that so many cities have. And Michigan Avenue (a street name as obligatory as Art Deco towers in mid-sized Michigan cities) is a seven-lane, one-way racetrack west of the downtown core before suddenly narrowing to about three lanes. There's a downtown mallway closed to vehicles, and a giant, modernistic Radisson hotel that clashes well with stately old buildings -- including an 1887 Louis Sullivan building (the Desenberg Block) from before he split with Dankmar Adler.

 

This Kalamazoo beer drinker's license plate is on a car in a lot across from Rupert's Brew House

 

Rupert's exterior. The building was a long-ago drug store, and then for many years a great used-record store, according to my wife's uncle, who has lived in town for several decades.

 

Rupert's interior. It was our favorite of six Kzoo taprooms because it's not really just a taproom. It's a great neighborhood bar that just happens to brew its own great ales. It's full of friendly people and it's easy to get into a rollicking conversation. It also has a friendly Great Dane.

 

House drum

 

Bell's sign

 

Bell's entrance

 

Since we were in Kalamazoo in mid-July, shortly after the launch of Pokemon Go, hordes of phone-wielding whippersnappers were chasing Charizards in Bronson Park, a block off Michigan, between the county courthouse and city hall.

 

It's a handsome urban park with lots of big wildlife topiary art -- not to be confused with Pokemon

 

 

 

Sticking with the pop-culture theme, there's this sign near the park

 

City Hall

 

Civic Auditorium next door

 

Art museum in the next block

 

B&B next to the art museum on South Street

 

Classic old apartment block next to the B&B

 

A mix of stately old-money homes nearby on South and Academy streets

 

 

 

Pleasant downtown sidestreet

 

Public Library, near Bronson Park

 

One of three buildings within about a two-block area with signs indicating they are home to the Kalamazoo Gazette!

 

Another

 

Yet another

 

Stately State Theater, on Burdick Street

 

No, I didn't hang around to see Ted Nugent

 

 

A foreshadowing peek at the obligatory mid-sized Michigan city Art Deco tower on an equally obligatory Michigan Avenue

 

Assorted downtown streets and buildings. The six-story building in the background has a rooftop bar

 

An apartment with a deck with a view of the rooftop bar

 

The Sullivan-designed Desenberg Block, now a Huntington branch

 

Sullivanesque detail

 

More

 

Still more

 

A Sullivan neighbor

 

Another neighbor

 

Mix of styles

 

Looking west toward the super-wide part of Michigan, and the Radisson

 

The narrower part of Michigan, looking east and slightly north (the street doglegs)

 

Shops on the narrow part

 

We later made a stop at the Coney Island

 

Good food

 

There she is! The obligatory Art Deco tower, a Fifth Third bank

 

Another view

 

The tower is on the right. The building straight ahead is where Michigan doglegs to the left

 

A closer look

 

Now we'll approach the tower from the other direction, the raceway section of Michigan Avenue

 

A zoomed view

 

 

 

 

Courthouse

 

Funky newsstand with a great sign

 

 

 

 

Part of the mall way, with limited traffic

 

Cool Art Deco signs

 

They featured different sectors of our national economic might. I liked "Transportation."

 

The building with a rooftop bar

 

Nighttime view of Michigan from the rooftop

 

And the tower

 

Amtrak station and local transit center, On Kalamazoo Avenue (the westbound one-way thoroughfare paired with Michigan)

 

Assorted downtown views from north of Michigan Avenue, mostly along Kalamazoo

 

 

 

It's not ALL old stuff

 

But some of it is

 

 

The Acadia Creek Festival Place offers Tourism Bureau photo ops of  downtown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kalamazoo is one of my favorite small Midwestern cities.  They even have downtown Alamo Drafthouse!

Thanks--yep, Kalamazoo is a nice town and fun to say. Western Michigan's campus leaves much to be desired, however, and I wish they would make Michigan Avenue two-way again.

My best friend in grad school went to K-College and told me lots of stories of the college and the town, so I felt like I knew it already, though this was the first time I've actually seen pictures of it.  Need to visit, it looks very pleasant.  And I wouldn't mind checking out that brewery scene!

 

ahhh!

 

Great Pictures! I went to K College in the 00s. I've been back once in 2014, only for a couple hours, when I was driving through Michigan. Rupert's was a coffee shop throughout the 00s (Ravenwood, it was called), right at the edge of the K college campus border...  Since I left, the beer culture really has grown. It was pretty much just Bell's and a couple others back then. Heck, Southwestern MI is pretty good: there's also Battle Creek (Founders and others) and a couple smaller ones in Holland.

 

I never had seen Bronson Park so crowded!

 

The Michigan News Agency is a gem. I wish there were something like it in Cleveland, has an amazing selection of periodicals (magazines, journals, newspapers) from all over the world.

 

Ditto on WMU's campus. People forget its size: has >20,000 students and its campus is rather auto-oriented. It was known as the place where people who were rejected from U of M and MSU went ;)

(aka Waste-ern , a big party school).

 

K's campus is relatively tiny (only 1300 students) with classic architecture and it strongly resembles a New England type school with mostly brick buildings and Academy, the street that runs through it is also brick. It's also separated by the railroad tracks which reinforces the isolation.

 

Speaking of banks, one of the larger towers there used to be occupied by National City, but with its acquisition of PNC, I'm not sure if PNC is still there.

 

Overall, if you go there, I highly recommend visiting in early-mid October. It's absolutely beautiful during the fall with great foliage.

Yeah I graduated from K College in '87. The town has changed a lot since then, but the ridiculous freeway of a road (Michigan) that cleaves through the heart of downtown is absurd, a sad vestige of outdated models of urban planning.  Also West Main, which zooms by K College to the North is pretty awful. There's a lot of that 60's style urban planning in the general core. Lot of great home stock, primarily Victorian, in and around K College (which I will submit, in a not so humble/biased opinion, is one of the most picturesque colleges around).

 

Rupert's used to be Boogie Records, an awesome new as well as used record store, and head shop.

 

When I started school in '83, and for much of my time there, downtown was a incredibly dead, bizarro world. John Engler as the Guv shut down the state mental hospitals, so they all wandered about the sad, downtown pedestrian mall (which I believe was the first in the nation to completely shut off the downtown street for a pedestrian mall).

 

Bell's was in a gas station in the back of their current Eccentric Cafe when I was there.  Campus Beverage ("Tiny's") at the edge of K College had a great selection of beer, in the days before craft beer pretty much existed (Anchor Steam, Sierra Nevada and a huge selection of foreign beer, plus Bell's three varieties at the time).

 

Kalamazoo can pursue a "Grand Rapids Lite" model, with the breweries, not as much of the "meds," but much more of an "eds" presence, particularly in the core.

 

The whole "release the creek" project helped give downtown a boost. They now have a Hop Cat's in the old depot out by Bell's that will further advance the beer-town culture.

looks like a cozy place with lots of rehabs and life to its downtown.