Donnie and I were driving through the familiar S-curve of Tecumseh Road near Crawford, when the hillside Southwood Hotel made me ask what the deal was and why we'd never visited. It seems like these type of bars are disappearing by the month in Windsor, leaving us on the lookout to check them out before they go away forever.

The reason I'd never checked out the Southwood was simple - both Donnie & Steve thought I had already been.

Walking through one of those heavy green doors without windows where you don't know what you're getting yourself into, there was a surprising number of young people here early on a Friday night.

The inside was cavernous and divided into different sections, so we easily picked a quiet and chill place off to the side.

The cops showed up outside soon after we arrived, and I immediately went with my normal reaction that anyone who's had an extra beer or two should stay tight and not try to drive away.

These weren't my normal haunts though. One guy immediately scrambled towards the kitchen as the bar flap lifted and he disappeared. We all looked at each other with a laugh like, "oh fuck, he's hiding in the kitchen?"

Luckily for him, the police left almost as quickly as they showed up.

Some people came over to say hello to Donnie and Steve as they knew them from the neighbourhood, while also giving me side glances like, "who the fuck is this guy with the Crosby curls?"

In fact, Donnie knew buddy that hid in the kitchen and a few days later we learned Donnie's old lady dated buddy's brother back in the day. Small world, lol.

The Southwood backs onto train tracks and it's easy to imagine it was built to house overnight passengers, especially because those tracks weren't always just for cargo trains. The Michigan Central Railroad's Windsor Train Station stood across the way until it was destroyed by arson in 1996 - and from that station people used to ride the Niagara Express between Detroit, Windsor, Buffalo, Albany and New York (the last passenger train left the station on January 31st, 1979).

While the train station was built in 1911, the Southwood was built in 1919, so named because this was the south of Windsor at the time. In 1944, it was bought by Yugoslavian immigrants Mike and Angeline Bielich for $44,000. Mike would die in 1961, but Angeline became a fixture at the Southwood, serving burgers and working well into her late 80s.

Angeline died upstairs at the Southwood in 1999, but her granddaughter and grandson-in-law took the bar over back in 1989. Throughout the 80s and 90s, bands would play here every Friday & Saturday night, and the place was often packed with workers from nearby Crawford Avenue factories and shops.

Almost all of this information comes from a September 2018 news article, published when the current owners were about to sell the Southwood for a paltry $400,000 (which even includes 20 occupied apartments on the upper floors). The plan is to heavily renovate the interior, but to keep it as some type of place that serves alcohol.

On my most recent trip down, I only saw that the Southwood sign was gone (Feb 2020).

Next up, we headed down Highway 3 and out to Essex County's other city, Leamington, as Donnie had recently noticed another promising dive, the International Hotel at the corner of Mill & Erie.

Our friend Dave Bull was like, "oh, the International? yeah I stop in there!" and we were left wondering if we're the only ones not going into these establishments.

Next door to the International was Bedrock's, which had lots of dark wood grain, a low ceiling and one of those walls made out of staircase railings.

And sitting at the bar, the bartender let us pick the music!

Which there was no way we we're going to take seriously.

A little Yankee Rose from David Lee Roth? Nothing like Diamond Dave having a fake conversation with his guitar, LOL.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Diamond David Lee Roth might've worked for the two regulars at the bar beside us, but that surely changed when we got to our favourite song to laugh at of late, All In, by Lil Yachty and his band of halfwits (Burberry Perry, Kodie Shane, B'you, etc.).

At least the bartender was really nice and seemed to get that we might not be picking songs in all seriousness.

The International was busier and more of an open concept that we had pictured.

Not taking the name seriously, I hadn't thought about how this must've been the old, main hotel of Leamington and it would have spacious areas, weird dark spaces and a pressed tin ceiling.

Throughout Southwestern Ontario, I always think of these old hotels as stand alone buildings, sometimes hanging on as a dive bar, sometimes closed and many times gone.

I guess with Leamington being a bigger community amongst Essex & Kent County, you could have the hotel built right into the other buildings downtown. Personally I love seeing these old hotels in close to their original style and configuration, so big ups to Donnie for noticing this place.

After a few at the International, we kept the Leamington bar crawl going by heading up to the main crossroads in town and another bar we were told about on Talbot Street.

I think this may have been the El Palacio Sports Cafe, but by this point, even getting into the spirit by buying lower percentage Modelo, I was getting too faded. Regardless of wherever this was, we all liked it. It felt like a weird bar you'd encounter in Southwest Detroit.

One day I'm going to think, "I should go back to that El Palacio!", and then I'll walk into 38 Talbot Street West and realize I wasn't at El Palacio at all, haha. Also, I can't find a single Google Review, Instagram tag or Facebook page picture to help me out.

Across the street from the International was another place we popped into, one we wouldn't have known was a bar except for the people standing outside and the bass reverberating through the streets.

This Beckers Convenience Store-looking building is Moe's Cafe and Bar. Inside, it was like a convenience store with the same tile, absolutely no dividing walls & only the addition of some pool tables. It was also bumping and we were having no luck getting a beer amongst the jam-packed dance crowd; so we dipped back out.

And now that it was closing time, we found a scene straight out of Windsor, with girls scream-yelling, guys acting tough, and a raucous crowd spilling out into the street. Who knew bucolic Leamington was home to such scenes?!

Not to mention that the Leamington strip club used to stand right next door too, so this must've been a wild street corner on Fridays and Saturdays back in the 90s and 2000s (the Sunset Club burned down on July 18th, 2012).

After watching the scene at Moe's for a half hour, we noticed Bedrock's was still open, then made that long, 45 minute drive back to Windsor.

Somewhere along the way I was in touch with Whitfield and he said if I wanted to hang out the next day, that I was invited to his annual, all-day brewery tour he does with his buddies. This was the complete opposite of what I needed after all of those Leamington Modelo's, but I was also flying out of Windsor the day after - you can see that my hand was forced here.

Before long, Donnie was dropping me off in LaSalle at 10am, amazed that I'd agree to go on something like this when I only knew one person out of the 12 attendees. The thought hadn't even occurred to me, especially as I got out of the car with Donnie's dog bed so I had something to sleep on tonight.

First up was Sandwich Brewing, right next to Rock Bottom down in Sandwich town. Then we headed out into the county, to this strange, new build brewery that was in that flat, sparsely treed area outside of Amherstburg and near the Malden Methodist Church at the end of Howard. The GL Heritage Brewery folks were really nice though and gave a good tour. The outside seating area was pleasant as well, especially on this perfect fall day where the surrounding farm fields made it feel like my grandparents' place on Belle River Road before they replaced those fields with houses.

Next up was a drive through Harrow and then a stop in Kingsville at The Grove. Meanwhile I was loving all of these passing old scenes and fantastic Essex County towns. Especially as Whitfield had some streaming service going and I was in charge of getting The Menzingers and Spanish Love Songs playing, while we also commented on things like the old school Beer Store in Harrow and I pointed out how close we parked to the Kingsville Lighthouse.

Anyway, The Grove was bumping and fancy and has an attached hotel where one guy in our group had stayed and said the little bathroom window looks out on the brew hall. For someone who has been away for a while, it was impressive to see all of this activity in Kingsville.

From Kingsville we had an hour's drive to Chatham & I don't know how four guys in a car drinking beers got on such a lewd topic, but one of the other guys had an interesting anecdote about the abandoned strip club I explored in Wallaceburg a couple months back.

Hailing from Sarnia, dude said Wallaceburg's Kent Tavern used to be the spot to go because they offered a free night's stay if you danced for an hour. This meant that a lot of dancers travelling between Chicago and Toronto would end up in random-ass Wallaceburg. He knew this fact because it was a thing for Sarnia guys to go to the Kent Tavern since the travelling dancers were much more attractive than the regulars.

Now I'm not so pervy that I need to track patterns of stripper migration, but I do find the thought of people with absolutely no ties to, or knowledge of Southwestern Ontario, ending up in Wallaceburg for some random night of their life.

Another updated item we saw was the old Montreal House in Chatham, even though Steve already told me it turned into a dental office named Lighthouse Dental.

Anyway, throwing it back to the worry about only knowing Whitfield, this was proving to be no problem at all. Especially when you add in day drinking and the fact that there were 10 or 12 different people - if I didn't care for someone or our conversation stalled out, we were soon enough off to another place and the musical chairs continued.

I eventually sorted out that I knew another guy from school, as he was certain he knew me and brought up enough people and things that eventually I pulled out remembering this guy from some deep recess of my brain. We barely knew each other back then, but he remembered me because of how jealous he was that I was dating this one classmate of ours. Funny.

We had to stop at one guy's house in Chatham and we pulled into this strange neighbourhood with wide streets and some stately brick homes. This was north of Highway 2 and east of Chatham's Taco Bell.

I had no clue Chatham had a boulevard of fine old homes like the one above.

Another thing I learned about Chatham was that they used to have a theatre downtown...and now it's a brewery. There wasn't any interior throwback to the theatre days, but it was adaptive reuse and a new area of Chatham explored all the same.

Inside, I loved that the Sons of Kent Brewery table signs were miniature town signs like we used to have in Ontario, with all of the fun Kent County places like Morpeth, Shrewsbury and Charing Cross.

Throughout the day touring, one of the guys in the group was really excited about the adult establishment in Chatham, which was hilariously just opening at 6pm as we sat at the Sons of Kent.

So four of us broke off from the group, walking into the 2-story Spanky's, with a catwalk around 3 sides and a large space in the middle. No music was playing and the lights weren't even dimmed. Grabbing a couple OV's which really complimented the saisons and goses of this brewery tour, we sat by the stage and nothing was happening.

Since I was mostly here for the story and to check out the atmosphere, I was extremely amused to have us drinking overpriced Old Vienna's by an empty stage in a dingy and vast space, but the one guy excited for Spanky's wanted to figure out the deal. Going up to the bar, he asked about dancers and the bartender pointed to the one girl sitting at the bar having a drink.

Taking her time to finish said drink, she moved with the same pace towards the stage and after about a song or two, Excited Dude made it rain way too much money...and now the most money I've ever seen it rain was at the strip club in Chatham Ontario at 615pm.

Good, seedy times.

We finished up the brewery tour with a 30 minute drive down to Erieau and the Bayside Brewing Company. By this time we were pretty hungry, so Erieau's delicious beer and food worked great. We even had to park a bit far away from the brewery, which left me walking the flat, cottage-lined streets I've longed to walk since the last time I visited Erieau 14 years prior in 2004.

Our accommodations were out in Erieau as well - or maybe Erie Beach - where one of the guy's dads lived and was fine with 12 grown ass men from a brewery tour crashing all over his living room.

And while earlier in the day, the other guys made fun of me for being "the guy who showed up with a dog bed", now that the couches and spare beds were filling up, I was getting the last laugh as I laid down with some sweet comfort between my hips and the hardwood floors. I even went to bed earlier than the last stragglers, worn out from a couple of long days and savouring this dog bed that Donnie leant me. His poor dog Boston can deal with the confusion of where his bed went, lol!

Morning would come all too quickly, as we had to get up earlier than the sun so Whitfield could get home for something to do with his kiddos.

After some early talks by the morning light of the aforementioned village of Charing Cross, and then coffees in Comber, I was home before I knew it and ready for more slumber.

What a fun coincidence that I just so happened to be in town for this. Thanks Whitfield!