Ever since I arrived in Kalamazoo all those years ago I’ve always noticed this blight on East Kalamazoo Ave as you approach the downtown region. Oh God No, what the hell is that?!? Turns out it’s Bell’s Brewery. It looks like an abandoned industrial ruin, fences, the hint of brewing tanks behind filthy windows, serviced by a incredibly tiny parking lot which is marked for company use only. It’s strange because there is a big yellow sign advertising things that sound like musical acts. So there has to be an inside, obviously. It’s the dead last place I ever wanted to go mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to approach it. The outside looks awful, it’s filthy, barbed wire fences, no parking at all, and East Kalamazoo is a one way, so if you miss it, well, screw you, you’re shit out of luck.

Years went by, I assumed that there was something there, but seeing Bell’s from the outside I always figured it was a dive. A nasty wretched filthy dive. Then I started hearing about how Bell’s is supposed to be this incredible world-renowned microbrewery. Family members ask about it, where I am in relationship to Comstock, MI. It’s, uh, I suppose a town, it’s just down the street. I assume it’s a town at least. I’ve been there a few times, it strikes me as being sparser than Cortland, New York and that’s embarrassingly sparse. Oh look, they have an intersection, yay.

Then out of curiosity I bought a six pack of Two Hearted Ale thinking it was rated very highly, so why not give it a shot? Oh my god. It was the first time I hate-drank a six pack. I couldn’t endure the notion that I had wasted money on that swill (oh, and god, was it awful, unpleasant is a huge understatement) and so I put Bell’s, and all it’s delightful whatever in the list of “Maybe someday, if I find the Wardrobe to Narnia…” and it became just another blighted eyesore that contributes to the general dilapidation that is downtown Kalamazoo. It needs a good solid tornado to improve.

So, years go by and I don’t think of Bell’s at all. Every once in a while people mention meeting people at Bell’s and I always ask “Does it have an inside? I mean, something you can go into?” and they look at me funny and assume that I’m being intentionally odd. No people! I don’t think it HAS an inside! Not for people at least! And I let it lapse. Wondering whats beyond the Wardrobe to Narnia occurs to me every time I pass it heading to work on East Kalamazoo.

Anyways, between a lot of not-thinking-about-Bells and now I joined a cycling group that heads out all over the northeast part of Kalamazoo every Tuesday. A nice bunch of people, I don’t know any of them at all, but nice enough. I get my exercise in, I get a path to follow, and I get people to bike with, at least in general. After the biking they customarily go to Bell’s for beer. Cue the double-take. People who have… wait for it… **been inside**. It’s like spotting Mr. Tumnas for the first time and expecting to hear a bleat and the clickety-clack of little hooves. So today we were headed up to Gull Lake, sort of, and then back. I got home, fed my cats and then got my license and my bank card and headed out. I asked Google Maps to get me to Bell’s, thinking that it might lead me to the Wardrobe (baaah), no, not really. I ended up standing in a lot too tiny for my big SUV, festooned with industrial debris, you know, the “No way this is habitable for human beings” itty-bitty parking lot. Not for customers. I seriously doubted, even at this point, that there were customers at all. I mean, Narnia folks, Baaaah. So I turned down the next street and figured that the Wardrobe might be on the other side. But there is nothing on the other side but ugly train tracks, mostly a nasty railyard which serves the most annoying feature of Kalamazoo. A train runs through it. Annoyingly so, and poorly too. Amtrak. Yay for sitting in piss, but I digress. There is nothing back there but rotten out abandoned warehouses, potholes, the saddest field of brickwork that used to be the street, it pokes through sadly every once in a while, when the rotten out asphalt just can’t hack the punishment. That’s it! It’s just rail controls, street crossing barricades, brownfield, debris, urban decay… oh my fucking god, it’s the god damn Wardrobe to Narnia! There it is. It’s a parking lot, bigger than you think, but not marked, so maybe you’re going to be towed, maybe you aren’t. Is it for employees? Are there employees? This whole time I seriously doubted this was a real place. I honestly figured Bell’s had grown softheaded and thought that maybe the train-that-doesn’t-run-through-here-anymore may pick up kegs of their beer. Sort of like a really depressing alcoholic Polar Express. If you look very carefully, and you walk around the building you see the entrance and, well, there I stood. 15 years of living in this wretched place and I finally found the fucking entrance to a place I thought was a local urban legend. Bell’s Eccentric Cafe. Oh, hello Mr. Tumnas. Nice seeing you! Baaaah!

I wasn’t dressed for this place. I was hot and sweaty and I looked kind of disheveled. I had talked myself into going even though I don’t really have the money to spend and the gasoline I burned up getting there was a very tiny black cloud hanging over my head. The people pouring out were brightly dressed, tourists, hipster trash, and downtown people. Even walking up I felt awkward. Then I entered. There was a gentleman sitting by the entrance and he looked at me and I glanced at him. I thought it was strange that he was just sitting there, and since I didn’t think anything about it, I just walked right past him. Turns out, maybe, he was a door something or other checking patrons licenses, at least that’s the gist I got when I turned around on my way out. He didn’t seem to be important, just kind of “this guy by the door”. Honestly the thought was that maybe he was using his phone, or something else, but that I should have approached him wasn’t even anywhere in my head.

Then it hit me as I looked around. It was several things all at once, actually. There was this overwhelming social anxiety – I knew absolutely nobody at all. I didn’t know the shape of the interior, and I walked past what appeared to be a beer hall and then further down to a door that didn’t appear to be for customers, and on my way back, I happened to notice a beer garden patio on the other side. I peered through the window and saw elderly people and strangers. Giant swaths of strangers, strange faces… then I felt an overwhelming urge to escape. I had to go. I didn’t have the money, I didn’t know if the biking group that I was supposedly going to join were actually there, and even if I did, I only know the owner of the establishment and only just first names. I was weighing everything and I felt like I really didn’t belong there. I was woefully under-dressed, I was running a risk of drinking beer on a empty stomach which would have really complicated my trip back home, plus the notion that I wasn’t going to really get out of there without spending $30 to $50 for beer I don’t really care for and people I don’t know in a building that really might have been Narnia. Baaaah!

I’m not a bar person. I really don’t like big group things surrounded by strangers, and I only put up with those situations because I don’t want to be that guy that clogs up the works for everyone else when they want to have fun – but it’s never really fun for me. It’s expensive. It’s nasty. It’s dirty. It’s smelly. Oh god, I’d rather just flee. And so I did. I fled from Bell’s. I didn’t have the heart to even make eye contact with the guy at the front door. Maybe he was a bouncer, maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was just sitting there – who the hell knows? Exit was the only thing I wanted and I walked back to my car, cursing the burnt fuel to get me to this boondoggle of an experience and thankful that I decided against “making the best of it” and staying. It would have been really awkward. Throw alcohol on top of awkward and I might as well be an albatross. Squawk!

So, I’ve been to Bell’s, er, Narnia. Yes, it’s probably a nice place. I’m sure it’s wonderful and I’m sure I am missing out on something, but in the end, I’m okay with that. People who like beer seem to regard it highly, and also in that, good for them. I don’t think it’s for me. 15 years and finding it finally has scratched off an item on my “Whatevs” list, so for that, a tepid yeh.

I can’t really afford the place. I can’t afford their beer. I can’t afford the gasoline it takes to get there and back and I don’t know a soul in the place. So, we’ve learned where the Wardrobe is and at least now I know it’s not for me. At least I can go back to my comfortable notions of before, that it’s just a run-down industrial pit and there is nothing on the other side but filthy blighted railroad.

Baaah.