In an age when bars often jam the walls with faux historical trinkets, load the shelves with fancy liquors, serve a few dozen dishes and stick a wide-screen TV on the wall, you don’t often find one that strips all that down to the basics of beer, a bar, a jukebox and seats.

But that’s how it is at Dyer’s, located on Gratiot near Outer Drive on the city’s east side. The bar has but one beer on tap, and it’s Milwaukee’s Best no less. There are four beers available only in cans: Bud, Bud Light, Miller and Miller Light. That’s it. Shots are available from a handful of liquor bottles. The small television doesn’t get cable, so if you want to catch a Tigers game there, you have to listen to it on the radio. Yet it’s a friendly place in what is otherwise a slum.

Dyer’s is on a once-packed commercial strip that can generously be described as decimated. On first approach, it’s hard to tell whether the bar is even open anymore. Customers hail mostly from the surrounding blocks; in fact, many of the regulars live in the seven apartments that fill out the remainder of the old building that houses the bar.

For decades it was called the Snow Owl, a German-themed bar with a traditional German house band; at another time it was a hangout for the Vigilantes motorcycle club. There had been a Dyer’s restaurant across the street, but it closed in the 80s. Once the Snow Owl’s run ended the bar became Dyer’s. Occasionally, regulars from the Snow Owl days will pop in, remembering the bar from the old days and surprised to find it still open.

The bar is generally tended by 50-year-old “Snoopy” Dunford, who’s worked there for 11 years and who’s married to Jimmy Dyer, a member of the family for whom the bar is named. Although her 78-year-old father, Bob Gunn, who lives upstairs, sometimes pitches in on bartending duties, she’s almost always the sole bartender. “We don’t make enough money in here to pay somebody,” to help bartend, she said. She tends the bar from the time it opens – “around 11 or noon” – until they close, “when we want, usually we’re out of here by 11 o’clock.”

Snoopy describes Dyer’s as “boring, but it’s comfortable. It’s our home away from home. It’s mostly our usuals, and a few stragglers every once in a while.”

“We have our little parties, we have DJs come in, we have our food,” she said. “We just had one last month ‘cause it was mine and Marilyn’s birthday, so we had the DJs in here and we had food and everything. We had a nice little party.”

The kitchen was open until about five years ago, but the cost of upgrades demanded by city health inspectors proved too much. “We did check it out – 10 grand. For a little hole in the wall like this? I don’t think we make 10 grand a year in here.”

Nevertheless, you can still eat a meal in comfort here. “I got a few guys that’ll come in, they’ll get fast food and they’ll come in here because they want to have a cold beer with it. I don’t mind that. You want something to eat and want to sit down and have cold beer go ahead, pick up what you want and come on in.”

James’ Birthday Bash, featuring DJs Buddy and Phyllis, will take place Saturday, July 21 from 9 p.m.-?
Dyer’s Bar and Grill is located at 12241 Gratiot, north of Outer Drive. Hours vary. For more information, call (313) 521-6767.