Log Cabin to Fraser’s Pub

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On most football Saturdays, John, sixty-one, can be found sitting by the front door, greeting customers and checking IDs. For big games like MSU, the crowd overflows into a tent in the parking lot.

One change over the years is that the owners no longer tend the bar themselves--the bartenders, like the waitresses, are now young, fit, friendly females. "They [the customers] don't come to see us," John explains. "Guys want to see girls." The cooks, at the moment, are all male. "They're young, and they all got drama in their lives, and texting," says Sartori. "It's crazy."

Since the 1980s, Fraser's has been through three major renovations--they extended the bar, redid the bathrooms, took out the game tables from the backroom, installed an Internet juke box and computerized order system (which counts every pour), and built an outdoor patio in the front. But the biggest change came when Michigan banned smoking in eating places in 2010.

"That's helped a lot," John says."We washed the place from top to bottom. On May first of that year, it opened up for non-smoking. Two weeks later there [were] eleven or twelve women and a baby [in the pub]. They came, sat right there"--he points to a table in the center of the main room--"and had a baby shower."