A Regular Thursday Night Out; in East Lansing
‘Next stop Grand River’ the automated sound faint on the background of my foggy yet clear memory.
Getting off the 31 Brody via Grand River bus then being immediately greeted by the bright light of Target and music blasting from the small gap of Lou and Harry’s window. Piles of students filling up LouHa’s as the temperature gets colder, of course it can never stop girls from using their cutest outfits to go out with friends — us included.
No Thursday night trip is complete without a trip to Lucky for pregames. Natasya’s Jacoke, Egi’s Half-and-Half Twea, Sekar’s Peach-Mango Smirnoff Smash, and my personal all time favorite the Peach Twea. Of course Lucky would be watching any kind of episode from Friends and attending to the other students with similar agendas. Oh, and leaving Lucky wouldn’t be perfect without a mandatory Lemon Mint and Spearmint Breeze refill.
The walk back to queue for LouHa’s usually consists of us debating whether we should walk past the line of people trying to get to Riv’s or the lowkey shady alleyway that takes us straight to LouHa’s queue. Undoubtedly, people were lining up to enter LouHa’s tonight since the Lions are playing on mug night and half of them are IISMA kids who got nothing better to do than go out on a Thursday night, making the most out of their stereotypical-American-college-kid experience. White and blue jerseys and shirts are seen all around E. Grand River Ave. tonight, guys are streaming the game on their phones as they wait in line. The queue for Harper’s are infamously filled with freshmen who obviously have fakes and are more focused on hookups than the game or the music — which is very shitty for a pay-20-bucks-to-enter bar.
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LineLeap comes to the rescue when we inevitably have to pay for cover upon ID checks. Another $20 flies by as the four of us walks through LouHa’s wooden deck onto the mini arcade consisting of a single pool table and a dimly lit booth looking out towards and line of people outside and the deck where people go out for smoke breaks. Beer-sponsored mirrors decorated the micro entry towards the bar. Trust me, this part of LouHa can get suffocating when girls are lining up for to use the restroom and a herd of dude-bros are showing off their skills in pool. But once you pass through, another corner of booth seatings are splattered across the room. A medium-sized tinted window to the kitchen with two TVs above them shows whichever game is playing and girls — mug in hand — pretend to watch the game while simultaneously seek out cute guys to talk to.
We make our way through the crowd before eventually reaching the sticky dance floor right in front of the DJ set right beside another booth. It took us a while to get the attention of Abby, our go-to girl who was always nice to us despite having to deal with other half-drunk dudes in the crowd. And let me tell you one thing, nothing, and I mean literally nothing beats the feeling of dancing to Rich Baby Daddy with my girls while sipping on my huge mug of Long Island Iced Tea or Rum and Coke on a Thursday Mug Night out in Lou and Harry’s bar in East Lansing.
The memories burn bright each time I listen to any songs from our last-minute curated playlist. As soon as the intro plays and I hear “is it all… i could be enough…” no matter where I am at the moment, all I can see is the four of us dancing and singing our hearts out on the dance floor decorated with red string lights without a care in the world. I would remember how we struggled to write down songs we wanted the DJ to play then waving our hands on the air until they noticed, how excited we got when the DJ actually played the song, how Nat or Egi would order Rumple Minze shots to top off whatever kind of concoction already brewing in our stomachs, how the world seemed to be running on our time and East Lansing was still right outside the door the bouncer was leaning against.
However the night ended, the walk to Cottage Inn can never be forgotten. Raising Cane’s, University Weiner, Rice Kitchen, Chipotle, Insomnia Cookies, and Five Guys can never distract us from a portion of mushroom and cheese pizza with a side of ranch and shot-sized water complete with George’s warm smile and the almost immediate bathroom break as we wait for our orders and for a booth to clear up. Well, sometimes half-drunk students would offer their seats and some baseless conversations were exchanged over shared needs of pizza. We would never see their faces again after that night, but still. The memories of laughter, spilling water, sharing pizza and bathroom codes, burns bright in my mind. How I can never see orange and blue walls or orange and blue anything and not think about Cottage Inn. How could I forget? Our post-LouHa Cottage Inn run was where our so-called friendship with the ASP&E kids started, but that’s a story for another day.
Now it’s time to run like hell for the last 31 Brody via Grand River bus back to Shaw. Transit never helped with calming our nerves with its inability to show the bus arrival time accurately. A horde of people ran after the bus and piled in to catch a ride home, and all the way back, the entire bus was filled with conversations on whether happened with each people with half-awake faces and people limping over each other. It will always be the most exhausting bus ride, beating that morning bus ride to your 8am class. Then bit by bit people started getting off before the speaker rang ‘Next stop Cata Bus Station’. We scatter towards East Shaw’s entrance and stumbled across every step towards our rooms. Saying goodbye to Sekar who lived on the floor above me, then tucking in Egi and Nat on Cebe’s vacant bed before climbing up my lofted bed.
Despite the night being very eventful and exhausting, I went to bed asking God to let me do it all over again the next day, the day after, and every single day after that up until we inevitably rode our final bus ride to Grand River, greeted by the bright light of Target and music blasting from the small gap of Lou and Harry’s window. Strolling further past Riv’s, making a quick stop at Lucky’s before getting on the Michigan Flyer and hearing through the speaker ‘We are now leaving East Lansing Marriott towards Detroit Wayne Airport’.
