I once drove past a burger place; it may or may not have been Mr. Burger. Their sign out front declared, ‘[y]ou can have bacon on any burger.’ Though hardly a ringing endorsement for Mr. Burger when taken literally, I chose to interpret the phrase as some sort of aspirational metaphor. Equal parts ‘when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade’ and ‘the fundamentals of our economy are strong,’ the burger-plus-bacon mantra speaks of optimism, self-sufficiency, freedom, and personal taste. It is with that spirit that our journey at Places Nobody Goes began.
The Hideout is a microbrewery that shares an address with a hot tub rental organization called Hubba Tubba, which seems like a surefire recipe for dehydration and a sedentary lifestyle. Traveling to The Hideout is an experience in and of itself, as Plaza Drive is a long, meandering, unlit road with apartment buildings on both sides and only a sign consisting of poster-board, magic marker, duct tape, and a dream to guide the way (see picture, above). At the end of the road, The Hideout beckons.
Immediately after walking in, it became apparent that seating was at a premium on this particular Saturday nite, but only because there were no more than a dozen bar stools total on the main level. Our group of four ended up at a long table that was shoved against a wall, which meant that two of us were facing a windowless slab of cement adorned with a clock. The Hideout combines the best aspects of microbreweries with those of being placed in Time-Out by your kindergarten teacher.
There is more to The Hideout than initially meets the eye, though. Upstairs there was more seating, along with a foosball table, shuffleboard/carpetball, dart boards, and a computer. The computer was a desktop, ostensibly from the mid-90s; a sign above the monitor said that it was not for playing games. So, if you plan on going to The Hideout, leave your SimCity diskette at home, or something. Also upstairs was a table of people eating pizza that they had brought in from a nearby restaurant. There is also a significant outdoor component to The Hideout that included a drained swimming pool, baggo/bags/cornhole, ladder golf/hillbilly horseshoes, and more shuffleboard. This place would be perfect for an Out-Of-Shape-Guy Decathlon.
Ambiance: Two Tumbleweeds
There isn’t much to say that hasn’t been said. The outdoor ‘beer garden’ area is about 3x as large as the main-level seating area, which, for unexplained reasons, is somewhat unsettling.
Consumables: Three Tumbleweeds
Giving credit where credit is due, The Hideout does make its own beer. While Tumbleweeds are not ordinarily given for effort alone, making beer seems complicated and ambitious, or at very least utilitarian and time-consuming. Furthermore, there were 10 or so beers available when we visited, and the four we tried exceeded our admittedly low expectations. In terms of food, though, the menu contains five items: chips and salsa, nachos, a soft pretzel, a cheese and crackers plate, and popcorn. If you add Swiss Cake Rolls to the list, you basically have my after-school snack options circa 1995.
Hidden Treasure Factor: Two Tumbleweeds
The Hideout asks more questions than it answers (e.g. What's the story with the drained swimming pool? How does Hubba Tubba fit in with the overall business model? When did you realize that being three miles from anywhere that someone could conceivably happen to drive by and wander into, depite being located in the middle of Grand Rapids, was a bad idea?). That said, these questions are not quite interesting enough to require answers, which is somehow analogous to the awkward position of The Hideout within the PNG calculus: it isn't good enough to be considered important, and it isn't bad enough to be, either.
