Liberty, Equality, Consensus and All That Jazz at the Del Rio Bar

Every revolution needs a good bar. In Ann Arbor, Michigan that bar was the Del Rio. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ann Arbor morphed from a quiet Republican university town to an epicenter of the “counterculture” and liberal-left politics. And the new Del Rio Bar became the hangout for the newly Democratic City Council members; the anti-Vietnam-War activists, including the vocal Women’s Strike for Peace, and the SDS; black power activists, gays and lesbians, women’s libbers–a whole range of uppity youth–to strategize, booze and enjoy great jazz. In Liberty, Equality, Consensus and All That Jazz, social scientist/epidemiologist and former Del Rio owner Ernie Harburg shares the “warts and all” story of the social experiment that was this business establishment–somehow, miraculously run by consensus, right down to hiring and firing. The lesbian cooks who balked at hiring a male … the employee who slammed the door on would-be customers because they wore suits … Torry Harburg, co-owner, who begged haughty employees for a raise … Interwoven are an employee’s memories of coming of age in the raucous, sexually promiscuous, often drugged-out but surprisingly supportive Del family. And amazingly, the Bar stayed open, sometimes just barely, until 2004. In one quixotic bar is the story of a generation.