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.