"w I 6B enedy Novmbr , S1 0 CONTINUED FROM PAGESB According to Carlson, the main appeal at the time was the live music. They went to Ann Arbor's other popular spots, like the Union, which used to sell alcohol. But even when they started elsewhere, Carlson and her friends eventually made their way to Rick's when they wanted to dance. Whereas the other bars cranked out radio songs and didn't have a space for dancing, Rick's offered interest- ing music and, according to Carlson, a "better atmosphere." "They had a dance floor; they had the bands; it was good," Carlson said. As it turns out, Madonna isn't the only one who forged a special connection at 611 Church. On one of her Rick's nights in 1982, Carlson started talking with a complete stranger. They danced; heboughteher a drink. For months, she saw him around campus, remembering him as the guy she met at Rick's. Almost a year after their chance meeting, the two began dating. Karen and Mark Carlson graduated in 1984 and married in 1987. Twenty-six years later, two of their three children are University students. Carlson said her daughter Sara - a senior in the Stamps School of Art & Design - goes to Rick's with her friends, just like her mother used to. "And then her friends will look around and say, 'Hey, doyou think our husbands are here?"' BEAT GOES ON According to Hesse, the general manager, the live music started tapering off and then 'stopped completely about seven years ago. Now, live performances only happen in rare instances. The Business School band, for example, plays a few times a year. But, as Hesse explained, for a bar to host liveshows success- fully, bands have to be booked consistently, four or five nights a week. The recognizable, respected bands the Rick's management wanted to book started getting tooexpensive, and there was also the risk of becoming too niche. If Rick's booked an '80s cover band, they ran the risk of losing' customers who might not like sweaty 20-year- olds screaming Michael Jackson covers. So, in the early 2000s, Rick's started transi- tioning into featuring DJs one or two nights a week, and those nights becamethe most popular. "And the local band market just dried up," Hesse explained. "So even the least expen- sive bands were twice as much as a DJ. It got to the point where it just financially didn't make sense for us." The switch to DJs allowed Rick's to cater to a wider range of music tastes and requests. Recent University alum Julie Ruppe remembers Rick's the same way as Carlson does: as a place to dance with your friends and have a great time. "I went at least twice a week," Ruppe said, explaining that she usually went with the group of girls she lived with, which includ- ed members of Delta Gamma, her soror- ity. Rick's even weighed into her decision to live at "Chillard," a house on the corner of Church and Willard. "As long as you brought the right group of "A lot can happen at Rick's ... Some, good, some bad and some so utterly life-changing that you wake up every day and just have to smile at the mere, thought of it." - JULIE RUPPE, RECENT UNIVERSITY ALUM people, you'd always have agood time," Ruppe said. "It's just the only club on campus -if you can even call it a club - where you can dance with all your friends everywhere, and I think that's-really fun." Ruppe's advice to Rick's first timers like us is to "expect the unexpected." Just last year, Ruppe was at Rick's enjoying what she described as "an extraordinarily delicious vodka soda" mixed by one of her favorite bartenders, and the all too familiar "Call Me Maybe" started playing. On awhim, she decid- ed to sing the song to a stranger. She picked a random guy, serenaded him, danced for a few more songs and put her number in his phone. Three weeks later, she agreed to go on a date with him, even though she didn't even know his name. Having little faith that the date would lead to anything other than a nice lunch, she wore an "ugly hipster grandma" sweater and met him at Sava's. When she met her mysterious date, he told her he was from Germany. She had just returned from a study abroad trip to Germa- ny, and they connected instantly. The couple recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of that first date in Berlin where they now live and work together. "A lot can happen at Ricks," Ruppe wrote in an e-mail with the subject line "Til Rick's do us part." "Some good, some bad and some so utterly life-changing that you wake up every day and just have to smile at the mere thought of it." And it's not only Rick's regulars who have found love in the dimly lit basementbar. Jenny Schwartz was a student in the School of Social Work from2002 to 2004.As agrad student, one of her favorite bars was Dominick's, and she rarely made the journey to Rick's. One night of fall 2003, however, her friends convinced her to go. Recovering from a cold, the last place Schwartz wanted to be was out on the town, especially since she wasn't drinking that night. "Idon'tknowifit'schangedatall,"Schwartz said, "but Rick's back then was basically where you drank and hooked up with random people. It was notsome place you would go to meet the future love of your life." On that night, trying to get out of a con- versation with another Rick's goer, Schwartz started talking to a stranger in a Cornell hat. He was a law student from New York who had just broken up with his girlfriend of six years. They talked all night, he walked her home and she gave him her number. "They always say that you're going to meet someone when you least expect it," Schwartz said. Nearly ten years later, the two are married, have three children and live in West Bloomfield. ME AGAINST THE MUSIC Hesse, the general manager, also attributed the lonigevity of Rick's to the consistent pattern of top-notch employees. Like Lily Pike, a 2008 graduate from the University.Pike joined the staff her junior year, partially to pay off a car payment she couldn't afford, and partially just to get in the place. "I wasn't 21 yet, and I had been going to Rick's since I was 17," Pike said in a phone interview. "I had changed my hair, so my ID didn't work anymore. I needed money, but I knew if I wanted to be there, I'd need to work there. Because you can get in there - without drinking-- if you work there." But, as she found out, being part of the sober population at Rick's is - surprisingly enough - a bit different. "Everyone's wasted, and you're sober," Pike said. "You see guys whipping out their dicks and peeing on the bar Y-" , We stopped her: You actually saw that happen? "Oh yeah," Pike said. "They don't want to wait in line for bathroom, so they pee right next to the bar. I've seen guys getting kicked out constantly for that." And when the bouncers aren't throwing out the urinary exhibitionists, they're trying to keep one of the most inebriated crowds on campus under control. Easier said than done. "One time, we had to take a guy out, and he grabbed onto my shirt and wouldn't let go," said Roth, a Rick's bouncer. "And he tore the shirt off me." But overall, Roth says, the employees at Rick's do a decent job of keeping anarchy to a minimum, and that "very rarely have I seen one of my co-workers have to, like, punch someone in the face." And as for what Rick's looks like after last call and once the lights turn on, it's certainly not for the faint of heart, or the sober of mind. "It's a mess," Pike said. "You see purses left behind, heels of shoes, jackets, cell phones. Cheap stuff and really expensive stuff, sur- rounded by puke." But as the old saying goes, from the stinkiest puke comes the sweetest love. Or, at least that was the case for Pike. A co-worker-turned- manager, Matt Dedes, added another hyphen to his title in 2009: boyfriend. "He was so sweet," Pike said. "He,used to walk me home every night after close." After months of just being friends, Pike took a sabbatical from Rick's for an internship in Washington; D.C. Once she came back to Ann Arbor, she went to Rick's and saw Matt. They set up their first date the very next day. And now - "Now we've been together for five years," Pike said. Just last month, Pike ("finally," she said) convinced Matt to come with her to Bos- ton, leaving behind the bar they both loved to start a new life together. "I guess he couldn't handle the constant river of puke, scantily clad angry girls cold in line, nor the deep and dark cavernous habitat of Rick's," Pike said in an e-mail. "It's good for a night or two, but not for a lifetime. Love found there, on-the other hand, is for a lifetime. #ricksloveforlife" FUTURE LOVERS When told about the influx of stories we've received aboutcouples finding their loved ones at Rick's, Hesse chuckled. "I met my wife here," he said. His experience, like the others, wasn't something he had planned for or sought out. It was 1997, and Hesse - a senior at the time - was working on a particularly slow Sunday night. His friend showed up on a double date, and one of the girls started talking to Hesse. In fact, she ended up talking to him more than her date. A month later, they went out, and another month after that, they became serious. They've been married for 16 years, the same amount of time Hesse has been with Rick's. But Hesse has also experienced a different type of love during his time as general man- ager. He described the outpouring of apprecia- tion he gets from people who "live and die" by Rick's. He said getting people out the door on graduation weekend is always a struggle. "The people make Rick's what it is," he said. "At graduation last year, I had so many people shake my hand and girls giving me hugs say- ing, 'Thanks, it was the best senior year ever."' For Ruppe in Berlin, the other Rick's - memory that stands out as much as the night she met her boyfriend was on her very last night at 611 Church. It was right after gradu- ation, and Ruppe was there with 15 of the girls she lived with. Vitamin C's "Gradua- tion" began to play. "We all put our arms around each other and just started crying in the middle of Rick's," she said. "It was our last night all together, our last night at Rick's. Everyone's graduating and moving different places, and it'sjust a very ste- reotypical moment and also very fitting that it was at Rick's." It's not necessarily for everyone, especially if you're not the dancing type. But the legend- ary bar offers its fair share of surprises. Maybe you could meet the love of your life at Rick's. Or, like us, you could just end up dancing on the stage with your closest friends and leftover pasta. Or, you could walk in, pay $6 for a shot, look around and leave (we did that one night, too). In any case, the basement of 611 Church has been the setting for endless late-night tales, Ann Arbor history and its fair share of real-life meet-cutes. Here's looking at you, Rick's ...but not when the lights are on. No one wantsto see that. statement on the street: How do you get ready for a night out? PHOTOS BY TERESA MATHEW "You're supposed to have a set of failures, but you've organized yourselves in such a way to be successful from the get-go." - KEN FISHER, president of the University Musical Society and an advisor ofMUSIC Matters, about the club's newly-announced $50,000 endowed scholarship. "We need to go 100 percent every single play, and some plays we didn't do that ... so they came out with the win." - JAKE RYAN, redshirt junior linebacker, on the Michigan football team's 29-6 loss to Michigan State on Saturday. "You can even ask the site to conduct a survey that will determine whether or not your pictures make you seem bone-able to complete strangers." - EMILY PITTINOS, Daily Opinion columnist, on experimenting with OKCupid, a dating website. "Sometimes on our floor in Markley, we throw shower parties with a bunch of us - play some music, rage in the shower." Ryan VanDagens, LSA freshman "I make sure I have a hype playlist ready for all my friends. Sometimes there's a new song I've heard that might be hype that week." Kayla Nwokeji, LSA junior "Take a shower, shave if I need to, and then put on some nice clothes like a dress shirt and spray on some cologne - Lacoste." Soumith Inturi, LSA sophomore pm According to The New York Times, a recent analysis of data by NASA found that "one of every five sun-like stars" has an Earth-size planet circling at just the right distance where liquid water could exist. The next time you feel alone in this world, think about the t ther 40 billion potentially NASA/AP Photo habitable planets. After being lost for at least 70years, 1,500 pieces of art taken by the Nazis were found in a Munich apartment, according to CNN. The art, valued at more than $1 billion, includes pieces by Matisse and Picasso. o--a J 1 A vote on Monday ruled that the Senate will consider outlawing discriminationbased on sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace, according to The NewYork Times. Amendments to the existing federal law will be proposed in the next few days. F A Halloween party at Arizona State University featured two girls in the sexiest costume to date: just heels. According to Gawker, commenters on the story suggested the women were strippers hired by a fraternity.