FLINT, MI -- It's Wednesday, and that means it's Retiree Day at J's Bar & Grill.

Outside, on Industrial Avenue, cars and trucks — mostly trucks — are parked at the curb. They're the only indication that the bar is open, or even occupied. The west side of Industrial Avenue is dotted with businesses that have gone under. The Tropicana, an old shop bar, is closed; Family Deli's now-tattered awning flaps in the breeze of the lingering winter.

The east side of the street is emptier, 258 barren acres that were once an entire city — Buick City, where 27,000 employees spent at least a third of their day during years when there had been plenty of overtime. Buick City is long gone now, but inside J's is a group of men who spent at least three decades apiece on the other side of the street.

The men sit at two tables pulled together toward the back of the bar, not far from the pool table that sits unused, its overhead light slightly askew. A few patrons sit at the bar nearby, its wood deeply gouged with the names of customers from who knows when, and in some places just deeply gouged. "The Price is Right" plays on a TV overhead, but none of them are watching it as they swap stories and lies and talk about the way things used to be.

"Everyone else doing OK?" asks "Mister" Robert Anderson, a 61-year-old Flint man with an American flag bandana wrapped around his head. The bartender brings his drink, a Budweiser poured over ice, without needing to be asked.

"Alive," comes the answer from across the table.

The owner, James Williams, barbecues outside in the summer, but in the winter, the kitchen is closed. No matter. At the center of the table sits an open bag of pork rinds, which they wash down with cans of Budweiser or whiskey and cokes. Drinks used to cost a dollar on Retiree Day, but Williams couldn't keep up and had to reinstate the regular prices.

People still show up. It's still Retiree Day. This is the place they still come back to, the place they've always come. As long as they're around, it's still a shop bar, or something like it, one of the last places in Flint that can claim such a title.

There may be no other place that captures the former prosperity and excitement, the very culture of a Flint that once existed than the shop bar.

Shop bars were once the watering holes that surrounded the factories that dotted Flint. They were the places that were packed every lunch break, after every shift, where workers would escape management and the monotony of the assembly line. For many, they were a place to cut loose and kick back a few, or several, drinks after work — or during a lunch break.

And now, they're almost gone.

The men gathered at J's are the "remnants," as Anderson puts it, of that almost extinct culture. They were born about the time GM was at peak employment in Genesee County with 82,186 employees in 1955, and were among the 62,598 employed 30 years later, when they were well into their careers. As of 2008, there were just over 7,000 people employed in the area by GM. They are among the last of the shop worker tribe who still congregate in their remaining sanctuaries, places where they can find friendly faces or at least people in United Auto Workers jackets with whom they can exchange knowing, brotherly nods.

"It's the camaraderie," said Mark Hawrylo, 61, of Swartz Creek. "That's one of the reasons we come here. Family."

There are fewer who show up on Retiree Day now. Many have moved away. Some are dead. Others don't like the neighborhood anymore.

Today, there are six.

Inevitably, the conversation turns to that open expanse across the street. There has been big news this past year. A new plant is coming. No one will be making cars but no one was expecting cars to return there anyway. A company called American Cast Iron will be taking up 18 of those acres to make steel pipes. Industry will return. J's might get a lunch rush.

"Aren't they putting something over there?"

"They were talking about a pipe plant."

"A steel pipe plant. I'm thinking if they get enough construction..."

"They should have just turned it into a drag strip."

And then the conversation ends. They're on to world politics, fish stories and the crumbs in the bottom of the pork rinds bag. The pipe plant is just one more thing that's happened since the Flint, Michigan, they knew disappeared.

The old days

This is how you used to have lunch in Flint:

"Your buddy, you'd work him up the line, so he could get out and get the car. You'd have to do his job, too. You worked your butt off. So he gets there, he gets the car, and the whistle blows, and you run. He meets you with the car, you go to the bar, you order two Velvets and Coke, suck those bad babies down and make it back and maybe take one back with you."

That's according to Steve Trevino, former millwright for General Motors. He was sitting at the bar of J's Bar on another Wednesday. Retiree Day, the official time being from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., was technically over, but a handful of guys were still hanging out or came in for an evening drink.

Trevino didn't always go to J's, he said. It was directly across the street from the shop he was in, a place where his supervisor could see him if he wanted to, which Trevino suspected he did.

Mark Royce of Flint retired in 2009 after 33 years across the street. He was standing near Trevino, beer in hand, remembering when he first came to J's.

"Packed. I brought my first paycheck down here. The owner used to cash paychecks down here. ... He'd open the bar up at 6 o' clock for us working third. He'd set us up a drink. He couldn't take no money or anything until seven. But he'd serve it, you know. And payday, you know, he'd put it in that box right there. That box was just full of money," he said.

The brown wooden box is still at J's, sitting behind the counter.

"When I was younger, working, making that money, man, we'd jump from bar to bar. ... You know, everyone had money," Royce said, while Trevino sat at the bar in his UAW jacket, sipping a Velvet and Coke.

The last real shop bar

It's 2:30 p.m. on a Friday at the Wooden Keg and eight people are sitting at the bar, two of them talking about some of the bars that have opened in downtown Flint in recent years — places specializing in wines, cocktails and craft beers. No one is yet sitting at the tables.

That's OK, though. It's early, shifts across the street at GM Flint Assembly are about to end, and the workers will be here. They always are — and they better be. They're what keep the Wooden Keg alive.

It is, "absolutely," Mary Seal, the manager says, a shop bar. "They're our bread and butter."

And with the exception of a place like J's that brings retirees together, it might be the last.

When the guys show up, they'll look to the ceiling, counting off the bars that have closed near the plants that have closed. Other shop bars? Real shop bars, where line workers get off shift and head out for a burger and a drink? They can't think of any.

But they haven't yet arrived, and Seal is sitting at a high-top table talking about the bar, owned by her father, and the guys who will show up and keep it going.

"If the shop's down, we all feel it," she said. Lately, things have been good. General Motors has been giving workers overtime as they kicked out the new Chevrolet Silverado. In 2011, they added 750 jobs at the plant.

But it's an uncertain future. And while the bar is doing fine, Seal says, things aren't what they were. Crowds are smaller. The cash they keep on hand has almost been cut in half. She used to cash the checks of GM workers but has since stopped.

It's a nice bar. Clean. Inviting to new customers. The tables shine and the lights from behind the bar that zig-zag along the back wall cast a glow over the windowless establishment. In the men's bathroom the walls are white. A chalkboard has been hung to deter the graffiti, but people have still scratched some permanent names and choice words onto its surface, and the year '92, a time when more than 43,000 people in the area still worked for GM.

Seal is keen to all the changes in the shop. It is inextricably linked with her business. When Flint Assembly started a third shift about two years ago, Seal started opening the bar at 7 a.m. to catch the guys heading in or out of work. Sometimes, it's a full bar, she said. Other days, there might be two people sitting there.

The Wooden Keg was built on an economy fueled by assembly workers during a time when shaving a few more minutes — or hours — off the time clock was practically an art form. That economy has changed as GM has changed.

The bar felt it when GM instituted a no-tolerance policy with alcohol, and again when they installed turnstiles — there was no way to cheat the time clock.

"It's not the same," she said. "You know, before it was, 'Hey, punch me out, buddy.' Now, when you punch out, you punch out. They literally have like 27 minutes for lunch."

She said she doesn't blame GM and doesn't pass judgment on her customers from those days. It's not a matter of taking sides. That's just the way things were.

"These are all things that have affected our business," she said. "Are we thriving? No. But we might be OK, because they might do a paint shop," she said, just days before GM broke ground on a $600 million addition to the assembly plant that is supposed to create, or at least retain, 150 jobs.

That might keep them around as Flint's last shop bar, but her crowd is already diversifying, and she's pushing that. She's added a ladies' night and a monthly comedy night in an effort to show that it's not just a place where shop guys hang out. But it's not always that easy.

"It's almost like this bar works against me sometimes, because I'll try to do stuff, try to get younger people and new people, and their whole mentality is, 'I'm not going to go to that shop bar,' like that's all we are, and we're not. We do a lot of stuff," she said.

She doesn't kid herself, though, about what would happen to the Wooden Keg if, like so many other bars, the shop next door that kept it alive shut down or if the guys stopped showing up.

"We'd be screwed," she said. "I'm surprised I've stayed alive this long. ... I don't know how the other bars are doing it."

Staying alive

Maria Vomvolakis's business model is one of trial and error. It has to be.

She's been co-owner of The Raincheck Lounge for 30 years and the bar isn't what it used to be.

It had once been the lunchtime and after-shift bar for AC Spark Plug in Flint. There was a time when you could barely stand without touching shoulders with other people. Every week, they brought in a bank teller to do one job: cash checks. The bank teller was busy.

"It's completely different," Vomvolakis said. "It was a shop bar. ... Now the shops are closed."

There are still some workers from surrounding businesses and factories who come in, along with four die-hard retirees who still sit on the same four stools, but they're about all who remain from the old crowd. Now, it's a place to grab lunch or dinner, a place you could bring your kids during the day as much as a place to go for a drink after dinner.

In January, the bar had plans to close and sent out notices. Just a few days later, they reached out again with a different message: Never mind.

Vomvolakis owns the bar with her ex-husband, Ted Vomvolakis, whose parents, Greek immigrants, opened it in 1966.

He said he never wanted to close, but had considered moving to a new location in Fenton, where there were stronger neighborhoods and a chance for a steadier future.

It doesn't sound like a bad business plan, but the opportunity fell through, he said. And there was another problem: The Raincheck Lounge is a Flint bar, and Ted Vomvolakis wasn't sure what would happen if they moved.

"I like it where I'm at. It's taken years to build up the clientele I have. To move to a new location, I don't know if I'd do well or not," he said. "My heels are dug in and I'm staying."

There was also Maria, who had no intentions of closing or changing locations.

And although the bar does well, she said, she's constantly trying new things to attract new customers and retain the ones she has.

Some nights, she has a DJ. She's experimented with karaoke (it didn't work) and live music. Last year, she instituted a comedy night ("They weren't crazy about it," she said). They're decisions she's been making and changing for 25 years, when she started managing nights.

"I do love this bar, but it's a diverse crowd now. It's not like it was back then," she said.

Her future plans: Just keep at it.

"I'm not ready to stop. I love my business. I love the bar," she said. "I'm not dead yet."

End of an era

After 3 p.m., the guys from Flint Assembly trickle into the Wooden Keg, taking up two high-top tables against the wall and one low table. AC/DC's "Back in Black" plays over the radio. The men order bottled beer and are already laughing, trading insults that don't get old -- making fun of each others' ages, beers of choice, even beards.

"Some of us have to have beards," says Tom Durant, a 29-year veteran of the metal fabrication plant. "Cover up the ugly."

More laughter.

And more time slips by, though there are only half a dozen or so of them here. It's not like what it used to be, but they all remember those days. They talk about the bars that would have your burger (often accompanied by a couple beers) waiting on your lunch break. If you didn't call in on a day off, you still got charged for your lunch.

It wasn't just about the drinking, either. The guys sit and remember how they used to have cookouts for lunch right at the plant, a daily family reunion. Now that's banned, too.

"Nobody leaves for lunch," said John Kelly, 59. "There's no more zipping out for a couple."

They don't talk about the camaraderie the way the retirees at J's do, and maybe that's because it's a thing only realized in retrospect. Because those days might be over, but they still gather here. They're still doing what guys on the line have always done after work. The world is just different now.

"Ten years ago, this place would be packed," said Walt Brockway, 59.

Nearby, a handful of tables over, a family walked in and sat down around a table and took their menus, deciding what to order for dinner.

A new kind of shop bar?

It wasn't the ideal time to buy a shop bar when James Williams took over the White Eagle and renamed it J's Bar & Grill, after himself.

He retired in 2011 after 30 years with the company, one year after GM stopped the last of their manufacturing at Buick City. The shops there were gone, and with them, the customers who had packed the place. Some people told him he was crazy, but when the former owner asked him if he wanted to try running it, he said, "I guess I'll give it a try."

For $15,000, he got a two-year lease and, after a legal dispute, took over the building for not a penny more. Since then, it's been a battle to keep it going. The building will need a new roof soon. While sitting at end of the bar on a recent Retiree Day, two plumbers who had been in the back room come to tell him his heater is broken. He only recently started using a credit card machine.

"They wanted to know if you're making a certain amount of money and everything, and I wasn't making that kind of money," he said. "I just got that credit card machine. I don't got hardly anyone using it."

Business is steady but slow. He doesn't have any young people coming in, he said, and occasionally rents out J's for private parties. He's thinking about doing just parties and letting go of the liquor license — keeping it isn't cheap, but it would also end its legacy as a shop bar. There would be no more Retiree Day.

But there's also that pipe plant coming in, something officials say could start a chain reaction. And that might be what his business needs.

"I don't know. I don't think it will be the same like that," he said, referring to the days before Buick City closed. Then he reconsiders. "When they get that building and everything up across the street, it might end up being close to the same."

It won't be the same, of course. No one will be making cars, and it won't be part of a city-wide work force leaving the plant hungry and thirsty every eight hours, but it will be something. In the meantime, he's keeping his options open. Maybe he'll stick it out; maybe he'll just do parties; maybe the pipe plant will save him; maybe he'll put the bar on eBay. It's tough to know what to do with an old shop bar.

Scott Atkinson is an entertainment reporter for the Flint Journal and can be reached at (810) 262-0216 or at satkins1@mlive.com. You can also follow Scott on

or

.