A football Saturday in Grand Rapids

The first Saturday of football season in Michigan isn't a cold day. It's seventy-eight and sunny and you're in short sleeves. The only evidence of what's coming is that a few trees have gone gold at the edges, and the light turns amber an hour earlier than it did in July.

What that combination does to this city is the part nobody warns you about. Everyone comes outside. The bike paths get crowded, dogs are everywhere, and every patio (restaurant or otherwise) in town is full by eleven in the morning — because everyone here knows exactly how many of these Saturdays are left, and it's not very many.

Then, at noon, it's time for football.

This year that Saturday is September 5. The college season opens with a full slate, the NFL follows on Wednesday the 9th — the first Wednesday kickoff in seventy-five years — and the Lions open at home the Sunday after that.

So here's what a football Saturday looks like from where I sit. Not the definitive version. Mine.

Why I'm like this about football Saturdays

I've been going to Michigan games since I was three years old. At Hope I ran cross country and track, so fall was my competition season, and my own Saturday mornings in Holland were spent racing. The weather turning, the season starting and football coming back all arrived at once, every year, and they've never really come apart since.

Graduate school took me to Wake Forest, which is where I picked up ACC football, and then to Michigan. For the record: I'm a Michigan football fan. In a town split this evenly I'm not going to pretend otherwise — all my friends here would probably tell you anyways. They're all MSU football fans.

The morning

I start at the Fulton Street Farmers Market — 1145 Fulton Street East, Saturdays eight to two through October. It's the oldest and largest market in the city, and September is the one month when it's carrying both seasons at once. The tomatoes are still going and the peaches are still good, but the apples have arrived and there's cider three weeks before anybody's ready for cider. Get there by nine if you want to move at your own pace. After ten it's strollers and tote bags and people who've stopped walking to talk to somebody they know.

I go because it's in my neighborhood. I live in Midtown, which is the honest reason most of this morning happens within a few blocks of itself.

Two of those blocks matter if the game is late and you need lunch first.

Black Napkin, 966 Fulton Street East. Smash burgers, walk-in only, and a line that tells you everything. Go before noon or accept your fate.

KCM, 209 Diamond Avenue SE. Chef-owner Jason Kim's hire katsu curry made the New York Times' Best American Dishes of 2023 — a national critic flying to Grand Rapids and writing about the crisp perfection of the fried pork. That happened here, four blocks from a farmers market, and I don't think the city has fully absorbed it yet.

The games that are actually here

Most of my Saturday is spent watching a game from four hundred miles away, which is true of most people here. But there's real football inside thirty minutes of downtown, and it's worth knowing about.

Grand Valley State plays at Lubbers Stadium in Allendale, fifteen minutes west. They're a genuine Division II power, and their home opener this year is a Thursday night White Out on September 3.

Hope plays at Ray and Sue Smith Stadium in Holland, half an hour southwest. Their home opener is September 12, and on November 7 they play at Calvin.

That last one is worth a paragraph. Hope and Calvin have been playing each other for 106 years and 218 games across every other sport — Hope leads the all-time series 111 to 107, which is as close as a century of anything gets. But Calvin only started a football program in 2024, 149 years after the college was founded. So the oldest rivalry in West Michigan has a brand new football chapter, and it's three seasons old.

Where to watch

(All four are on Instagram: Peppino's, Bob's, The Score, Blue Dog.)

For beer specifically: Founders on Grandville Avenue is the one everyone outside Michigan has heard of. New Holland Brewpub, the Knickerbocker, is on Bridge Street, and the original brewery is down in Holland — which makes it a nice bookend to a Hope Saturday.

Both have patios, and so do Bob's and The Score, which in September is most of the point.

The night

After the game there are three options, and I've never regretted any of them.

Bridge Street, on the west side, if you want the night to continue. It's become the corridor where you can start at one place and end up four doors down without ever making a decision. Bridge Street Bar at 600 is a Detroit bar down to the memorabilia, Steel Cat is at 640, and Rapid River Stillhouse anchors the Stocking corner with three floors and a rooftop.

Cherry Street, if you'd rather walk it off. Brewery Vivant pours Belgian-style beer in a former funeral home chapel, which sounds like a gimmick and isn't. Furniture City Creamery is across the street at 958 Cherry SE if you'd rather finish on ice cream than another beer.

A bonfire in somebody's backyard, if you want it to wind down. This is the thing I'd tell somebody who's never lived through a Michigan fall: the day that hit eighty at two o'clock will be fifty-five by ten, and that swing is exactly what a fire was invented for. Somebody brings the leftover burgers. The game gets recapped four times, each version less accurate. Half the reason people love fall here has nothing to do with football at all.

The point

That first Saturday is the one where the season turns, and it doesn't announce itself. It's still eighty degrees at two o'clock. You notice it in smaller places — somebody's kid in a jersey three sizes too big, a stranger asking you the score like the two of you have already met, the jacket you didn't think you'd need by the time the fire is going, and the subtle smell of fall in the background — all while you spend the afternoon somewhere loud, with people you like, watching a game.

Nobody would think that's a waste of a warm day.

If you're new here and looking for a room to watch your team in, send me a message. This city is more split and more welcoming about it than you'd expect, and I'd love to bring you along for the ride. And if you are not here yet, the numbers behind moving here are less romantic than any of this and worth reading first.