A Sunday in Grand Rapids

Earlier this week I wrote about a football Saturday in Grand Rapids. This is the other half of that weekend, and it is the half I would defend harder.

A Sunday morning here is quiet in a particular way. Nine o'clock, nobody moving fast, and the only line on the whole block is thirty people standing outside a restaurant that will not take their reservation.

That line is the tell. Saturday comes with a plan attached — a game, a festival, somewhere you said you would be. Sunday arrives with nothing on it, and what a city does with an empty day says more about living there than any Saturday ever will.

So here is mine.

How about brunch

The rule is go early or plan to wait. That is it. Grand Rapids takes brunch seriously enough that a 10:30 arrival on a Sunday is a decision you are making about how you want to spend the next forty minutes.

Lucy's, 1747 Plainfield Avenue NE in Creston, is the one with a national argument behind it. Yelp ranked it the 12th-best brunch spot in the country in 2024 — the only Michigan restaurant in that top hundred. Open eight to three, and yes, people know.

Tupelo Honey, 140 Ottawa Avenue NW, is downtown, Southern, and technically a chain out of Asheville. I lived in North Carolina for a few years, which is where the opinions about Southern food come from, and this one holds up. Pretending otherwise would be posturing.

Logan's Alley, 916 Michigan Street NE, is a pub the rest of the week and worth knowing for a slower start.

The Old Goat, 2434 Eastern Avenue SE, does Sunday brunch with live music, which nobody else on this list does. I have not been yet — it is the one I keep meaning to get to.

The hours nobody schedules

Here is the part of a Sunday that earns Sunday Funday its name. It's the slow part that a visitor may not see, because it's not about the photograph. It's about taking a breath, going slow, and enjoying the day.

The Elevated Market, 955 Godfrey Avenue SW, is vintage and artisan and open ten to four on a Sunday — a shorter window than the rest of the week, so this is genuinely a Sunday-morning errand. Lost & Found, 445 Century Avenue SW, is the one I'd point you to first — mid-century, architectural salvage, the kind of place you lose an hour in. It doesn't open until noon on a Sunday, which matters if there's a one o'clock kickoff. Warehouse One Antiques is a few doors down at 449.

The Downtown Market at 435 Ionia Avenue SW is open ten to eight with more than twenty merchants under one roof, which makes it the reliable answer when the weather stops cooperating. And if it's your thing (as a real estate agent with a blog, it's definitely mine), the Meyer May House (pictured above). It's a Frank Lloyd Wright — restored by Steelcase, free to tour, closed four days a week and open Sundays from noon to three.

And then there's Wealthy Street, which is the one to walk if you're only walking one. Stoffer Home, 714 Wealthy Street SE, is the storefront for Jean Stoffer Design — Jean and Grace Stoffer, whose show The Established Home runs on Chip and Joanna Gaines' Magnolia Network. Furniture, kitchen goods and design pieces worth the trip on their own — you leave with just as many ideas as you do items from the store. Better Aged is a corner off it at 413 Eastern Avenue SE, vintage clothing rather than furniture.

If there's time

Although, the Lions' kickoff could be your only appointment the whole day.

Bob's Sports Bar, 725 Michigan Street NE, is my pick and I am not going to be coy about it. Something happens in that room during a Lions game that does not happen anywhere else in town.

Peppino's downtown at 130 Ionia Avenue SW has the screens and the volume if you want a bigger room. The Elbow Room at 501 Fuller Avenue NE opens at noon on Sundays, which tells you exactly what it is for.

This year the Lions open at home on September 13 against New Orleans, one o'clock on FOX. If you are new here and want to understand the place quickly, that is a useful three hours. You do not have to care about football. You just have to notice that everyone else does, at the same time, in the same way, and that this is a city where that still happens.

The point

A Saturday tells you what a city wants you to think of it. A Sunday tells you what living in it is actually like — whether the slow hours are any good, whether there is anything to do when nothing is planned.

If you are weighing a move, that is the day to test, and almost nobody does. People visit on the best weekend of the year, fall in love with a festival, and find out later that the other fifty-one weekends are the actual product.

And if you already live here, the version of this that matters is smaller. Most of us have a Sunday we default to without ever choosing it — the same errands, the same four blocks, a whole free day spent in the part of town we happen to sleep in. I have caught myself doing it plenty.

So: go stand in that line. Buy something old you did not need. Find a room somewhere at one o'clock.

Send me a message whenever you want the local version of any of this — whether you are looking at the numbers behind moving here or you have been in this city for twenty years and just want a better Sunday.