Mackinac Island — What happens when the last ferry leaves for the night? Shockingly, the best summer nightlife in all of Michigan.
I was there for golf, but I decided to stay on the island overnight and get a feel for things myself.
I posted online beforehand, in jest, “Any hoes on Mackinac Island?” I thought it was a funny joke, considering the island’s reputation for horse carriages and chocolate fudge.
But a friend of a friend reached out and said yes, actually, there are. She’d worked at a hotel on the island for a bit this summer and had recently left.
Her best recommendation was “booty night” at Horn’s Bar on Wednesday nights. She told me to bring ear plugs—last time the DJ almost blew out her eardrums. Lucky me, I just so happened to be staying on a Wednesday night.
Talking to a younger guy at the golf course before we teed off, I asked him what the move was for a single guy on the island tonight. He looked at me with a straight face and said, “You gotta go to Horn’s, it’s a whorehouse.”
He was so deadpan that I wasn’t sure if he was kidding. Mackinac Island does have a very wealthy crowd, all the yachts and Victorian era mansions and such.
Is there a hidden “Eyes Wide Shut” scene on the island? It wasn’t hard for me to imagine there might be.
I hit the town around 9:30 p.m., having heard that Horn’s would kick off around 11.
First I passed by the Pink Pony, an iconic Mackinac Bar. I saw three guys in the doorway with sweaters tied around their neck and decided yachters weren’t my crowd. I wanted something more local.
Down the street, I found a man dressed up like a pirate. All dressed up for booty night, he told me, “I’m too old for this shit, but I’ll go dressed up like a pirate because that’s fun.” He was going to the Mustang Lounge around the corner first, so I followed him there.
The Mustang Lounge struck me as the Mackinac Island equivalent of a dive bar. It was decked out with wood paneling, old photos behind plastic on the wall, and military and police badges across the ceilings.
It bills itself as “Michigan’s Most Historic Tavern,” and it felt like it. Older and less pretentious, no modern updates. For a rustbelt dive-bar connoisseur, it felt like home, with cheap drinks too.
There was a small crowd in the Mustang Lounge, mostly younger workers on the island. A few girls wore matching cheetah-print outfits. Another group heading to booty night, I assumed.
One girl lives on the island year-round, she told me, but none of the rest did. All worked at various places on the island: hotels, restaurants, shops.
These girls were American, for the most part, albeit from out of state. I wondered what brought them here, why come all the way to Mackinac Island to work for the summer?
TikTok, a few said. One shared that she’s a TikToker herself, posting videos about her life on the island that summer, how much fun she was having.
They’d all seen Mackinac Island lifestyle content and decided this would be a fun summer job. The videos do make it look idyllic, in the way social media often does, when you only see the good parts.
The clock turned 11 p.m., and rain started pouring. My hopes for a fun night and a good story grew dim. Horn’s was just around the corner, but surely no one would make it out in the rain. I ran through the downpour and made it inside.
My fears evaporated instantly. There was a huge crowd dancing, drinking, and having a good time. Mostly young women, and, my god, were they gorgeous. It took me a second to get my bearings, what on earth did I just stumble into?
A tall young man, clearly a few drinks in, came up to me right away and dapped me up like we were old friends. He was from Indiana and working at one of the ice cream shops for the summer.
He was clearly having an incredible time. He saw my camera, and asked for a photo with a few of his friends.
That was a common theme from the night. Everyone loved the camera, wanted a picture, wanted my Instagram so I could send the photos after. It’s a noticeable departure from current American nightlife, where everyone is afraid of being seen.
I assumed he was friendly because he was drunk, but it turned out to be the genuine atmosphere of the place. Everyone partying was friendly, wanted to talk, drink, dance, have a good time.
There’s a reason for this. By my estimate, 80% of the young people I met at Horns’ that night were European: Spaniards, Croatians, even a few girls from Macedonia.
You could tell because they clearly loved to party in a way I haven’t seen in America since well before the pandemic. There were no little groups hiding away on their phones, and the lack of self-consciousness was noticeable.
Anyone who’s familiar with the state of nightlife in America can tell you that it’s grown dismal. The headlines blare every day about how Zoomers don’t drink anymore, don’t go out, don’t have fun.
Yet the Europeans still love to party and aren’t afraid to show it, dancing away with no fear of being perceived.
Not only were they fun, but a quick glance proved it—there were more pretty women at this bar than any I’ve been to in Michigan.
I asked one girl if she had to pass a test to get on the island, if they did casting calls or model searches or something. The young men were generally handsome, too.
Why were there so many hot people on this island? No one told me there were hotties on Mackinac.
One possible reason: The type of people who seek out seasonal tourism work tend to be charismatic and good-looking to begin with. It’s part of the trade, working in hospitality after all.
Otherwise, maybe their places of origin. The young people working on the island fall into a few groups.
The Americans, by and large, had either heard of Mackinac Island before, or seen the TikToks from girls working on the Island, and came up for a fun summer job.
The Europeans, however, told me they were contracted by a tourism employment agency, one that specializes in placing seasonal workers abroad. One Spanish girl, when I asked why on earth she’d leave Madrid to come to Mackinac Island, told me she was only there because “the visa application was free.”
Turns out, it’s hard to attract workers to Mackinac Island. How do employers deal with this? They hire foreign workers, anyone they can get for the summer.
Despite the idyllic setting for tourists, it can be a real pain living there, and the wages can be low, especially once you factor in the cost of living.
Many of these young people told me they live in employer housing, with meals included, as part of the deal. Employer-sponsored visas, with costs covered, are often part of the arrangement as well.
There’s a caste system in the job market, too. Europeans and Americans work the customer-facing jobs—scooping ice cream and dishing out fudge and such.
The local white guys who live on the island year-round, one of them told me, “mostly work shit labor jobs.” The ferry stops running in the winter, sometimes the planes to the island don’t come, the tourists are all gone. He didn’t like the idea of staying there all year long.
The Jamaicans, such a large presence on the island that the grocery store downtown features obscure Jamaican sodas front and center, work menial labor jobs. They deliver packages from the back of horse drawn carts, shovel up the horseshit left on the streets, clean bathrooms and fold bedsheets.
One island local told me that he came home one day to find one of the Jamaicans passed out on his couch. Too tired to make it up the hill back to his dormitory, the man simply walked into the nearest house and took a nap. He said it happens all the time, a totally normal occurrence on the island.
It makes sense. When you’re on an island together, everyone has to get along. It’s a very open-door culture. No one locks up their bikes. No one worries about theft. Supposedly the police don’t even pursue bike thefts, they just say it was “borrowed” because they always turn up somewhere.
The nightlife definitely had these island vibes. Everyone is there together and open to engaging, but also with the understanding that everything is temporary.
It reminded me of studying abroad in Europe. Everyone was just there for the summer, working a job, just wanting to have fun and be young, knowing that when summer ends it’s time to leave.
Despite the complicated state of employment on the island, it makes for a crazy fun nightlife that’s largely absent from America these days. It’s worth visiting the island for that alone, even though you won’t see it in a guidebook.
Of course, it’ll be ruined if too many tourists (and writers with cameras) join in, so keep it reasonable. Let the kids have their fun for the summer, let the local scene be what it is.
Perhaps the real takeaway is that we need to start partying again in America. Take the island vibe and bring it back with you when you go home, go out to the bar and put your damn phone away. Talk to the people around you, and let go of the weird social anxiety afflicting an entire generation of American youth.
Not everywhere can be Mackinac Island, but we can bring that spirit to the rest of Michigan, can’t we? At the very least, we can have a drink and go dancing. We’d all be a lot better for it.
The tourists sure thought so. An older couple I met at the bar ran into me on the street the next day. They had a blast on the island and were heading out that day smiling and hungover, same as me.
“I shouldn’t be saying this in front of my wife, but there are so many pretty girls on this island,” the man said.
So true, king, I couldn’t agree more. There’s a festive spirit there, lively and beautiful, and we carried it back with us.
Bobby Mars is art director of Michigan Enjoyer. Follow him on X @bobby_on_mars.
