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By the time we left closer to 1:00, there was a wait with people sitting in the entryway and right outside. The restaurant was already packed and we were a little worried there was going to be a wait. We headed inside to the hostess station which is right inside the door and surprisingly, we were shown to a table in the back dining room immediately.
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We got there about 11:15 and found an already full parking lot on the second full day of business. Our plan was to get to the restaurant before the 11:00 opening. There are about a half a dozen seats right at the bar and a number of taps…but not all 100 that they have inside, so you don’t necessarily have to go inside to get beer. The bar on the patio is an old Airstream trailer that has been converted. The main bar is an arch shaped wooden bar made with reclaimed wood. There are two bars inside Hopcat and both of them are pretty special. Hopcat’s space is quite large with a huge bar area as you first walk in, a smaller dining room beyond that, and one of the best outdoor patio spaces in Kalamazoo. When the building was restored, they kept as much of the original structure and materials as possible. There’s also a Maru Sushi that is going in on the south side and it looks like office space for Amerifirst Financial will be in between them. Hopcat takes up the north side of the building. What they did with this building is pretty amazing. It was bought by Jon Stryker in 2007, but not much was done with it until Hopcat came in to the picture. Over the years, it’s been used for a variety of things including a home for Robinson Guitars. The building, constructed in the 1920’s, was originally used by Grand Trunk Western Railroad as a freight office. Hopcat opened up this past Saturday at 300 E. A lunch out would give me a little bit of time to spend with my family on a busy weekend. I knew it was going to cut into my sleep, but I said yes. J had asked me on Saturday night if I wanted to get up and try to get to Hopcat before it got busy.
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Sunday it was back to the regular job, so again, I didn’t get to spend anytime with the family. I had a 12 hour day ahead of me, so daddy/L time was going to be short. The same thing was going to happen on Saturday. I crawled in bed and snuggled with her for a few minutes, but she didn’t even notice. By the time I got home Friday night, she was already in bed. She knows I have Friday and Saturday off and when I dropped her off at school Friday morning, I told her I wouldn’t be there when she got home. I threw our weekend schedule off by taking some extra work which kept me away from home all weekend. “Stay tuned.” Well, I don’t have to tweet at them anymore. They answered almost every time and the message was always the same. Every time a Hopcat would open, I would tweet at the main Hopcat account begging for one to be opened in Kalamazoo.