Michigan has an actual ‘Star Wars’ Mos Eisley Cantina which opens every May 4th

Dec 24, 2023

The "Star Wars" inspired, "Space Dive," takes place in Detroit from May 4 through May 6, 2023. (Photo provided by "Space Dive" via Colin Wilson)

DETROIT - Calling all bounty hunters, scoundrels, smugglers and scum of the galaxy... this place is for you. You can hang out at one of the most crummy dive bars around for three nights only at Michigan's "Star Wars" inspired Mos Eisley Cantina.

You never know what or who you’ll see at the Cantina, which features themed food and cocktails, live entertainment, vendors, projection-mapped illusions, a fan-centric theatrical screening room and in-character interactions.

"Space Dive," as it's called, encompasses more than 6,000 square feet of space at Detroit's Tangent Gallery, located at 715 East Milwaukee Avenue, on May the 4th, 5th and 6th. This is the seventh time the event has taken place since 2015 and organizers have already been painstakingly building the Cantina for months.

"We start in February and we’re deep into it right now," Colin Wilson, Assistant Creative Dir. of "Space Dive" told MLive. "We’re working on props and the actual install of everything starts about a week before the event. This is the first year we’ve kept some permanent installations up, but we have to still build the Cantina alcoves and everything. Our storage unit is filled with stage flats we assemble into rooms for the event."

The event is for ages 21 and older. Admission is 35 credits at the gate, which opens at 7:00 each evening, or you can purchase tickets ahead of time here. There's also a costume optional family day on May 6th from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. where admission is free for ages 18 and under and it's $5 for adults.

Costumes are mandator each night at the Cantina. But as Wilson says, don't overthink your attire.

"You don't need to buy a Storm Trooper costume or anything like that. We want people to come not as on-screen characters, but as their own invention of what an everyday citizen of "Star Wars" would dress like. You could throw on a leather jacket, a keffiyeh and some goggles and be done, or you could go all-out with full Cosplay armor, masks and prosthetics. Just don't come dressed in a "Star Wars" shirt.

The "Star Wars" inspired, "Space Dive," takes place at Tangent Gallery in Detroit from May 4 through May 6, 2023. (Photo provided by "Space Dive" via Colin Wilson)

The creative director of the event, John Dunivant, is no stranger to throwing huge, immersive events. He is the creator of Michigan's Theatre Bizarre, the massive, annual multi-level Halloween party at Detroit's Masonic Temple.

"Space Dive is an absolute labor of love," said Dunivant. "It was really born out of a desire to inhabit the world of these films we’ve loved since childhood. (Co-creator Daniel Land) and I just wanted to have a drink in that cantina, and nobody else was building it, so we had to."

Everything is built from scratch to create the Cantina, adds on-site manager Brett Carson. "The windows inside the bar are lightboxes built into modular walls, and every detail, from the canisters behind the bar that are sculpted from clay, cast in fiberglass, and then painted and weathered, to the full sized starfighter. It's all hand-made."