The city with more than 15 bars and one CVS used to be a dry city with four or five drugstores.

"They're gone now," Professor Norman Abeles said. "It's sort of curious."

Professor Mordechai Kreinin said the city expanded to stores behind Grand River Avenue, which didn't used to be the case.

The stores also changed.

Kreinin used to be a regular at Jacobson's.

"Even when they moved to the East Coast, they would come home and go to Jacobson's," he said about his three daughters.

The store closed in 2002 due to bankruptcy.

East Lansing's original city charter made it illegal to manufacture, sell, keep for sale, give away or furnish any vinous, malt, brewed, fermented, spirituous or intoxicating liquors.

It wasn't until 1968 that a public vote turned East Lansing from a dry city to a place where the alcohol flowed and students indulged.

In the late 1950s, before the vote, students used to go out of town to get drinks, Abeles said, and many would drive drunk on their way back.

It hit home for him when a student in one of his psychology classes was killed drunk driving on the way back.

"That stands out in my mind," he said.