ONE Mile Magazine Vol 1 by Akoaki

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COVER Jannash Rashid is wearing a vintage jacket from her aunt, Asos shirt and chain around scarf, leggings F21, scarf from Teeba fashion, Michael Kors watch, glasses from her sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s car, boots from a boutique in Atlanta. Jannash was accompanied by her sister, Leah VernonRashad for the photo shoot in the Mothership.

SPRING 2015 ONE MILE DETROIT Creative Directors Bryce Detroit, Jean Louis Farges, Halima Cassells, Anya Sirota Fashion Editor Halima Cassells Managing Designer Matthew Story Contributing photographers Piper Carter, Jean Louis Farges, Kirk Donaldson Peter Halquist, Halima Cassells Contributing writers Annelise Heeringa, Matthew Story, Peter Halquist Jamii Tata, Makeeba Ellington, Bryce Detroit, Halima Cassells, Anya Sirota, Christophe Ponceau, Carelton Golz, Athenia Harris, Za’Nyia Kelly Assistants Danielle Weitzman, Kristen Collins, Rosemary O’Brien, Kathryn Carethers, Caroline Petersen Publisher ONE Mile Publishing Spiritualist Makeeba Ellington PR Andrea Daniel For international and domestic distribution info@onemile.org For advertising inquiries halima@onemile.org And a special thank you to: Dee Castelow, Roger Robinson, Dave Boggon, Jerry Hebron, DJ Los, Rachel Mulder Made possible through the support of: ArtPlace America, Knight Arts Foundation, University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning Follow us on: facebook.com/onemile twitter.com/ onemile copyright ONE Mile © 2015, the authors and photographs Reproduction without permission prohibited

SPRING 2015 CONTRIBUTORS

A long-time dream came true when the legendary Detroit-based photographer and cultural activist PIPER CARTER shot the opening event at the Bureau of Emergent Urbanity. The shoot resulting a beautiful series of candid photographs that harnessed the energy and projective potential of the collective, multivalent experience. Piper is one of our cultural heroes, and her powerful, dreamy, undeniably sexy images invoke a deep sense of dynamism and beauty that have led to innumerable nationally recognized publications, including British Elle, New York Times, Trace, Spin, and Island Def Jam Music Group, and Vogue Magazine, to name a few. We’re touched and excited to share Piper’s visionary look at the workings of ONE Mile.

A night out in Detroit with MATTHEW STORY will bring you in contact with the most unpredictable people and places. The reason why is that Story is a designer who operates without borders. He is concerned with cities and their political contexts as sites of social experimentation and resistance to anticipated outcomes. A musician, polemicist, and son of a midwestern preacher, Story is a keen observer of the world, and a delirious participant. He is currently a project manager with the Metropolitan Observatory of Digital Culture and Representation and Akoaki, where he works on novel aesthetics of social practice.

Epic is the word we would use to describe BRYCE DETROIT’s positive impact on Detroit’s 21st century culture and arts movement. The exceptional caliber of his artistry, his deep impact on youth, and his message of positive, diasporic African self-determinism all make Bryce Detroit among the ones to watch. There are few who can combine his acumen, candor, and cultural sophistication with such ease. Currently Bryce Detroit lives and works in the North End, contributing to the board of the Oakland Avenue Artists Coalition and Cass Corridor Commons. He is the founder of Detroit Recordings, and is currently establishing the Detroit Afrikan Music Institute.

JEAN LOUIS FARGES is a designer and photographer with great passion. His energy and idiosyncratic approach to perceiving and visualizing the world have led him to work on some of the city’s most iconographically punchy and socially driven spatial interventions. We are excited to include his documentary work in this issue. Along side his photographic work, Jean Louis is the principal of Akoaki and the co-founder of MODCaR. He is also an insatiable, autodidactic music aficionado. He is currently working on the launch of the Detroit Afrikan Music Institute

Detroit-based artist and activist HALIMA CASSELLS is one of the most exceptional figures in the city. Her work crosses disciplines and boundaries, always defying expectation. A consummate diplomat and avid experimentationalist, she traverses diverse circles, and occupies a myriad of roles that are unified by a deep and unwavering devotion to fostering community interconnectivity and love. Cassells shares her work as the pilot of the Free Market Project and Swap programming. In addition, she assumes roles at O.N.E. Mile, Incite Focus, the Oakland Avenue Artists Coalition, North End Soup, Center for Community Based Enterprise, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, and as an independent artist and media-maker

We are happy to welcome ANNELISE HEERINGA to our pages. For this inaugural issue of the O.N.E. Mile zine, she shares her impressions of weeds, mowing, trimming, picking, and pruning. Trained as a civil engineer, and currently working on a master of architecture degree, coiffing the landscape is more than just a sweat-inducing activity for Heeringa. She imagines it as a way of cultivating public space and a sense of collectivity. In her future she sees mushrooms. She is currently working on a strategy to transform underused architecture into sites for fungi horticulture and artistic production.

Architectural designer ANYA SIROTA loves making social space. Deploying objects, environments, and experimental programming, she creates situations where surprising things happen between people. As the co-founder of the Metropolitan Observatory of Digital Culture and Representation (MODCaR) and principal of Akoaki, she studies architecture, urbanism, and generative cultural infrastructure, and believes that design came make significant impact on collective experience. Her work has received recognition internationally, and featured in numerous design publications and exhibitions. She currently teaches architecture at the University of Michigan.

Spend the day with DR. MAKEEBA ELLINGTON, the North End’s acclaimed Abstract Oracle, and you will experience the world in an unprecedented way. Dr. Ellington is an ordained minister, a spiritual counselor & auditor, a Tapology and Reiki practitioner, as well as a mom. Through her studies and doctorate in divinity, Dr. Ellington uses her abilities to tune in to people’s energy and emotions to channel spiritual energy for readings and healing. Along with Hip N’ Zen in the North End, Dr. Ellington holds “Save Your Soul Sundays” at Red Door Digital, a movement-based, group meditation. She is also a published writer, knitter, painter, dancer, singer, and O.N.E. Mile Artist Fellow. Her strength and positivity are unmatched.

ANDREA DANIEL is a writer and poet. She is co-owner of Dakota Avenue West Publishing, an independent book publisher. She also owns AND Communications, a multi-layered creative communications agency. Andrea is a member of the Motown Writers Network, Michigan Literary Network, and is producer and guest host of Michigan Literary Network Radio and co-produces “Literature, Lyrics and Lines” on WRCJ Radio. She combines her love of poetry and music as a singer/songwriter under the stage name Naomi Daniel.She serves on the Board of Directors for the Friends of the E. Azalia Hackely Collection of African Americans in the Performing Arts with the Detroit Public Library.

CHRISTOPHE PONCEAU is an unusual landscape architect. For one, he doesn’t believe in weeds. Instead, he treats all plants as participants in an ever evolving ecological performance, where the gardener, released from the role of vegetal enforcer, learns from natural processes and encourages outcomes. Coupling the garden with other disciplinary interests, including photography, graphic design and architectural installation, Ponceau situates landscapes within a confluence of creative practices that contribute to the quality of collective experience. The approach has earned Ponceau accolades. He has co-curated the Jardin Lausanne 2014 international festival, the Zaragova French Pavilion, and designed the scenography for Cartier’s flagship stores around the global, to name a few recent projects.

JAMII TATA is a North End based artist, advocate, and educator. His commitment to issues of justice in the community are expressed in his direct contribution to campaigns around homelessness, food justice, education reform, literacy, environmental justice, cultural expression and counter-narrative dissemination. Working with youth through his organization, Know Allegiance Nation, Tata uses writing, performance poetry, storytelling, and self-publishing as tools to combat illiteracy, build social and economic capital and create a foundation for future villages to stand on. He is also Youth Growing Detroit Coordinator of Keep Growing Detroit, which engages thousands across the city in community gardening. And principal organizer and President of the Oakland Avenue Artists Coalition.

PETER HALQUIST’s training as both an architect and large-scale multi-media sculptor made him the perfect person to head up the fabrication and construction of the Mothership. He is equal parts hyper-detailed engineer, ad-hoc DIY’er, selftaught structural whiz, and all-in-all positive force for O.N.E. Mile. His work couples playfulness, economy, and misappropriation to virtuosic effect. Halquist makes things happen, without apology. He currently teaches design at the University of Michigan.

Jasmine Harris

cr8iveminds.com

SPRING 2015 CONTENT

110

Welcome to the Bureau

Roger Robinson

Photography by Piper Carter

Interview by Halima Cassells and Matthew Story

121

Meet D.J. Los

Dee Castelow is Biking and Baking

Interview by Bryce Detroit

Interview and photograpy JL

Portrait by JL

131

Building the Mothership

Landing in the D

Conversation with Peter Halquist &

Story by Christophe Ponceau

Ian Donaldson

Photography by JL

142

Jerry Hebron: Growing Green, Jobs, and Community

Detroit Sound Conservancy

Interview by Jamii Tata

Text by Carleton Gholz

Portrait by JL

145

Swap Till You Drop

Building Social Practice

Story & Photography by Halima Cassells

Text by Matthew Story Photography by JL

Red Jazz Shoe Shine Parlor Interview by Matthew Story Photography by JL

157

Spiritual Healing with Dr Ellington Drawings by Makeeba Ellington

The Legacy of Funk Photographs by Piper Carter & Kirk Donaldson Narrative by Bryce Detroit

163

North End Poetry Power Text by Zaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Nyia Kelly Poem by Athenia Harris-Muhammed

EDITORS’ NOTE

The O.N.E. Mile Project is a collaborative effort to support the cultural production and socio-economic activity of Detroit’s epic North End neighborhood. We host events, exhibits, workshops, conversations, and performances. We create public spaces and experimental environments. We design tools for broadcast. And we continue to build a network of people interested in the sustained collective vibrancy of the North End. Amazing things have happened and continue happening in the North End - production and activity that transformed music and culture around the globe. In this inaugural issue of the O.N.E. Mile zine, we’ve collected a few stories from people who live and work in the North End. They represent a small fragment of the neighborhood’s energy and cultural endowment. We’re excited to share these stories and images with you, to broadcast and uplift the people and activity of the North End. Enjoy!

O.N.E. Mile

Welcome to the BUREAU OF EMERGENT URBANITY. Last fall, we opened a space for people to gather, share ideas, and talk about their work and their city. To convert the former OK Barbershop into a new urban hot spot was a collective effort. We fixed the walls, floors, and ceiling. Then we installed a new facade. But, as a wink and an aspiration, the barber chairs, pole, and mirrors remain - reminders of the power of convivial and informal social space.

photography PIPER CARTER

words ANYA SIROTA

The Bureau of Emergent Urbanity is located at 8326 Oakland Avenue, Detroit. The space hosts events, performances and exhibits.

Bureau opening , September 5, 2014

Marsha Music’s “From all sides” exhibit facing page top: Marsha Music with Cynthia Jarvis-Zuri bottom: Marsha Music accompanied by David Philpot reading “The Kidnapped Children of Detroit”

Jaffer Kolb preparing his â&#x20AC;&#x153;Home Economicsâ&#x20AC;? exhibit, a commentary on the politics of making in Detroit

Detroit’s pioneering musician D.J. LOS gives a good interview. He is candid - willing to speak openly about the city’s Hip Hop and Funk scenes, as well as to share his personal experiences growing up among some of the world’s most renown musicians. Likewise, few are better equipped to speak of D.J. Los’s work than the notorious Bryce Detroit, a community advocate and music producer based in the North End. Together, they offer their memories, thoughts, and impressions about the remarkable power of music to shape experience.

interview BRYCE DETROIT Photographed at the Bureau of Emergent Urbanity in Detroit. Archival photos courtesy of the artist.

portrait JL

Okay. Alright, I am Bryce Detroit here with hip hop legend and...my brother, please introduce yourself... I am the DJ pioneer, DJ Los.

on that song. ...well my friends started explaining to me something about producer J Dilla, who they had interacted with alot. He produced a lot of tracks for 5-Ela. They were informing me, you know, I guess they didn’t realize after brushing up with me so many times that I was the pioneer DJ Los from back in the day and he didn’t realized who I was, I guess I have a youthful appearance. They were apologizing for not recognizing me and thought that I was a little older, you know, things of that interest. They said. “You don’t realize that Dilla, J Dilla, was influenced by what you were doing that back in the day, the album covers, not so much the music, but the album covers and the packaging, and videos, and our songs playing on the radio, you know, and we were inspiration.” They said “If those guys on the West side can do this stuff, you know, we can too,” and he used that as motivation for everybody he was working with.

True indeed. We are here today as a part of this Legacy of Funk... shout out to ONE Mile Detroit, shout out to Detroit Recordings, Oakland Avenue Artist Coalition. Los, we’d like to start with this question: What is your connection to the legacy of funk, which is Parliament Funkadelic? I’m looked at as a baby funkateer, if you will. My dad is a percussionist of Parliament Funkadelic. I traveled with him, toured with him. As a child I used to go to the studio twice a week at the time when he was recording Flashlight, Knee Deep, One Nation and stuff like that. I say that I was there when history was being made.

To that point, who, if you could please share with us, were some of these players who were making history in front of your eyes? Oh yeah, man, my uncle Tony Green, T-Money Green, bass player, he also played with the Dramatics. Tony was instrumental in playing a lot of the bass lines back then. Bernie Worrell, Larry Hatcher, a horn player, and Gray, I can’t remember his last name, played in the great horn section in Parliament, Ricky Rouse... it’s a bunch of people that I hung with, George himself, you know what I’m saying..

That’s crazy dope, especially how that speaks to the peer-to-peer skill sharing, the peer-to-peer experience sharing, and the presence of each other and having a creative community where we can see examples of ourselves so to speak..., that’s crazy dope. That speaks to community building in this art and culture. One thing I want to ask you, a real straight question, you essentially having Parliament Funkadelic... in your DNA, and then went to create your own career in hip hop and rap music. What would you say is the direct influence of Parliament Funkadelic in your thinking as a producer, or your style as a composer? Well, the funk influenced a lot of people in hip hop. The first time I saw it introduced might have been on the East Coast, with a group called EPMB, Eric’s son was a producer in that group. He had a lot of gritty bass lines and actually had sampled “More Bounce to the Ounce” with my dad’s hand claps. That was first time I think I started to notice that people were taking to the Midwest sound as far as production... and I could be wrong man, but then there is Dr. Dre. Dr. Dre was heavily influenced by the Midwest sound, because the sound G-Funk he patterned after P-Funk. P-Funk was his inspiration for a lot of what he was doing...so he named his sound G-Funk... but he knows where he got that from, you know what I am saying, and I’m sure George knows that. That’s why you saw Dr. Dre wearing a Parliament-Funkadelic T-shirt in his video, you know, he’s got that Funkadelic shirt on during G Thing because you know it was a George Funkadelic song.

And who was your pops, you know, who brought you into that whole world? I give honors to my dad, Carl “Butch” Small. He’s the percussionist who made all those hit records, More Bounce to the Ounce, etc. His discography is extensive. Many hit records. Now boom, we’re gonna seagway from your pops to the... fruit, you know what I mean. All of us who know anything about Detroit hip hip, locally or globally, we know DJ Los as a pioneer. Can you just explain to us, the audience who may not know, why so many people on the planet uphold you as a pioneer? Can you tell us about some of those moments that establish your living legacy? When me and EZB were placed together in reality, we did not know that we would create history for Detroit. I recently found out we created the first full length rap album from Detroit. I take honor in that. I didn’t know we were doing that at the time. We were just having fun, experimenting, and trying to do things... to create. We see now that we had an impact on a lot of people. We had a historic moment with Detroit.

Now this is a lot of what I call history, but for some, it’s like hip hop urban legend...that speaks to you, Butch, Tony, some real people who coming in direct contact with Dr. Dre. As the legends go, that’s the reason why we were hearing the music that we were hearing during the reign of Death Row, from California Love and Tupac, Doggy Dog world with Snoop, you know what I mean. We felt Detroit in it, but the legends say Detroit was actually on it too. So please clarify, enlighten us, hip us on what that is about. For example, my Dad played professionally on California Love [by

I was speaking with two of my partners that are a part of 5-Ela which grew out of D-12, Eminem’s best friends in the beginning, and they told me that from the very beginning stages when they were creating a group, J Dilla... (car pulls up outside blasting More Bounce to the Ounce)*laughs* That’s funny there...my dad is playing

D.J. Los with E.Z.B.

and he said “don’t you need some equipment for that,” and I said “yeah but I don’t have any money to buy any equipment dad”. So he took me to a store here in Detroit, well actually in Dearborn, called Wonderland Music and he bought me my first turntable, my first mixer, and a Peavey guitar amp so I could hear myself. He didn’t buy me two turn-tables, he bought me one and he said, “you gonna learn with the best equipment” and back then I think Technic 1200 turntables cost $600 apiece and a mixer is like $200, so he spent close to $1000 dollars. And he said, “Learn. If I see that you are serious, maybe you’ll get the other turntable.”

Tupac Shakur]. They were in studio thinking about putting a talk box on that song. You know a talk box is the harmonic sound that plays the keyboards and singing at the same time... and Dre was thinking about using someone he used before in one of Snoop’s albums, I think it was “What’s My Name”... at the beginning. My Dad was in the studio with Dre at the time and he told him “Why don’t you use from Roger Traubman?” and he goes, you know, “I don’t know Roger like that” and my dad was like “I know Roger, I could call Roger up no problem.” So he called him up and flew him out to do “California Love”, and that’s how Roger Traubman got in on California Love.

So I practiced every day in my room, scratching every day, learning rhythm patterns, studying everyone in the industry that I looked up to, guys like Jazzy Jeff. Now Jazzy Jeff started around the same time I did, but he had records out before me. So I was listening to his rhythm patterns and emulating, seeing how you transform things, listening to scratch patterns.

That’s dope. SO as far as Detroit artists being liaisons to Dr. Dre, actually being on the songs...you actually, and I know this from my conversations with you, you actually had direct conversations with Dr. Dre to assist his getting our Detroit fault sound down pat, making sure he got it right. How has your direct participation with craft and this whole G-funk, that is based off the legacy that is in your DNA, how has this informed and inspired where you are today as a part of this Legacy of Funk initiative? How has it inspired me?

Three weeks later, my dad checked on me to see how I was progressing and he was pleased that I was developing my skill. So he placed me with a member of my group EZB. He had this idea to put us together, he had already pre-planned it. He saw me DJ-ing, or trying to DJ, so he gave me the tools. Then he had this other guy he’d already seen, skill-wise, “I’m going to put these guys together to develop their skills together.” He and executive producer Ken David placed us together. My dad was very supportive of everything that I wanted to do, Him being a percussionist, he probably didn’t have a father figure to cultivate that talent. I needed him to give me a little boost.

In terms of what you are doing today, how has your contribution to what we are now calling Hip Hop history in terms of Funk...how is that informing...What’s DJ Los doing today with the funk, since he has funk in his DNA and has had such a major part with the resurgence of the funk sound, along with his family members….his family members are responsible during the hip hop era in 1990 for getting funk in the air. When I saw Dre do it, and my dad and my uncle and all these guys I knew way before I knew Dr. Dre, when I see him be successful utilizing everyone that is close to me, you know, he kind of beat me to the punch. I am a huge Dr. Dre fan, he’s my favorite producer, but when I see him do that I think, “ why didn’t I do that”... so, you’ll find in a lot of DJ Los productions, there’s a lot of that going on. I had a lot of instrumentation from people who play funk, who were affiliated with Death Row. They are playing parts of a lot of tracks that I am creating now that are for newer artist. So you will hear that now because I was there when I was a child so I should be able to do that.

So how old were you when you and EZB got together? I was around 15. That’s crazy dope. To be 15 and to have the environment and opportunities for that type of professional development and nurturing that came from a place of straight fatherhood. Environment wise, were there communities of young people into hip hop? Cause now a days there are mad fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years olds who we engage through the community. Was it like that back then...a vast community for artist? I’d want to say that there was, but there was not much community. I’m sure they existed in some form or fashion. Now there is social media and the internet, there are ways to connect. We didn’t have that back then in 1987. If something was going on it was all word of mouth. If you didn’t get that information you didn’t attend.

I appreciated you bringing up that child piece. How did having a father, who literally created rhythms on these hits, respond when you began to express interest in hip hop? As a good father, you know he did everything a good father would do, he cultivated it he saw interest. You know, he was a part of the beginning stages of hip hop. He used to tool with a group called R.J.’s Latest Arrival, they had a record called “Shackle On My Feet “and my dad played on that song and as they were touring he came in contact with groups like Kraftwerk which is techno, but a different type of techno, you know what I’m saying, like hip-hop influenced techno, and so he came in contact with Kraftwerk, Newcleus, they had songs like “Jam On It”, and he saw this new genre of music emerging around the same time he saw me experimenting you know trying to learn it, trying to scratch on it, you know some generic brand turn tables my grandmother had laying around the house, and he was saying, “what are you doing”, and I got embarrassed, but he already knew what I was doing. I said “I am DJ-ing man”,

We didn’t congregate a lot back then, but when did it was huge. We had this club called The Habitat, or the X Spot. Everybody used to come to this spot it was on Livernois and 6 mile in this abandoned building, a warehouse or something, on the 3rd floor. Everybody who did hip hop came through. Actually John Salley was the financial backer of the building; he would come through and give us money to try to spruce it up. We had legends like Chaos, Maestro, Mark Simpson, Awesome Dre, Dez Andres, DJ Dez, the whole Twelve Tech Mob, the turntablists, I wasn’t a part of that group because I was signed to a contract, but I always wanted to be a part...well, I was...but not officially. Those were the days. Nothing like today.

We did it in small groups, a couple people here and there; it wasn’t really a strong camaraderie for a lot of people

Like my dad had good equipment, but when I was first starting out, I didn’t have everything I needed in order to record. We used tape decks, you know, I always get props from my brother DJ Dez, because he was the one that didn’t have a lot of equipment, but he worked well with what he had. He didn’t have a sampling drum machine, like I had. Dez would make beats with two tape decks and loop them together, and when you listen to it you can barely hear the slices in between the recording, and you be like “how did you do that man?” So I think that’s what we got away from, you know, hiphop was born out of working with what you had; you know, that’s how the turntable got incorporated, because when we want real instrumentalist we took what you call the break, from the record which is a small part of the record where it’s just instrumentals and no vocals, and you play that, you have two of the same record, you play the instrumental a part and you play it, you keep playing it back and forth, so that the rapper can rap over top of you still with the instrumental and you keep it going. So, that’s how breakdancers were introduced, that’s why they’re called break-dancers, where they dance over the breaks so that you can play through DJing. So a lot of people don’t know that history. You work with what you had, the bare, whatever it is you had.

On this similar tip, what are some of the mechanisms that help build community back then? I am appreciating this and projecting my own viewpoint on this, I can sense that there was enough of a sense of community to where people, who come from, like the Hip Hop Shop, were part of a scene that was known to have existed, a core energy, in an organized and collected way. What were some of those community building things back then? I just spoke about the Hip Hop Shop; you talked about the X Spot, what were some of the pieces that existed that allowed you all to form community Those places like that were central and essential. They directly spoke to hip hop. You had places like Northland Skate Room where they would showcase talent where a couple of people would be able to perform. All of those places like that were able to help us develop as a community because we frequented those places all the time. There were certain stages set up in the mall. There weren’t a lot of venues set up for us. So when they had stuff set up at the Northland Skating Rink - that was essential. I appreciate you uplifting those examples because it speaks the importance of creating spaces and how spaces were used to come together around this particular point of expression which is hip hop. You are collaborating with us at ONE Mile to help uplift the culture to create spaces. See, we were inspired by things we saw in movies like Fresh Groove and Beat Street. In Beat Street they had a place called the Roxy. It was the place where all the break-dancers came, all of the DJs, the rappers showed their talent. We didn’t really have a spot like that in Detroit. We had the Habitat and the X spot, and we were trying to duplicate what we saw in movies, some central spot. In LA they had the Good Life Lounge where people like Ice Cube, NWA, Pharcyde; they all frequented that place, that’s where they emerged from. It was like what our Hip Hop Shop is today. Everybody you know of today they came out of the Good Life Lounge, a small open mic place. , kind of like our 5E gallery. We wanted a place like that, be we didn’t really have that. So all the groups that emerged like Awesome Dre, Smiley, Detroit’s Most Wanted, we all knew each other because we had that music common, but we were recording in different parts of the city and we never came together to create. It was more of a friendly competition. “Oh ______ got a new record out, we can out do that”. Then we would come out with something

This is me asking your professional opinion, do you think that the working with what you had, the innovation that that brought forward, do you feel like you are still seeing that same, not the same kind of innovation, but do you still feel like you’re seeing innovation amongst the you people that you, I mean, young cats doing hip-hop today? When I speak of innovation, do you feel like you’re seeing them going further in their imagination, like you all had to? Like you literally had to. If you only had two tape decks, then you have to think of a new way to create this feat, which is in turn what makes the beats sound different period, just because of the technology you’re using. But if we all have free loops, like if I can use my man’s machine, that leads, it could lead to a lot of similar thought processes, and a lot of similar sounds. I know me as a producer I hear a lot of the same shit; I’m just wondering how you feel about that? I think that a lot of the youth are emulating what they see, which is not a bad thing totally, because that’s what we did too. We emulated what we saw too, so I’m not taking nothing away from them. I think it’s too much emulation, like back in the day; we use to say that, someone was biting, and they sounded like someone else. Like “oh man you biting, like you can’t do that, you’re trying to be like, you biting that’s whack”. So we were real strict about rules... you can’t be like nobody else, you have to be your own person. They not like that now, it’s like its ok to be just like somebody else, and do the exact same thing as somebody else, you know the vocal sound, you know the range of the rappers, a lot of times they sound exactly like the other rappers. Back in the day, it was about having a distinct voice, a distinct sound; the subject matter had to be distinct. You had to be an individual. you getting influenced by everything you see, but you know what I’m still going to do this hip-hop, because everybody else is doing hip-hop, but I’m going to do it my own way, so that I make my own lane, so that people say, “oh man, that guy is unique”, so I don’t see a lot of that now, every now and then you hear an artist come out, you got people like Kendrick Lamar, somebody you know he’s studying.

Now days in Detroit, the hip hop community would say that there is a lot of collaboration. Mainly because there is a lot more access to studio equipment and people are practicing and linking up in those ways. What was the access like back in the day? How much access did the average young person have who wanted to get into hip hop have? By no means, we didn’t have the technology that we have today; so you know as far as now you can create something, and I can create something, and you can email it right now straight to you and you can record. If you have a facility at your house, you can record vocals on top of it, you know what I’m saying? You can create whole albums like that now. So we definitely in this day and time have a lot more access to recording and creating without doing it. A lot of people are doing it with the best that they had, including myself.

D.J. Los with E.Z.B.

“

... hip-hop was born out of working with what you had; you know, that’s how the turntable got incorporated, because when we wanted real instrumentalists, we took what you call the break, from the record which is just instrumentals ...” I appreciate you saying that. I want to switch gears a little bit to the actual legacy of the funk, this whole initiative; you’ve been with us from the beginning of this. You’re the first person I reached out to orchestrate what then became, that Mothership Launch concert we did. Let me ask you, how has your interaction, you’re engagement with the O.N.E Mile project, how has your participation with the legacy of the funk so far, how has that been for you? What are some of the type of things you’ve been experiencing? Based on what you’re experiencing, what are some of the things you would like to see, or how you would like to see yourself moving forward in this? Well I told you personally it was a dream come true to be rocking on stage with all these people that I had a fondness for. My family members, my dad, Uncle Tony, Gabe, and Amp Fiddler. Like man this is all right, I should’ve come up with this! I really appreciate ONE Mile putting this together; it means something to me personally. What I would like to see in the future, just more exposure of it, on an international level, with tours and videos and albums put together with all of these same instrumentalists involved. Editing wise, this will probably be up front. If you can let us know, as a DJ what is your definition of a DJ based on you? What are DJs supposed to be for the people in a philosophical and spiritual way? He is a communicator, for one. He distributes information. People don’t look at him like that but he has that ability. There are all types of DJs; there are so many different variations. I tell you all the time don’t put us all in the same bunch because there are different forms of us. You’ve got your scratch DJS, your turn tablers, you’ve got your radio DJs. A lot of us DJs are producers. So many are technical DJs. There are so many different forms.

into consideration. You are not there for you. You take yourself out of the equation. I look at the people that are in front of me and I am trying to understand them and I want them to understand me and I want us to be on the same wavelength. So, say there are a bunch of old people there and I am the youngest person there, I am not going to play rap music, I am not going to play things that are pleasing to my ear necessarily, but there are some old songs that are pleasing to my ear too, and I say, I listen to stuff from their time period, from when they were young, so I am communicating with them, and when I see people on the dance floor go “ooooh that’s my jam!” Now I am happy, now if I see a large number of people doing it then I continue doing that, I try not to deviate too far away from that because I am not supposed to do. What kind of advice or preparation or techniques do you share with young people who want to develop their ability to communicate through DJ-ing? Put yourself outside of yourself and think about other people. I think we should do that anyway in every aspect of life. Know that you are there to provide something for someone else. If you are good, that is going to show anyway and you will be pleasing people. But don’t be so focused on that, be focused on “I want to give to someone, I want to please someone, and I want to do something for other people.” And if you approach it that way you will be great, you will be good, and everyone will come to you and always look up to you. On behalf of ONE Mile Detroit and Detroit Recordings, I want to thank you my brother DJ Los.

So, first and foremost as a DJ if you are hired to do an event you have to take the audience and the demographics of the audience

The P-Funk-inspired Mothership was designed to serve as an urban marker, mobile DJ unit, and broadcast module. We imagined the vessel as an easy-to-assemble, deployable unit that fastens together using a simple aluminum paneling system and bolts. Sixteen panels fit flat into the back of pickup truck and attach to produce a self-structured polygonic shape secured to an interior platform. Steel tubing supports the platform, floating the DJâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s staging area a few feet above the ground. PETER HALQUIST and IAN DONALDSON talk about the challenges and pleasures of building a contemporary Mothership. photography JL conversation PETER HALQUIST & IAN DONALDSON

The Mothership was fabricated at the Taubman College of Architecture Fab Lab and first reassembled at Omar Bruceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Garage on Oakland Avenue, where it currently resides.

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... then Bryce Detroit said make it gold, make a reference to Sun Ra. And it was a revelation. Gold would be perfect.” PETER: So when we heard that there was only four week to fabricate the Mothership, we panicked a little bit. Actually, we panicked a lot. IAN: Then we learning that the original musicians from the P-Funk ‘family’ would be taking a look at this version and giving their feedback - and that was intimidating, too. But, exciting, or inspiring, really… So the team started the fabrication process when we learned that twelve members of Parliament Funkadelic were performing at the Mothership launch. That was a real motivation! Nothing like figuring out how things work under pressure. Up until then, we had been developing patterns and shapes. But when we got that call, we had actually had to build it. But, from the beginning, we had been thinking about ways to make the mothership travel. It had to land! And perhaps more than once. This meant it had to be relatively light, easy to manufacture, easy to transport, and simple to assemble, without any heavy tools or machinery. I remember conversations about using a crane to drop the Mothership onto the site! It was a sweet idea, but too expensive. So ultimately, aluminum turned out to be the perfect material. It doesn’t rust. It’s light. It cuts with relative ease using a water jet cutter. However, we had to get around its lack of stiffness because we didn’t want to just fix panels to a separate frame, which is why we ended up designing the panels with flanges that bolt together on the interior to create a self-supporting shell. Making the skin and skeleton the same piece allowed the panel connections to remain very low tech. No welding, nothing like that. Just some socket wrenches. And preferably some tall people. You’re right, aluminum was the way to go. But the problem was the finish. It lacked luster. It didn’t support the ambitions of Funk - and its intrinsic hotness. It’s intergalactic sophistication... It had to be more inspiring. So we entertained trying to paint it like a car and mixing our own paint with reflective sparkles and effects… But then Bryce Detroit, the ONE Mile music and cultural curator,

had an idea. He said, make it gold... Make a reference to Sun Ra. And it was a revelation. Gold would be perfect. This is when we starting testing polished gold vinyl. It’s otherworldly. And we started testing its material and visual effects right next to dichroic film. That stuff is so psychedelic - it throws every color you could imagine onto surfaces. So the Mothership’s cosmetic finish borrows techniques from car customization. The result is a glistening exterior that purposefully juxtaposes popular embellishment with psychedelic interior effects. Then you add billowing smoke and lighting add to create the illusion that the module just landed. But the best part is seeing the Mothership as an active module activated at events. The Mothership’s front panels crank open revealing the artist, along with a DJ table, mixer, laptop and speakers. In the end, the Mothership is an urban marker and a prototype, and it’s significance is weighty. The project comes at an important time for the North End. As residents of Detroit know, blight removal across the city is proceeding at an accelerated clip. Unchecked, the broad renewal plan threatens to erase important historical spaces that connect Detroit and its cultural innovations to a greater national legacy. So in many ways, the Mothership is a physical reminder. It’s an icon that says important things happened in Detroit and its outlying neighborhoods. Rather than plaques, the module serves as a living symbol that Funk music literally started here. Of course the broad concept for the Mothership is the consequence of an unprecedented collaborative effort. It’s an amalgam of ideas from people who live in the North End, from people who were there when Funk was born, ideas from people with a deep understanding Afro-Futurism, of the diasporic African tradition, ideas from people who were literally part of Parliament Funkadelic, from people who sampled the music, who danced to the groove. What we added to the mix was a technique to materially channel the collective ethos.

The Mothership stationed at Omar Bruceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Garage 7615 Oakland Avenue, Detroit.

The Detroit-based community leader JERRY HEBRON has shining eyes - like she has access to a container of determination and optimism that the universe told her to safeguard and share at will. She does share, and her impact is throttling. Since 2009, she has worked tirelessly in the North End to grow greens, confidence, jobs, and a sense of place. Her tools of empowerment are inextricably connected to her beliefs in collective opportunity and justice. On a crisp winter morning, fellow community advocate Jamii Tata sat down with Jerry Hebron to talk about gardens and projective visions. Their conversation reveals the deep rootedness of their mutual commitment.

interview JAMII TATA

portrait JL

Photographed at the Oakland Avenue Community Garden hoop house.

I started this work in the community and became apart of the community in 2008 as an activist. I lived in the community as a child, went away, and visited often throughout the years and saw a dramatic change in the way that it looked given the large economic decline.

had friends that lived down on Woodland. The North End, as I knew it as a child, was safe. We knew all of our neighbors. For streets over, the kids played together. We played in the alleys. I can remember as a child, I was about 12, and there was a skating alley, a roller rink, the arcade, which was not too far from the Fox Theatre. I can remember it would be like 6 of us young girls we would walk down Woodward at 10 o’clock at night going to the roller rink. I mean we could see the prostitutes and some other activities going on but nobody would bother us. And we were very innocent in the way that we looked at the world, in terms of our right to be able to go and come as we pleased. It was a very safe environment and a very happy environment. We had abundant fruit trees. We had fruit trees, which were abundant. Apples, pears, and peaches. We always knew which ones were ripe so that we could raid the trees.

I’m a former real estate broker, so, quite often I showed properties in the North End. But then when the real estate market crashed in 2008, I closed my office, took a step back, and looked at my life and asked, “where do I go from here.” It was at that time when I received a call from Reverend Carter, the pastor at St. John’s Church. She asked me to come over and take a look at their nonprofit and try to figure out what’s happening in the community from a ministry perspective. So, at that time, in the North End there were approximately 44 churches up record of different sizes, but about 80% or more of their membership, did not live in the community. They would come in to worship and then leave, and what that meant is that there was no connection to the community. And so my role was figure out what St. John could do to change that. So rather than sit in the office, I used to stand out on Oakland in front of the church and just talk to people.“Hey, what’s going on? Who are you? Where do you live? Where are you going? What do you do? What would you like to see happen in this community? What do you need?” And over and over again I heard that there was a need for healthy food, there was a need for jobs and there was a need for good housing.

Everybody had gardens at that time. I can remember my parents, mostly my mom because my Dad worked for the city of Detroit (he was a garbage collector), growing and my mom grew grains, tomatoes, and string beans. Those were our staples. And then Ms. Mary grew cabbage and something else and they were always back and forth sharing. Maybe you have peppers down the street, so give me some of your peppers; you can have some of my grains. That cooperative economics was very prevalent back in the day. I mean, it’s a term that is thrown around today like it just arrived, but it has always been there; that cooperative economics of sharing. So that is my vision and memory of the North End. It was a very safe and happy. Even though we knew there were things happening underground, it was safe and happy. I can remember 12th street, whenwhere 12th street was very lively with prostitution and illegal gambling and a lot of things, but it was always exciting as a child to just kind of drive through it at nighttime to see the big cars and the fancy outfits, and just the energy. It was always very exciting and that was a different type of economy.

You talked about growing up in the North End, and if you could describe a little bit what this neighborhood was like when you were growing up and what your family was like, just to set up what kind of possibilities for density were here, and scenarios are for people might not imagine... So, my family lived in Black Bottom. We actually lived across the street from the Elmwood Cemetery. I can remember, we used to jump the fence and play inside the cemetery when I was a young kid. But after the I-75 expressway came through, it kind of wiped out the neighborhood. We moved into the North End. My world was Woodward, Oakland, the Boulevard. I can remember my parents

Could just situate us in this moment of having come back and your questions and your assessment of the changes that had taken place? I was a little bourjie when it came to real estate. When I was asked

to come over and work in the North End, I was like “Oh my god, I am out of my mind,” because to come into the neighborhood from the outside and see the decay,it was hard to think back to the way that it was. My husband didn’t know anything about this neighborhood. When he first saw where we were going to be working he said,- you are out of your mind! I am not doing this! But then, he started meeting people and hearing the stories about the North End. He related that to what I had talked about and he was like, you know what, its probably going to be ok.

He was walking by and I was like, “Hey! Where are you going?” He looked lost and he was like “Who? Me?” and I’m like “yes. You. Who are you? What is your name?” He told me his name and I asked “Where are you going” and he said, “I don’t know I am just walking.” And I said, “Do you have a few minutes? Do you want to help us do something.”? And he was like “yea” and he started helping us pull weeds. I found out he was just released from prison, his grandmother lived on Brussell and he was just wandering. Carlos was one of the first people that we hired.

So yes, the initial reaction was, for me, it was sad. There is a vacant building right across from the garden on Oakland that I knew the lady that owned it when I was a child. She had her beauty salon there and her brother had his barber school there. There was a restaurant there; there were people that lived upstairs. I was a child, but I remember all of this.

Carlos didn’t have a father and he latched onto my husband as a positive role model. We’ve now worked with Carlos for four years. Because of the work that he has done here and his parole officers have seen the house, the garden, they know about the church. They know about the farmers market and all of his involvement with that. They started working to get him off of paper because on his connection to us and finally in November it happened. So he is no longer on parole. He is free.

As I began this work and became enthralled in growing food and creating this green space and just trying to figure out what can we do with this vacant land to create a light in the community. That became my mission. I want people to come back. I want that energy to come back.

He tells that story to other people in the community and we have several of them here who will be working with us again this year who are trying to find their place in the world and in society. When they release them back into society there is no book that says you do this you do this they have to go out and figure it out and a lot of them don’t make it. They get back, they get locked up again. It is not a simple environment. I think stability is one of our biggest impacts in terms of individuals.

When you started working here, did you imagine yourself as an advocate, an activist, an organizer? Every time I heard somebody call me that I was like, “Hmm, I didn’t know that was what I was doing”. I embrace it now. What did you think you were doing initially? I was just working! *Laughs* I was just working. I was just doing what I was asked to do. All of a sudden people were drawn to us. People really became interested in what was happening down here. The first year, they were looking at us like, “Hmm, they won’t be back.” But then when we left for the winter and we returned in the spring it was like, “Oh y’all came back! Oh, ok! What’s up! Whatcha gonna do!” So then we stayed and we are here every day. I didn’t come in here to say I’m going to become an activist. It just kind of happened. And actually, I can’t think of doing anything else.

So many non-profit organizations have different ways of going about doing their work. What is your goal or drive? That is a difficult question because we are non-traditional and I resisted the structure, the corporate environment. The church had a little office for me upstairs and they wanted me to set up a desk and I was like “I don’t want to be in here! I worked in an office for 30 something years! I don’t want to do that! I can’t even see people! People can’t see me! How do they get to me? How do they know I’m here unless they see my car or something like that!” So what me as an executive director is trying to do is figure out and identify that individual who can step in my shoes and continue this work for it who has the passion to do the work and to continue the ministry. Hopefully a young person, and can continue to grow the organization and build capacity in a way that compliments the work in the community and not get caught up in corporate structures and funding. So we are trying to figure out a way for the organization to be sustainable.

For 30 years I chased money. I didn’t value it at all. It was fast. We made it fast and we spent it fast. And the market crashed, I saw so many of my friends in the industry just lose everything. Things happen to these folks because of the change in the market, so when I look at what I am doing today and I still talk to some of my friends in real estate, those that are till struggling, I am so blessed and so grateful for the work that we do because of the lives that we touch and there is no expectation. It brings me joy and my husband joy to be able to do what we do in this community and we feel very much apart of the community.

To create some type of income that is sustainable and that is one of the reasons that we run the farmer’s market, that is one of the reasons that we do the off site markets, and we are trying to figure out some of the value and the products that we can bring that will build sustainability to the organization. So, I have a conversation with an attorney on Monday who is trying to help us acquire this whole block of vacant land here because we would like to see some fruit orchards producing apples and pears and peaches so that maybe we can make some jams and things like that. I don’t think small. I don’t think in terms of lots.

Describe what you do on a daily basis, what does your week look like, or maybe you can tell us an anecdote of working with one particular person to give us a sense of the impact through what you do. There is a young man that stays here. He is part of our security team. And his name is Carlos. We met Carlos about two days after he was released from prison. Same way, standing out on the street.

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... the main thing for me is that you eat something that is healthy, and not eat something only because you have no other option. So that’s why we do Urban Ag, that’s why we grow food. Who would’ve thought you would get it in the North End. They kept saying nobody in the North End wants organic. Who told you that? I want organic if I can get it. I don’t want poison on my food if I can get it.” a little different. I haven’t worked out the details yet, but basically, fearful network has rolled out the opportunity for double up food box to be accepted by CSA, businesses. I’ll learn more about that in a couple weeks. But the beauty in that is for, vulnerable communities now, and this requires a lot of education, and just walking people on how it works. We will be able to provide small box, large box, of produce and some value added products at maybe $20 a box, I don’t know what the numbers are going to reflect, but lets say $20 or $40 depending on what your family size is and what your needs are. Weekly or biweekly, so with that we would be able to accept your bridge card for payment, and offer double up food bucks as an option. So for $20, instead of $20 you would swipe your card for $10. For a $40 box, instead of $40 you would swipe your card for. We have to work out the details; the devil is in the details, on how that exactly works, in terms of the transaction. But my point is CSA opportunities, are not in the city. They’re in the rural areas, where the farms are, and so for us to be able to do it in that urban environment is something new, and we think that it will increase the affordability and the access, to more people. Were going to run a pilot, and test it out, but that’s what were looking at. To presale the shears, its about $400-$600, for the season. How many people do you know, just out of pocket can pay that, so that’s not the motto that we want to look at. We want to look at the model where we have the produce laid out, and people show up and, you’re shares $20 so you can get this much tomatoes, this much greens, this much squash, this much this. That’s what you do; it’s like an a-la-carte. So that’s our plan.

How do you approach urban act in the garden, why do you do that? I tell you one of the big reasons we do it. Have you seen the Salvation Army truck parked on Oakland? I want to get rid of them. And I know that that sounds horrible, but I just think that. I have people that work with us, who eat off that truck often, and then they’re sick. Their stomach hurts, I know that for a lot of people, that that one meal a day that they get, but the quality of the food, on that truck is sub standard, and I think that people deserve something back. So urban ag is providing better quality food choice to vulnerable people. So I don’t care if they have no money, or if they have some money, they can still get some food out of our garden. If they come and say I don’t have any money, but I want some greens today. Okay we’re going to get you some greens, tomatoes, we’ll get you what you need. One day you’ll have something and we wont worry about that, but the main thing for me is that you eat something that is healthy, and not eat something only because you have no other option. So that’s why we do Urban Ag, that’s why we grow food. Who would’ve thought you would get it in the North End. They kept saying nobody in the North End wants organic. Who told you that? I want organic if I can get it. I don’t want poison on my food if I can get it. What is the trajectory of expanding the garden program and the farmers market, kind of expanding that business? What do you see the goals for producing the garden, the business of it. We have the new food co-op potentially coming in, we still have some, spaces like King Cole, the same spaces that offer nothing, interacting with the gas stations the CVS are not interact. Like where do you see produce? That conversation that were having now. Were going to run a pilot, a CSA, community supported agriculture, but we’re going to do it

Is there anything that you would like to see along Oakland Ave? I mean, look at Oakland, there is not one cleaners, there is not, well we’re soon to have a bakery. I would like to see, a coffee shop, I want that building right there for a smoothie shop. Red’s, don’t you

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We would like to see some fruit orchards producing apples and pears and peaches so that maybe we can make some jams and things like that. I don’t think small... ”

think Reds could be a dynamic smoothie shop. So basically I want to see, some businesses. I feel like the lone ranger sometimes, you know on Oakland. So, Id like to see a coffee shop, I’d like to see a cleaners, I don’t know where these people go for the Laundromat. Other than the liquor store, I’d like to see some stuff.

pass the vacant lots they would just huddle up together , because you don know what’s in the grass, I couldn’t see. One day I was standing in the field, and you could not see the top of my head, the grass was that tall. (Pause) It makes me feel good that I’m not the lone ranger anymore, you know we can collaborate and pull our resources and really make this happen. I felt like the lone ranger. People would say to me why do you do this work, because I want to see stuff develop economic development. Then they would look at me like on Oakland. Yes on Oakland.

There’s this nice project involving a greenway, and you have gardens, would you like to see more of that down on Oakland or should that just be a part of the natural I would like to see a corridor, to see Oakland was very active. I remember there was a furniture store, a meat market, a record store, barbershop, beauty salon, cleaners, and fish market. All this kind of stuff was happening on Oakland. Kind of like Hamtramck and Joseph Campau. People would be out and about for the day, just enjoying the space. So a greenway with gathering spaces, or places, activities, I can shop, I can sit out at the café and have a latte. That’s what I want to see, now that’s me, that’s what I see. A diverse, culture, that’s vibrant community space with all these things.

Oakland Avenue Farmers Market is located on 9354 Oakland Avenue. Open Every Saturday 11am - 3:30pm. Vendors include: Oakland Avenue Community Garden and Greenhouse, SunRise Smoothies, Pure Religion Bake Good.

This is the reason green space is so important. We’ve got to make them functional, but we also have to, they provide safety. The reason we started cutting a lot of the grass is because were a block from the school , and I saw the kids walking , and when they would

The Free Market of Detroit is a new economic model that started with the North Endâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very own HALIMA CASSELLS. We connected with the artist-activist after her most recent swap at the Garage. She talked about how looking good has never been more radical than doing it for free. In the Free Market, if you like something, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s yours! Just make sure you bring something to swap. Cassells has grown the swap from a couple of friends to a nomadic fashion house dropping in all over the city. It is a new way to imagine an economy where everyone can participate.

photography and words HALIMA CASSELLS

The O.N.E. Mile Swap was held in December 2014 at the Garage on Oakland Avenue. The event featured Mike Agent X Clark D.J.ing from the Mothership.

What’s the coolest thing that you ever picked up at a swap? I have gotten so many cool things at the swap including kitchenwares, copy machine, shoes etc. It’s really hard for me to say the absolute coolest... but something I truly love is a pot of motherin-law tongues that is almost 6 feet tall and over 30 years old. I look at this plant in my living room and think of my friend who brought it every day.

Tell us a little bit about the Free Market of Detroit. What exactly is it? Its the awesomest place on planet Earth and it got started on the North End of Detroit. Its where people find things they want and take them for free in exchange for things they no longer want, but are useable and could benefit someone else. How did it all start? As a mom, I wanted to help friends and family, and myself by moving kids clothes and toys around the community. So it began the practice of swapping items at get-togethers. Soon the backyard bbq tradition among family and friends grew into an event that now has live music, interactive elements like impromptu fashion shows, photo booths, and participatory art-making.

What the largest thing that anyone has ever brought over? The largest thing that was swapped was a refrigerator that was taken no more than 15 seconds after it was brought in by a super grateful dude whose fridge had just blown out. Can you share an anecdote with us about someone who was touched by the idea of a swap, or maybe found exactly what they had always been looking for? At the last swap, an elderly woman came in with her daughter, and said she was looking for some boots. Since the space is always in flux once it gets going, I was totally unsure if we had any boots at all, but i pointed her to our “women’s section.” She was astounded by how much clothing and accessories that people were giving away. They shopped for a couple hours, and on her way out she came over smiling, holding a pair of tall furry boots. “Thanks so much! I got my boots!”

Since you started hosting swaps, what’s changed? How have the events evolved over time? Since the beginning this event has grown organically from the needs and desires of a community. In addition to The Free Market being mobile and fluid, we will also be moving into a space in Detroit’s historic North End neighborhood. A practice space for new economy and new work. It will be open to skillshare, workshops, trunk shows, and other evolving programs that respond to people needs and fashion desire. This will be an informal fashion house where anyone may lead a group in learning whatever skill they’d like to share.

How do people find out when and where to swap? For more swap info - people can check out freemarketofdetroit.wordpress.com. And remember to like us on Facebook.

What’s next for the Free Market? This summer we look forward to hosting workshops that combine fashion, visual art, and basic sewing, with featured artists Sydney G. James, and Diana Nucera who will lead garment deconstruction and artistic refashioning.

Throughout the history of modern dress, the art of cobbling has remained a vital force in the symbolism of popular fashion. Embellishment, ornamentation, color, stitching, and polish stem from the indulgent and the profound: a good pair of shoes can elevate a person’s image and poise. No one knows this better than DAVE BOGGON. He’s been saving soles in the North End since anyone can remember. Today Dave’s infamous Red Jazz Shoe Shine Parlor on Oakland Avenue is a Detroit institution where people of all walks of life connect over shoes, music, and an appreciation of shine.

photography JL interview JL MATTHEW STORY

Red Jazz Shoe Shine Parlor is located at 8348 Oakland Avenue in Detroit.

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... Didn’t matter what walk of life gangsters, preachers, police, all professional people. Thisis where they came. And one thing about the shop, you never know who you were sitting next to... ” So Dave, tell us about your amazing business! Well, I must say, at about the age of 15, I started working with my uncle who had the business at that time. He put Reds together in 1950. And was it here at this location? No, it was on Oakland. It has been in several places up and down the street... but it never moved off of Oakland. I was one of 16 guys that worked with him and the only one who went to school to learn how to do shoe repair. So I advanced myself on knowing how to fix every pair of shoes. I went off to do business for myself in 1990 on the East Side of Detroit under the name of Reflections Shoe Shine. I was on Van Dyke and 7 mile for about 7 years, then I joined back up with my Uncle right after that. After he passed on, the business was passed on to someone else, and then after that it was passed on to me. So now I am here, just keeping the tradition going.

I think there is a big cultural shift from leather shoes and soles that can be repaired to sneakers. Are young people are catching on and moving back towards more traditional styles and care? More of keeping the sneakers clean, basically. And traditional styles, yes. Have you had any famous people come in? Detroit famous or world famous? Well, everybody that walks through the door is famous because they are customers. I treat them just as I would treat anyone who would come in here. Maybe some singers? Yea, we do have people that come in that are pretty well known in politics and government and corporations. So we do have people that come in with high stature in those areas.

How many days a week are you open? Right now, I am open from Tuesday through Saturday. I am open 5 days a week.

So your uncle started the shop and built a really great reputation and you are keeping that alive? Correct. I am keeping the reputation going on.

All year round, winter, summer… Yes, all the time, Tuesday through Saturday all year round.

What helped build that reputation? Good craft? Spitshine, which is called the Boston Gloss. That is being able to make a shoe shine to the highest capacity, as much as it will go. It is an ancient Chinese secret but it is simple. It is basically being able and knowing how to use the rag and the polish to create that high gloss that we put on shoes.

Do you work by yourself? No. I have two other employees by the names of Mel and Alvina. What kinds of clients do you have? People of the North End or people who come from far away? People come from all over the place. From as far North, West, East and South as they come because it has been a business for over 60 years.

Where did the name of the shop come from? My uncle… That is a good question. I never asked him that. But, he came up with the name Red Jazz Shoe Shine Parlor, and I never asked him where it came from.

Has you clientele changed since it started in 1950? Yes, can’t do nothing but change. Now it is more of a middle class that we see. Also now, the younger generation is catching on as far as taking care of their shoes.

Do you have any good guesses? Mel: Well, I think his uncle’s skin tone was a light skin color, so they called him Red, and he played Jazz in the shop...so Red’s Jazz….

So I can see there are many images of singers. Aretha Franklin and her father, used to frequently visit his shop. The Temptations used to visit his shop and get things done. Dramatic used to visit his shop. Spinners. Actually a whole line of artists really used to come in and visit him.

anything. It’s just the atmosphere that people bring when they come in. They come in for that ambience of conversation. It’s a pretty special place where politicians, actors, preachers, and musicians are all in one room. Oh, yeah! Everybody! All of them right here in one place.

Because of the neighborhood? Because of the neighborhood and the area where it was located. The atmosphere was to the point to where people just wanted to come. Didn’t matter what walk of life, gangsters, preachers, police, all professional people. This is where they came. And one thing about the shop, you never knew whom you were sitting next to. You never knew. The only people that knew, basically, unless you knew the person, were the workers. You could be a politician sitting next to a gangster. Or you could be a drug dealer sitting next to police. They came in, frequently, this is what they did. Everybody kept up their shoes. From suede to dance shoes.

Do you have any ladies come in? Oh, ladies as well! Of course! They sit up on the stand just like the guys do. That’s what differentiates it from a barber shop because they’re usually separate. Yeah, I can seat up to 7 people to do shoes all at one time. You can drop them off. You can leave them and come back and get them. Or you can sit down and put them on. So, this business is the same one it was 60 years ago? There is no big difference? Only difference there is now is the economy. Outside of that, it is the same.

Could you recognize the kind of shoes that belonged to a certain kind of character? Yes. If I am not here in the shop and I see some shoes, I basically know who they belong to. Oh yeah.

And the iPhone. People watching their iPhones more than before? Oh yeah! But I try to keep it going by playing music that everyone will like. You know smooth music. Nothing hard or anything like that. It keeps the ambience going.

I kind of want to test you. Well, if you are a frequent person who comes here all of the time, and I am not here when you come and leave them, I’ll basically know who they belong to. I have to know who they are. We don’t write down anything unless they ask us for a receipt or something. We have never written stuff down unless they asked. We don’t mix people’s shoes up. We do any type of shoes. We do any brands and walks of life of shoes. It doesn’t matter. We can make just about any leather shine. So the whole point is, no matter what condition your shoe is in, if it’s dirty and you think there is just no hope for them, don’t count them out, bring them in. We can wake them up.

So we hear you’re a DJ? Do you play music in the store? Yeah, I’m a DJ. I play R&B; I play jazz; and I play hip-hop, but it’s the clean, smooth stuff. I used to play records, but I don’t have any vinyl anymore. It’s just digital, but I started collecting records around ‘88 or ‘89. Was your taste in music based on Detroit musicians that were here or did you branch out first and then come back to what’s here? No, I always knew the music here. I was full of music anywhere. I grew up on music from the neighorhood and Detroit as a whole.

So there used to be nights when musicians were dropping in all the time. So, before concerts the musicians would come over to have their shoes shined to look their very best on the stage. Do you have any stories about musicians coming in and talking about what songs they were going to play? Or is it confidential, what musicians talk about while they are getting their shoes shined? No, basically they just come in and get their shoes done. And they basically say they are on their way to work and they’re going to the Fox Theater or Music Hall.

So, as a teenager you would go out and dance to music all the time? Yeah.

Red Jazz Shoe Shine Parlor is located on 9148 Oakland Avenue. As everyone in Detroit know, the shop provides the best service in town, including gloss shines and high quality repairs. In addition, customers are surrounded by good people, good music, and good conversation.

Do you have any telling stories about the shop because you described it as full of so many different people and there aren’t many places like that? Well, it’s like going to a barber shop or inside a beauty salon where everybody gets together to talk on a subject that can be just about

There is a deep legacy embedded in the homes, buildings and streets that many North End residents live in, drive past, and walk on – unknowingly, everyday. A community’s history so rich and compelling that even it’s storiesof-legend, spanning decades long since past, continue to inspire awe and reverence, attracting music historians and aficionados the world over. concert photography PIPER CARTER portraits KIRK DONALDSON words BRYCE DETROIT

The Legacy of Funk Performance and launch of the ONE Mile Mothership took place at Omar Bruce’s Garage on October 11, 2014. The event featured: Walter “Hazmat” Howard, Carl “Butch” Small, T-Money Green, Gabe Gonzalez, Dominie Deporres, the T.F.O. Horns, Dames Brown and D.J. Los. #LegacyOfFunk

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If only we could see the wealth of art, culture, and infrastructure our greatgrandparents, uncles, and aunts have created; vanguards of curating urban life and contemporary expression. ”

A mighty current of musical innovation and cultural generation, flows strongly enough through our Oakland Avenue artery, to buoy at least seven future generations of creative producers, community activists and entrepreneurs.

The mainstream news outlets paint pictures of our hood reminiscent of a war-leathered general’s recounts of invaded foreign territories; pitifully fashioned in fire-scorched storefronts and ballisticsriddled residential blocks. The legacy members of the North End anecdote of eras replete with racial segregation, blues and soul funk royalty, revolutionist political movements and economic prosperity –all against the backdrop of “one of the most important cities in the world” for popular music entertainment in the 20th century …Detroit.

If only we knew of the cultural revolutions and economic legacies that our legendary North End neighborhood has birthed. If only we could tap into the ocean of our own ancestral memory; perhaps that could offer a point-of-reference upon which a people rendered “down-trodden and destitute” can establish a new vantage –one oriented in a self-image of determined love and community pride.

I am the North End, now. Standing proudly at a unique point on a well-traveled road. Standing between one of the greatest musical legacies on Earth, and the reimagined Future of the most important cultural revolution of our collective Time. I am my Ancestors, now. Gyrating guitars, piano playing, spirit raising, ever-creating and ideating new realities through improvised composition. I am the new drum. Speaking old rhythmic myths digitally mixed with samples of new narratives –synthesis synthesized. I am a member of that legacy continued. Through my community, We etch our existence in art, music, design, and culture. We are the next chapters of one of the greatest music stories yet to be told.

If only we could remember the sounds …the smells … the tastes and the sensations of that not-so-distant truth; a truth from which we’ve been so thoroughly disconnected. If only we could see the wealth of art, culture, and infrastructure our great-grandparents, uncles and aunts have created; vanguards of curating urban life and contemporary expression. If only we saw “something” different, as we glance ashamedly into broken-window-paned reflections of class disparity and modern displacement.

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If the North End has a long running space for informal and organized social gathering, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in no small part due to ROGER ROBINSON. As driven as he is astute, the expert community advocate - owner of Red Door Digital - has developed a space as appealing to movement and mediation spiritualists as it is to young spoken word performers and street artists. A month ago, we sat down with Robinson in front of his fireplace at the print shop-cumcultural center to talk about being a young organizer in a burgeoning Detroit, the politics of Jewish heritage, and the future of the North End.

interview HALIMA CASSELLS MATTHEW STORY

photography MATTHEW STORY

Red Door Digital is located at 7500 Oakland Avenue in Detroit.

I was born in Detroit. I have been around the North End as a resident and/or business person pursuing my vocational activities for the last thirty-five years. I was first introduced to the area almost sixty-five years ago. I went to Sunday school at Temple Bethel which is at Woodward and Glasgow. My first adventure on the East Side of Woodward was to go to what was then the Jewish Community center where I went swimming. And my dentist, which I went to a year later, was on the East side of Woodward, on the Boulevard and Woodward. So I am not unfamiliar with the area. And I have a historically-set, modern involvement. So you were born in Detroit, but there were a couple years before you got introduced to the North End, but where in Detroit do you come from? I was born in North West Detroit. Had I not been an antisocial youth, I would have gone to Mumford High School. But I was sent off to military school because I was probably headed towards reform school if I didn’t go there. After military school, you came back to Detroit? I came back to Detroit, went to an honors college called Montief College at Wayne State. They used a pedagogy that was extrapolated from the University of Chicago. So I went to Montief College. I only applied to one place, got accepted, and I went. For what? The Univeristy was a front. I organized my first union when I was 19. I was at an large member of SDS when I was 18. I had received a scholarship internship with the Committee for Sane Nuclear Policy in Washington in 1964. I actually ran or travelled to the Senate subway cars lobbying against the resolution of Tonkin Bay. Were you at Port Huron? Port Huron proceeds me. I was among a small enough group where there wasn’t an SDS chapter in Detroit. What is SDS? Students for a Democratic Society was a grouping which

was a progressive, anti-capitalist presence. It had predecessor roots in the American Socialist Movement and was a paternal organization linked to SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Committee). You must have raised a little bit of hell in the antiwar movement. I was one of the tenpeople who organized and founded the Detroit Union. I was alsoorganizing working people for the municipal workers union. And before that I organized for the restaurant union. You said you organized your first union at 18. What was the pressure to do that? I was 18 about to be 19. That was a workforce that was the total action against poverty workforce. The poverty program had people working for it. I wound up organizing that into a union. Actually appointed me to interim officers. Got me involved in negotiations. Your political consciousness started pretty early. I did not look like an 18 and 19 year old, and I did not function like one. Where do you think your ideology comes from? As a young person, what had you seen or what do you think made you move in that direction? I think part of it is the cultural left wing pro-worker underfitting of my mother’s parents who left Russia after the unsuccessful revolt of 1905. He was a carpenter, he carried books in Windsor and Detroit. He was a simple guy who believed in what was the socialist response of many Jews in Russia. There were two responses, the left revolutionary response or the insular, very orthodox, ethnic, religious response from the pogroms and oppression. So, I had that from my family. My mother went to what was called the Harbor Terrain Workman Circles School which was part of the Second International Yiddish Manifestation of the socialist movement. My father was not a left winger, but he was an educated, developed man who was on socialism.

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Very progressive and onto that aspect of Jewish culture, I emphasized and believed in the liberation aspect of the celebration of Passover. I understood that I had come from a people that had seen repeated oppression and therefore did not want to favor people who oppressed other people. The other thing is that when I was growing up there was a serious movement for human rights and the Organizing Policy Act of the American community. I was maturing concurrent with that. I was intellectually and ideologically in support and in concert with what was going on. When I was active politically, my parents had move to Lafayette Park in Detroit. Which was a different enclave, but the greater geography was black. So as I cut my teeth in mainstream traditional politics, it was essentially a black political jurisdiction. I also learned certain aspects of support and came to the conclusion that many white liberals were fine with coalitions, as long as they were allowed to dominate the coalition. But I actually practiced and learned in the situation where operationallysupported black folks were the leaders of the coalition that was in the jurisdiction where I practiced politics. It basically was an agreement that there were some undesirable types who would prevail, but I basically came up when it was appropriate that that political jurisdiction is best led by black folks.

with these people, and had respect for them. They were people to learn from and they knew a lot. They were incredibly able. It was sort of an anomalous act that happened in this geography. Are you speaking of General Baker? General Baker is the next generation, but he’s a manifestation of the kind of people like the first Horace Sheffield. Ernie Dillerd got elected to be in the most important collective bargaining position and the big GM local was less than 10% black. You have the whites that were basically hillbillies and Hungarians and Poles. So you had a situation where the working class might not like black people. Mr. Dillerd got elected in a department that was mostly black, then the rest of the working class saw how well he negotiated and defended workers. That then gave them access to representing all. So you had a lot of that going on, these were very talented people. Some of these people I came up with. I was taught by developed white people and developed black people. I was trained in the old religion. So what is the old religion? The old religion is not being afraid to use extra- legal activities in order to prosecute what you wish to have accomplished. Its not being afraid to place you picket sign on a 2x4 and then apply it to someone who is trying to break your line. In some circumstances it was much more - consequential.

I’m curious, what did that look like? Was this when you were younger, or when you were practicing as an organizer? No, I had made this move when I was still in high school. So I came into an area that was middle class and probably upper middle class, but it was a thoroughly integrated community. A lot of the black population were more activist elements of the black middle class, though fewer were very progressive and politically enriched.

So is there a new religion then, not necessarily in terms of labor? There are no acolytes and there is no religion. The people who came after when it was a fat time and it was easy, and they never had to fight...they had no desire to fight. They had a desire, they might have had sincere effort to defend people, but they - they weren’t the same stuff let’s just put it that way, and they’re not the same stuff.

You describe an incredibly formative environment. How do we understand how difference is supported in a place like this? Well I’m really not sure, but there were some unique things that happened. Detroit had the first serious black middle class, which were the children of the black industrial working class. Most of whom had been employed at Ford Motor. So Detroit was ahead a full generation, or generation and a half before that phenomenon was in the rest of the country. You had a very developed middle class, and black working class. Detroit had an economic explosion in 1943 before the rest of the country and again in ‘67. So the black movement and sociology of Detroit is different from the rest of the country. Detroit was the first jurisdiction in America that sent black folks to congress. That’s not an accident. It wasn’t Chicago, it wasn’t L.A., it wasn’t New York - it was Detroit. Detroit was the first community with “one person, one vote” and that had a proportional aggregate of legislative representatives in Lansing. That came from the black community in Detroit. So you had some advanced developments also, the black leadership in most of the industrial unions were to a degree overdeveloped, because of the racism in the society at large,. Black folks weren’t given access in management. They were able to get access, if they were incredibly politically adroit, in the labor movement.

Given the impact of Jewish history and Jewish politics, as well as union organizing, labor politics, workers’ rights on Detroit, I’m wondering how do you see these impact the culture coming from ONE Mile? Or how do all of our different experiences and history influence culture production? Well I’ll take a side - what is now ONE mile was the old Jewish North End. There were twelve houses of worship in the area. The Jewish community center was on the East side of Woodward in the North End. Most of the progressive Jewish Union were New York centered. They had branches in Cleveland and Chicago and a minor presences here. There were Jews that were active in labor. Probably the most prominent was Edmond Bluestone who was the vice president of the UAW and Martin Beiber who also became VP. They came out of the old socialist movement and were Jewish. Barry Bluestone was at Port Huron. And Port Huron was a UAW convocation, so the founding of SDS was underwritten by the UAW.

So the black leaders in the UAW, in the earlier days were an incredibly skilled group of people, who because of racism wound up dedicating their lives, their energy, and their intellect there. So these were not slouches, these were very skilled people, and I interacted

There was among the older generation, the generation before me, an understanding that came out of Eastern Europe where there was oppression; and understanding that abuse could systematically be heaped upon people. I don’t suggest there wasn’t racism, but I think there was a lot less and a lot people weren’t racist at all. That progressive patina and social democratic sensibility, its more than a varnish. Isn’t what it was, but it still resonates for some folks. My hope is that it will have a stronger voice sometime in the future.

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“Wwʼás z’n’n ʼ’yr g’m’kt? Wwʼás t’ánʼ’yr t’án” What are you making, what do you do? ”’yk byn g’m’kt hyys byyg’l’k” I’m making hot bagels. They weren’t just having a few words, they could speak Yiddish. You had the same thing in the Polish community. You had black folks that spoke elegant Polish, spoke Italian, because that’s who their neighbors were. So I think there was a working class, an industrial class, in Detroit, which was a little bit different from most other geographies.” I don’t know necessarily what all that is, but in this community, the old Jewish North End, social ties were tight because those who were religious couldn’t drive on the Sabbath. See you had to live close enough to where you worshiped so you walked and that also built community. So it was in a Jewish context a recreation of the church centered village, and I was here. Is that your first memory of the North End? Sunday School? Sunday school was on the West side of Woodward, but I didn’t really know much about the North End until the early and mid 60’s when my friend’s father had a furniture store on Westminster and Oakland. When I got to the neighborhood and I was a little more adventurous... Oakland probably had twenty blind pigs, which were after hours establishments, besides the ones that were licensed. I had some experience relating to Oakland when it was Oakland. That’s probably the most delicate way you’ve ever talked about that... You had Jewish merchants, but the blind pigs were all black. That transition had been made. You had residual Jewish merchants that were there, but after ‘67 they basically, except for Charlie the Pencilman, were gone. There is still one Jewish business of consequence left, Greenfield Noodle Company just a block away. That was established 1980, its not from the period when there was a residential density of Jews. What interrelationship between Jewish people and black people have you seen in the area? Well right now there isn’t really any, because there aren’t any Jews who live here, the Jewish merchants aren’t here. Historically most Jews in 1950 were some what supportive of equal rights. If they weren’t explicitly supportive of the civil rights movement, they were intellectually in concert with their goals. To a large extent. There are obviously conservative Jews, but there weren’t that many back then. I went to a junior high school that was probably black. No one from the Jewish community who came from Bagley Elementary School felt dislocated because they were going to a school with black kids.

There occasionally could be some stupid pejorative references, but I never ever saw a negative action, and most of the verbal stuff was minimal. Two weeks ago, at the Bureau, Marsha Music was reading about housing covenants, did you see that here? Well I remember when I was very young still seeing signs that said, “No Jews and dogs allowed.” Here? In Detroit, on the West side of Woodward. Whites lived on the Westside , blacks lived on the East side. So in my memory, I still have memory of that shit. I have explicit memory of the point system and the points. If you were a Jew, you couldn’t buy a house because of the the point system. If you were a gangster you could buy a house. If you were an Italian Gangster. That changed later on but there was a prevalence of closed housing. Neighborhoods were closed. I remember going to bagel shops, and bakeries, where the black workers spoke Yiddish. In Detroit? “Wwʼás z’n’n ʼ’yr g’m’kt? Wwʼás t’ánʼ’yr t’án” What are you making, what do you do?”’yk byn g’m’kt hyys byyg’l’k” I’m making hot bagels. They weren’t just having a few words, they could speak Yiddish. You had the same thing in the Polish community before Fannie May financed the black working class to leave the city. You had black folks that spoke elegant Polish, spoke Italian, because that’s who their neighbors were. So I think there was a working class, an industrial class in Detroit which was a little bit different from most other geographies. Because of the brutality and madness of industrial production, people in their communities got their strength after the depression and before the end of World War II. You have a lot of ethnic whites living next door to mostly blacks who came up from the South, and they got along...for the most part. You described both and incredibly vibrant and tumultuous Detroit. The alienation of the industrial work was more perverse than any

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other geography. In Chicago if you worked in a steel mill, it was exhausting work but it wasn’t dehumanizing. You were part of a magnificent process that made steel. It was not magnificent to screw a fucking bolt, 200 times, 250 times, 300 times an hour. That is dehumanizing, its alienating. The brutality of the plant was that you voluntarily went into a inhuman condition because you were economical rewarded. Consequential to a certain point, the industrial working class was paid very well and had a middle class life existence as a result of the economic reward of the wealth that was generated and negotiated on their behalf. That is not at this time a common experience.

Just curious, when you think of the North End, what’s your best memory? Actually from 25 years ago or so, there were a couple rib places; there was also a former grey economy. People would set up a big barrel and start barbequing. I don’t want to call it a central network; but it was an energy that is no longer here and that was one main thing I took pleasure from. What about in Detroit as a whole? In general in Detroit and not the North End - going to the ballpark and sitting in the bleachers. It didn’t cost anything. You could go outside a locker room and get a ball player’s signature. When you went to a hockey game they would sign a piece of paper and give you an autograph. They were normal people. In my neighborhood there were professional football players who lived there. Now it was a middle class area, but it wasn’t huge income, it was a different world. My doctor used to come to my house to care for me. Doctors carried a little black bag and they lived in the area they worked in. It was a different world.

How have your feeling changed about Detroit? You have a relationship with the city, you’ve been here for so long. The city has been disinvested. The black population, the fundamental black pollution hasn’t changed in 60 years, 678,000 people, its not 600,000 people, in 1950 it was close to 600,000 people, in 1960 it was 600,000 people. Detroit was one third black, that’s when Detroit was 2 million. The white people left, black folks were here. Leaving with the white people was all of the economic power of the rural class, the industrial class, the merchant class. The fact that Detroit was the first to develop a suburban shopping mall. Northland, it was the first in the country, meant the abandonment of the city. The retail commerce outside the city. So how do you couple this frustration with the disinvestment of the city with the fact that Detroit is also one of the most vibrant cities in the country, or that there has ever been. Detroit is a complex accident. The working class of Detroit had no problem when the third world was being exploited, and they got good wages. Now that the social meanness which was invested upon the third world has now been invested on the indigenousness Detroit population, the tables have turned. So you have to take this with a grain of salt, the benefit of the industrial working class was partially based on the exploitation of the rest of the world, and now that that world has returned, one has to have some kind of analytical ability to know what is going on. Detroit was vibrant because it was the center of the consolidation of the industrial revolution into an industry which became the dominant industry - which consumed more than anything else and then created fundamental wealth.

What’s needed is more of that. What’s needed is enough business and commercial activity that is rooted in the local area to provides more than entry level employment. That helps become part of the glue or key stitches in a fabric that is a neighborhood and community. We have almost none of that now. There is a new work movement, and hopefully some of old work and old tradition, will become new work. We will be able to weave elements into the fabric and also apply some of the stitches that caused the fabric to be knit together to create the strength that is a community. You also have to have institutional bases that center a community and make it a village. The only thing I see that does that in the North End, is during the good season when it becomes the center for a lot of people, at least for some free time. So we need to create, or be involved in the creation, or the reinforcement of brick and mortar or intellectually spiritual pieces of our geography that are owned by everybody. That then creates the self-policing strength that builds community, and builds safety, and builds sustainability.

Detroit now is rich because there is a culture which is driven from the African American community. The musical energy, the forms come from there. This political geography has value even though we’re working against the forces of fundamental abandoned and only have taken little pieces back because they can get it for .10 on a dollar. And its good. Detroit will not be the same gentrified pattern or investment pattern or bonus of most cities based on the assumptions of transit-oriented investment and development. The dope man can’t make a living in most areas of Detroit anymore. There isn’t enough wealth when you intervene with transit and other things to sustain what it costs to elect new facilities, and all of these figures and groups that are speculating are going to get their asses kicked. In long hall there will be incremental improvements and benefits that people will think will make a short term financial killing based on historical development transit oriented development.

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It’s not just what you’re eating, it’s how you’re eating it - and for biker-baker DEE CASTELOW eating sweet potato cakes is sometimes just a vehicle to talk about love, life, and everything else. We had a chat with Castelow, head of Ava’s World Famous Sweet Potato Cakes, about riding through the city and bringing piping hot deliciousness to everyone’s table. He’s infectiously optimistic, and will have you eating cake and pedalling in no time. As host of the North End’s biggest annual party in Bennet Park, Castelow has a vision for the neighborhood, which he contributes to one cake at a time.

interview MATTHEW STORY

photography JL

Visit Ava’s Sweet Potato Cakes on sweetpotatoavas.weebly.com, and remember to like Ava’s on Facebook. Archival image courtesy of Dee Castelow.

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I originally started riding a bike eleven years ago for therapy. I would just ride and do my physical therapy for maybe two hours a day, but I was getting stopped because I keep really unique bikes, so people kept wondering where I got the bike since I’m always on three wheelers -So would people stop you and ask,“where did you get your bike?” Yes, they would ask where I got my bike - and I had a snake at the time. So between the bike and the snake, me being out, you know, two hours a day would sometimes become five or six hours. I had a Burmese Python and I would keep it on my neck or sometimes I would put him in a basket and Jake and I would ride... Jake the Snake? Yeah, Jake the snake [laughs]. So, one day I was out and I used to see several groups and different individuals riding and I met “Bike Mike”. His name was Mike, but they all called him “Bike Mike,” and he asked me to ride with him...so I did. He was riding with a group called “East Side Riders” and they would ride with “Group G Mob” Over the years it had just grown so it was “Hood to Hood,” that’s another bike group, and it was all surrounded by what you would call “bike life”. Can you explain “bike life”? “Bike life” is just the joy of being out free, riding your bike, just being a cyclist. Bike life is basically just having fun. Old, young, and people from the community riding together and enjoying each other’s company. And you know how people always say so much bad stuff is going on in Detroit? When I first started riding with the guys, I didn’t really know any of them and I would leave my iPod on my bike, along with my speakers and sometimes other valuable stuff. But you could go to the store and come back an hour later and be like “Oh, I left my phone” and all your stuff would still be there because you know everybody looks out for each other, not just when we were riding. We got people who block traffic to make sure everyone is riding accordingly - sharing the road with the

cars, cause when we start out early in the day everyone’s out there honking their horns and waving, you know, but as it gets later in the day, the crowd gets bigger and the day grows longer. How many riders are there in your bike club? Well, currently, in my group, there’s about fifteen to twenty riders. Now the subset of the group that I’m in is the “North End Bike Club,” and there are thirty riders in that group. But when we get together and do a slow roll, there’s maybe about twenty-five hundred riders. Twenty-five hundred?! Between twenty-five hundred to four thousand riders. And it started off with a group of maybe thirty or forty people. Over the years, it’s like a magnet. Everybody is drawn to it. There are some people who might think they are too big, but there are so many people that you can’t get lost from the pack. Everyone is making sure that everybody is alright. If you catch a flat, you’ve got people out there who will help you patch your tire up, or change an inner tube. Everybody is helping each other. No matter where you came from or what you’re doing, we are a collective group. So, what is the North End Bike Club? That’s the group of bike riders that live on the North End. They would like me to be in a group, but I started with the D-Town riders. I am currently the president. The North End Bike Club, they’re my friends, and I’ve known them through the North End and I grew up with them. But, I am already a part of something, everything is going pretty good with who I am with, and you don’t just give up on somebody just because. Tell us about the D-Town Riders? D-Town Riders...Bike Mike started riding because he had health issues. He was diabetic. He was overweight. It started with him just trying to get his body back in order. It started becoming part of his life.

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And he’s from the North End? Yes, he’s from the North End as well. I believe he’s originally from the East Side, but he has been over here, and I’ve been on him about 8 or 10 years. He’s a good guy and he is the reason I ride with that group. If I had not been injured...you know, I was shot three times... so if I hadn’t have gotten shot, maybe I wouldn’t have even thought about riding as an adult. That was why you were doing cycling for physical therapy? Yes, to rehabilitate myself. I was going to the hospital for therapy, and in the beginning they were really hands-on. Yet, by the fifth or sixth month, they would just say, “Go over there and do this, go over here and do that,” and I’m still paying them. They are not doing anything, they are just giving me instructions. So I would just go ride the stationary bike for an hour and half at the hospital. One day I was looking out the window and I saw a couple of cyclists. I said, “I can’t really put my foot on the ground, but I can get me a threewheel bike and get the same exercise and benefits, get out, and not pay anything.” One low cost of a bicycle and my own ambition and I can get the same results. I don’t know about the snake. Is there a story about the snake? Where did the snake come from? Well, he was my pet. So you have a pet that’s a snake and he is in the box. He looking around… I’d take him around so that he could stretch his arms, at least that’s what I would tell folks. What about the bike? Did you start to customize the bike for the snake? I had a friend who knew that I was hurt and was looking to sell a bike, and he knew that I was looking for something special. He thought one particular bike would be beneficial for me. It had all rubber tires on it. I could ride it through a mile of glass and not get a flat. He got the bike from a guy who worked at the factory. The factories were so big that the foremen would ride these bike through the plants. I happened to get a hold of one of these bike. I had it for awhile and I loved that bike. I’d keep it on the side of my house and everyone knew it was mine. Every now and then I would let somebody ride it. People would say, “Hey, where’d you get that bike from!” “DR said I could ride it!” People thought I was crazy, but they knew I was trying to rehab myself and I’m friends with everyone around here. I have several businesses around here. I have the candy store on Brush. My mom and I had a restaurant on Clay and Oakland, Ava’s Kitchen and Catering where we did full service dine in, carry-out, and delivery. We had another restaurant, Ava’s Kitchen between Josephine and Owen on Oakland. So your mom is from the North End? She moved here from the West Side, and I still have a lot of family

over there. But my mom, when she first moved to the North End, she was trying to get a house on Boston. The lady was giving her the run around and she happened to come by here and the previous owner had a piano sitting in the window. The lady happened to invite her in and she liked it and it became her residence. So let’s keep talking about the bikes. Well, I had that bike for a few years and I even had it stolen. I let a friend ride it and someone stole it. The bike shop recovered it and I got it back. And then several months later someone else stole it. I miss that bike. I used to call it Big Orange. I’ve ridden alot with the D-Town Riders. We’ve ridden in parades like the annual parade on Mack Street. We do different community events for the neighborhood. We rode for Richard Bernstein’s reelection campaign. We have Fourth of July events where we have bike riders come out to Delores Bennett Park. I’m getting more enthused about riding because all the bikes now are so magnificent. They are lit up, they have all these lights and music. Someone rides by you and just blows you out the water. And my bike, it sits so low that you can’t see me so I have to do something to enhance it so that I will be noticed. I am noticed once you are going to the right and you look down and you’re about to ride over me. I have to show it to you. It looks like wagon or some type of odd wheelchair. Did the bikes always start out so magnificent or has there been an escalation? When I met Bike Mike, he already had the lights and the music. Some of the other guys from the East Side or bike crews already had lights. I just recently started to get my cousin to ride over the last year or so, and now he rides almost more than I do. I would close early on Mondays so I could ride in the Monday Slow Roll. They meet every Monday at different bars in Midtown. We’ll ride maybe 13-16 miles and then hang out for a while downtown. While I’m just riding with the little bluetooth speaker, he’s got the boombox stereo that’s car battery operated on his bike. Do you have discussions about who’s bikes are best? They have annual bike shows and, in the beginning of May, we meet at Harmony Park and everybody brings their bikes out and they hand out trophies and ribbons to the prettiest girl bike, the fanciest guy’s bike, the best overall bike, best paint job, stuff like that. Who organizes it? This year, King Wayne from the East Side Riders. Have you ever gotten a prize? I have a unique bike, so I got a prize for most unique. I got a little ribbon with a medal. There is an annual bike show at COBO hall that they wanted me to enter, but I told them, “My bike is just

“

We are a changing community, and biking means you have the freedom to enjoy and embrace the hidden jewels of the city.”

unique, your bikes are fancy.” Some of them have strobe lights with their names across it, engraved seats, spectacular paint jobs, hydraulics, all of this enhanced work. I just ride. I just started caring about my bike and not leaving it out in the rain so I wouldn’t have to wipe the water off of my seat. I am starting to appreciate my bike more. When I first started riding, they would say “Dee, you riding for two hours, you’re going to be gone for too long.” But it’s summer time, there’s nothing to do, might as well ride for a while. Now, I think I’m the least active rider around. The slow roll has grown so much. Every route is different, sometimes they roll through the neighborhoods and people see that you don’t have to be in the best shape. So what if my bike is not in the best condition. There’s enough people where I still fit in and I enjoy myself. So what if I’m not lean and trim. I can weigh 340 lb and still get the benefits. You see all type of riders. It’s a type of encouragement to everybody. I see guys eighty-five, ninety years old, the bike is falling apart, and he looks better than the bike does. Everybody is just having a ball. You see little kids, people have got their dogs in baskets and strange little contraptions. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a real diverse crowd. You’ve got doctors and lawyers. It’s kinda like a reunion because in a crowd of twenty-five hundred people, there’s no telling who you are going to run into. There’s been connections, love connections, business connections. It’s a good thing. There’s this guy who they call the Light Man. He sees people

who don’t have any lights and he’ll come on over. He’s got tail lights, spoke lights, whistles, bells. So there’s always somebody out there trying to push a product. There’s a gal with a souped-up bike with an ice cream cart on it. You’d never imagine the different kinds of bikes you can see. I’ve even seen one guy who has one of those bikes with the really big wheel and the really small wheel. People come up to me and say they really like my bike, but I really like everybody else’s bikes! There’s a guy who has barbeque grill on the back of his bike. To be a biker in the Motor City, what does it mean? It means being able to just ride free. You have to share the road and you have to love the bike. We are a changing community, and biking means you have the freedom to enjoy and embrace the hidden jewels of the city. Most people in cars know exactly where they are going and aren’t going to cut through the byways and the back streets. Bicyclists have the freedom to go anywhere. You just make your own path. Being a bike rider, you get to enjoy, embrace, and see all that the city has to offer. Sometimes I would ride without a specific destination, and I will see a group of people standing out, and I’d turn down that specific street. Since you’ve been here, the population isn’t what it used to be. So whenever I see some life in the neighborhood, I’ll go check it out. And sometimes it’s someone I know and sometimes it is someone who wants to ride. And I just tell them, just meet here and let’s ride!

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In the alleys of the North End, with a group of volunteer and residents, we experimented with the possibility of redesigning a city through its landscape by using the assets that are already there. To understand the latent possibilities of this exceptional vegetal scenario, our garden is evolving. We assess, organize and maintain the landscape in order to arrive at an urbane ecological experience. Step 1: remove debris. Step 2: identify the important trees. Step 3: weed, open things up, clarify. Step 4: cut, prune, form, render the human hand apparent. Step 5: choose, find, plant. Step 6: follow up, observe, manage, and care. To borrow the words of Gilles Clément, “do the most that you can WITH, and the least AGAINST nature.”

photography JL words CHRISTOPHE PONCEAU

Christophe Ponceau is a landscape architect and curator based in Paris and Lausanne. He joined the O.N.E. Mile Project in Fall 2014. During his stay in Detroit, Ponceau ran a series of workshops introducing the team and a broad network of volunteers to the concept of the Garden in Motion. Fin more about Ponceau at christophe-ponceau.com

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The North End is crucial to Detroit’s musical story. Both Smokey Robinson and Aretha Franklin spent formative years here. Marvin Gaye played the Phelp’s Lounge. Ruth Ellis threw house parties above her print shop on Oakland. John Lee Hooker had one of his earliest gigs at the Apex Bar. A Mothership currently sits in a warehouse on Oakland. Musical traditions like the ones that began in neighborhoods like Detroit’s North End have resonated throughout the world. And yet, Detroiters continue to lose our legacies, whether through floods, scraping, or just plain neglect. Through oral histories that go beyond the usual suspects, archival digitization of hidden collections, and academic diligence outside the Ivory Tower, the Detroit Sound Conservancy (DSC) has begun to establish a track record for asking the right questions when it comes to music history preservation. Now we are trying to find the answers. We were founded in 2012 in order to preserve Detroit music history from the bottom up. Two summers ago, the DETROIT SOUND CONSERVANCY ran a successful crowdfunding campaign through Kickstarter to found an online oral history archive dedicated to Detroit music. The next year we celebrated our momentum with a free and open to the public academic conference dedicated to Detroit music history at the Detroit Public Library. We will hold another conference this year on May 22 on the role of Michigan and Detroit in the emergence of the modern soundscape. Our long-term goal for all of this high-minded organizing is to use the stories and sounds to propel us into a more sustainable future for Detroit’s sonic heritage. You can read more here: detroitsoundconservancy.org

Carleton Gholz (PhD, Communication Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 2011) is the President and Executive Director of the Detroit Sound Conservancy, a lecturer in Communication at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, President of the Friends of the E. Azalia Hackley Collection at the Detroit Public Library, and a member of the Detroit Public Library Friends Foundation.

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It was clear that whatever we did would be public. Lifting the doors to the garage slowed traffic and the forty-five foot tall boom lift inside was an invitation to recall changed tires twenty years back and how there used to be an auto parts shop next door, but it closed and was torn down a long time ago. The same was true for the O.K. Barbershop. When the inside gleamed out to the street from the fresh paint on fresh plaster and the old facade was removed, the shop was already a public space with building as its program, regardless of completion.

photography JL words MATTHEW STORY

Since its launch in the summer of 2014, O.N.E. Mile has renovated and repurposed two space on Oakland Avenue: the OK Barbershop was transformed into the Bureau Emergent Urbanity and a garage become the Garage, an experimental venue for music and performance.

When construction machines, pick-up trucks, hammer thwacks, and saw brrraps sound in the North End, it has recently meant that another house is being torn down. It is devastatingly efficient in speed and opaqueness. Neither who, nor where, nor when are known when the dump trucks drive down Oakland Ave. While working up on the roof of the garage, a truck pulled up to the building with the caved in roof across the street. The men from inside the truck fixed a small, yellow demolition notice to the jam of the missing door, behind some branches of a tree growing out of a gap between the sidewalk and the foundation. I came down off of the roof and cut the tree back with the branch cutters that we had from the times we were working on the landscape design. This did more for my personal feelings than make a bold demand for transparency with the gravitas of work implement in hand and tool belt buckled around waist. Yet, what I saw was that a visible act is not inherently a public act. If this is case, that building is not in and of itself a public act, how can it be made to be one? Or rather, how can the ability to change the city be made explicit? What does it look like to change the city, and what does it look like when it is changed? These questions center on who has the right to the city. I appreciate how David Harvey puts it when he says that, “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.” A simple way to relate this O.N.E. Mile’s practice is in how we position building as a public program to cultivate participatory relationships with the people. There are, perhaps two ways to think about building as public program. Firstly, building architecture with people does practical things. It can repair things that are broken and strengthen affinities between people. It necessitates clear communication and common language, teaches skills, create jobs, broadcasts successes, organizes community, and spread And yet it is this very practicality that normalizes a potent and radical practice with the language of job training. skills

development, and remediation. Building draws out a person’s right to the city, the right to produce space. A right that is not solely funneled into the ability to work for a wage and participate in dominant building practices. A framer, for example, has the capacity to create space for a radical cultural and architectural project in the North End while at the same time building a suburban housing development. The right exists and the ability exists, yet the building can be a social practice must be made explicit in order to be actualized. If action is the marker of a social practice, public building, or even more generically, producing new space, maximizes intervention and engagement. Producing space with openness of purpose and process initiates that radical transference of the rights to space, rights to the city. This is not to say that there is some exchange by which right are acquired by through work, but rather that rights to space are not made clear, nor rendered visible or representable without signification from the collective spatial transformation and from novel visual/aesthetic representation. Simply put, it come from from building and doing that building together. It isn’t always clear that space is up for grabs and constitutes social practice. Without seeing the space changed, it remains infallible, complete, un-transformable, and unremarkable. The question becomes how the production of space is represented to broadcast a maximum liberating effect? The obvious question then is what does these rights look like? If we are changing the city through changing ourselves, what does this change look like? And not just in an epistemological sense of what is is, but actually what are its aesthetics? The aesthetics of emergent culture are chalked up to just that, emergence. With this logic, aesthetics are not prototype-able, deployable, designable, nor leverage-able. But don’t be mistaken, along with the right to change space comes the right to represent it.

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DR. MAKEEBA ELLINGTON can sense the interconnectedness of the Universe. As a healing artist and mystic movement leader, Dr. Ellington believes that the spiritual nature of community flows from being together and moving together in space. Her training in metaphysics allows her to channel and connect to the whole-ness of being and help guide others to self-fulfillment and happiness.

photography JL words Dr. Makeeba Ellington

Along side her spiritual work, Dr. Makeeba Ellington is also a visual artists, and a O.N.E. Mile fellow.

light fixture designed by Dr. Makeeba Ellington following pages: the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand painted chairs

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If you ever find yourself at a cross roads, I am one of the people who is here to assist you in healing... ”

I have my Doctorate Degree in Metaphysical Sciences. When I say that to most people have absolutely no idea what that means or how I can make a living in that field. I generally get a nonunderstanding nod with a glazed over look. One way that I explain to people exactly what I do is to break down what metaphysics is. Meta means whole, implying that this is a whole work body, mind, and spirit. Physics means medical art/natural science, saying that this is natural for all people.

would resume them as soon as I saw a way to do so. Moving back to the North End and meeting folks from O.A.A.C and O.N.E. Mile, the opportunity to restart what I had begun a few years back was there with a small twist.

I specifically work within the spiritual aspect of this kind of work. I provide a service using spiritual tools and strategies to assist people who want to work to empower themselves. If you’ve ever found yourself at a cross roads, I am one of the people who is here to assist you in healing. I’ve been doing this type of work ever since I can remember, but I finally took my act on the road seriously after years and years of encouragement from family and friends. I went back to school to finish my degree, but this time it was in something that I loved which made it so much easier to achieve because I wanted for myself. Not long after finishing school I started what I was calling Empathic Mystic Movement...this was a movement class that combined meditation and music. I was just getting my feet wet with the idea that I should facilitate a class and build the confidence to do so. With life happening the way that it does, I had to stop the classes temporarily with the knowing that I

I recognized how many of the programs that we have in the city are geared toward the youth or elders. My thought was “What about us in-betweeners? “We don’t have anything for us to do that is just good fun, where you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to go, and you can meet cool people, bring the children, and get home early enough to get ready for work the next day.” I decided that I wanted to create a space where the in-betweeners could come and remember how good it is to dance and listen to House Music in a safe and non-judgmental environment. This idea was the birthing of what I call SAVE YOUR SOUL SUNDAYS. I, The Abstract Oracle, facilitate the meditation and spiritual aspects of the event while my partner Music Medium, Alvina Renfrow, provides the music. Save Your Soul Sundays are held once a month (for the time being; we hope to do them more often) from 2p-5p at Red Door Digital on Oakland Blvd. The next one will be April 19th, and you can check Facebook Events for future dates. Come out and get your life with us, share in the love.

Be like water.

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Mosiah Sims Bey

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ILLUMINATE LITERACY ENTREPRENEURS brings together young people in the North End to write and do other things. They write and write and write and write. Illuminate Literacy Entrepreneurs is a black power driven program dedicated to the education of literacy and its importance to black people. Jamii Tata, the founder of the now three year program says, “Illuminate exists to combat illiteracy by giving the ability to decipher language and to elevate it through this broken society.” I asked a member of the Illuminate Crew, Khafre Sims-Bey a.k.a YAKUZAmoon what he thought the purpose of the program was and he told me that it “ empowers young melinated people to get the opportunity to take control of their own destinies.” The collective is currently composed of ten youth, all with beautifully unique talents, views, personalities, and contributions not only to the program but to the North End community it serves. I myself being one of those ten youth members can’t help but to scream out loud how awesome and truly amazing this program is! This program is giving youth the opportunity to truly get an understanding of just what their voices can do through written and spoken word. Mosiah Sims Bey, or Moszs Infinite, said it best, when he shrugged his shoulders and said “[we’re] going into the community and showing people who aren’t ever in the spotlight that they have a voice.” He says this so casually as if everyone is involved with a program that constantly empowers and uplifts the community while combating the ever increasing illiteracy rate in the city of Detroit. This program, though small in student population, is mighty. It’s “more than just poetry or literacy entrepreneurship, its community oriented; its activism,” Khafre concluded. Illuminate: Literacy Entrepreneur classes are Mondays & Wednesdays from 6-8PM at 222 Marston and the Open Mics are every 4th Saturday from 6-9:30PM at the Bureau of Emergent Urbanity located at 8326 Oakland in Detroit’s North End. For more information please visit knowallegiance.net or call 313-986-1907. Za’Nyia Kelly is a happy, eccentric 16 year old student who is currently a junior at Benjamin Oliver Davis Aerospace High School where she is training in aviation mechanics and piloting. She enjoys gardening, poetry, and arts of many forms. Above all else she enjoys laying in the grass and devouring a book or two. A new addition to the Illuminate family and its newest intern, she brings much potential and always wears a grand smile. She plans to go into the culinary arts and hopes to one day own a small bakery.

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Where I'm From By Athenia Harris Muhammad I am from DETROIT, From the D and rising up I am the queen I am from the rising flowers and trees I am from my hometown of spiritual ways of life I am from the family dinners From Standing on right and being respectful I am from bunny ears and shoe laces I’m From “Hard heads makes soft Behinds” I am from a religion and praying in the pews Somewhere down town

Poet/Visual Artist Athenia Harris-Muhammad has been a part of the Illuminate Youth Group for 3 years and counting. She has grown poetically through Jamii Tata’s influence and patience in helping to develop her writing skills. She has performed poetry at many events in the city of Detroit including: J Dilla Youth day, Noel Night, The Red Door, Redford Branch Library and more. Also a visual artist, Harris-Muhammad works in a variety of media including painting, stained glass, and jewelry. She has show her work around the city.

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The O.N.E. Mile project is made possible through the exceptional collaborative effort of a broad network of people from different fields and walks of life. Thanks to everyone who has taken part in this unprecedented project. allen gillers, alix eoche-duval, alvina renfrow, amp fiddler, andrea daniel, andrew kremers, annelise heeringa, anthony hatinger, billy hebron, carl ‘butch’ small, carleton gholz, caroline petersen, christophe ponceau, dames brown, danielle weitzman, dave boggon, david philpot, dee castelow, dj g-smooth, dj los, duminie deporres, eiji jimbo, eric harmon, eric howard, gabe gonzalez, gregory sirota, ian donaldson, incite focus, ingrid lafleur, jaffer kolb, james folden, james lesko, jamii tata, jasmine harris, jason lindy, jayne choi, jennifer kee, jerry hebron, jide aje, joe johnson, kalia keith, karen harris, katheryn carethers, kirk donaldson, kristen collins, lee azus, makeeba ellington, marsha music, michael monford, mike clark “agent x”, missy ablin, monica ponce de leon, n’neka jackson, omar bruce, patrick bouchain, peter halquist, peter sepassi, piper carter, rachel mulder, reshounn foster, rich richardson, roger robinson, rosey o’brien, ryan mason, ryan moritz, san street catering, sarah pavelko, sharon haar, shae king, stephen gliatto, steve patton, tfo horns, tom bray, tony “t-money” green, ulysses newkirk, walter “hazmat” howard, ya suo, young-tack oh, and so many more people to whom we are infinitely grateful.

*** O.N.E. Mile is made possible through the generous support of the Knight Arts Foundation, ArtPlace America, the University of Michigan, and Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning