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NEWS & VIEWS
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We received responses to Lee DeVito’s dispatch from the Kamala Harris rally for metrotimes.com, “Kamala Harris’s jubilant Detroit rally ends in meltdown.” The Aug. 7 rally held at a DTW hangar was reportedly campaign’s biggest stop yet, where the Vice President sparred with antiwar protesters and due to a logistical bus shuttle failure thousands of supporters were left stranded for hours.
Absolute chaos to get back to our cars. Got home at 2:00am.
—Mary Reed Mataczynski, Facebook
My son went and he said there so many people!! It was a challenge getting out
but he said it was worth it.
—Todd White, Facebook
Everyone chose to be there. It was a very inspiring rally. She handled the protesters as well and we do need a woman speaking for us in the White House. I don’t understand the negative slant in the headline for this article. Keep this up and we’ll have Trump in the White House, come November and fewer people will be reading the Metro times
Kirsti Hart-Negrich, Facebook
It should go without saying, but just because we are critical of one Harris rally does not mean we support Donald Trump.
—Lee DeVito, editor-in-chief
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NEWS & VIEWS
Pressure mounts on Wayne County prosecutor to investigate misconduct cases
The Detroit Police Department said it’s “fully committed to cooperating” with prosecutors to review cases handled by a former police detective who terrorized young Black men for nearly two decades.
The former detective, Barbara Simon, was featured in a two-part series in Metro Times that revealed she had confined young suspects and witnesses to small rooms at police headquarters for hours without a warrant. She elicited false confessions and witness statements that were later recanted.
So far, four men have been exonerated for murders they didn’t commit, and a fifth was released from jail after DNA showed he wasn’t the killer.
Attorneys for the Michigan Innocence Clinic, which handled the cases, say many more people are likely imprisoned for murders they didn’t commit because of Simon’s investigative misconduct.
“If true, the allegations against retired Detective Simon are concerning,” Detroit police spokesperson Dayna Clark told Metro Times in a statement. “The Department is fully committed to cooperating with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which is empowered to examine the legitimacy of convictions.”
However, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who is running unopposed for reelection this year, wasn’t as enthusiastic.
“It would be irresponsible of me to respond at this time without gathering more information,” Worthy said in a statement.
In the series, Metro Times found multiple people still imprisoned who say Simon either coerced them into making false confessions or were convicted based on statements from witnesses who were threatened. Defense attorneys, activists, and private investigators say evidence is strong that more Black men are behind bars after getting interrogated by Simon.
Only a prosecutor or judge has the authority to reexamine cases involving potentially innocent people. In each of the exoneration cases involving Simon, Worthy’s office tried to prevent the men from getting free, despite overwhelming evidence that they were innocent.
Worthy launched the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) in 2018 to review old cases to determine if people were wrongfully convicted. Since then, 38 inmates were either exonerated or their cases were dismissed as a result of the CIU. A disproportionate number of
those cases – 13 – occurred in 2020, the year Worthy was running against a reform-oriented opponent.
But this year, Worthy is running unopposed, and the CIU has only been involved in getting new trials for two men. Valerie Newman, head of the CIU, acknowledged the unit is understaffed, though she said there were plans to hire more attorneys.
None of the cases that the CIU intervened in involved Simon, who worked closely with Worthy’s office in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Simon, who was known as “the closer” because of her knack for gaining confessions and witness statements, was a detective in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the U.S. Department of Justice found that homicide detectives trampled on the constitutional rights of suspects and witnesses for decades to get confessions. According to the DOJ, the department had a history of subjecting suspects and witnesses to false arrests, illegal detentions, and abusive interrogations. Despite what was at stake, the detectives weren’t properly trained, and bad cops were rarely disciplined, the DOJ concluded.
In 2003, to avoid a massive civil rights lawsuit claiming suspects and witnesses endured false arrests, unlawful
detentions, fabricated confessions, excessive force, and unconstitutional conditions of confinement, the Detroit Police Department agreed to DOJ oversight. Because of the harsh interrogation tactics, DPD agreed in 2006 to videotape interrogations of all suspects in crimes that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.
After 13 years of federal government scrutiny, the DOJ finally ended its oversight, but only after DPD agreed to sweeping changes in a consent decree to overhaul its arrest, interrogation, and detention policies. Detectives could no longer round up witnesses and force them to answer questions at police precincts and headquarters.
At no point since those findings have prosecutors or police tried to reexamine the cases during that troubling period. And, it’s unclear why Worthy is not pursuing those cases. Other cities, including New York and Chicago, have conducted wholesale investigations of corrupt detectives, leading to numerous exonerations.
In response to the Metro Times series, the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners called on the police department to conduct a thorough investigation of all of Simon’s cases. Detroit Police Deputy Chief Tiffany Stewart
Detroit police pledge to work with Prosecutor Worthy, but she balks at taking action.
AP PHOTO/PAUL SANCYA
responded that it’s ultimately the CIU’s responsibility to review the cases.
Worthy told Metro Times, “With all due respect, DC Stewart is not in a position to task the CIU with work.”
Mark Craighead, who was exonerated in 2022 after spending more than seven years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, says Worthy has a moral responsibility to review Simon’s cases.
“I think it’s important for both the police department and prosecutors to work together to get this done,” Craighead tells Metro Times. “Those entities have the capability to right the wrongs, and the police can’t do it alone. They have to get the prosecutors involved.”
In June 2000, without a warrant, Simon confined Craighead to a small room at police headquarters for hours, denying him access to an attorney, phone call, food, or water, he said in a lawsuit against the city. When he refused to speak, he was forced to spend the night in a vermin-infested jail cell.
The next morning, Simon claimed she had evidence tying Craighead to the murder, which turned out to be untrue, and she coerced him into falsely confessing to accidentally shooting his friend during a fight, according to his lawsuit. The false confession was contradicted by forensic evidence, which showed his friend was shot four times in the back execution-style from a distance of at least two feet.
Phone records later showed Craighead was nowhere near his friend when he was murdered.
Craighead says he’s disappointed with Worthy.
“She’s unwilling to budge, and that’s a problem,” he says. “For the young guys in prison, they need this. The evidence is indisputable that they are innocent. Why can’t the prosecutor see this? She’s unwilling to.”
Craighead and the Metro Times series were featured in a nearly 90-minute episode this week on ML Soul of Detroit, a podcast by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter M.L. Elrick.
Detroit police say they have cleaned up the homicide division when they signed an agreement with the Department of Justice in the early 2000s.
“Many of the issues underlying the practices of concern were addressed by the city in the course of its two consent judgements,” Clark says.
—Steve Neavling
Macomb County man files lawsuit over tiny home ban
A Shelby Township man is suing a municipality in Macomb County for preventing him from building a tiny home because of an ordinance that bars houses smaller than 1,200 square feet.
Jordan McBain filed a lawsuit against Chesterfield Township in Macomb County Circuit Court last week, alleging the minimum square footage requirement – or what he and others refer to as “snob zoning” – violates state civil rights and equal protection laws.
“Minimum square footage requirements are preventing the construction of tiny homes, which could serve as a lifeline for those in need of affordable housing,” McBain tells Metro Times
McBain cited federal statistics that show a disproportionate number of retirees, Black residents, and people with disabilities are experiencing homelessness.
Tiny homes, he and other activists say, are a potential solution to homelessness, but too many cities and townships forbid them.
More progressive communities like Detroit have embraced tiny homes as an affordable alternative to expensive houses.
McBain wants to set a precedent in court “that protects the rights of all
citizens to access affordable housing, regardless of their income, disability status, or minority affiliation.”
The dispute over the township’s square footage requirements began when McBain bought property on 26 Mile Road, where he wants to build a small home for himself and his dog.
But township officials forbade him, citing the square footage requirements.
McBain points out that many communities claim that tiny homes are lowering property values and destroying neighborhood character. But, he says, housing is priced on a per-square-foot basis, “making the reasoning flawed.”
“Contrary to the township’s claims, tiny homes can be made attractive and integrated seamlessly into existing neighborhoods,” he explains. “Meanwhile, townships allow the construction of massive homes that drastically alter neighborhood character, revealing that these regulations are more about controlling who can live in the community and ensuring future tax revenue than about genuine public interest.”
McBain says the restrictive zoning laws make no sense and are hurting lower-income people.
“These restrictive laws also endanger retirees with limited resources, who may be forced out of their homes due
to unaffordable repairs, and young adults just starting their lives, who are denied access to low-cost housing,” he says. “In a society where gun owners have the right to choose automatic weapons, should not homeowners have the right to choose their mode of living?”
In his lawsuit, McBain alleges the township is violating Michigan’s Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act, the Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act, and the state constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
McBain is hoping to find organizations to file amicus briefs in support of his lawsuit.
Nationwide, tiny homes have exploded in popularity. They’re more eco-friendly, less expensive, and are an attractive alternative to large homes. As home prices continue to skyrocket, more people are choosing smaller homes.
Home Depot has cashed in on the trend, offering 30 varieties of prefabricated tiny home frame kits. Amazon also sells tiny homes.
Chesterfield Township Supervisor Bradley A. Kersten says he can’t comment on the lawsuit because it’s in litigation.
—Steve Neavling
Jordan McBain says a minimum square footage requirement for homes — what he refers to as “snob zoning” — violates state civil rights and equal protection laws. SHUTTERSTOCK
Duane Williams seeks exoneration as wrongful conviction cases mount
He woke up craving a smoke. It was about 2 a.m. March 5, 2013 when Duane Williams opened his eyes to the darkness of the Inkster home he shared with his wife and family.
In his grogginess he grabbed a cigarette, then searched for a lighter, but never found one. Out of fatigue and frustration, he decided to go back to sleep.
“The next thing I knew, I heard people in the house, calling my name,” recalls Williams, 54.
He was pretty sure the voices belonged to police, but he didn’t know why they were there. Hearing officers walk in one direction, then another, he soon saw “all these guns on me.” His wife Kathy stirred awake, barely comprehending much beyond the sight of deadly weapons. Williams says he surrendered, politely asking the officers to take him from the house, hoping to keep Kathy out of harm’s way.
He remembers being glad he’d stopped looking around for the cigarette lighter instead of accidentally startling the officers he’d never heard come through the door. Coincidentally, smoking appears to have caused the two deaths for which Williams would lose 11 years of freedom, following wrongful murder convictions. Now he awaits the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office’s decision whether to re-try his case after its Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) recommended his release from an Ionia prison in June. Williams’s story is one of a growing number of Michigan wrongful convictions being examined by Metro Times
While Williams knew about the deaths of Bobby Cross, his mother’s longtime boyfriend, and Darryl Simms in a west-side Detroit house fire the previous summer, he says he didn’t know an investigation had led police to his door while he lay asleep.
“They told me they’d been outside so long that one of them had to use the bathroom,” Williams says.
To his surprise, the morning air soon revealed onlookers, street barricades, and police car lights glowing against the blackness over the neighborhood. Before the day ended Williams would learn that Gary Vone Jennings II, a man he casually knew from Williams’s earlier days as a rap artist, told Detroit Police Williams confessed to deliberately setting the fire that killed Cross and Simms. The medical examiner concluded both deaths were accidental after Simms
fell asleep on a sofa while smoking.
Despite having argued with Cross the night before the fire, Williams says he harbored no ill feelings toward anyone who was there, and Jennings hadn’t been at the house on Fielding Street, or witnessed anything he could reliably tell investigators.
“He knew no details and they should never have believed him,” Williams says.
In fact, Jennings’s only connection to the entire affair was that he dated a woman related to Cross, CIU would discover in 2024. But a few months after the fire Jennings was arrested for felony bootlegging of audio and video products, an offense for which he was already on probation, court records show.
Now he needed a deal.
“Using jailhouse informants is an incredibly bad practice,” says Maya Menlo, a State Appellate Defender Office (SADO) attorney who represented Williams.
Not only did Jennings lie, in hopes of gaining leniency after his arrest, but he was paid a $5,000 reward, following the trial, according to SADO’s investigation in collaboration with CIU and Western Michigan University’s Cooley Law School Innocence Project.
Williams says the help Menlo and SADO gave him felt like the first real legal support he’d received, since his trial lawyer and defense investigator didn’t listen to him. He was convicted September 10, 2013.
“It hurt to see that so many lies were being told and nobody was working to find out that the things being said weren’t true,” adds Williams.
Part of the problem, Menlo says, is that the full truth had never been made available. For example, a report and photographs of a Zippo-style lighter discovered near the fire’s point of origin were not made available to the defense team, as required by the so-called “Brady rule” requiring that prosecutors share information that could support a defendant’s innocence.
“The CIU review revealed that there were multiple Brady violations, and the primary witness was an informant who did not come forward with the information in the case until he was placed in custody,” says Maria Miller, Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office spokesperson. “Once the CIU review was completed, Prosecutor [Kym] Worthy recommended that a
grant of relief be given.”
Also withheld from Williams’s defense team was an interview contradicting the claims made by Jennings, Menlo adds. Jennings and Williams had met at a promotional event years ago when Williams pursued a rap career, using the stage name Diablo (Spanish for “devil”).
“I used to always tell people, ‘I’m a nice guy,’” he says. “For some reason, people in my neighborhood gave me that nickname when I was 13 years old, and it stuck.”
As Diablo he recorded with the likes of the Detroit group D12’s Swifty McVay, but he traveled to unlikely destinations like Grand Junction, Colorado to perform for money, Williams says. He also drew support from recording artist T-Pain, but by the time of his arrest Williams had settled down and been married for a year. He says he’d served an earlier prison sentence, also based on false testimony, and traveling out of state had led him to violate parole. He embraced a simpler life with Kathy and her little ones who became his stepchildren.
“I loved being responsible, doing homework with the kids and walking them home from school, taking them on trips,” he recalls. “I was becoming a family man.”
The fire investigation disrupted his entire life. Since his release from prison he says he’s “working on” his marriage and he was recently hired by an organization that investigates cases of the wrongfully convicted.
“I don’t want anybody to forget about any of them, because there’s more work that needs to be done,” he says.
Attorney Todd Flood, who will represent Williams late this month when the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office determines whether to exonerate or charge Williams a second time, agrees.
“There is so much to address here about how this happened, and to do our best to make sure it never happens again,” says Flood.
Like Menlo, who is “hopeful that the prosecutor will do the right thing,” Flood’s optimistic: “I’ve gone through every nook and cranny of this case and, from what I can see, there’s no way I can imagine in my wildest dreams that this case is ever going back to trial.”
He’ll also represent Williams in a civil case, seeking compensation for the years he spent in prison, says
Flood.
“It’s all hard work,” he adds, “and there are people on the other side who are not going to be willing to make Duane whole without being held accountable.”
Meanwhile, Williams says he’s grateful.
“I thank Prosecutor Worthy for starting the Conviction Integrity Unit. I thank Ms. [CIU Director Valerie] Newman for doing what she does, but the safest thing for me to say is everybody has to have ‘integrity.’ Everybody has to do their job correctly,” he adds. “There shouldn’t be a need for a CIU.”
Menlo says there’s a “really easy way to address” the withheld evidence issue that leads to countless wrongful convictions, “and that’s to adopt an open file policy.”
Defense attorneys could visit the prosecutor’s office to examine the complete evidence file and then ask questions, unlike the current system in which prosecutors share information at their sole discretion, Menlo says.
While Williams says he’d be glad to see improvements in the legal system, he recognizes that he still has personal challenges. Menlo, Flood, and Flood’s staff members like Isaias Cruz have all been a godsend, he adds, and Williams even enjoys time on his uncle’s boat, but trauma haunts his freedom.
“You would think that you get out of jail and it’s a party from then on, but that’s when you have your problems,” he says. “I keep crying. I don’t have good control over my emotions.”
—Eddie B. Allen Jr.
Duane Williams. COURTESY PHOTO
August 14-20, 2024 | metrotimes.com
NEWS & VIEWS
Lapointe
JD Vance and his weird take on Motor City history
By Joe Lapointe
In law school at Yale, Senator JD Vance of Ohio organized study sessions with classmates to examine “Social Decline in America.” His fellow scholars served as a de facto focus group for his hit book Hillbilly Elegy
One reading assignment Vance ordered was a lengthy essay in The Nation that was published in the mid1930s about migration of poor, white people from the Southern states to the Motor City to work in the momentarily revived automobile factories during the Great Depression.
It was titled “The Hill-Billies Come to Detroit.”
“For months now, the companies have been sending their labor agents to recruit hill-billies from Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama,” the Nation article says. “These hillbillies are for the most part impoverished whites, ‘white trash’ or a little better, from the rural regions.”
The author — Louis Adamic — writes that these migrants “of unsophisticated mien” would be “employed at simple, standardized tasks in a production department, for which very little or no training is necessary, at 45 or 50 cents an hour . . .”
Critics have suggested Vance — in his Hillbilly book — trashed his own Kentucky-Ohio roots by blaming later generations of that sub-culture for their own troubles today with poverty, drugs, and violence, as if macroeconomics had nothing to do with the trap doors beneath their lives.
In addition, the word “Hillbilly” in Vance’s title also struck some as an ethnic or cultural slur. Does the piece in The Nation nine decades ago reveal the seeds of Vance’s low opinion toward his own people?
“The hill-billies, with their extremely low standard of living and lack of acquaintance with modern plumbing,
are looked down upon,” the Nation article states. “Petty landlords and realtors who have rented their vacant houses to the hill-billies complain that their tenants, unappreciative of modern appliances, are damaging their properties.”
Vance, Donald Trump’s Republican vice presidential candidate, came to suburban Detroit last week to speak in Macomb County at the Shelby Township cop shop with grim-faced lawmen lined up behind him. But he said nothing about how that essay in The Nation inspired his current thinking.
Instead, the 40-year-old Senate rookie preached about many other things. Ostensibly rallying to “back the blue” in their fight against crime, Vance ranted against “migrant criminals,” not from the old Confederacy but from foreign lands. “They rape our children,” Vance said of these “illegal aliens.”
The young fellow from Middletown, Middleamerica, also revealed that “the world is on fire” and that the city of Minneapolis burned down in 2020 (after a cop murdered George Floyd, a Black man, before a live audience and video phones).
Vance said Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, the vice president, is to blame for police deaths because she encouraged “open season on American police officers” (during the Black Lives Matter movement that followed Floyd’s death).
Vance called Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, “a radical human being that comes from the farleft wing of the Democrat Party.” He said Walz “abandoned” his National Guard unit before it deployed to the Iraq war.
And he also told reporters how to do their jobs.
The “Hill-billy” comes to (suburban) Detroit. AP PHOTO/ALEX
“Show a little bit of self-awareness,” he said, without irony, as he told them to question Harris more harshly. Harris last month replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
“The media honeymoon is disgraceful,” Vance said. One reporter asked Vance about his criticism of Harris for not choosing as her running mate governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania because Shapiro is Jewish.
QUESTION: “Do you have any evidence to support that assertion that a person who is married to a Jewish man is somehow antisemitic or bowing to antisemites?”
VANCE: “Well, I reject the premise of the question. I did not say that that was the only reason that Kamala Harris didn’t choose Josh Shapiro. So you should, you know, take a little less DNC talking points when you ask your questions and ask a real question.”
In that several generations from that white, Southern migration still live and vote in Michigan, one of the “real questions” to ask young master Vance might have been: How much did “The Hill-Billies Come to Detroit” influence your thinking and is it fair that your critics fault you for an ethnic slur?
The Nation article itself is ambiguous and filled with half-baked analysis. Even its date is confusing in internet archives. An old-style “dateline” shows it filed from Detroit on January 25, 1934. The publication date is listed as February 13, 1934.
However, several context clues in the copy suggest it appeared a year later, after the car business picked up in 1934. It refers to past labor unrest in Toledo in 1934 and the author predicts of Detroit:
“Despite prophesies of impending trouble in 1935, there is no possibility of any great upheaval in the motor industry during the current, highproduction season.”
One of his many observations — some of them astute — is that imported southern men as well as local young women were being hired in the auto plants to discourage the union movement among Detroit’s veteran male workers, both native and foreign-born.
The article describes how “stool pigeons” in factories ratted out union organizers and even searched pockets of coats for union literature. What is clear is that the piece was published before the General Motors sit-down strike in Flint in 1936-37 and the formation of the United Auto Workers in 1937.
“Absolutely no danger of a general
auto strike this year, nor anything resembling real trouble,” the article states. “. . . The automobile manufacturers’ labor policy is this: The industry must not be unionized . . . It is all very, very clever, and it will take the labor movement, such as it is, some time to devise the strategy and tactics to cope effectively with this latest of dirty tricks played upon the workers by the automobile tycoons and their brain guys.”
Another hole in the story is the utter absence of African-Americans, who were also in the midst of the same geographical relocation from many of the same states for auto jobs.
In that the author himself was an immigrant to the United States from the Austro-Hungarian empire, it is curious that he overlooked this. (During the Red Scare of the McCarthy era, Adamic died of a murky suicide after having been accused of serving the Soviet Union as a spy.)
In that Vance is well-educated, glib, and full of self-confidence, it would be good to hear his more considered thoughts about migration — both internal and external — and how economic churn disrupts lives and cultures while giving novice politicians a chance to exploit fear of the “other” who will move in and “take your jobs” and “rape our children.”
But, instead, in suburban Detroit, Vance came across as callow and shallow, talking too fast, acting like the snottiest kid on the high-school honor roll running for a seat on the student council.
Even his trim beard flecked with gray — his serious, 19th Century look — made him appear to be a student in costume for the school play about Abraham Lincoln.
Most of his points were in the tone of Trump — personal insults, lies, and petty mockery. Unless Trump fires the amateurish Vance before the election (“Yuh FIE-ud!”) it will be interesting to see Vance debate the more experienced governor, who is quick with a quip.
Walz might parry Vance’s suckerpunches aimed below the belt and thrown after the bell. Or, in the meantime, Vance might mature in the few weeks before the Nov. 5 election. When it is over, win or lose, he may have time to work on his next volume of American sociology.
But, instead of the toxic title term “Hillbillies,” he could at least modernize his vocabulary, lest he again offend anyone. How about “Dixo-Americans,” an academic-sounding label he could toss around with scholarly authority among his old study buddies at Yale.
Rapper BossMan Dlow hit the stage at Detroit’s Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre last month as one of the hottest emcees of the summer, fresh off the cover of XXL’s “Freshman Class” 2024. However, the Florida native only performed his hit “Get In With Me” and a couple of other crowd favorites before his performance, part of a concert dubbed “We Up Now,” ended.
“He did three songs and everything stopped,” says an attendee, who prefers to remain anonymous. “They stopped the show.”
In a statement, Keith Jackson, owner of UEG Promotions, one of the show’s promoters, downplayed the incident. “The We Up Now show that took place on Saturday, July 6, at the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre was neither halted nor stalled,” the statement read. “BossMan Dlow performed, and the show proceeded as planned.”
However, the next morning, local hip-hop phenom Skilla Baby took to Instagram to voice his frustrations about his set at that same show being cut short. And it wasn’t the first time.
“Every time I perform at home, fire marshals or Detroit police always come shut me down,” the rapper says in the clip, shared with his 1.3 million followers. “I don’t know what I be doing, but they always come shut
me down.” Skilla even claimed he has been targeted by one particular DPD officer and threatened to sue the city over it.
In several videos posted to social media sites from the July concert, a shirtless Skilla Baby can be seen on stage angrily yelling at police and fire authorities, “Y’all can’t bully me no more!” A police officer can also be seen talking to Skilla’s manager East Side Juan making a “cut it” hand gesture (implying to cut Skilla’s set). Skilla is then restrained by concert security while trying to interact with fans in the first two rows at the Aretha before he eventually exits the stage.
Speaking on behalf of the show’s promoter UEG Promotions, in a follow-up phone interview Erica Banks of Bankable Marketing Strategies says that Skilla was not technically scheduled to perform that evening and his appearance was more of a surprise treat for the fans. In hip-hop, it’s common for national touring acts to bring local artists onstage for a few songs, like Detroit faves Peezy, Icewear Vezzo, and 42 Dugg recently giving surprise performances at the August 4 stop of Future and Metro Boomin’s “We Don’t Trust You Tour” at Little Caesars Arena.
Nonetheless, even though Skilla was not on the show’s official roster, he was still stopped from performing the entirety of what he had planned
— which is what he was venting about. “They kept cutting his mic while he was on stage trying to bring out [fellow Detroit rappers] Sada Baby and Tee Grizzley,” the anonymous source says.
The onstage drama was a bitter end to what had otherwise been a festive day for the 25-year-old Detroit native. Earlier, CBS News filmed and profiled the rapper on Detroit’s west side, which was followed by an interview on one of hip-hop’s top podcasts, Million Dollaz Worth of Game
In his Instagram video, Skilla Baby accused DPD Lieutenant Lacell Rue of being the reason there were so many hiccups planning his birthday bash concert that was originally scheduled to be held at Masonic Temple on September 30, 2023.
“He shut me down, made me get a venue last-minute,” Skilla said in the video. “The week of [the show he] made me get a different venue. I had already paid a certain amount of money, I had to pay 80 more thousand to get another venue, 50 more thousand for production, and a couple more thousand for 100 security guards. He made me change my stuff the day of, he went to Masonic Temple and told them people I’m a gangbanger, I shoot people, I kill people, and I’ve never even been arrested in Detroit.”
Last year, DPD responded to Metro Times’s inquiry about the canceled
Masonic Temple show, saying, “The decision to cancel Skilla Baby’s concert was the venue’s own decision.” The show was then moved to Detroit’s Riverside Marina, which was also shut down only a few songs into Skilla Baby’s set due to organizers not having “proper use permit, security, or emergency medical staff onsite,” according to Detroit Fire Department chief James Harris.
In his Instagram video, Skilla Baby went on to highlight his philanthropic endeavors in Detroit and his positive relationship with DPD, but he also claimed Lt. Rue tried to use his influence to deny him entry into a high school football game at Ford Field last year.
“The next thing I’m going to do is sue the city,” Skilla added. “I’m going to sue the DPD for [putting] him at my events.”
In a statement, DPD denied Skilla’s claims.
“The Department has reviewed the allegations contained in the video created by the rapper commonly referred to as Skilla Baby,” the statement reads. “We deny any suggestion of wrongdoing toward the performer or his events. While several of Skilla Baby’s concerts have been canceled, this has been due to the performer failing to follow city protocols and for failing to obtain venues with the appropriate capacity. Questions regarding specific
violations should be forwarded to the [fire marshal].”
The Detroit fire marshal did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Skilla Baby’s camp.
The We Up Now Show was one of several local hip-hop concerts to be interfered with by police in recent years. On August 11, 2023, entertainment company 313 Presents canceled a show by the New York-based hip-hop group Beast Coast after local police departments received separate phone calls about the possibility of a mass shooting occuring at Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre. Less than two weeks later, on August 20, a Moneybagg Yo show at the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre was
shut down due to capacity and crowd control issues.
“The police here in Detroit get intel, it might be street stuff going on you don’t know about,” says Anthony Thompson II, an operations manager for Live Nation and CEO and founder of ATNetwork Production Studio. “Because we find that out too, they give us heads up on certain things.”
Mark Hicks, one-time manager of Detroit hip-hop collective D12, says there has been police involvement in the hip-hop scene for over two decades at the hands of DPD’s “Gang Squad,” a special paramilitary unit of the department known for being more heavyhanded and street-savvy than your
average police officers.
“They kept a real beat on the rap game here,” Hicks says. “They followed the hip-hop culture like we did. When they would hear rumors about different things they would follow up and tell their police chief.”
The Gang Squad unit was broken up and reorganized in 2013, and although police have historically had an adversarial relationship with Black people, Thompson says it’s important for the general manager of a concert venue to have open lines of communication with the police and fire marshal. He says it’s common for either to walk around inside of the venue and observe what’s going on during a show.
“[All] these folks, EMS, and police, fire departments are all connected,” he says. “I just feel like Black artists and Black people all over are overpoliced, and they don’t do that with white artists, they don’t do it at that level.”
A music industry professional who goes by Six Two, who previously worked as a junior talent buyer for Live Nation at Saint Andrew’s Hall and the Shelter and also promoted her own events, says in 2015 she rented out a venue outside metro Detroit for a Beanie Sigel and Freeway concert that garnered police attention.
“The police brought me Beanie Sigel’s record, his public arrest record, and mentioned to me that if I was go -
Skilla Baby’s appearance at an Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre concert on July 6 was cut short by Detroit police. It’s not the first time the rapper and DPD have clashed.
COURTESY PHOTO
ing to go through with this show, the kind people that would be attending this show would be in line with the rap sheet I was being shown of the artist,” she says.
Drug use, arguments, and fights happen at many concerts, festivals, and sporting events. When Thompson says, “they don’t do that with white artists,” he’s not stating that police don’t make their presence known at nonBlack events. But there can be an extra aggressiveness shown toward Black crowds and Black artists, he says.
“So it happens, but it’s viewed differently,” Thompson says. “It’s looked at as less threatening to even police and security. They feel more comfortable breaking up a white boy fight and letting them walk away like, ‘Alright guys, it’s over.’ Some Black guys get into a fight and everybody is nervous.”
A complicated history
Shows being canceled, postponed, or shut down is just as much a part of hiphop culture as the emcee and the DJ. As the energy of hip-hop matriculated from the Big Apple to the Big Axel in the late ’70s, Detroit’s talented hip-hop artists struggled to consistently book large venues to entertain their blossoming fanbases.
Kalimah Johnson, who performed under the monikers “Nikki D” and “Eboni and Her Business,” was a part of Detroit’s first wave of ’80s hip-hop artists and recalls multiple issues. “Venues would back out of shows for lack of planning, low presale of tickets,
fear of violence, or straight scamming because some venues would charge us to perform,” she says.
“History is the best teacher,” adds Lamonte Hayes, a music industry veteran and founder of BWP Marketing. “If you understand the history of hip-hop, it’s always been a genre of music where venues have always been afraid. If you remember back in the ’70s and ’80s they didn’t allow rap concerts at all.”
The issues weren’t always confined to local talent, and some of hip-hop’s biggest stars faced debacles on their Detroit tour stops. At an August 6, 1989 show at Joe Louis Arena, Detroit police infamously warned hip-hop group N.W.A. not to play “Fuck tha Police.” The group performed the controversial track anyway, darted off the stage before finishing, and were greeted by Detroit police officers back at their hotel rooms. (A much more dramatic version of this was shown in the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton.)
On July 14, 1995, a concert at the Aretha (then known as Chene Park) featuring Notorious B.I.G. was threatened to be canceled by DPD, who claimed the Brooklyn native had received death threats prior to the show. And a December 4, 1998 concert featuring mega groups Outkast and Black Eyed Peas had to be moved to Harpos after the previous venue backed out the deal.
“Back then if the Fox was tripping, Joe Louis was tripping, you could take the concert to Harpos or Eastown Theater,” Hicks says.
On July 6, 2000 Dr. Dre’s “Up in Smoke Tour” featuring Snoop Dogg,
Ice Cube, and hometown hero Eminem was delayed over an hour because DPD didn’t want to allow a sexually explicit video to be shown. “It was very close to being shut down,” says Hicks, who was there at the time. “It was at high-end levels at that time. [Police] were all backstage and literally holding up shit.”
“You can call it ‘Black,’ ‘urban,’ whatever you want to call it, but it’s always been treated differently than other forms of music,” adds Hayes.
Much like the N.W.A. concert more than a decade earlier, the incident has been viewed as a case of police flexing their muscle and getting high off their own egos. Ultimately, the video wasn’t shown and the concert went on. The debacle was filmed and added to the Up in Smoke DVD released in December of 2000.
Budgets, ticket sales, and marketing
Over the last six years the fever of Detroit’s hip-hop community has reached an all-time high. Artists have been enjoying features with national hip-hop acts and several top 10 charting debuts. There’s nearly three dozen Detroit hip-hop artists signed to major record labels or having inked major distribution deals.
But popularity and millions of streams don’t always equate into concert ticket sales. In recent years, many of Detroit’s favorite emcees have quietly canceled concerts with no explanations. One second the event is listed on Ticketmaster, and the next minute
you’re getting a “link not found” message on your phone when you go to buy tickets.
It’s much the same with national touring artists as well. Veteran New York emcee Busta Rhymes quietly canceled his tour that had a planned April 11 stop in Detroit, while Georgia emcee Playboi Carti scrapped his highly anticipated tour with an October 4 stop. When no explanation is given, the assumption from fans is that “ticket sales” were the reason, but it’s more intricate than that. Despite hip-hop’s commercial dominance, its concert and touring budgets aren’t as big as other musical genres and aren’t privy to the same kind of promotional dollars spent.
“You don’t need a band, just a DJ,” Hayes says. “The allure with hip-hop with major companies was that it was always cheap to make. They would make a lot of money and take the resources from that cheap labor and you put it over there to the crossover top 40 side.”
“It’s not fair — marketing dollars, it’s not on the same level,” Thompson adds. “Look at the numbers. Look at the billboards. Look at the ads purchased. It’s not the same playing field, but I don’t think it will ever be.”
From the outside looking in, hip-hop is still a great place. Statista published a report earlier this year showing 54% percent of music fans between 20-24 named hip-hop their favorite music genre. The concert industry also appears healthy as Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, reported operating income of
Lamonte Hayes.
COURTESY PHOTO Lauren McGrier.
COURTESY PHOTO
almost $46.8 million, which was up 21% for the second quarter of 2023.
However, Civic Science reported that 36% of consumers say they will spend less on concerts and live performances this summer. A Yahoo! Finance poll showed that 54% of people aren’t going to spend more than $50 concert tickets, and 35.2% aren’t going to spend more than $150. None of that is good news for a genre that depends on a fanbase with a limited disposable income who are getting bombarded with more concerts than they have time to attend. Per SeatGeek, the average price of a hip-hop concert is $134.
“I think the artists and the industry are stressing the consumer financially,” Hayes says. “I think we got too many shows in the marketplace [...] Hip-hop is also a last-minute market. That’s a known fact, but you also have to understand why — because you still have DTE, you still have to put gas in your car, might have child support, you might need some stuff from Costco. People have real-life expenses.”
“There’s that habitual cycle where fans wait to buy tickets because they’re afraid it’s going to get canceled, and it gets canceled because they waited too long to buy tickets,” adds Six Two.
“One thing I know from working in the touring industry, we talk a good game as our people but we don’t show up like that,” Thompson adds. “It be mostly white folks at these hip-hop shows.”
In order to maximize a tour’s earnings potential, promoters will oversell tickets at general seating venues knowing that a percentage of patrons
“They feel more comfortable breaking up a white boy fight and letting them walk away like, ‘Alright guys, it’s over.’ Some Black guys get into a fight and everybody is nervous.”
won’t show. This is one of the reasons hip-hop concerts encounter capacity issues frequently. They might also book an arena tour for an artist that doesn’t have the streams or analytics to back it up with hopes the artist will pick up momentum. When that doesn’t happen, they’ll seek to kick down the show to a smaller venue (like a club or theater) or even skip several markets altogether, as Atlanta rapper Lil Baby did when he canceled seven dates on his “Only Us Tour” last year.
“The majority of acts on the road should only be doing theaters, 3,000to 6,000-seat venues, and selling them out,” says Hayes. “Even if you do two or three nights of those, that’s much better than trying to go for a big arena. And to be honest, you’re going to give a better show in a theater than in an arena. Everybody isn’t built for arenas. It’s a money grab.”
When ticket sales look bleak for a local one-off show, venue general managers and promoters can be eager to cancel a show altogether as there won’t be any way to make a profit. “If you’re not selling tickets and you’re
not going to have anybody in that room, then how are we going to know how to staff our space?” asks Lauren “Lo” McGrier, who’s managed Southwest Detroit’s El Club since 2021. “If I’m going to have all these security guards, and all these bartenders, and my insurance for the day, and I’m not making no bar, then what am I opening for?”
McGrier and Hayes both believe this is the reason you see more Detroit hip-hop artists coming together to do concerts. The results of combining multiple fanbases and giving patrons the chance to see several of their favorite acts on the same stage stand the best chance of delivering a sell-out show. Earlier this year, Detroit hip-hop groups Team Eastside and Doughboyz Cashout caused buzz when it was announced they would reunite onstage at the January 19 show headlined by 42 Dugg at Little Caesars Arena.
“In my opinion, outside of Team Eastside and Doughboyz Cashout, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a local act that had that many people truly excited about going to an arena,” says
Hayes. “And yes, there were other people that were on it, but if you go back and look at the sales history of the data, the majority of the ticket sales were sold when it was announced that those guys were going to be on the show.”
The need for more Black-owned venues
By nature, hip-hop is communal. It has always needed an alignment and synergy between the artists, supporters, and venue managers, and some of Detroit’s most memorable moments were enabled by venue owners and managers that understood the needs of its participants. The Hip Hop Shop is legendary because owner Maurice Malone made it accessible to everyone. When Big Proof died on April 11, 2006, Mike D who, who managed Saint Andrew’s Hall at that time, opened it at 10 a.m. so Proof’s peers and fans could congregate, pray, and mourn. (And this was after Saint Andrew’s had been sold to Clear Channel.)
“It was very much a community feel,” Six Two says.
Some of that same comunal energy is at El Club. The small venue has become a fixture in southwest Detroit and a place where artists and promoters can throw shows without dealing with the obstacles and reservations of bigger corporate-owned venues in the city. “We know the culture, so it doesn’t intimidate us like it does other venues,” McGrier says.
McGrier states it cost at least $2,000
Anthony Thompson II.
COURTESY PHOTO Mark Hicks.
COURTESY PHOTO
for her to open her doors, and El Club has been known to negotiate deals that bigger venues won’t. “We can reach a happy medium,” she adds.
BJ Pearson has also been an administrative mainstay of Detroit’s entertainment scene. He managed event operations at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall for 11 years before becoming vice president of the Garden Theater in 2014.
“I’ve worked on both spectrums. I’ve seen both sides. Managing an independent venue, there are less hoops you have to go through. When you’re dealing with a corporate-structured venue you have to deal with union labor, you have to go through the board, and a whole panel of what kind of events you’re bringing,” he says.
However, being a “hip-hop friendly” venue doesn’t come without its hiccups. McGrier cites challenges like dipping bar sales because patrons are smoking marijuana more and drinking less, and the sense of entitlement that can be shown by large entourages of hip-hop artists.
“They have these long guest lists and those are the people who don’t want to stand in line, they give you a hassle at the door, and just the energy, it’s hard to deal with sometimes,” she says.
Her concerns aren’t new. Anyone who’s been to a hip-hop show in any era will notice the amount of non-performers who tend to be on the stage with the main act. Many times performances will be temporarily paused while the stage is cleared, because it seems that every hip-hop artist has a crew of close friends and family that they want to share the moment with. The solidarity is commendable, but problematic at times. (At the 42 Dugg show in January, the performance was paused, with a voice announcing, “If you ain’t a rapper, get off the stage!”)
“They want to showcase their family and friends. It’s a challenge, it’s a challenge to get them on stage and off stage. We as a venue have restrictions on how we can make it better,” says Pearson.
Six Two feels getting a list via a show rider of how many people an artist is going to bring in the venue and on stage (as touring acts do) would help mitigate any logistical snafus. “It’s never communicated that a large entourage is coming,” she says, adding, “The number of people allowed in the venue includes entourage, staff, artists, fans, everybody — and so when you’re bringing that many people in the back door you’re really creating a risk in terms of being over capacity.”
“Detroit is a very combative city sometimes, so I get why there are
red flags, but 90% of the time it’s all good,” adds Hicks.
The Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre has been praised for how they work with the hip-hop community. The Right Productions, ran by Shahida Mausi and her four sons — Sulaiman, Malik, Rashid, and Dorian — have handled all aspects of programming and marketing for the venue since 2004. A quick click through the venue’s website and you’ll see concerts by jazz artists and legacy R&B acts alongside ’90s hip-hop emcees like Trick Daddy and local favs like Babyface Ray.
“That family is doing an amazing job,” says Thompson. “Respecting the venue, and selling out all the shows. They’re a Black family that runs it. They sell season tickets — how many Black folks got season tickets? Y’all want to see it get better, up the sales.”
Thompson believes more efforts should be made for more Black-owned venues in the region. The thinking is that if there were Black entrepreneurs from Detroit’s hip-hop community willing to acquire or open concert venues, then that would grow Detroit hip-hop’s independent culture and lessen the dependency on corporate venues or those with non-Black owners who don’t understand the culture and don’t want to.
The Garden Theater is the only Black-owned venue in the city with 1,000-patron capacity. It has hosted events like “Trap Karaoke” in 2019, premiered Al Nuke’s Detroit Dreams film, and held the first “313 Day” hiphop concert in 2022.
“We want to make sure our venue is a staple to our community,” Pearson says. “To me it’s important that we keep hip-hop and R&B in our community. It’s a major thing in our community, to bring it to a nicer venue in Midtown, downtown Detroit, to a Black-owned establishment is a honor of our company.”
Both Thompson and Hayes hope that more Black general managers and owners would establish a stronger communal approach and working relationships that Detroit hip-hop has always needed.
“You would have people who really know who an artist like Skilla Baby is,” says Hayes. “A lot of these owners, they don’t know who they are, they don’t know their story.”
“I want to see more Black venue owners,” Thomposon says. “I want to see more Black executives. I think that will help put things on more of an even playing field. I kind of fault us as a people at times too because when are we going to come together and do some things to make it happen?”
WHAT’S GOING ON
Select events happening in metro Detroit this week. Be sure to check venue website before events for latest information. Add your event to our online calendar: metrotimes. com/AddEvent.
MUSIC
Wednesday, Aug. 14
Live/Concert
Foxxy Gwensday Wednesday & The Preservation of Jazz: Jazz & Cocktails featuring Sky Covington & Friends in Concert 7-10 p.m.; Aretha’s Jazz Cafe, 350 Madison St., Detroit; $20.
Jazz Open Jam Session in the Lounge! 8 p.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; no cover.
Sheila E. & Larry Lee & The Back in the Day Band 7:30 p.m.; The Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, 2600 E. Atwater St., Detroit; $15-$51. Matt Lorusso Trio & Special Guests 8-11 p.m.; Northern Lights Lounge, 660 W. Baltimore St., Detroit; no cover.
Together Pangea, Liily, Same Eyes 7 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $23.
Thursday, Aug. 15
Live/Concert
Carrie Nation and the Speakeasy, Fishgutzzz & His Ignorant Band, Matthew Teardrop, Dr. Haj 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $15.
Nate Topo and the 313 Group 8-10 p.m.; Aretha’s Jazz Cafe, 350 Madison St., Detroit; $20.
Missy Elliott, Ciara, Busta Rhymes, Timbaland 7 p.m.; Little Caesars Arena, 2645 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $79.50-$329.50.
Stacked Like Pancakes, Mephiskapheles 7 p.m.; Small’s, 10339 Conant St., Hamtramck; $17.
WDET 2024 Sounds Like Detroit Showcase: Drey Skonie & The kLOUDs, C3theartist, Elspeth Tremblay & The Treatment, Chris Lanard & One Band Global, Isis Damil (hosted by Jeff Milo) 7-10 p.m.; New Center Park, 2998 W Grand Blvd, Detroit; $25.
Ying Yang Twins, Twista 8 p.m.; Sound Board, 2901 Grand River Ave., Detroit; $41-$52.
Karaoke/Open Mic
DARE-U-OKE 9 p.m.-midnight; Northern Lights Lounge, 660 W. Baltimore St., Detroit; no cover.
Drag Queen Karaoke 8 p.m.-2 a.m.; Woodward Avenue Brewers, 22646 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; no cover.
Friday, Aug. 16
Live/Concert
Bush, Jerry Cantrell, Candlebox, Bones UK 6 p.m.; Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill, 14900 Metropolitan Pkwy., Sterling Heights; $39.50-$89.50.
Candlelight: 90s Unplugged on Strings 6-7:15 p.m.; The Detroit Masonic Temple, 500 Temple Street, Detroit; $29.
Fe Norteña: Noche de Lujo de Norteño Sax en Detroit 9 p.m.; The Crofoot Ballroom, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $50-$200.
Gladys Knight 8 p.m.; The Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, 2600 E. Atwater St., Detroit; $45-$125.
Sapphira Cristál 7 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $29-$69.
The Marshall Tucker Band 8 p.m.; The Music Hall, 350 Madison Ave., Detroit; $49.50-$69.50.
The Prince Experience Starring Gabriel Sanchez 8 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $25.
Thra, Urine Hell, Archthrone, Amongst Enemies, Trespass 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $15.
DJ/Dance
The Brothers Groove, DJ Tangent 8 p.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; no cover.
Saturday, Aug. 17
Live/Concert
Action Bronson Presents: Dr. Bachlava And Human Growth
Hormone 7 p.m.; The Crofoot Ballroom, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $45.
Afro Nation Detroit; Bedrock’s Douglass Site, Beaubien Blvd., Detroit; $99. Childish Gambino, WILLOW 8 p.m.; Little Caesars Arena, 2645 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $54.50-$244.50.
Cody Jinks:, Tanner Usrey 7:30 p.m.; Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill, 14900 Metropolitan Pkwy., Sterling Heights; $39.50-$250.
Ekko Astral, Tetchy, Killing
August 14-20, 2024 | metrotimes.com
Pixies 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $15.
Forrest Frank, Josiah Queen 7 pm; Cathedral Theatre at the Masonic Temple, 500 Temple St., Detroit; $45$249.
Michael Franks 8 p.m.; The Music Hall, 350 Madison Ave., Detroit; $59-$79.
The Old Breed, Side Effects, Hairy Queen, and 5 Good Reasons 8 p.m.-midnight; Regal Beagle, 817 E. Michigan Ave., Ypsilanti; $10.
Saddle Up Country Dance Party! 8 p.m.; Diamondback Music Hall, 49345 S. Interstate 94 Service Dr., Belleville; $10.
The Amalgamation Project II live feat. Letters from Abel, The T.M. Experience 7:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $10.
Trey Songz, Muni Long 8 p.m.; The Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, 2600 E. Atwater St., Detroit; $49.50-$200.
DJ/Dance
HEARTBREAK BEATS: Dream Cruise Edition! 80s New Wave Lounge w/ DJs Zumby & Josh 8 p.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; no cover.
Sunday, Aug. 18 Live/Concert
Afro Nation Detroit Bedrock’s Douglass Site, Beaubien Blvd., Detroit; $99.
Bilmuri, Driveways 7 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $23.
Drake Bell, Savage Reaction 8 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $30-$130.
Dweezil Zappa 6:30 pm; Royal Oak Music Theatre, 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; $43-$128.
EarthTones at Palmer Park Log Cabin: Wendell Harrison & Tribe, Say Less with Louis M. Jones, Jordan Anderson 4-7 p.m.; Palmer Park Log Cabin, Merrill Plaisance St., Detroit; no cover.
Eyehategod, Exhorder, Hans Condor, Self Absorbed 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $25.
Iron and Wine, Sunny War 6 p.m.; Cathedral Theatre at the Masonic Temple, 500 Temple St., Detroit; $39-$225.
Kindred the Family Soul, Jeff Bradshaw 7:30 pm; Sound Board, 2901 Grand River Ave., Detroit; $44-$57.
Princess Goes, Synthia Looper 7
p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $37.
Monday, Aug. 19
Live/Concert
Orbit Culture, Repentance 6:30 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $29.95-$60.
The Diana Ross & Donna Summer Tribute ft. LadyLove 6-11 p.m.; Aretha’s Jazz Cafe, 350 Madison St., Detroit; $35.
DJ/Dance
Adult Skate Night 8:30-11 p.m.; Lexus Velodrome, 601 Mack Ave., Detroit; $5.
Tuesday, Aug. 20
Live/Concert
Faster Pussycat 7 p.m.; Diamondback Music Hall, 49345 S. Interstate 94 Service Dr., Belleville; $20-$35.
Global Sunsets, Blackman & Arnold Trio 7-10 p.m.; Northern Lights Lounge, 660 W. Baltimore St., Detroit; no cover.
Lindsey Stirling, Walk Off the Earth, Nya 7 p.m.; Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill, 14900 Metropolitan Pkwy., Sterling Heights; $29.50-$175.
Mad Caddies, The Iron Roses, You Dirty Rat 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $15. Ohgeesy, 310babii, Yung Chowder 7 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $35.
DJ/Dance
B.Y.O.R Bring Your Own Records Night 9 p.m.-midnight; The Old Miami, 3930 Cass Ave., Detroit; no cover.
THEATER
Performance
Matrix Theatre Company The Adventures of Dimitri and Banana Sandwich puppet show; pay what you can, donations accepted; Friday, 8-9:30 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 3-4:30 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 3-4:30 p.m.
Planet Ant Theatre Cade Willimon’s REAL Ghost Adventures; $35, with a group rate of $25 per person for groups of four or more; Thursday, 6-11:30 p.m.; Friday, 6-11:30 p.m.; Saturday, 6-11:30 p.m.; Sunday, 6-11:30 p.m.
COMEDY
Comedy! All-Star Showdown; Fridays and Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.; $25.
Planet Ant Theatre Hip-Prov: Improv with a Dash of Hip-Hop; $10; Wednesday, 7 p.m.
Stand-up
Caesars Palace Windsor - Augustus Ballroom An Evening With Larry The Cable Guy; $33-$93; Friday, 8 p.m. District 142 David Koechner; $25; Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Royal Oak Music Theatre Jimmy Failla; Saturday, 7 p.m.
The Loving Touch Chris Gethard, Eddie Pepitone; $26; Saturday, 7 p.m.
The Shelter Danny Lopriore, ben Gold; $20; Friday, 7 p.m.
Continuing this week stand-up Blind Pig Blind Pig Comedy FREE Mondays, 8 p.m.
The Independent Comedy Club at Planet Ant The Sh*t Show Open Mic; $5 suggested donation; Fridays, Saturdays, 11 p.m.-1:30 a.m.
Detroit Shipping Company 313 Comedy Show Your; no cover; Sunday, 7-8:30 p.m.
FILM
Screening
New Center Park Free Outdoor Movie Night: Barbie; no cover; Friday, 7-11 p.m.
The War Memorial Outdoor Family Movie Night: Ghostbusters Frozen Empire; no cover; Wednesday, 6:30-9 p.m.
ARTS
Artist talk
Curator Led Tour: Laura Mott and Abel González Fernández
Led by Chief Curator Laura Mott and co-curator Abel González Fernández, the tour will guide visitors through the paired exhibitions, A Modernist Regime: Cuban Mid-Century Design and A Modernist Regime: The Contemporary Cuban Lens Thursday, 6:30-7:30 p.m; Cranbrook Art Museum, 39221 N. Woodward Ave., Bloomfield Hills; no cover.
Art exhibition opening New Dodge Lounge Curated by Disco Walls: The Non-Toxic Masculinity Series. Panel discussion moderated by Disco Walls to include male artists and community leaders in the Detroit area including the featured artist. No cover; Sunday, 3-7 p.m.
Marcus Elliot is inspired by Detroit’s parks
Transformation is always at the heart of Marcus Elliot’s work.
The Detroit saxophonist, composer, and educator says his upcoming project, Sounds from the Park, will be no different.
Commissioned by the Detroit Parks Coalition, the collection of work will reflect the diverse stories, histories, and cultures of Detroit’s parks and their surrounding neighborhoods.
Elliot’s creative process is deeply rooted in community. He’s been visiting Palmer Park, Eliza Howell Park, Clark Park, Chandler Park, and Belle Isle to engage with locals and get a feel for the essence of each area. His goal is to blend structured music with improvisation, drawing inspiration from the organic sounds and atmospheres of the parks.
“When I do a project, when I’m learning about a certain topic, going through that process transforms me as a person and I allow that transformation to inform the music,” Elliot says. “These parks to me represent abundance… Especially in the world that we’re in right now, to have access to a place where you can just be a part of that and put down whatever it is that you’re carrying, it’s a serious gift.”
The project is made possible by a $100,000 grant from The Joyce Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting artists of color in the Great Lakes region in creating community-centered work. Sounds from the Park is one of five 2024 Joyce Award recipients and one of two Michigan-based initiatives recognized. The other is DRONE, a multimedia theater production by Andrea Assaf in collaboration with the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.
In the summer of 2025, Sounds from the Park will culminate in a series of outdoor concerts at the parks that inspired the music. Elliot will perform alongside community artists connected to each park, with each concert being filmed and recorded for a full-length vinyl album and video series documenting the project.
Despite Elliot’s deep personal connection to Detroit’s parks — having grown up on the westside and frequently visiting Eliza Howell and Belle Isle — he’s also wrestling with the doubts that often accompany creative work. Since being awarded the grant, he found himself asking questions like: “Am I worthy of this? Am I good enough? Am I the
right artist for this? Is this even something I can do?”
“As I kind of traced my emotions back, it’s kind of this idea that I don’t deserve the abundance that’s in front of me,” Elliot says. “I think just the process of going to these parks on a regular basis, it’s been really good for me to just accept like, ‘Hey, this is here for you.’ You don’t have to pay money to be there. You don’t have to be at a certain status. You can just show up. It’s here and it’s beautiful.”
In collaboration with the Detroit Parks Coalition and Sidewalk Detroit, an organization focused on advancing public life through art and equity, a main mission of Sounds from the Park is to “deepen connections between residents and the land, reaffirming community identity and belonging.”
“I think it’s important for us as a city to embrace the abundance of what we have here,” Elliot says. “These places, they’re very special and they’re worth spending time in and worth investing in… The hope is that the music can kind of just help bring some more awareness of just how precious these parks are.”
As Elliot continues to immerse himself in each park and surrounding neighborhood, he’s also in the midst of composing.
“Through my personal experience, I found that when I’m learning about a new thing or doing a project, the process of doing the things that I’m doing has an effect on my creative space,” he says. “I really try not to force anything, but just to kind of show up and be myself and create.”
He adds, “I do a lot of recording myself, recording ideas on the piano, so right now that’s the space that I’m in, and then, in a couple of months here, I’ll go into actually starting to kind of organize the ideas and see what I have and see what themes kind of come from that.”
For Elliot, these parks — and nature in general — symbolize transformation, harmony, and inspiration.
“I’m constantly thinking about how things come together and how they can support one another,” he says. “I just feel like naturally that’s just what nature does. It harmonizes and produces in a beautiful, beautiful way. I feel like I’m always trying to be inspired by how nature just naturally creates harmony and just doing the best that I can to allow the music to do the same.”
—Layla McMurtrie
Marcus Elliot. TAMMY TAKKIS
FOOD
Hot stuff
By Jane Slaughter
Leña
2720 Brush, Detroit 313-262-6082
lenadetroit.com
Starters $9-$24, entrées $26-$44
A Spanish restaurateur might chuckle at the idea of a place that closes at 10 p.m., when his customers are just settling in, but hey, we’re Midwesterners and this is how we roll. No complaints here — and BasqueCatalan Leña is full to the brim not just on weekends but on weeknights.
Leña bills itself as a neighborhood place, and toney Brush Park is apparently just the right location for a spot where local folks are comfortable dropping $150 a couple for no special occasion. Given that, I’m grateful when a server doesn’t ask if I want “sparkling” or “still” but just pours the tap water.
Leña has always been one of my favorite Spanish words. Partly because of the way it sounds, sort of like my grandmother’s name, but more because I think it’s neat that there’s a special word for firewood that doesn’t include “fire” or “wood.” At least one element of every dish at Leña is “fired” in some way, whether on the hearth, the grill or a plancha cooktop.
The flavors at Leña are outstanding and the service is top-notch, though
it takes a long time for your first dish to arrive and noise levels are quite high. The menu includes ”pintxos,” the Basque version of tapas, which you’re warned will be just two to four bites per order; “entradas,” which include gazpacho, a salad, a Spanish tortilla (more like a quiche), and a couple of vegetable dishes; and “principales,” main dishes.
Although every dish at Leña was good, I’d say it was the starters whose flavors stood out most. One friend said “best tapenade I’ve ever had,” of an earthy spread of smoked olives, walnuts, and quince paste, with lemon prominent (lemon is a modal flavor throughout the menu).
Also outstanding was blonde gazpacho, Andalusia style. It’s not tomato-based but white, more or less liquid garlic in effect, garnished with roasted grapes and almonds for crunch. A charred beet tartare (that’s beet, not beef) is garlicky too, on crisp, thick, buttery toast. The tortilla has a soft potato filling enlivened by lemon and a kick of something spicy at the end.
Ham croquettes were fine — crisp spheres, tender within — but more ordinary. A bright-red piquillo pepper was stuffed with crab, a good contrast. Most unusual were smoked mushrooms — chanterelles foraged by the chef himself, we were told — with a creamy sauce and hazelnuts, served with more thick, buttery toast. Our
party agreed this was a stand-out. The only small-to-medium dish I didn’t care for was grilled broccoli, served cold, crunchy and smoky.
Of the half dozen main dishes, I liked a long tentacle of charred octopus primarily for the excellent green mojo and smoky, lemony aioli that brightened it up. Salmon is sushi grade from New Zealand and cooked gently to bring out salmon’s best characteristics. It’s served with a tomato-brandy sauce you’ll want to sop up and a fennel sofrito. One night a salmon special was offered—the head, blackened—and the meat was delectable if hard to pick out.
I found chicken chorizo rather bland, as you might expect: let chorizo be chorizo! It’s served with a big heap of grilled peppers and onions. Another sausage, long, skinny txistorra (you know it’s Basque when you see x’s in unfamiliar places), is cured just for a day. Here it was served with “Spanish rice” that I thought could be a lot fluffier; it’s the Calasparra variety that’s supposed to be good for paella, and it did indeed have a lot of texture. The dish includes a dab of sofrito to liven it up.
For dessert we had a puff pastry that turned out to be not feathery but a hard cracker, with a voluptuous rhubarb-raspberry filling. Hard to cut but worth the work. Arroz con leche was a bit overcome with cinnamon; a walnut praline made it taste a lot like a
cinnamon graham cracker. Honey Maid still makes them!
Leña is rightly proud of its alcohol program, where the wines, sherries, and vermouths are all Spanish. I read recently that Spain has “more land under vine” than any other country. I wasn’t crazy about a white called Barco del Corneta “Cucú” Verdejo Castilla y León; too acrid, but that’s just me; I don’t claim to be right (and I don’t like sweet wine in any way). My friend loved her dry white Estatu from the same year, 2022, and another friend said a red Pinaguas was full-bodied and just what she was looking for. Sangria was made with rosé and cocchi rosa.
The Spanish are big on gin and tonic, which they call “gin tonic,” the English words, and Leña plays around with three variations that are poured generously. In the fruit version, we couldn’t taste tonic, though Angostura bitters certainly added the astringent note, and it floated pink peppercorns and a couple of raspberries. Floral and herbal are the other gin tonic options.
Parking is a problem for non-residents of Brush Park, where you need a special resident permit to park after 6 p.m. Leña validates for the lots at 440 Alfred and 124 Alfred; get the QR code. And be certain about your plans: Leña charges a fee of $25 per person if you cancel later than four hours before show time.
At least one element of every dish at Leña is “fired” in some way.
COURTESY PHOTO
CULTURE
Arts spotlight
Systems of oppression are ‘Still in Place’ for artists Yvette Rock and Shekenia Mann
A prolific art exhibit is tucked away in perhaps one of the most unassuming buildings on Detroit’s west side.
In the lobby of Northwest Activity Center, a triptych of white paint creeps in on a black center. Lines of chalky white run across the black canvas, inching in from all sides, dripping ever closer to the middle. If it infiltrates the black landscape anymore, eventually, it will cover it completely.
This is part of Yvette Rock’s “Infiltration of Institutional White” series, part of an exhibit called Still in Place at the National Conference of Artists (NCA) inside Northwest Activity Center. Her work is displayed alongside photography by Shekenia Mann in the show, which runs until the end of August.
“I started to think about institutional white as a color swatch,” Rock says. “When you go to the paint store you have different names and colors and so that color, I call it ‘institutional white’ because it’s pervasive and it’s infiltrated the spaces that we’re in historically, and in the present day.”
Rock is a Surinamese-Domincan artist based in Detroit whose family fled to the United States in 1983 to escape corruption and impending dictatorship. She runs the non profit art organization Live
By Randiah Camille Green
Coal and Detroit rePatched — a green space and arts hub in the Brightmoor neighborhood she created on several plots of overgrown land.
Several of Rock’s pieces in Still in Place including “What Comes From Dirt” and “Memory, Migration, and Movement of Black” reference the land she tends in Brightmoor. She was inspired by a photo she took of a pile of dirt on the land, which for her represents a source of life, perseverance, and the “richness of the color black.” The land in Brightmoor that Detroit rePatched’s mobile gallery and studio space sits on was a dumping site and Rock says she struggled with city policies that left her with several tickets for not cleaning the area, which had previously been neglected by the City of Detroit, fast enough.
One time she was fighting a blight ticket when she found a dead woman’s body that was dumped on the property.
“I was literally in court with the city because they ticketed me for, ‘You have too much brush,’ or ‘Why’d it take you so long to clean up?’” she remembers.
“I very emotionally described this body that had just been dumped at the same time that we’re getting a ticket and I’m like there’s other things to fight. Why are
you fighting me? Shouldn’t we be working together, cooperating to make this a better space for our community? … The policies in place in the city are pretty broken and frustrating. I just don’t want to see this land abandoned.”
She adds, “There’s so much that comes from dirt. Our food comes from there and then there’s this human body put in there… It’s both painful and poetic.”
Further in the series, she flipped the dirt pile over and realized it looked like a boat, holding the ancestral memory of migration whether chosen or forced.
“I started to think about being a political asylee coming from Suriname to America, fleeing and thinking about all those who are either fleeing or those kidnapped,” she says. “So what does this boat start to symbolize? I’m no historian but we know enough to know the grueling pain, the separation, the horrors that took place on boats of our brothers and sisters coming [here].”
Going back to “Infiltration of Institutional White,” the triptych in the lobby with white paint creeping towards a black center is actually a self portrait of Rock.
“It’s the infiltration in my own life by institutional white and institutions that
I have given my ideas or brainstormed with [thinking], ‘Oh, we’re doing this together,’ and then at the end I get no credit,” Rock says. “I’m just an example of thousands of Black people that happens to.”
The lobby art is just a tease as more work lies inside the NCA’s gallery. Here Rock paints a series of maps of Brightmoor, once brightly colored, slowly turning more white.
Beside her work sits Mann’s photographs of sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta picking cotton. They look as if they could have jumped out of a history book page onto the gallery wall, but these are images of Black folks who still choose to pick cotton that Mann shot in 2012.
In one photo of a dense cotton field, a sign reading “Heathman Plantation” looms in the background, linking the not-so-distant past and present.
“For many people in that area, there just isn’t much more for them to do,” Mann says.
Her father worked as a sharecropper back in Mississippi but eventually migrated north. When Mann went to Mississippi for her grandmother’s funeral, she was shocked at her grandmother’s home — which she describes as a shack
In one photo of a dense cotton field, a sign reading “Heathman Plantation” looms in the background, linking the not-so-distant past and present. SHEKENIA MANN
— but also struck by the area’s natural beauty. But when the photographer told her father she wanted to return to Mississippi to take photos, she was surprised by his response.
“He goes, ‘No baby, those white folks will snatch that camera out of your hand,’ and my stomach turned because you’re talking about this strong man who fishes [and] hunts,” she says. “He goes, ‘Baby, we were sharecroppers.’ …I had no idea. I had never asked him about his childhood. We were millimeters away from slavery.”
Like many Detroiters, Mann’s family came to the city in search of a better life during the Great Migration.
“When you have a vision, or a yearning for something different, it takes the pioneers in the family to get out of those conditions, and to bring others and let them know, hey, there’s something else,” she says.”
Eventually, Mann did make it back to the Mississippi Delta, camera in tow, to photograph Black men in the area who were still working picking cotton.
“I saw brothers and I said, they looked like me. They looked like Detroiters,” she remembers. “They were clean and neat … their jeans were ironed and you could see their shirts were crisp and clean. It reminded me of Detroit. I’m like, this is us. These people are up
North too, from the Great Migration. So my thought was, it’s 2012 and we still picking cotton. The only difference is that we’re using cotton pickers to do it.”
The purpose of Mann’s photographs is not to shame people who are still doing this back-breaking work, but to show how some things haven’t changed much in some areas in the South. She says she didn’t ask the subjects in her photos about their working and living conditions and whether they were being fairly compensated, though those are questions the photographs pose. Mostly, she wanted to document their lives and for Black men like them to see their own beauty.
“Look at yourself and see how beautiful and resilient you are,” she says. “See your beauty and your strength, and hear from your ancestors from which [you] came. I think all of us could benefit from knowing where and from whom we’ve come from, because you can draw upon that strength and continue to rise and continue to imagine, and do more and better.”
“Amen,” Rock adds.
Still in Place is on view at the NCA Gallery inside Northwest Activity Center through August; 18100 Meyers Rd., Suite 392, Detroit. Hours are by appointment only.
An image from Yvette Rock’s “Infiltration of Institutional White” series. YVETTE ROCK
CULTURE
Savage Love
By Dan Savage
: Q
I’m a queer cis woman in my late 30s with a problem: I don’t like having my pussy eaten. This isn’t about me being uncomfortable with the way my pussy looks or smells or tastes. I just don’t like the sensation. At best, I get close but eventually plateau, which is frustrating. At worst, it feels slimy, like a slug exploring my genitals. Also, being on my back with my knees up reminds me of being at the gynecologist, which is not sexy. In the end, it’s just not my thing. But the actual problem for me is modern men. They are obsessed with eating pussy and get very pouty when you don’t think it’s the best. I like plenty of other things — being held and talked dirty to, light teasing with their mouths, fingering, etc. — but they all want to get me off orally. I get a lot of, “You just haven’t had it done right,” or, “Wait until I do it for you,” and then they get mad when (surprise!) I don’t like this thing I don’t like. I tried dating a couple of men who “don’t eat pussy,” but those men didn’t seem to care at all about getting a woman off. And while I’m queer, it feels like cunnilingus is even more important when you’re hooking up with other women/AFABs. Honestly, I feel like faking it with new partners and enjoying my actual orgasms alone would be easier than opening about this to new people. Being treated like a freak has turned sex, which is supposed to be fun, into something that makes me feel bad about myself.
Any advice would be appreciated. At the very least, Dan, maybe you could make a public service announcement telling people that being GGG for a cis woman doesn’t just mean eating her pussy, it means showing a genuine interest in who she is as an individual sexual being.
—Wish I Liked Licks
A: Let’s get that PSA out of the way: Not everyone likes receiving oral! There are cis men who don’t like having their cocks sucked! There are cis women who don’t like having their pussies eaten! There are trans men who don’t like having their pussies eaten or their neophalluses sucked and trans women who don’t like having their
cocks sucked or their neovaginas eaten and enbies who don’t like having their genitals — whatever form they take — licked or sucked! People are allowed to dislike things! Even things you’re good at! Even things most people like! Being GGG means listening to people when they tell you what they like! And doing those things! If they’re things you like too! It’s really not hard!
I hope that helps, WILL, but since PSAs never reach 100% of their target demo, you’ll still have to tell new partners you dislike receiving oral sex. Which means, if you don’t wanna spend the rest of your life faking orgasms before sneaking away to get yourself off (which sounds worse than having to explain that receiving oral isn’t what you want), you’re gonna have to use your words.
Pro-tip: don’t string weak-ass words together into mealymouthed statements like, “Sometimes I get close from oral but I’ve never gotten off from oral and there are other things we could do if that’s OK?” The kind of guys you wanna fuck — who are, ironically enough, the kind of guys who do wanna eat pussy — are highly likely to interpret a statement like that as a cry for help. Many of them may have been with women in the past who were uncomfortable with their own genitals and/or had never been with a guy who loved eating pussy, WILL, and thanks to their persistence — in offering oral over and over again — dozens or hundreds of other women overcame their hangups and discovered that they loved being on the receiving end of oral sex. That is how it sometimes goes down.
But that’s not how it’s gonna go down for you.
You don’t have issues with how your pussy looks, smells, or tastes and you’ve been with plenty of men who loved eating pussy. You’ve give it a try… again and again and again… and it’s not for you. So, when you’re with a new sex partner, WILL, you need to hammer that point home with a clear and emphatic statement like this: “You’re one of the good guys — I hate straight guys who don’t go down on women — but plenty of people who were really good at eating pussy have gone down on me and it does nothing for me. Not only doesn’t it turn me on, it turns me the fuck off. And that’s not what either of us is here for. So, about those fingers of yours…”
Zooming out for a second, WILL, you say you’re frustrated by modern men who seem to believe eating pussy is
synonymous with meeting a woman’s needs — and you’re proof that isn’t true for all women — but you’ve found that retrograde men who loudly refuse to eat pussy are worse, as those men don’t care about getting a woman off.
I have some good news for you, WILL: your choices aren’t limited to guys who won’t shut up about how much they love eating pussy and guys who won’t shut up about how much they hate it. Because mixed into the pile of modern men who seem obsessed with eating pussy, WILL, you will find a small number of modern men who are only pretending to be obsessed. And in that pile of queer women (and AFABs) you might wanna fuck or date, WILL, you will find a small number of women (and AFABs) who enjoy everything about sapphic sex except the eating pussy part.
The kind of partner you want is someone who goes through the motions of pushing back when you say you don’t want to receive oral sex (“Wait until I do it for you!”) but who doesn’t push back for long. In other words, WILL, you want someone who’s relieved to learn they don’t have to eat your pussy but whose relief isn’t obvious. If you can own that — if you can admit to wanting a partner who either wants to eat your pussy but doesn’t insist on it or someone does a very good impression of someone wants to eat your pussy — you’ll have an easier time tolerating the pushback you’re inevitably going to receive when you share this fact about yourself. Because that pushback is a good sign, WILL, a sign that this person is worth the time and effort required to convince them that, no, you really and truly don’t want to receive oral sex.
: Q My partner and I have been dating for almost a year, and everything’s been amazing — this is the best relationship I’ve had in a long time. We have a Dom/Sub dynamic, and he really wants me to get into anal play, something I’m new to. Early in our relationship, we tried, but I was on a medication that made me nauseous, so it was unpleas-
ant. I’m no longer on that medication. He hasn’t pushed the subject since, until the other day when he tried to insert a plug without much warning. I told him I need more comfort and preparation before we dive into that kind of play, especially since I’m a novice at anal. I also confessed I’ve been dealing with some GI issues. He made it clear that he eventually wants to fuck my ass with his giant cock, and he seems to think I’m just making excuses, and not trying hard enough. Which to be fair, I haven’t done much solo exploration with plugs. And while he hasn’t been forceful, he mentioned that not progressing with anal could be a dealbreaker for him. Is that fair? Can anal really be a dealbreaker? How do I navigate this without compromising my comfort while still being a good partner?
—Advice Negotiating Anal Leeway
A: Anal can be a dealbreaker — anything can be a dealbreaker — and Liz Lemon never said dealbreakers had to fair. But dealbreakers cut both ways. Meaning, your partner is free to say, “I’m gonna break up with you if I can’t fuck your ass with my giant dick,” ANAL, but you’re free to say to him, “If you pressure me to do things that don’t feel good — and trying to shove a plug in my ass without warning did not feel good — I’m gonna dump your ass before we can figure out whether your dick feels good in mine.”
As prices of admission go, ANAL, having butt sex that doesn’t feel good is too steep a price to pay. Going without anal sex, on the other hand, is a price many have paid to be with someone they loved. If your “amazing” new partner with the giant dick isn’t willing to contemplate going without anal for you — if he can’t even entertain paying that price of admission — he probably doesn’t deserve your ass.
P.S. To make someone feel excited about exploring anal sex — to get them to open up — you have to make them feel physically and emotionally safe. Shoving a toy into someone’s ass without warning is great way to make them feel physically unsafe; threatening to break up with someone if they can’t take your giant dick up their ass is a great way to make them feel emotionally unsafe. If your boyfriend can’t see that he’s doing this all wrong, ANAL, it’s not just your ass he can’t be trusted with.
Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@ savage.love! Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/ askdan! Podcasts, columns, and more at Savage.Love.
CULTURE
Free Will Astrology
By Rob Brezsny
ARIES: March 21 – April 19
Years ago, when I worked as a postal delivery person in Santa Cruz, California, I mastered my route quickly. The time allotted to complete it was six hours, but I could easily finish in four. Soon I began to goof off two hours a day, six days a week. Many great works of literature and music entertained me during that time. I joined a softball team and was able to play an entire game each Saturday while officially on the job. Was what I did unethical? I don’t think so, since I always did my work thoroughly and precisely. Is there any comparable possibility in your life, Aries? An ethical loophole? A workaround that has full integrity? An escape clause that causes no harm?
TAURUS: April 20 – May 20
From an astronomer’s perspective, Uranus is huge. Sixty-three Earths could fit inside of it. It’s also weirdly unique because it rotates sideways
compared to the other planets. From an astrologer’s point of view, Uranus symbolizes the talents and gifts we possess that can be beneficial to others. If we fully develop these potentials, they will express our unique genius and be useful to our fellow humans. It so happens that Uranus has been cruising through Taurus since 2018 and will mostly continue there until 2026. I regard these years as your best chance in this lifetime to fulfill the opportunities I described. The coming weeks will be especially pregnant with possibilities.
GEMINI: May 21 – June 20
Mountaineer Edmund Hillary is renowned as the first person to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest. It happened in 1953. Less famous was his companion in the ascent, Gemini mountaineer Tenzing Norgay. Why did Hillary get more acclaim than Norgay, even though they were equal partners in the monumental accomplishment? Was it because one was a white New Zealander and the other a brown Nepalese? In any case, I’m happy to speculate that if there’s a situation in your life that resembles Norgay’s, you will get remediation in the coming months. You will receive more of the credit you deserve. You will garner the acknowledgment and recognition that had previously been unavailable. And it all starts soon.
CANCER: June 21 – July 22
for products you don’t really need. JUST KIDDING!! Everything I just said was a dirty lie. It was designed to test your power to resist distracting influences and mediocre advice. Here’s my authentic counsel, Leo. The coming weeks will be a fantastic phase to waste as little time as possible as you intensify your focus on the few things that matter to you most.
VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22
Scientific research suggests that brushing and flossing your teeth not only boosts the health of your gums, but also protects your heart’s health. Other studies show that if you maintain robust microbiota in your gut, you’re more likely to avoid anxiety and depression as you nurture your mental health. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to focus on big-picture thoughts like these, Virgo. You will be wise to meditate on how each part of your life affects every other part. You will generate good fortune as you become more vividly aware and appreciative of the intimate interconnectedness that underlies all you do.
LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22
The official term for the shape of a single piece of M&M candy is “oblate spheroid.” It’s rounded but not perfectly round. It looks like a partially squashed sphere. An Iraqi man named Ibrahim Sadeq decided to try the difficult task of arranging as many M&M’s as possible in a vertical stack. He is now the world’s record holder in that art, with seven M&M’s. I am imagining that sometime soon, Libra, you could achieve a comparable feat in your own domain. What’s challenging but not impossible?
blue or black drapes topped with icy blue chiffon. Eminem insists on a set of 25-pound dumbbells, and the hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd wants Super Soaker water guns. Since the coming weeks may be as close to a rock star phase of your cycle as you’ve ever had, I recommend you create a list of your required luxuries. This imaginative exercise will hopefully get you in the mood to ask for exactly what you need everywhere you go.
CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19
Sleep deprivation is widespread. I see it as a pandemic. According to some studies, over half the people in the world suffer from insomnia, don’t get enough sleep, or have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Most research on this subject doesn’t mention an equally important problem: that many people aren’t dreaming enough. And the fact is that dreaming is key to our psychological well-being. I bring this to your attention, Capricorn, because the coming weeks will be a favorable time to enhance your relationship with sleep and dreams. I encourage you to learn all you can and do all you can to make your time in bed deeply rejuvenating.
AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18
Yes, technically your 90’s Taurus, Tempo, Probe, Supra or Camry is a classic, however; no one‘s writing songs about them….cruise on by the Gus, for a beverage, when your thirst hits.
As an American, I’m embarrassed by the fact that my fellow citizens and I comprise just 4% of the world’s population but generate 20% of its garbage. How is that possible? In any case, I vow that during the next five weeks, I will decrease the volume of trash I produce and increase the amount of dross I recycle. I encourage you, my fellow Cancerians, to make a similar promise. In ways that may not be immediately imaginable, attending to these matters will improve your mental health and maybe even inspire you to generate an array of fresh insights about how to live your life with flair and joy.
LEO: July 23 – August 22
The coming weeks will be a wonderful time to waste time on the internet. If you are properly aligned with cosmic rhythms, you will spend long hours watching silly videos, interacting with friends and strangers on social media, and shopping
SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21:
I’ve heard many people brag about their hangovers. The stories they tell are often entertaining and humorous. One of my best laughs emerged in response to two friends describing the time they jumped on the roof of a parked Mercedes Benz at 3 a.m. and sang songs from Verdi’s opera Falstaff until the cops came and threw them in a jail cell with nothing to eat or drink for ten hours. In accordance with astrological omens, Scorpio, I ask you to not get a hangover in the coming weeks, even an amusing one. Instead, I encourage you to studiously pursue extreme amounts of pleasurable experiences that have only good side effects.
SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21
Most famous musicians demand that their dressing rooms be furnished with specific amenities. Beyoncé needs rose-scented candles. Rihanna expects her preparatory sanctuary to have dark
Only 47 people live on the volcanic Pitcairn Islands, which are located in the middle of nowhere in the South Pacific Ocean. Pollution is virtually non-existent, which is why the honey made by local bees is the purest on the planet. In accordance with astrological omens, I’d love for you to get honey like that in the coming weeks. I hope you will also seek the best and purest of everything. More than ever, you need to associate with influences that are potent, clear, genuine, raw, vibrant, natural, and full-strength.
PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20
Many Indigenous people in North America picked and ate wild cranberries. But farm-grown cranberries available for commercial use didn’t appear until 1816. Here’s how it happened. In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a farmer discovered a secret about the wild cranberry bog on his land. Whenever big storms dumped sand on the bog, the fruit grew with more lush vigor. He tinkered with this revelation from nature and figured out how to cultivate cranberries. I recommend this as a teaching story, Pisces. Your assignment is to harness the power and wisdom provided by a metaphorical storm or disturbance. Use it to generate a practical innovation in your life.
Homework: What do you want but think you’re not supposed to want?
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