Metro Times 03/08/2023

NEWS & VIEWS

We received responses to last week’s cover story package, “The Tattoo Issue,” including to Lee DeVito’s feature on Witch House Tattoo, Ferndale’s new “secret” tattoo studio.

We just wanted to say how f’en grateful we are to you for this opportunity. It means the world! (The dark and spooky one, of course. �� ) —@witchhousetattooferndale, Instagram

������ I’m so proud of my brother Kevin McLeod and his wife Pamela McLeod! Great job you two! —Ellen Terri, Facebook

We also recieved comments in response

to Randiah Camille Green’s story about Alexander Boyko, a tattoo artist accused of sexual misconduct who is now working in Livonia under an alias.

This is why I have a no nickname policy for my artists. They just hop shops and make up a new moniker. Hope this creep gets what’s coming to him. —Sonnet Gothro, Facebook

Psyched this guy is still being put on blast. Is no way he should still be able to work in this town. Nor anywhere else. Also, props to the determined folks who have continued to keep an eye on his whereabouts. —Kevin Maliszewski, Facebook

Sound off: letters@metrotimes.com.

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NEWS & VIEWS

Limp Bizkit guitarist’s lawsuit dismissed

A DETROIT JUDGE dismissed

Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland’s lawsuit against ex-wife Carré Callaway, saying that comments Callaway made in the press about their breakup “simply do not rise to the level of being defamatory.”

The legal action stemmed from the time the former couple spent living in Detroit from 2015-2019, when they were renovating a home near Detroit’s Boston-Edison neighborhood for a DIY Network TV show called Sight Unseen

Last year, Callaway, who performs in an indie rock band called Queen Kwong, told Bandcamp Daily that Borland abruptly kicked her and her cats out of their house.

In a legal motion filed earlier this year, Borland accused Callaway of violating the non-disparagement clause in their divorce agreement. But Judge Helal A. Farhat of the Third Judicial Circuit in Wayne County disagreed.

“The court does not find that [Callaway] made any defamatory statements regarding [Borland],” Farhat said in the ruling. “In the Bandcamp Daily article, [Callaway] expressed her opinions, frustrations, and the struggles of her divorce from [Borland]. Ms. Callaway did not specifically indicate that [Borland] was the cause of her being ‘broke and homeless.’ All other statements referenced in [Borland’s] motion are either [Callaway’s] reflection of her feelings or insinuations made by authors. Statement [sic] that simply do not rise to the level of being defamatory.”

In an interview published by Bandcamp Daily last year, Callaway claimed Borland gave her only three days to leave their home just weeks after she had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening condition.

“We had seven or eight cats of our own, and when everything fell apart, one thing that made me realize things were really over was his desire to not only get rid of me, but the cats too. There was a disabled one called Daisy. She died a week after he left because

he was the only one who could care for her. That’s the hardest thing to get over, honestly,” she said, adding, “I still have nightmares about it.”

On her Instagram account, Callaway shared a statement with the caption, “A win for art, women and freedom of speech. A loss for sad men.”

The full statement follows:

In January, a member of Limp Bizmit pursued a legal action against me in De-

troit. He alleged that my latest record, “Couples Only,” and the press attention surrounding it defamed him. He asked for the court to hold me in contempt and for me to reimburse him $5k for the legal expenses he incurred by initiating the motion.

Shortly before the hearing, his counsel offered to withdraw the motion against me in exchange for my silence and $5k — I declined.

I found out this week that the case has been rightfully DISMISSED. Thank you for the support during this crazy ordeal. Thank you for keeping my record alive.

The couple purchased the house for $500,000 in 2015, married in October 2016, and filed for divorce in January 2019. In 2020, Borland listed the home for sale for $899,900.

—Lee DeVito

Clinton Township sued after cop permanently blinded a man after foot chase

A MAN WHO was punched and permanently blinded in one eye by a Clinton Township cop filed a federal lawsuit against the officer, the department, and the township, alleging excessive force.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court last week alleges Daniel Reiff, of Clinton Township, was minding his own business while walking to a friend’s house on April 2, 2021, when officers approached him.

The cops were responding to a complaint from a caller who said something “didn’t seem right” about two men walking down the street.

Reiff was walking alone when an officer began questioning him and demanded, “Come here!”

Feeling threatened, Reiff fled and was pursued by police in their cruisers. Officer Broc Setty sped the wrong way down a three-lane road

before getting out of his cruiser and chasing Reiff on foot, video shows.

“I’m going to taze you, dude,” Setty yelled at Reiff. “Yea, baby! Whooo!”

When Setty caught up with Reiff, he surrendered and said, “I’m done.”

Winded from running, Reiff collapsed on all fours. Setty demanded Reiff get on his “fucking stomach or I’ll punch you!”

That’s when Setty punched Reiff in the left eye, fracturing his orbital bone in two places and rupturing his eye globe. The injury left Reiff permanently blind, according to the lawsuit.

“This incident, as evidenced by the video footage, unfortunately shows another instance of a police officer violating an innocent individual’s civil rights,” Reiff’s attorney, Jonathan Marko of Marko Law, said Monday in a statement. “An officer’s

first duty is to protect and serve. A citizen had complained about a suspicious person, not about witnessing a crime. The officers chased the alleged ‘suspicious person’ out of the area. That should have been the end. But instead, an act of violence took place and Mr. Reiff is now not only blind, but also broken and traumatized.”

Marko said the assault should alarm township residents.

“Mr. Reiff never committed a crime. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Marko said. “That means anyone in the community was in danger of the Clinton Township police department’s excessive force that night. What’s even more disturbing is that we don’t believe Setty was ever disciplined by Clinton Township for blinding Mr. Reiff.”

—Steve Neavling

Wes Borland performing with Limp Bizkit in 2011. SHUTTERSTOCK

Detroit sues celebrity pastor and his ‘nuisance’ mega-church over unfinished project

THE CITY OF Detroit sued a pastor and his unfinished mega-church near Woodward Avenue and 7 Mile Road, saying the stalled development is “a massive example of blight and misuse of land.”

In the lawsuit filed last week in Wayne County Circuit Court, the city is asking a judge to declare the property a “nuisance” and order celebrity Pastor Marvin Winans to clean up the blight by April 3 and finish the construction of Perfecting Church, which began 18 years ago.

If Winans fails to accomplish both tasks, the city is urging a judge to transfer the property back to Detroit and allow the city to demolish the unfinished structure and sell the land.

According to the suit, the property is covered in overgrown vegetation and bound by dilapidated fencing and appears to be infested with rodents.

“The condition of the property directly threatens the health, safety, and welfare of neighboring residents and those who must pass the property when using public sidewalks and streets,” the lawsuit states.

In a statement to Metro Times, Winans said the lawsuit was a surprise.

“We are shocked and extremely disappointed that the city would take this course of action in the dark of the night, and in our opinion, not acting in good faith,” said Winans, a member of the famed gospel group, The Winans.

The city sold the land to the church for $13,000 in March 2005 with “the expectation” that it would be “fully developed,” the lawsuit states. At the time, church officials pledged to build a 4,200-seat church, 35,000-square-foot administration building, and a 1,000-space parking structure.

But the project has stalled, and the church hasn’t received any building per-

mits since July 2015, according to the suit.

During an inspection in July 2022, the city spotted numerous violations, which church officials have failed to sufficiently address, the city alleges.

The property is “a public nuisance and danger to the safety and welfare of the public,” the suit states.

Winans countered that church officials addressed the violations.

“Perfecting Church has been in constant discussions with the City of Detroit, and we believed we are up-to-date in addressing all matters of concern posed by the city,” Winans said.

The city is asking a judge to order the church to hire an architect and construction manager by April 3 and prove that it has the finances to complete the project.

—Steve Neavling

Michigan Legislature considers bills to abolish life sentences for juveniles

DEMOCRATS IN THE state House and Senate introduced legislation this week to abolish life sentences for juveniles.

If passed, Michigan will join 26 other states that have taken steps to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling, Miller v. Alabama, which declared that a life sentenced for a juvenile was considered a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment.

“The United States Supreme Court and the Michigan Supreme Court have ruled that automatically sentencing youth to life without parole is cruel and unusual punishment. Michigan law needs to recognize that juvenile offenders deserve a chance at rehabilitation,” Sen. Jef Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, said. “We shouldn’t turn our backs on juvenile offenders and throw away the key. Instead, we should ensure that Michigan’s juvenile justice system provides a chance for rehabilitation, reintegration, and redemption.”

Under the legislation, felons under the age of 19 cannot be sentenced to more than 60 years in prison. The bills also allow for a parole review after 10 years to consider the juvenile’s age and immaturity, family home environment, circumstances of the offense, and the role of peer pressure.

“The law clearly distinguishes children from adults — this is why ending juvenile life without parole is necessary,” Rep. Amos O’Neal, DSaginaw, said. “These are kids’ lives we are talking about. I can’t stress the importance of this legislation enough: It’s the difference between life behind bars and the opportunity for redemption, grace and mercy.”

O’Neal also said the onus is on the state to help young people when they leave prison.

“The state should provide the necessary help, resources, and training for these young people to re-enter society,” O’Neal said. “We must move from a punitive-focused corrections system

to one centered around restorative justice.”

The lawmakers point to research that shows significant developmental differences between youth and adults that impact decision-making, impulse control, and susceptibility to peer pressure.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that life without parole sentences for young people should be rare.” Sen. Sylvia Santana, D-Detroit, said. “The Michigan Supreme Court has placed the burden on the prosecuting attorney to prove by clear and convincing evidence that a young person is one of the rare people who should receive a life without parole sentence.”

A study by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office found that juveniles who had been sentenced to life in prison but were later released had a recidivism rate of just 1.14%.

“As the Supreme Court has recognized, children are ‘constitutionally different than adults for purposes of

sentencing’ because they have less culpability than adults — a conclusion that is supported by both social science and brain science documented in Supreme Court decisions,” said John S. Cooper, Michigan executive director of Safe & Just, a nonprofit advocating for criminal justice reforms. “This package of bills supported by Safe & Just Michigan positions our state to join 26 other states and D.C. in ending the cruel and unusual practice of sentencing children to die in prison.”

The bills are supported by the Michigan Center for Youth Justice, Safe & Just Michigan, the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, and the Michigan State Appellate Defender Office.

“Michigan has a moral imperative to step up and join the majority of other states that have stopped sentencing young people to die in prison.”

Jonathan Sacks, of the Michigan State Appellate Defender Office, said.

—Steve Neavling

A sign at Detroit’s 18-year Perfecting Church development shows expectations versus reality. LEE DEVITO

NEWS & VIEWS

“Lucy” from Detroit said such a deal would boost private profit instead of funding schools and libraries, and asked Barnhill whether any Ilitches actually live in the city. Barnhill nimbly dodged the question and changed the subject. But the caller offered the most memorable line.

“This,” Lucy said, “smacks of extractive capitalism.”

So will Detroit, for a change, say “No” to the Ilitches?

No, Detroit will probably take the bait again. The momentum sure seems in favor. And that might even be a good thing. As a guardedly optimistic native Detroiter with skeptical doubts, I have my own selfish reasons.

I am emotionally — but not economically — invested in the revival of the Woodward Avenue corridor from the Detroit River to the New Center and beyond.

For my first job out of high school, I clerked in what was then called the City-County Building, corner of Woodward and Jefferson. For college at Wayne State University, I took the Woodward bus.

Lapointe

In Ilitch Village, greed is good

If you stroll around Grand Circus Park in downtown Detroit, you might now and then be bugged by panhandlers begging for money.

“Can you help me out?” they may ask, with eye contact, one palm up.

They could be shabbily dressed and otherwise unkempt, as if they’ve slept in soiled, wrinkled clothes. Perhaps they show some missing teeth or beard stubble or even emit an odor.

If you feel generous enough, you might contribute pocket change or even a dollar bill. Sometimes, it feels good to give.

In contrast, consider Christopher Ilitch, another denizen of that neighborhood. He and his billionaire family run two sports teams, two stadiums, the Fox Theater, a pizza chain, and a goldgushing gambling casino. Chris Ilitch is hardly a sidewalk panhandler.

Clean-shaven and wearing well-cut suits, his full smile shines and he works in spiffy Woodward Avenue office space well above the riff-raff. He might even smell good, although few news media ever get near enough to know.

But — like the sidewalk beggar — Ilitch also has his hand out, again. In

By Joe Lapointe

a proposed real estate development deal, the pizza king and his business partners want your money, again, and lots of it. They just might get it, too, and this cheesy deal could even do some good.

This time, the figure is almost $800 million in public funds, more than half the project cost of $1.5 billion. They promise to construct or restore 10 buildings in the vicinity of Ilitch Village, the entertainment and sports ghetto stretching north up the Woodward corridor from the Ilitch baseball park to the Ilitch hockey arena.

Tellingly, Ilitch isn’t pitching it himself in the local news media. While in Lakeland, Florida, for Tigers’ spring training last month, the team owner avoided reporters, and that may be wise. In public appearances, he seems timid, stiff, scripted, and unconvincing.

Instead, Ilitch assigned this charm offensive to Rian English Barnhill, a vice-president for Ilitch’s Olympia Development; and Andrew Cantor, executive vice-president of development for Related Companies, Ilitch’s New York partner run by Stephen Ross.

Speaking with Stephen Henderson

on “Detroit Today” on WDET-FM, even this tag team of silver-tongued spinners admitted the so-called “District Detroit” didn’t prosper the way the Ilitches promised less than a decade ago when the public helped fund their LCA rink.

After citing recent improvements to a few Ilitch properties, Olympia’s Barnhill conceded: “That said, I do understand that that doesn’t necessarily match the big vision that was laid out many years ago.”

In this case, “many” is “nine,” and the “vision” promised offices, hotels, apartments, and retail space in a walkable environment.

Instead, we got an Ilitch arena surrounded by Ilitch parking lots for Ilitch customers spending money at Ilitch entertainment properties.

The new venture promises — you guessed it! — offices, hotels, apartments, and retail space in a walkable environment. But this time is different, Cantor said, while acknowledging previous delays.

“It has taken too long . . . relative to what has been promised,” he said.

Some callers to the show voiced sharp questions.

Like many, I have roots in the soil of metro Detroit’s signature street, the spine of our community. I even love the Woodward Dream Cruise, up the road in the suburbs.

By building their ballpark and hockey rink further north in the Woodward corridor, the Ilitches — in their self-centered way — helped extend the frontier toward campus despite holding on for too long to too many decayed properties.

Another burst of construction could further fill in the gaps, although critics justifiably charge that further gentrification will drive some people away.

More businesses, hotels, apartments, and stores — should they be built — might give people more reasons to ride that lonely QLine tram. And spend money. And invest it. What’s good for the Ilitches, in this case, also might benefit the general public.

But even boosters must admit that this deal amounts to socialism for the wealthy. In some ways, the current spirit takes us back to the 1980s, when the Ilitches first bought the Red Wings and began to expand their downtown empire outward like the octopus tentacles of their hockey mascot.

That decade brought Reaganism and its “trickle-down” economic fantasies and the 1987 film Wall Street. Ilitch’s pitch this time harmonizes with that memorable speech by actor Michael Douglas as tycoon Gordon Gekko.

“ . . . Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” Gekko said. “Greed is right. Greed works.”

Billionaire Christopher Ilitch is once again asking for money. Will Detroit say “no” for a change?

SHUTTERSTOCK

FROM THE MIND OF

RICHIE HAWTIN

A conversation with the Windsor-raised Detroit hero and global techno ambassador about his new tour

By Michaelangelo Matos

Few dance-music DJs or producers have been so concerned with the historical telling and ongoing narrative of techno music as Richie Hawtin. Certainly, his own legacy has been tied up in that story. Hawtin’s work making and spinning tracks alike — as well as putting on parties and performing live — has earned him a substantial place in the firmament. For many, his most enduring legacy is for throwing events — from ravers who went to Hawtin’s notorious Detroit parties of the mid-’90s, where he’d wrap entire rooms in black plastic (a fire hazard that could, and should, never happen today), to the young artists who went to his CNTRL Tour a decade back, featuring panel discussions on the history of techno.

His CV is impeccable: Hawtin’s work as Plastikman, as well as the head of the labels Plus 8 and M_nus, were at the leading edge of techno during the ’90s and 2000s. He’s always been dynamic on the decks: Hawtin’s own SoundCloud page teems with killer DJ sets from every vintage, including official CD releases such as the classic Decks, EFX & 909 (1999) and DE9: Close to the Edita (2001), as well as numerous live tapes, from Power 96, Detroit, from November 1989, to Flavor, Denver, from April 1994, on up to a pair of live sets from 2021.

A father of two — one is 15 years old, the other 18 months — Hawtin has also parlayed his wide and genuinely diverse set of interests into ancillary businesses. He has invested in sake, created music for Prada, and co-designed Model 1, a pro-grade DJ mixer that was recently manufactured in a more compact and affordable model for the wider market. Hawtin prizes “having long discussions about creative process” with people in all fields: “I’m inquisitive, and I love exploring,” he explains over the phone to our Metro Times correspondent from his home in Madrid. “All those projects came from the creative space more than the commercial or economic space.”

METRO TIMES: You last toured the U.S. properly in 2019. Does coming out of lockdown play a part in your decision to launch this tour?

RICHIE HAWTIN: Yes and no. I think the lockdown helped accelerate the exposure of a lot of young techno artists, or maybe just artists across the board, because there was a lot of streaming happening. And actually, with some of the younger artists, the streaming was allowing making new connections, and also time for working in the studio and honing their craft. They jumped out of COVID with a new degree of momentum — so that’s part of it.

But honestly, this tour goes back nearly 10 years to the EDM explosion in America and 2010, ’11, ’12, ’13. I was playing places like [Electric Daisy Carnival] and some of the real big commercial electronic music festivals. I was doing that in the hope that we would reach some new kids out there: Maybe a fan of EDM would accidentally stumble across techno and hear something different.

Around that time, we also did the CNTRL tours, trying to reach a little bit more of the American next generation. There’s been a 10-year gap, and then COVID. Something really feels like it’s changing now. There’s this new generation that’s been percolating this last decade that’s ready to come out and push this music into a new direction, or just to develop it, or to show their own talent. That was really the beginning of the idea to do this type of tour.

I remember seeing you in 2015 — a daytime speaking tour with panels, a primer for the kids. That’s not the kind of tour that this is, but I’m curious what you see as the com-

monalities between that tour and this one.

We did do events on that tour. But you’re right: There was a lot of panels and discussion. It was trying to reach out to kids out there who’d maybe heard of techno and were curious. The panels gave it a way for kids to come, who perhaps were in school, who didn’t want to go out partying [into] late night, and brought it up to a broader market. One of the women on this tour, Lindsey Herbert, was at one of those talks back

hearing techno in a very pure, first-time way, and share that commonality, that love of electronic music.

Right now, I hear a lot about how techno is becoming more commercial. It might just be because I live in St. Paul rather than a bigger city: I go to a lot of parties here, but I don’t encounter techno very much outside of when I go to see it. Where are you seeing this happening most visibly?

If you use the word techno, it conjures a huge spectrum of music; so we use the word techno loosely. It is very aboveground or at least recognized by people all over the world. In Europe, and also in the Instagram generation, you can feel a real huge interest in techno that has catchy hooks, that samples old records, that has trance — as in ’90s trance — melodic hooks and phrases.

then, and is now on this tour. So, I definitely see a correlation and a connection to what we were trying to do then, and some of what’s happened now.

In very basic terms, one of the most exciting things for me in my 30-year career has been always finding a good, strong connection to young DJs and producers who can learn from me and [are] inspired by me, but also vice-versa — inspire and re-energize me. That happened in the early days of Plus 8, when we had a whole collection of new young producers — we were all young producers. Then it happened again during the M_nus era in the 2000s with Magda and Troy Pierce. And then we were doing that on the CNTRL tour to reach out. And this is, again, another moment where you feel, or at least I feel, new people coming into the scene every week — but right now it feels like there’s a big generation shift.

I feel like I’m going into a new phase of my career, being into it now over 30 years. It just feels important for me to help nurture and again, just get that energy back and forth between kids who are learning and understanding and

I think we’ve spent the last 30 years — we as in the whole collective — making music that has slowly permeated just normal culture. Everyone uses technology in the studio now, so the sounds of techno are much more common in the records you hear on the radio. So it may not necessarily be that techno in general is more commercial — it’s the sound and the path behind it that’s more readily available, more often. Those futuristic electronic sounds are closer to the ears of regular people.

Leaving your own work aside, where do you see techno the genre right now?

Techno the genre — it’s an interesting topic, because it’s really the first time that I remember there was such a huge hype about the early days of techno. There’s a whole breed of techno that is nearly regurgitating what happened in the nineties, merely sometimes rebuilding some of those great records, and ending up with a new audience. It’s scary sometimes, because techno with its futuristic ethos starts to kind of crumble apart when you start creating records that sound like the past.

But I think that’s also part of it. Techno was so new and fresh back then. I don’t know if it can be that new and fresh forever, because it’s an art form now. There’s papers and stories and even academic courses to learn about making beats in techno now. But we’re in a different place. Sometimes I

Richie Hawtin in 2004. | DEBBIE BRAGG / EVERYNIGHT IMAGES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

stand on one level, scratching my head, saying, “Hey, they made this record 40 years ago.” And then on the other side, I’m thinking, “Wow, this is exciting. It’s a brand-new record.” So that’s kind of where we’re at. Some people are happy to look back and reappropriate, and there’s other people who are looking forward and trying to find a way to make techno fresh and exciting. As people who know me [are aware], I’ve always been into a very minimalistic, rhythmic, drum, bass line-driven type of very subtractive very, very few vocals, really hypnotic — that’s probably the word I’m looking for.

This tour is while that commercial side is happening. While this ’90s resurgence is happening, this tour takes some inspiration from then, because we go back into the warehouse, really raw, really dark. But it looks and brings together artists that I think are surging ahead with that kind of minimal, hypnotic style that I’ve been part of, or Jeff Mills has been part of, Robert Hood has part of, and taking it into their own place. And importantly for me, because I come from the North American region, and they’re connected to Detroit, bringing together North American artists to see what their interpretation is going forward.

Well, you’ve always been historically aware, and you’ve always made a point of at least attempting to make your audience historically aware. What you’re describing, though, makes that sound like a doubleedged sword. Is it at times?

It is, because nobody wants to be preached to about “back in the day” and all this. If I say the word[s] “back in the day,” I start to roll my eyes. But it is important to let people know that there’s a greater history of this music now than two or five, even 10 years. There’s 30 years of modern techno, and then when you go back to the earlier records, to Juan [Atkins]’s pivotal records, it’s another 10 years. And if you go back to Kraftwerk and people like that, it’s 40 or 50 years.

So, how do you bring all that together, when you’re always trying to look ahead and make new music? One way for me to do it is a tour like this, and hang out with a new generation and listen to them play, listen to them talk, have conversation, share ideas, share history, share aspirations, and hope that that kind of energy shared between us goes further than all of us, and gets shared on the dance floor and gets shared as these new artists go on to their own careers.

Now, those discussions you’re talking about — are those happening

behind the scenes on this tour? Are we going to experience some of that as an audience as well?

On this tour, there’s no kind of discourse publicly. It’s just us hanging out and chatting and spending some time together, whether that’s in airports or restaurants or hotels or soundchecks. But I think those discussions and that kind of hangtime will be heard and felt in the sets that we all play together during the tour, and, I think, after the tour.

You’re talking about warehouses. Obviously, you aren’t going to get away with covering everything in black plastic the way you once did.

[laughs] Yeah.

I don’t know if you want to give anything away, but what can you do that is equivalent to that now?

I think most people are used to going into clubs or festivals, or watching festivals live, like Tomorrowland or something on YouTube. Everything is so overproduced. It’s so much eye candy. Really, festivals now cater the eye more than the ears sometimes. To go against that and go back to the warehouse, actually, all we need to do is strip everything back to the basics: a great dark warehouse, some cool, simple lights, and a great PA system and good artists. I think that’s the best recipe for a great evening out to listen to pure techno music.

I’ve always been full of contrasts. Of course, I love highly produced events. I’m one of the ones who went out there in the 2010s with Plastikman live, with visuals and a whole stage presence to underground techno. I think that

there’s a need and a place for that. But because over the last 10 or 15 years, we’ve become so much more visually seduced, I think it’s really important right now to remind people that we should be sonically seduced first.

I still remember the beautiful moments of the Music Institute in Detroit or over at the Packard [Plant]. You eventually forgot whether your eyes were open or closed, because it was so dark. And you were just pummeled by great music. That’s probably at the heart of what we’re trying to achieve on this tour.

Literally my next question was about the Music Institute. That seems to me as, maybe not the only model for black box, minimal lighting, loud music — maybe not the only one like that. But I know that was a very important club for you in that way.

Also, actually, you can start talking about the Power House in Chicago, and other places which I didn’t actually get to go to. But I was at the Institute. I used to love going to Heaven, with Ken Collier. They were just black boxes which celebrated music.

I think we’re in a very scary place where the eye discerns what is good sonically. That’s what’s happening for so many industries, especially the music industry, with our main communication avenues in places like Facebook and Instagram and TikTok. It’s really important to try and use those channels and use the way we communicate to reach out to people, but then bring them back to a place where they’re really forced to focus only on music.

In your experience, do you think that that’s going to be a giant leap for a lot of younger people? Is that totally inimical to their experience?

The tour is small, and the capacity is small, so it won’t be a giant amount of people we reach. But I do feel we have a great opportunity to give the visitors to our shows a real unique and new experience.

You mentioned that these are small capacity places. About what size are we talking about in Detroit?

I believe Detroit … let’s say, over the tour … you know, it’s good to have some mystery. The whole tour’s capacity is, there are shows of 400, and the top is about 1,000, so usually 600-800 is the capacity. And that’s it.

We’ve been talking about doing a warehouse ever since we did CNTRL. We wanted to actually do a CNTRL warehouse tour after that one. We could just never pull it together. We couldn’t find the warehouses. We couldn’t find the promoters. The scene in North America didn’t seem ready. And let me say, there was things going on like that, but [they] perhaps weren’t organized enough for us to come through on a tour. They were too short-notice.

Last year, I was able to, with the gang that I’m on tour with now, do a show in Houston at a warehouse for about 300 people. It really brought me back to those times — and back to that contrast of looking back to the ’90s and [also] looking forward. It was like in the ’90s at a warehouse party, but all the kids there were our age where we were in the ’90s. And they weren’t all there for techno. They were there because they were outcasts. They didn’t fit into the normal concert that was going on that night. They didn’t want to go to the local bar to pick up someone to take home. They were at this dingy warehouse, hearing crazy loud music. And I was like, “Wow, it’s happening again.”

That’s the exciting thing, of seeing this 30-year loop. These kids were just excited about doing something different. That was really kind of the puzzle: OK, I think it’s time to do that. That’s when we actually started talking to the gang who helps us to put tours together. They have a network of like-minded young promoters and other DJs around North America; together, they all put this together to bring the next generation to the old generation and share techno music.

Paxahau Presents: From Our Minds — To Be Announced 2023 Tour will be held in an undisclosed warehouse location starting at 9 p.m. on Friday, March 10 with Barbosa b2b Jay York, Decoder, Huey Mnemonic, Lindsey Herbert, and Richie Hawtin.

Ravers at an early Paxahau production. | DOUGLAS WOJCIECHOWSKI

“All we need to do is strip everything back to the basics: a great dark warehouse, some cool, simple lights, and a great PA system and good artists.”

WHAT’S GOING ON

Select events happening in metro Detroit this week. Be sure to check all venue website before events for latest information. Add your event to our online calendar: metrotimes.com/ AddEvent.

Wednesday, March 8

Live/Concert

The Accidentals 8 p.m.; 20 Front Street, 20 Front St., Lake Orion; $45+. White Reaper 6:30 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $22.

Thursday, March 9

Live/Concert

The Accidentals Present Time Out 3: EP Release Concert 8 p.m.; 20 Front Street, 20 Front St., Lake Orion; $45+.

After 7 wsg Club Nouveau 8 p.m.; Sound Board, 2901 Grand River Ave., Detroit; $45-$58.

Ani Mari & Co. and Big Chemical 8 p.m.; Blind Pig, 208 S. First St., Ann Arbor; $10.

Blue Thursdays 8 p.m.; Cadieux Cafe, 4300 Cadieux Rd., Detroit; $5.

Brandon Miller Band 7 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $15.

Cooper Alan 7 p.m.; District 142, 142 Maple St., Wyandotte; $25-$45.

Howling Giant, 30 ON 6, Distilled Tongues, Blood Castle, Bloody Butterflies 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $15.

MICHIGAN x SXSW ARTIST

FUNDRAISER & MIXER 6 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $15.

Zoso - A Tribute to Led Zeppelin 7 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $20.

DJ/Dance

Technically, Yeah with Gusto, Jesse Clayton & Eddie Logix 9 p.m.; UFO Factory, 2110 Trumbull Ave., Detroit; $10.

Friday, March 10

Live/Concert

Bat Hearse + DJ Tangent 9 p.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; no cover.

Chase Rice 7 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $29.50-$59.50.

Completely Unchained - The Ultimate Tribute to Van Halen 7:30

p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $20.

D.M. vs NIN 8 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $20.

Dogs In A Pile 8 p.m.; Blind Pig, 208 S. First St., Ann Arbor; $18.

Drive-By Truckers with Margo Cilker 7 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $29.50.

Eluveitie with Omnium Gatherum and Seven Spires 7 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $30+.

Jessie Murph 6:30 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; sold out.

Meet Me @ The Altar, Young Culture , Daisy Grenade 6:30 pm; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $19.

Meet Me at the Alter 7:30 pm; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $19.

Mouth Audit, Incomplete Duplicate Fetus, Corruptedhdd, Lava 8 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $10.

Music of Steely Dan with the Kris Kurzawa Group 8:30 p.m.; Cadieux Cafe, 4300 Cadieux Rd., Detroit; $10.

The Rebel Eves featuring Katie Pederson, Grace Theisen, and Jilian Linklater 8 p.m.; 20 Front Street, 20 Front St., Lake Orion; $25.

Saturday, March 11

Live/Concert

Elderbrook 8 p.m.; Majestic Theatre, 4120 Woodward, Detroit; $22.

Jim McCarty + Soul N’ Roll W/ Dj Dave Lawson 8 p.m.-12:30 a.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; no cover.

Jonathan Hutcherson: Nashville Hits the Roof! 8 p.m.; Tin Roof - Detroit, 47 E. Adams Ave., Detroit; no cover.

Joshua Ray Walker with The Vandoliers 8 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $22.

Kalush Orchestra 8 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $85.

Raising The Dead (Grateful Dead Cover Band) 8:30 p.m.; Cadieux Cafe, 4300 Cadieux Rd., Detroit; $5.

Steve Taylor 7-9 p.m.; The HawkFarmington Hills Community Center, 29995 Twelve Mile Rd., Farmington Hills; $15 advance / $18 door.

Subtronics 7 p.m.; Detroit Masonic

20 March 8-14, 2023 | metrotimes.com

Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle announce Mother’s Day concert

TWO SOUL HEAVY hitters are headed to the Fox Theatre for Mother’s Day.

The “Empress of Soul” Gladys Knight and the “Godmother of Soul” Patti LaBelle will perform at a “Salute to Mother’s Day” concert at Detroit’s Fox Theatre, on actual Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 14. This is straight-up grown folks’

Temple Library, 500 Temple St, Detroit; $39.

The Acacia Strain, Fit For An Autopsy & Full of Hell w/ Primitive Man 6 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $25.

THE FOUR HORSEMAN the Ultimate Tribute to Metallica 7 p.m.; District 142, 142 Maple St., Wyandotte; $18.

The Soul II Soul Tour 8 p.m.; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $59-$250.

The Winery Dogs, Anthony Gomes 7 & 7:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $50. Think Floyd USA 8 p.m.; Emerald Theatre, 31 N. Walnut St., Mount Clemens; $27+.

Toto 8 p.m.; Caesars Palace WindsorAugustus Ballroom, 377 E. Riverside Dr., Windsor; $25-$60.

Voxanna, Ladyship Warship 7-10 p.m.; Berkley Coffee & Oak Park Dry, 14661 West 11 Mile Rd., Oak Park; $10. Welshly Arms, Motherfolk 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $22.

Witt Lowry 7 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $20.

Isaac Castor with Edward Nash & Nobody, Tru Klassick, JClassic, Nickie P., Kalen Frazier,

music. If your mom ever woke you up on a Saturday morning playing Patti LaBelle’s “If Only You Knew,” as in, “if only you knew that you’re about to get up and clean this whole house,” then you know what’s up.

Tickets go on sale Saturday, March 11 at 10 a.m. via; 313Presents.com and Ticketmaster.com.

—Randiah Camille Green

Kazzy The Gypsy 8 p.m.; Blind Pig, 208 S. First St., Ann Arbor; $10. Ky William 9 p.m.-1 a.m.; Big Pink, 6440 Wight St., Detroit; $22+.

Sfam 9 p.m.; Tangent Gallery & Hastings Street Ballroom, 715 E. Milwaukee Ave., Detroit; $20+.

Sunday, March 12

Live/Concert

The Soul II Soul Tour 8 p.m.; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $59-$250.

ANGEL wsg The New Old and Larry Pascale 5-10:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $20. Colony House: The Cannonballers Tour 7 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $25. Eric Roberson 7:30 p.m.; Sound Board, 2901 Grand River Ave., Detroit; $37-$50.

Jonny Craig 6 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $18.

Mason Bayes 7 p.m.; Cadieux Cafe, 4300 Cadieux Rd., Detroit; $5.

New Found Glory and Special Guests 8 p.m.; Flagstar Strand Theatre for the Performing Arts, 12 N. Saginaw St., Pontiac; $36.50-$45.

PRISM Quartet Presents Premieres 7-8:45 p.m.; First Presbyterian Church of Ypsilanti, 300 N. Washington

SHUTTERSTOCK

St., Ypsilanti; $20-25. Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox - Life In The Past Lane 7 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $25-$99.50.

Sunday Jam Sessions Hosted by Sky Covington & Friends 8 p.m.-midnight; Woodbridge Pub, 5169 Trumbull St., Detroit; donation.

Tauren Wells 7 p.m.; Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd, Detroit; $33-$69.50.

DJ/Dance

Trappin In My Feelings - R&B Party 7 p.m.-midnight; MIX Bricktown (M!X), 641 Beaubien Street, Detroit; $8.

Monday, March 13

Live/Concert

313 Day 2023 3:13 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $25-$150.

Heathen, Arrival Of Autumn, Invicta 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $15.

Tuesday, March 14

Live/Concert

Bryce Vine: Serotonin Tour 2023 7 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $29.50-$59.50.

Soulside with J. Robbins (band) and Big Life 7 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $18.

THEATER

Performance

The Music Box Detroit Symphony Orchestra Friday 10:45 a.m. & 8 p.m. and Saturday 11 a.m. & 8 p.m.

The Book of Mormon (Touring)

Tuesday-Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday evening at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.; Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd, Detroit; $40+.

COMEDY

Improv

Go Comedy! Improv Theater $20

Saturdays, 10-11:30 p.m..; $10 Sundays, 7 p.m.

Planet Ant Theatre Ants In The Hall present White Lotus: Zug Island. $10. 7 p.m.

Stand-up

Detroit House of Comedy Sammy Obeid Paris Sashay. Sunday 7 p.m. $25.

The Fillmore Sarah Silverman: Grow Some Lips $45-$69.50 Saturday 7 pm.

Flagstar Strand Theatre for the Performing Arts Keep ‘Em Laughing Comedy Fest $29-$120 Friday 7 pm.; $40$60 Saturday 7:30 pm.

Fox Theatre Druski: Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda Tour $35.75-$70.75 Friday, 8 p.m.

Local buzz

By Broccoli and Joe Zimmer

Toughie keeps it dreamy on debut EP: Detroit indie rock group Toughie has been on a roll as of late. Through several name changes, the band has continued to create thoughtful and emotive indie pop music that resonates with fans and has landed some notable gigs with Audiotree Presents, among others. Its debut EP Mirror Room just dropped last Friday, and it feels like a long time coming for members Carrie Pitzer (vocals, guitar) and Tim Barrett (guitar), as they’ve been collaborating for over a decade. The band considers the self-released EP a testament to the musical partnership, as it was entirely written, produced, and engineered by the two at Barrett’s home studio. Carrie says of their creative process, “I make the outlines and Tim colors them in.” She continues, “This EP is about the clunky and overwhelming journey into adulthood – especially through my lens as a late bloomer. When I finally put myself out there to experience benchmark moments in life, I was essentially a functioning adult feeling that crazy intensity for the first time.” The band also released a video last week for the song “Tender Tension,” which is pretty great.

—Broccoli

Comfort Cure is here to ruffle some feathers: Who says that everything we write about has to be

brand new? Cheers to the ones that you might have missed! In January of this year, Detroit EBM artist Comfort Cure released Not My Taste, a two-song heater that gives a clear and concise window into a world of dark, driving beats and eerie, verbed-out vocals. (My auto-correct suggested “beasts” in that last sentence. Coincidence?) “Love in the Worst Way” is a powerful, slow build of a song perfect for soundtracking a fogged out room of dastardly creatures, and the bass lines banging against themselves in “Consume It” are enough to disorient even the bravest travelers of the shadow realm. Check it out via Bandcamp, and look out for live dates on the horizon.

—Broccoli

Music is a natural high: Local “natural music ensemble” Bonny Doon has announced its new album release date, accompanied by a new single and music video. The song “Naturally” features the band’s signature laconic, folksy pop sound, with a bit of country tinge mixed in. The video is a light-hearted wink to the song title, featuring four imposter Bonny Doon standins playing along to the track, as the camera pulls back to reveal the real band members in the director chairs. Each Bonny Dooner gets a lesson in how to properly depict the band, how to act naturally, on a set accented by fake, neon palm trees. Some may recognize the location of the video, the P.L.A.V. Post 10 on Joseph Campau Avenue, which has

hosted many Hamtramck Music Fest performances. Bonny Doon’s third studio album Let There Be Music is out June 16 on ANTI- Records, available to pre-order now.

—Joe

Experimental hip-hop knows now bounds: Regular readers of this column (we have those, right?) have seen us cover hyper-energetic and forward-thinking crew HiTech before. They already had a big year in 2022, with their debut self-titled LP on Omar-S’s FXHE Records (one of our faves), and are poised to blast off even more in 2023. Next Tuesday, March 14, the trio are playing on an unreal bill at The Sanctuary, opening for the current king of underground hip-hop MIKE. The New York rapper takes a more sample-based approach to music, a heavy nod to his MF Doom influence, but with a lo-fi soulful production style that compliments his free-form rhyming beautifully. MIKE was just in town recently as a guest at Bruiser Thanksgiving, and has also shared local bills with Black Noi$e and Bruiser Wolf, so clearly there’s come special Motor City sauce he keeps coming back for. HiTech’s rapid ghettotech indebted music definitely represents the next wave, and experiencing them live on The Sanctuary’s sound system is not to be missed. Tickets available via the venue’s website.

—Joe

Got a tip about Detroit’s music scene? Hit us up at music@metrotimes.com!

The members of Toughie enjoy a slice at Sgt. Pepperoni’s.

COURTESY PHOTO

Wed 03/08

Happy Birthday, Mike Thomas!

Thurs 03/09 Happy Birthday, ERIN!

Fri 03/10

TIME2FIND/HIDING SALEM/ ZOSETTE & THE GROOVE

Doors@9pm/$5 Cover

FIREBALL FRIDAY! $5 FIREBALL SHOTS ALL DAY

Fri 03/11

3148S/THE BROTHERS CORTEZ/ GHOST GARDEN

Doors@9pm/$5 Cover

Mon 03/13 FREE POOL ALL DAY

Tues 03/14 B.Y.O.R. BRING YOUR OWN RECORDS (WEEKLY)

Open Decks @9pm/NO COVER IG: @byor_tuesdays_old_miami

Fri 03/17 ST. PATTY’S DAY SHOW!

NUKE AND THE LIVING DEAD (REUNION) THE ZOTS/BLATSY’S BACKROAD

Doors@9pm/$5 Cover

Coming Up: 03/18 BANGERZ & JAMZ (MONTHLY) 03/24 CINECYDE/THE HOURLIES/ SEARCH & DESTROY 03/25 ASKELPLIUS (SMILEY’S B-DAY SHOW)

03/26 NAIN ROUGE PARADE PARTY W/BANGERZ & JAMZ 03/31 MATT BASTERDSON/ jo serrapere & the lafawndas/ phil profitt & his fast fortunes 04/01 PARKHOUSE NIGHT 04/06 TIGERS OPENING DAY JELLO SHOTS always $1

Old Miami tees & hoodies available for purchase!

March 8-14, 2023 | metrotimes.com

MUSIC

Samara Joy to perform in Detroitarea churches

The Grammy-winning jazz singer will perform two concerts through a new initiative by Christ Church Cranbrook

By Lee DeVito

Last month, Bronx-born 23-year-old jazz singer Samara Joy won Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Vocal Jazz Album — thanks to her 2022 release Linger Awhile, which has earned her comparisons to the greats like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan. And this month, there are two opportunities to catch the talented young singer perform intimate concerts inside churches in metro Detroit.

Joy will headline Cranbrook Project’s annual Sacred Jazz Concert series, with the first show at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 24 at Christ Church Cranbrook (470 Church Rd., Bloomfield Hills) and a second date at 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 25 at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church (18700 James Couzens Fwy., Detroit). Tickets for the concerts start at $25 and are available on eventbrite.com, and Detroit allwomen jazz group Musique Noire will open both nights.

Kisma Jordan, project manager of the Cranbrook Project, calls Joy “an amazing once-in-a-generation voice” and says the organization “is excited to just be able to present her in such a glorious moment in her career.” In recent months, Joy has performed on national television on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Kelly Clarkston Show

Jordan adds, “Her life is going to be changed forever.”

It’s unusual these days for the Grammy Awards to give such high honors to a traditional jazz artist. The gravity of the accomplishment was not lost on Joy, who is seen in a viral video bursting in tears, running a victory lap, and doing a celebration dance after she found out she was nominated on a train ride home.

The concerts, Jordan says, were

fortuitously booked before Joy won the awards. Jordan reached out to Joy Concert after she performed in Detroit last year at the DSO’s CUBE at the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center.

“It was just us getting in at an opportune moment,” Jordan says. “And it was really just to present good, gifted artists, just good music, and a quality experience.”

It’s the first time the Cranbrook Project has partnered with Detroit’s Hartford Memorial Baptist Church for a performance. The Cranbrook Project was incorporated as a nonprofit in 2019 and funded through a grant from the Erb Family Foundation. Jordan says the church is a perfect venue for the Cranbrook Project to partner with for events.

“The mission is to bridge cities and suburbs — it’s a simple thing — through arts programming,” Jordan tells Metro Times

So far, the Cranbrook Project’s music programming has largely centered around jazz at Christ Church Cranbrook. Aside from the Sacred Jazz Concert, it also organizes the annual Cranbrook Christmas Jazz event.

The Cranbrook Project has partnered with other entities in Detroit, but Jordan says people should expect more music programming at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, as well as an expansion into other communities like Pontiac.

“Detroit and Pontiac, they’re predominantly Black, and you know, the suburban areas around them are predominantly white,” Jordan says. “[We’re] just trying to move through some of the demographic barriers that in our world have kind of seeped into our subjective experiences, and we all kind of become nestled in our own little communities, our own little

worlds.”

She adds, “Part of what we’re trying to do is make things as accessible as possible.”

Jordan is a native Detroiter and a classically trained opera singer, which she says drives her goal of linked the city and its suburbs.

“If you want to get into Detroit, sometimes you have to have somebody from Detroit,” she says of her role. “It’s a very unique town, and you have to know how to navigate it so that Detroiters see you and they believe in what you’re committed to. People come here, and they want to benefit from Detroit, but they don’t necessarily sew into Detroit, and I think that matters. I see the Cranbrook Project has an opportunity to do that and to plant seeds that can last for a very long time.”

She says the Cranbrook Project programming has so far centered around jazz — and churches — because of its spiritual element.

“Jazz is a place where I think everyone can come together,” she says. “It’s just something about jazz music that

sounds like a centering or grounding, a beginning.”

However, she adds, “It doesn’t necessarily have to be just the church, but the church is a rallying spot. And so you start there.”

Jordan says she hopes to expand programming into other genres like classical music or folk, and other types of events like panel discussions. And ticket sales from the Sacred Jazz Concerts will go toward expanding a summer arts youth camp for kids in the metro Detroit area, she says.

She hopes that by building bridges, the Cranbrook Project can also expand minds.

“When you’re talking about building community, we should be more diverse, we should push ourselves to increase our cultural experiences,” she says. “Because ultimately, what that helps us do is it helps us see the world beyond our subjective, beyond just what we know and understand. We get to see what other people know, what other people understand, and that makes us become a better versions of ourselves, whether we know it or not.”

Samara Joy.

COURTESY OF THE CRANBROOK PROJECT

FOOD

An unlikely barbeque hotspot

Metro Detroit doesn’t turn out much in the way of smoked brisket worth mentioning. It’s hard to top the region’s rib tips and ribs, and there’s plenty of smoked chicken, but the best brisket I’ve found in town has been made in friends’ backyard smokers, and I rarely bother when it’s on a local menu. It’s a real hole in the region’s barbecue repertoire.

But there’s one exception to the rule, and it’s in an unlikely spot — Royal Oak’s Holiday Market. An upscale grocery store in Royal Oak doesn’t conjure the kind of vibe or atmosphere that one would think produces excellent brisket, but about five years ago Holiday hired chef Kirk Churchill, who previously worked at J-Bird Smoked Meats in Keego Harbor.

Churchill was looking for a day job so he could spend more time with his kids, found a fit at Holiday, revamped the menu with his own recipes, and The Smokehouse went from a place where you go to grab a smoked chicken to nibble on for the week to a place to go for real barbecue.

The brisket has always been on point

By Tom Perkins

in recent years — not a flaw to report, as it’s moist, smokey, flavorful, and the fat content is just right. But somehow it got even better in recent visits. Churchill asked if I noticed anything different last time I tried The Smokehouse’s brisket.

“Was it richer?” he says.

Yes. Churchill’s brisket is among the richest I’ve ever eaten. Decadent, even. How does one achieve that?

Churchill won’t reveal his secrets, but says he recently learned from a Michelin-starred chef about an ingredient that can be rubbed on brisket to impart a deep richness. It’s something natural and, after learning about it, Churchill and his crew experimented.

“We were like ‘Dude!’” he says of the revelatory moment when they tasted it for the first time.

The secret ingredient boosted the richness 10-20%, Churchill says, and, yes, my dudes — this is serious brisket. And if you really want to go over the top, try the burnt ends, an amped-up version of a portion of meat that was extremely rich to begin with.

Churchill smokes the brisket for 14-16

hours using Michigan hardwoods from a local tree guy. He says he doesn’t try to do any stunt barbecuing by using weird woods or trimming all the fat. “I respect the meat,” he explains. He is a traditionalist, and says he likes to buy up old church cookbooks and similar reads to find recipes and tricks.

Beyond the brisket and burnt ends, The Smokehouse offers a full menu that’s longer than what you would find in many barbecue restaurants. It had three kinds of ribs on a recent visit, and the baby backs held plenty of fall-offthe-bone tender meat that was a balance of smokey, sweet and tangy, and a tad rich. The Smokehouse first rubs it with French’s yellow mustard, then adds the chicken and pork rub.

The smoked chicken also pops — it’s rubbed the day before it’s smoked for a few hours to get the flavor deep in the meat, and a half-smoked bird provided the foundation for meals for three days. The smoked chicken wings with a sweet and tangy barbecue sauce were only second to the brisket.

Most everything is made from scratch, including the mac and cheese.

1203 S. Main St., Royal Oak 248-541-1414

holiday-market.com

My notes on it say “rich, find different adjectives,” but, look, it is rich. It comes coated with a layer of cheese and wet in a thick cheese sauce. The Smokehouse first sautees then purees onions and orange bell peppers that are added to the mix to ratchet up the richness.

We also liked the queso and loaded baked potato tots, even if they’re one of the few things not made in house. Don’t forget dipping sauces and to grab a jar of bread and butter pickles.

Everything is carryout, though the brisket is cut-to-order. Some of the grab and go items are cold, some are warm. It really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that Holiday holds one of the region’s best kept barbecue secrets. It has made a point of developing an excellent catering business and its bakery is among the better in the region — if the rich brisket doesn’t stop your heart, the rich cake might.

Brisket priced by the pound Wheelchair accessible

Is metro Detroit’s best brisket smoked in Royal Oak’s Holiday Market?

TOM PERKINS

FOOD

Avalon opens Canfield cafe

THE LINE WAS nearly out the door at Avalon on Canfield’s grand opening last week.

The bakery closed its flagship cafe around the corner on Willis Street after 25 years in business, and announced plans to open inside Jolly Pumpkin at 441 W. Canfield St. back in January.

Inside, the space feels more like Avalon with a side of Jolly Pumpkin. The hand-written signs, sea salt chocolate chunk cookies, Bite of Bliss, and everything we’ve come to love about Avalon are all there. And unlike its predecessor, there’s actually room to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee — like, a lot of room.

At a “cookie cutting” ceremony, Avalon International Breads owner Jackie Victor thanked the customers who have been rocking with the bakery since day one. Jolly Pumpkin co-founder Jon Carlson said, “it’s silly to think Jolly Pumpkin is welcoming Avalon. We’re not. This is their home. We’re a part of their home. We’ve always been a part of Jackie’s home… We’ve gone through some tough times, everybody has, but to be with Avalon is a blessing.”

Still glowing from the outpouring of love from the community and packed house of customers, Victor tells Metro Times she’s thrilled about the new location. She wasn’t always so optimistic about the move, however. When she first made the decision to close the Willis cafe, she felt like she was disappoint-

ing the community.

“I haven’t grieved like I grieved when I made that decision since I lost my mom, to be perfectly honest,” she says. “Anyone who knew Willis knew it wasn’t just a business. It was a living thing. It was an organism, and I couldn’t imagine life without it... I felt devastated that I was letting the community down. I thought people were gonna be mad and nasty but there was one of that. It was just like, ‘We’re so sad but good on you. Let’s go. See you at Canfield.’ I honestly didn’t see that coming.”

Victor still remembers when Avalon first opened on Willis in the winter of 1997. She says the building didn’t have any windows, electricity, or plumbing, just a plywood door and a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. At that time, people just called it “the bakery” because it was the only one in Midtown, she says.

“When we said we were going to put windows in, the landlord said the neighborhood wasn’t ready for windows. Obviously, he was wrong,” Victor says with a laugh. “We were told we were too far south of Wayne State to be viable. The neighborhood’s changed in so many ways, but I loved it back then. The idea of status and social capital that’s here now didn’t exist. The respect you earned from people was not based on what you looked like or how much money you made. It was more, what

do you do? How do you contribute? Are you an artist, an activist, or just the wild person who comes in and writes poetry at Avalon every day? We were so interdependent and it was magic.”

It was also at the height of a mental health and homeless crisis in Detroit.

“There was a lot of disruption. That was like post-Reagan, post-Bush, and we had Governor [John] Engler who all did a beautiful job of dismantling the social safety net over 10, 20 years,” Victor says, emphasizing “beautiful” sarcastically. “People were still leaving. It was white flight, and what they called ‘green flight’ because the Black middle class was leaving the city. All the mental health facilities had been closed down and people were just literally dumped into the streets. The winter before we opened there was a huge tent outside a church that was south of us. There were 300 people sleeping in that tent, so that’s the kind of economic dislocation that was happening.”

She says the neighborhood felt more “scrappy” back then, and businesses in the neighborhood relied on each other.

“I never considered it a dangerous neighborhood,” she says. “I always loved that it was always very scrappy, you know, artists, activists, that was the great thing. Larry, the homeless guy who, unfortunately, passed about a year ago and played drums outside [Avalon on Willis], lived outside the bakery. He literally used to get mail delivered to

the bakery. Those first 10 years, everybody just saw each other. We needed each other.”

Midtown has changed a lot since then, and Avalon is no longer the only bakery in the neighborhood.

While Avalon’s other locations like downtown Detroit and Ann Arbor were able to recover from sales lost during the pandemic, Victor says the Willis flagship struggled.

“The highest [sales] got after COVID was still down 30% from pre-COVID,” she says. “And there are lots of reasons for it, but costs are higher and our rent was really high. Downtown, our sales were even higher than pre-COVID. [On Canfield], we can do what we do best and not be under the stress of a business model that, for whatever reason, just no longer worked.”

Victor says she’s most excited about actually having space for people to sit down at the new location, something the Willis cafe was seriously lacking.

“We were all so used to the limitations of Willis and it was like that quirky uncle, you love him just the way he is,” she says. “We feel really good about the move and the fact that there are 90 seats.”

Hours for Avalon on Canfield are from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday-Friday and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The Jolly Pumpkin side will open at 11 a.m.

—Randiah Camille Green

Jolly Pumpkin co-founder Jon Carlson (center left) and Avalon owner Jackie Victor (center right) cut a giant cookie at Avalon on Canfield’s grand opening. COURTESY PHOTO

CEO of embattled Recovery Park to open Mexican restaurant

With his urban farm plans on hold, Gary Wozniak has partnered with Ori’Zaba’s Scratch Mexican Grill for Michigan expansion

By Lee DeVito

He became a media darling with his ambitious plan to create a large-scale urban farm in Detroit. But with Recovery Park mired in multiple setbacks, CEO Gary Wozniak is moving forward with a new business venture.

Last week, Wozniak announced plans to open an Ori’Zaba’s Scratch Mexican Grill franchise in metro Detroit. The fast-casual chain was founded in 2001 in Las Vegas, and the restaurant would be the company’s first in Michigan.

Reached by phone, Wozniak tells Metro Times that the opportunity dovetails with Recovery Park’s goal to help formerly incarcerated people find jobs. A recovering addict who served time in federal prison for defrauding investors, Wozniak says he faced hiring discrimination. He launched Recovery Park about a decade ago to help others like him, though its farm project has failed to materialize.

“The food space naturally attracts people with barriers to employment,” he says. “If you look across the spectrum, people working at Eastern Market, in restaurants, at delivery organizations … [these businesses] definitely attract a higher degree of people with challenges.”

Wozniak says he began looking at franchising about two years ago, and became an Ori’Zaba’s fan after visiting its Las Vegas-area restaurants.

One reason, he says, is the freshness of the food. “Nothing is boxed, or canned, or frozen on the menu,” he says. “Everything is made from scratch every day right at the store, which is very impressive.”

The menu is based on street food from Mexico’s Orizaba region. “It’s a different type of Mexican food than we’re used to in this country, and it’s very authentic,” Wozniak says, adding that he noticed the restaurants drew a

sizable Latino clientele. “I got to talking with them, and they were reminiscing about how the food was very similar to what they had in their native country.”

Wozniak says he plans to open multiple restaurants somewhere in Oakland and Macomb counties. He aims to start with one and hopefully open three over the next few years.

“Having the first store is putting the flag in and introducing people to the concept, introducing people to the food,” he says. “It’s key that we select the right location.”

Wozniak says he first became involved with franchising with Jet’s Pizza after returning from prison in the early 1990s. He also found other work, including managing money for a local nonprofit. In the 2000s, he got the idea for a nonprofit that could be supported by a commercial farm with a social justice mission, believing that customers would be willing to pay a premium if it was for a good cause.

He launched Recovery Park in 2010, and his story soon made national headlines. In 2015, the City of Detroit transferred 40 acres of land in Poletown to be leased by Recovery Park at a discount, where eight “hoop house” farms were constructed — part of a grand $13 million vision to eventually build a glass greenhouse that Wozniak once predicted would employ 100 workers and generate millions in revenue by 2021.

But in 2021, Metro Times found the Recovery Park property in disrepair, the hoop houses empty. Also that year, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs issued a cease-anddesist order to Recovery Park, saying Wozniak sold unregistered promissory note securities to at least two investors. And in 2022, a court ordered Recovery Park to repay $750,000 in loans from the state for failing to meet payment

deadlines.

Regarding the securities, Wozniak says Recovery Park reached a settlement with no fines or penalties under an agreement to not do it again. “I think that the promissory notes were perfectly legal,” Wozniak says. “But I’m not going to sit here and get in a scrap with the state of Michigan over it.” Negotiations regarding repaying the loans are also ongoing, he says. (The attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.) He’s also accused Lakeland Fresh Farms, a Chesterfieldbased operation launched by former Recovery Park investors and workers, of stealing intellectual property. “Theft from a nonprofit for personal gain is pretty illegal,” Wozniak says. (Lakeland Fresh Farms did not respond to a request for comment.)

Recovery Park is also in negotiations with former investors and workers who are still owed money, Wozniak says. “I don’t know where that stands at this point,” he says. “I’ve literally had my hands full just trying to rebuild postCOVID.”

He insists Recovery Park still exists, even though the project’s future is murky. “Our board is very active,” he says. “We meet quarterly like clockwork. Our team and the board will collectively make decisions on how to proceed.”

Wozniak says Recovery Park has invested nearly $100,000 into restoring

the farm’s hoop houses. One is being leased by a local chef, and Wozniak says Recovery Park could start growing produce in the other hoop houses and hosting community events starting this spring.

One day, Wozniak says he hopes Recovery Park could supply produce for Ori’Zaba’s.

“If we can figure out a way to grow large-scale successfully, I mean, there’s certainly an opportunity down the road to grow our own vegetables for the Ori’Zaba’s restaurants here,” he says. “Ori’Zaba’s is not opposed to the idea. We’ve talked about it.”

Wozniak says he is paying to open the franchise with personal funds, projected to cost nearly $700,000. He says he has not sold any Recovery Park property except for a donated commercial building near Poletown at 2600 E. Grand Blvd. that wound up being unsuitable. The money from that sale, described as “several hundred thousand dollars,” went back to Recovery Park, he says.

His goal is to open the first Ori’Zaba’s restaurant by the end of the year.

“I’m really excited because it’s going to give us an opportunity to hire more people coming out of drug treatment programs and prisons,” he says. “And to let people know that, you know, we do change our lives, and that we manage the bumps that go along in life as they happen.”

A worker at a Ori’Zaba’s Scratch Mexican Grill restaurant. COURTESY PHOTO

WEED

$59.5M from cannabis taxes headed to municipalities

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS ARE seeing green, thanks to Michigan’s cannabis laws. At least some of them, that is.

More than $59.5 million collected from taxes is heading to 224 Michigan municipalities and counties that have opted-in to the state’s licensed cannabis industry, according to an announcement from the Michigan Department of Treasury.

Recipients include 81 cities, 26 villages, 53 townships, and 64 counties. According to the Michigan Department of Treasury, that comes out to more than $51,800 for every licensed cannabis dispensary and microbusiness located within each jurisdiction for the fiscal year 2022.

“Municipalities and counties will begin seeing these payments appear in their banking accounts,” State Treasurer Rachael Eubanks said in a statement. “Through a partnership, the dollars received from the adult-use marijuana taxes and fees are distributed to our participating communities.”

While a plethora of licenses have contributed to plummeting cannabis prices in Michigan, more than $1.8 billion adult-use cannabis sales were reported in Michigan in the 2022 fiscal year.

Despite the plummeting price,

revenue grew. Last year, the Michigan Department of Treasury said it was disbursing $42.2 million to municipalities, raised from more than $1.1 billion in adult-use cannabis sales in the 2021 fiscal year.

For the 2022 state fiscal year, there was $198.4 million available for distribution. Along with the $59.5 million headed to municipalities and counties, $69.4 million was sent to the School Aid Fund for K-12 education, and another $69.4 million to the Michigan Transportation Fund, the Michigan Department of Treasury said.

“The team at the CRA does an amazing job and our effective regulatory approach allows our licensees to provide Michigan’s cannabis consumers the safest possible product,” said Cannabis Regulatory Agency executive director Brian Hanna. “The funding that makes its way to local governments through the excise tax collected by licensed retailers is an important benefit of the regulated cannabis industry and the CRA is committed to doing our part in supporting our law-abiding licensees.”

Under the Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act, which voters approved in 2018, communities must opt-in to allow adult-use cannabis businesses to operate, where anyone age 21 or older can purchase cannabis from licensed businesses.

Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, took years to opt-in after a series of social justice-minded ordinances got held up in legal wrangling.

The Motor City finally allowed licensed adult-use cannabis sales earlier this year.

More information is available from michigan.gov/revenuesharing.

—Lee DeVito

Mount Clemens JARS Cannabis dispensary opens

JARS CANNABIS OPENED its latest dispensary in Mount Clemens on Friday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Mayor Laura Kropp and members from the Macomb County Chamber.

“JARS opening is another sign of the revitalization that we are working very hard to bring to fruition in Mount Clemens,” Mayor Kropp said. “This is going to be another economic driver in our town, it’s a source of revenue that Mount Clemens desperately needs, and it lends itself to what we are trying to create in Mount Clemens. And that is for Mount Clemens to be the ‘downtown’ of Macomb County.”

She added, “That is the food scene, the entertainment scene, and the cultural scene – and JARS is a part of that entertainment. We know that voters, in 2016, legalized in Michigan, and we wanted to make sure that was represented in Mount Clemens as well. So thank you very much for coming to Mount Clemens, for making Mount Clemens part of your home as well, and again, thank you so much for being a part of that revitalization in Mount Clemens.”

The 4,000-square-foot dispensary is located at 101 N. Groesbeck Hwy., Mount Clemens and is open for adultuse sales. All customers age 21 and older are welcome with valid ID.

The Mount Clemens store is the Troybased company’s 15th in Michigan and 25th in the U.S. The company also has stores in Arizona and Colorado.

More information is available at jarscannabis.com.

—Lee DeVito

Puff Cannabis launches River Rouge dispensary

PUFF CANNABIS COMPANY opened its newest adult-use dispensary in River Rouge.

The dispensary at 11397 W. Jefferson Ave. hosted a grand opening party on Friday with giveaways, a DJ, and a chance to win $3,000.

The first 100 customers received a Puff goodie bag, valued at $250. All new customers also received a free pre-roll.

The 5,000-square-foot dispensary will offer “some of the most unique and one-of-a-kind edibles, flower, and oils in the area,” the company said in a news release.

“At Puff Cannabis Company, our customers and staff are treated like family as our goal is to always pro -

mote a healthy shopping and work environment, creating an excellent customer service experience,” said Justin Elias, president of Puff Cannabis Company. “When men and women 21 years and older shop or work at Puff Cannabis Company, they become part of an outstanding lifestyle and atmosphere.”

Puff Cannabis was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Madison Heights. It has seven other locations, with dispensaries in Madison Heights, Utica, Bay City, Hamtramck, Traverse City, and Sturgis.

The company plans to open an additional 5 to 10 locations this year.

—Steve Neavling

SHUTTERSTOCK

CULTURE

Artist of the week

Katelyn Rivas brings ‘abolitionist poetry’ to the tiniest gallery we’ve ever seen in Ann Arbor

By Randiah Camille Green

A tiny gallery in Ann Arbor holds a profound message for passersby:

With each new day, the cherry blossom blooms, red like blood, on a white shirt. he is not armed. he is not armed.

It’s a poem by Detroit-based poet, essayist, and digital artist Katelyn Rivas on display at Creal Microgallery in Ann Arbor for her Songs for the Seasons series.

Creal Microgallery isn’t the traditional exhibition space you probably picture when you hear the word “gallery.” At 16-by-10-by-12 inches the birdhousesized space is more like one of those little free libraries but with art inside instead of books.

A different poem will be featured in the gallery each week during Songs for the Season with an accompanying illustration exploring grief, joy, loss, and reflection.

“With these different illustrated verse samples I really am trying to capture

what it’s meant to be in a pandemic and I hope it’ll give folks the opportunity to reflect within their own self,” Rivas tells Metro Times

The piece from above is an excerpt from a longer poem “Self-Portrait of a Both Girl” and is accompanied by a silhouette of a man surrounded by cherry blossoms.

“I wrote this poem a while ago, but I recently created this illustration to go with this stanza as a representation of what has happened with Black men being brutally murdered by police,” she says. “I was definitely thinking of Tyre Nichols and other folks that have perished recently. A lot of my work is about abolition and I thought that was really important to bring with this exhibit.”

In a way, the poem is a contradiction. Rivas says the last lines “he is not armed” reflect her desire to exist as a Black woman without being politicized, while simultaneously nodding to radical movements against police brutality.

“It’s a metaphor for wanting to be in my own Black experience without having to fight for it, but another part of this poem is that I am a person who is transracially adopted,” she explains. “I was adopted into a white family and so this poem is also about me being a young Black girl who is of mixed ethnicity and also living in a multi-ethnic home and trying to figure out my identity as I see these things happening around me.”

The full poem is part of her Radical Self-Care for Black Women zine published by Detroit-based publisher Flower Press. The zine also features collage work by Rivas along with her poetry.

“When I think of radical, you know, I think of Angela Davis and that quote, ‘radical simply means grasping things at the root,’” Rivas says. “To me, being radical is about exactly that. It’s about going to your original source, to who you are and where you’re from, and

figuring that out. In the zine, I wanted to talk about some of the things that I had experienced throughout my life that inspired me to be on a self-care journey and overcome different issues with mental health.”

She adds, “it’s so important in a world where, folks, specifically like black bodies, are put on display as a consumption of trauma.”

Rivas has had poems, essays, and poetry reviews published in Belt Magazine, Bullet Train, Tayo Literary Magazine, Take A Stand: Art Against Hate, Michigan Quarterly Review Online, and others.

Where to see her work: Songs for the Seasons is on display at Creal Microgallery until March 27. The microgallery is located on Creal Crescent in Ann Arbor. More information is available on its Instagram page @creal_microgallery. Radical Self-Care for Black Women is available via Flower Press.

Detroit-based poet, essayist, and digital artist Katelyn Rivas

COURTESY PHOTO We told you it was tiny.

COURTESY OF CREAL MICROGALLERY

Magic Mike’s Last Dance

Rated: R

Run-time: 112 minutes

phy with a playful, still rare, and quite unabashed sexual frankness, the ultimate production becomes the film’s best case for watching: a lengthy climax that’s vigorously emotional, charged, and more elegantly engaged in metacomment than the rest of what makes it up.

The work of making a fantasy

By George Elkind

Following its more modestly scaled predecessors but nonetheless ensconced in a like striptease-centered world, Magic Mike’s Last Dance offers a chance for Steven Soderbergh to not only wrap the trilogy he and Channing Tatum began releasing back in 2012, but an opportunity, too, to remark upon its stakes. Moving upward through class spheres and due northeast in terms of geographic terrain, Last Dance abandons the (now more politically fraught) space and texture of Floridian Americana for the gilded confines of the London theater scene’s upper echelons. Making its subject — the provision of charged fantasy for a presumed, more-real-than-imagined female audience — its own premise, this latest film takes a closer look at the dynamics of power, desire, romance, and escape inevitably in play.

Opening on the franchise’s onetime entrepreneur Mike Lane (Tatum) working freelance as a bartender after taking a COVID-era financial hit, he’s happened upon by one Maxandra “Max” Mendoza (a freewheeling, energetic Salma Hayek Pinault): a wealthy philanthropist in the midst of a divorce who understands his reputation as an erotic performer. After arranging for Mike to visit at her plush Florida home (one of many, we’re informed), she offers him thousands for a single night of intimate entertainment, which, in an evocative montage of dissolves between moments of their legibly total, mutual absorption, they seem to both get carried away — not only by his enduring prowess but through the

blindsiding force of their own shared chemistry.

This unexpected turn is for Max a welcome distraction but still requires a certain accounting-for, prompting her to both retaliate and escalate the situation in her own way: by enlisting Mike’s services (to be illuminated later) for a hefty sum, carrying him back with her to London for a month. Reflecting and remarking upon the power dynamics of patronage extant both within the franchise and sex work generally (Mike hardly has the power here to say no), it also upsets the franchise’s prior dynamics of relative female passivity amid each film’s tactile erotic acts. Accounting for such old tropes of women as “receptive partners” (a bit understandably, as they’re paying to be “serviced,” whether privately or before a crowd), the latest film’s reallocation of narrative agency presents a welcome boon to the film’s female characters, who in previous films had little do do but offer witticisms or sit immobile, awaiting worship, in chairs onstage. This is of course its own sort of fantasy — one of being sensually embraced and taken care of by an embodiment of a certain corporeal ideal — but it’s hardly the only one to be had.

Mike’s new gig, it turns out, is likewise a blend of new and old: a more-than-invitation to bring his talents — or those of men with something like them — to the London stage. As part of a turf war with her outgoing husband, Max takes control of the velvet-festooned Ratigan Theater as a kind of pet project, installing Mike as

its new head. Displacing its old director in the process, she aims to generate a subversive revision of an old gilded-cage costume drama, the enterprise providing a kind of mirror to her own comfortable but largely inert life and the dynamics of repression the film claims to address more broadly.

From there, the film is constructed largely with the staging of the show: in other words, with the construction of a fantasy. Casting, choreography, creative spats, and administrative snags provide friction over Mike’s month abroad, amidst a backdrop reliably framed as Old World in a kind of shorthand — repressed and out of touch. Through these dynamics Soderbergh, Tatum, and series writer Reid Carolin treat the production as a way to comment upon their own work, interspersing creative and ethical discussions with a slew of montages, which sometimes gesture at better than capture the work of assembling an elaborate show.

Alluding strongly to a live show adapted from the franchise, the conceit allows for moments of self-critique and re-orientation beyond what Max as a figurehead invites just on her own. Moving toward welcome models of more involved participation from female performers (most notably Juliette Motamed, who performs as the show’s sly and charismatic star) while aiming not to undermine the series’ provision of a freely erotic fantasia aimed squarely at women, the show works to make explicit what old Hollywood musicals often had to treat obliquely. Melding sterling choreogra-

Soderbergh, acting as usual as his own editor and cinematographer, veers from the at times self-parodic, freely jocular work of prior installments, into something far more graceful with this newest installment. While, in the moments before the curtain rises on the film’s centerpiece show, one can often feel the gears turning behind the film’s script and production (a byproduct, possibly, of a COVID-era shoot), the film’s climax is fully neoclassical, evoking the director’s own old favorites. An avowed fan of Richard Lester (best known for A Hard Day’s Night and other Beatles collaborations) and Bob Fosse (Cabaret, All That Jazz), Last Dance embraces both their self-reflexivity and the swooning sense of romance, of visual and formal play, inherited from Gene Kelly, Vincente Minnelli, and other artistic forebears. Blowing other musicals of the past decade straight out of the water (La La Land, West Side Storymeanwhile exempted), Last Dance’s peaks become, a bit unexpectedly, radiant spectacles of color, movement, and light: and ones generous, too, in their ethical orientation.

Even amidst the gleeful creation of an escapist — if still bodily and immediate — variety of entertainment, Soderbergh and co. keep one eye on the inescapable entwinement of life with even the most seemingly frivolous art. Inevitably, without getting too particular, their stage fantasia routes back onto the financial and positional realities which produced it, accounting for the deep fluidity of our relations to one another, to money, and to our work (be it creative or not). In one offhand moment, Mike’s old friend and stage buddy Ken (Matt Bomer) waves off his financial concerns over an old debt, saying that money moves “like water” in multiple directions, gesturing at its potential as an ever-present, inescapable, and yet still-elusive force. For its abundance of spectacle, sly technique, and various distractions, Last Dance never loses sight of the fact that money, power, and desire work in similarly ambiguous, hard-to-track ways, and seem to move in surprising cycles. It’s almost inevitable, then, that when release comes, it’s with a shower of dollar bills — but there’s never much sense it’s either final or, beyond that moment, enough.

Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek in Magic Mike’s Last Dance

WARNER BROS.

CULTURE

Savage Love

Quickies

By Dan Savage

and/or annoy GAYS who don’t mess around at the gym. These days guys open Grindr at the gym and send hole pics to guys sitting on the machine next to them.

: A You remove the dental dam from its packaging, you place the packaging in the appropriate recycling bin, and then you carefully position the dental over the nearest trash can. You release the dental dam, you let it flutter into the trash can, and then you go to MyLorals.com and order yourself some of their FDA-cleared, ultra-sheer underpants designed for cunnilingus.

you’ve given up, lost, and/or never had — which would be absolute primacy and instead being grateful for what you’ve gained, e.g., someone else to do the dishes, someone else to pick up groceries, someone else to walk the dogs, etc.

: Q How are you liking MILF Manor?

: Q How can a bottom in his 50s find a dang top? Ageism sucks!

: Q

You suggested stocking up on abortion pills NOW for friends in the future because they could wind up being banned. I naively thought a ban would never happen. Now, as you probably know, it’s on the verge of being banned nationwide any day due to the lawsuit in Texas. It looks like I’d need to go to a doctor to get them and I don’t want to have to lie about needing them. Is there any other way to get them?

: A Go to PlanCPills.org!

: Q I look OK, I make good money, I have my own place, and I’m nice. But no one wants me, and no one stays, because I’m autistic. Everyone says, “Just get out there,” but it doesn’t work. I want a real relationship, but I would settle for an escort. But I don’t want to get robbed or killed. Everyone says, “Just get out there,” but it doesn’t work.

: A I can’t give explicit advice about finding escorts — it’s a legal gray area but I can suggest that you follow sex workers’ rights advocates on Twitter, many of whom are sex workers themselves. Most of the women sex workers I know — personally, not professionally — have experience working with autistic clients. And while locating an experienced sex worker you would like to see in person will require some time and effort, the energy you’re currently expending being miserable would be better spent on this search. There are also dating sites for autistic adults like Hiki (hikiapp.com) that you might want to check out.

: Q What’s the best way as GAYS to get laid at the gym?

: A No one gets laid at the gym — or through the gym — without going to the gym. As a very problematic person once said, 80% of success in life is just showing up. And here’s a pro-tip: presmartphones and hookup apps, GAYS would cruise each other while they lifted weights, offer to spot each other, and then follow each other into locker rooms to mess around — discreetly, of course, so as not to panic STRAIGHTS

: Q I’m a 43-year-old cis straight man. I’m going to see my doctor soon and I plan to ask him about testing for autism spectrum disorder, because more than half of my girlfriends and a few platonic friends have asked me if I might be on the spectrum. I don’t think a diagnosis will change my life, other than reframing a lot of confusing (to me) “breakups” with friends and girlfriends over the years. Any advice whether or how I should contact previous friends and girlfriends to let them know I received a diagnosis that might explain some of our problems? I’m still on friendly(ish) terms with most of them.

: A A status update posted to Facebook and/or a story posted to Instagram — assuming you’re on social media and/or want to be out about your diagnosis — would probably reach most of your friends and exes. If that’s too public, I don’t see why you couldn’t just send a note to the friends and exes with whom you’re on friendly(ish) terms, particularly the ones who suggested you might be on the spectrum.

: Q I have seen videos of guys getting fisted. Some of these guys take it all the way to the elbow. How the heck is this even possible?!? I mean they have to be touching their lungs or heart! Even done carefully how can this be safe and not do permanent damage?

: A “Some guys’ insides are just made differently,” said CagedJock, a gay male porn star who is often elbow-deep in his costars. “I once fisted this boy — he was short, only 5’5” — and I basically just slid in up my elbow. He was gifted anatomically. But I have also fisted 6’2” guys without getting past my wrist. So, it’s not the height that gets you to past the elbow. It’s like people in the circus ordinary people just can’t do that. And it’s safe as long as you’re doing it right. I have been fisting since 2015 and I’ve bottomed since 2004. It’s about knowing how the body works, using common sense, learning how to read the body language of the receiver, and lots of communication.”

Follow CagedJock on Twitter and Instagram @CagedJock.

: Q How do you use a dental dam effectively?

: A I’m always a little suspicious when a guy in his 50s — and that’s my demo — starts to complain about ageism in the gay community…. because I’ve heard from too many middle-aged gay guys whose complaints about “ageism” boiled down to, “Guys in their 20s and 30s don’t wanna fuck me, and I don’t wanna fuck guys my own age or older.” It may not be as easy for a guy in his 50s to find dick, but it’s not impossible, and it’s certainly not as hard as it was back when only guys in their 20s were considered hot. There are lots of guys who are into hot daddies these days, and while a lot of those guys are bottoms, they aren’t all bottoms.

: Q I’m pre-op, no-T, non-binary, AFAB. Do I belong on Grindr?

: A It depends on what you mean by, “Do I belong?” If what you mean is, “Am I allowed on Grindr and will I find someone there who might wanna fuck me?”, then the answer is yes. But if what you mean is, “Will I have a completely frictionless experience on Grindr and not encounter a single asshole who goes out of his way to make me feel like I don’t belong on a hookup app for gay and bi men because I have a vagina and boobs?”, then the answer is no. But by that standard… no one “belongs” on Grindr, where some people — where some assholes — have been known to go out of their way to make people, AFAB and AMAB, cis and trans, gay and otherwise, feel like they don’t belong.

: Q My girlfriend has some body odor underarm odor — that I notice when we play. Any subtle ways to tell her?

: A I’m not a “mansmells” kind of guy/pervert, but I like it the way my men smell… at least most of the time. When they smell too strong or sour or otherwise unpleasant, I usually just say, “You stink,” and point them to the shower. Try it.

: Q How does one effectively manage a throuple?

: A By not obsessing about what

: A I stopped watching MILF Manor after the third episode — the challenges were increasingly lame, the MILFs didn’t seem serious about wanting to actually fuck the younger men, and the younger men didn’t seem serious about wanting to fuck the MILFs. I’m watching Young Royals S2, now, and rooting for Willie, Simon, and Marcus to form a throuple.

: Q I’m addicted to PMO — “porn, masturbation, orgasm.” How do I break this addiction and start having real sex?

: A If you’re having a hard time closing the laptop, pulling up your pants, and getting out of the house, you might have to do something radical — like canceling your internet service or getting your ass into therapy.

: Q Ever since birthing my children all of my masturbation fantasies include me having a penis. Is there a possible physiological reason for this? Or is it all in my head?

: A Physiological — “relating to the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts” — would seem to cover what’s going on in your head, as you’re a living organism and your head is one of your parts, so the distinction you’re attempting to draw between physiological and psychological seems false to me. Whatever is going on here, it’s interesting — definitely something to explore and enjoy.

: Q My ex and I miss each other and we’re both in therapy now. Is it a bad idea to get back together?

: A There’s an option between “broken up” and “back together,” and it’s called “dating.” Keep things casual, keep your own places, keep seeing your therapists, and keep all your options including the option of getting back together — open.

: Q Any recommended resources (such as books) for our 18-year-old son about same-sex sex?

See Savage.Love for the full column. Send your burning questions to mailbox@savage.love.

CULTURE Free Will Astrology

ARIES: March 21 – April 19

Repressed feelings and dormant passions are rising to the surface. I bet they will soon be rattling your brain and illuminating your heart, unleashing a soothing turbulence of uncanny glee. Will you get crazy and wise enough to coax the Great Mystery into blessing you with an inspirational revelation or two? I believe you will. I hope you will! The more skillful you are at generating rowdy breakthroughs, the less likely you are to experience a breakdown. Be as unruly as you need to be to liberate the very best healings.

TAURUS: April 20 – May 20

You finally have all you need to finish an incomplete mission or resolve a mess of unsettled karma. The courage and determination you couldn’t quite summon before are now fully available as you invoke a climax that will prepare the way for your awe-inspiring rebirth. Gaze into the future, dear Taurus, and scan for radiant beacons that will be your guides in the coming months. You have more help than you know, and now is the time to identify it and move toward it.

GEMINI: May 21 – June 20

Our sun is an average star in a galaxy of 100 billion stars. In comparison to some of its flamboyant compatriots, it’s mediocre. Over 860 light years away is a blue-white supergiant star called Rigel, which is twice as hot as our sun and 40,000 times brighter. The red supergiant Antares, over 600 light years away, has 12 times more mass. Yet if those two show-offs had human attitudes, they might be jealous of our star, which is the source of energy for a planet teeming with 8.7 million forms of life. I propose we make the sun your role model for now, Gemini. It’s an excellent time to glory in your unique strengths and to exuberantly avoid comparing yourself to anyone else.

CANCER: June 21 – July 22

The philosophical principle known as Occam’s razor asserts that when trying to understand a problem or enigma, we should favor the simplest explanation with the fewest assumptions. While that’s often a useful approach, I don’t recommend it in the coming weeks. For you, nuances and subtleties will abound in every situation. Mere simplicity is unlikely to lead to a valid understanding. You will be wise to relish the complications and thrive on the paradoxes. Try to see at least three sides of every story. Further tips: 1. Mysteries may be truer than mere facts. 2. If you’re willing to honor your confusion, the full, rich story will eventually emerge.

LEO: July 23 – August 22

Happy early St. Patrick’s all. We will be open. I’ll let you know the hours next week, I’m still on vacation.

ERIN GO BRAGH

“There are no unsacred places,” wrote Leo poet Wendell Berry. “There are only sacred places and desecrated places.” Poet Allen Ginsberg agreed. “Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!” he wrote. “Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeteria! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets! Holy the sea, holy the desert, holy the railroad.” With Berry’s and Ginsberg’s prompts as your inspiration, and in accordance with current astrological imperatives, I invite you to invigorate your relationship with sacredness. If nothing is sacred for you, do what it takes to find and commune with sacred things, places, animals, humans, and phenomena. If you are already a lover of sacred wonders, give them extra love and care. To expand your thinking and tenderize your mood, give your adoration to these related themes: consecration, sublimity, veneration, devotion, reverence, awe, and splendor.

VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22

My favorite Buddhist monk,

JAMES NOELLERT

Thich Nhat Hanh, wrote the following: “In us, there is a river of feelings, in which every drop of water is a different feeling, and each feeling relies on all the others for its existence. To observe it, we just sit on the bank of the river and identify each feeling as it surfaces, flows by, and disappears.” I bring this meditation to your attention, Virgo, because I hope you will do it daily during the next two weeks. Now is an excellent time to cultivate an intense awareness of your feelings — to exult in their rich meanings, to value their spiritual power, to feel gratitude for educating and entertaining you.

LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22

How might your life come into clearer focus when you uncover secrets that inspire your initiative and ingenuity? What happens when resources that had been inaccessible become available for your enjoyment and use? How will you respond if neglected truths spring into view and point the way toward improvements in your job situation? I suspect you will soon be able to tell me stories about all this good stuff. PS: Don’t waste time feeling doubtful about whether the magic is real. Just welcome it and make it work for you!

SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21:

It’s not the best time to tattoo a lover’s likeness on your abdomen. Maybe in May, but not now. On the other hand, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to see if your paramour might be willing to tattoo your name on their thigh. Similarly, this is a favorable period to investigate which of your allies would wake up at 5 am to drive you to the airport, and which of your acquaintances and friends would stop others from spreading malicious gossip about you, and which authorities would reward you if you spoke up with constructive critiques.

SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21

Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world. They may grow as high as 350 feet. Their roots are shallow, though, reaching down just six to 12 feet before spreading out 60 to 100 feet horizontally. And yet the trees are sturdy, rarely susceptible to being toppled

By Rob Brezsny

by high winds and floods. What’s their secret? Their root systems are interwoven with those of other nearby redwoods. Together, they form networks of allies, supporting each other and literally sharing nutrients. I endorse this model for you to emulate in your efforts to create additional stability and security in your life, Sagittarius.

CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19

What’s the best way to be fulfilled? Hard work and discipline? Are we most likely to flourish if we indulge only moderately in life’s sweet pleasures and mostly focus on the difficult tasks that build our skills and clout? Or is it more accurate to say that 90% of success is just showing up: being patient and persistent as we carry out the small day-to-day sacrifices and devotions that incrementally make us indispensable? Mythologist Joseph Campbell described a third variation: to “follow our bliss.” We find out what activities give us the greatest joy and install those activities at the center of our lives. As a Capricorn, you are naturally skilled at the first two approaches. In the coming months, I encourage you to increase your proficiency at the third.

AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18

Mackerels are unusual fish in that they must keep swimming nonstop. If they don’t, they die. Do they ever sleep? Scientists haven’t found any evidence that they do. I bring them up now because many of you Aquarians have resemblances to mackerels — and I think it’s especially crucial that you not act like them in the coming weeks. I promise you that nothing bad will happen if you slow way down and indulge in prolonged periods of relaxing stillness. Just the opposite in fact: Your mental and physical health will thrive as you give your internal batteries time and space to recharge.

PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20

A financial advisor once told me I could adopt one of three approaches to running my business: 1. Ignore change; 2. always struggle with change, halfimmobilized by mixed feelings about whether to change or stay pat; 3. learn to love and thrive on change. The advisor said that if I chose either of the first two options, I would always be forced to change by circumstances beyond my control. The third approach is ultimately the only one that works. Now is an excellent time for you Pisceans to commit yourself fully to number three — for both your business and your life.

Homework: What’s something you’d be wise to let go of? What’s something to hold on to tighter?

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