Metro Times 05/10/2023

NEWS & VIEWS

Feedback

We received the following comment in response to last week’s column by Joe Lapointe, “In Michigan, some counties splash back against the blue wave,” edited for space and clarity.

Stop talking about politics like it’s a team sport. Stop writing the news like it’s a second-year English Lit student’s attempt at subtle metaphor in free verse. Stop “making it light.” It’s not you. It’s the whole machine. “Splashing back against the blue wave” sounds like a pool noodle fight at a girl scout sleepover. This is an ongoing, well-financed, well-coordinated, deliberate, long-term fascist coup. These cops aren’t just well-meaning citizens

serving their communities as best they now how; they’re jackbooted thugs with no respect for the law or anything else that doesn’t put money in their hands, give them power, or help them feel better about their lack of personal character (and probably a few other shortcomings, for some). Given the totality of what’s happening — in Detroit, in Michigan, in the U.S., and in the world — reading about the ongoing attempt at collapsing our entire society into autocracy under the ham-handed manipulation of a bunch of ignorant power-mongering bigots who got their friends to pin a tin star on ‘em in a popularity contest described as though it were a friendly backyard kid’s game just chills my soul. —John Henry, Facebook

Sound off: letters@metrotimes.com

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Temujin Kensu’s exoneration quest wins support from Khaliah Ali

DECADES HAVE PASSED

since Temujin Kensu last sat with his granddad, Carl, enjoying Wide World of Sports. The popular ABC broadcast that first aired in the 1960s often featured a young, brash boxer named Cassius Clay, later known to the world as Muhammad Ali, playfully sparring with commentator Howard Cosell.

“‘Howard, if I was to hit you just one time your grandchildren would feel it!’” Kensu says, performing his throatiest, cockiest Ali impression. “I would just roar as a kid and I’d watch it with my grandfather, who has passed away and was my best friend, and those are just amazing memories.”

Then just a boy in Flint still known as Fredrick Freeman, long before converting to Buddhism, Kensu couldn’t have predicted he’d spend his 60th birthday in prison this month — like every birthday since his 24th — for a murder he denies committing.

Kensu also had no way of knowing that Khaliah Ali, a daughter of the

legendary fighter he admired, would become one of his fiercest allies. She recently announced plans to visit Kensu, who is widely regarded as the casualty in one of America’s most egregious wrongful convictions, before he turns 60 at Macomb Correctional Facility May 23.

“My father was an unapologetic force for what was good and what was right,” Khaliah Ali exclusively tells Metro Times. “He loved people.”

She adds, “This is exactly what he would be doing if he was still here, advocating for the disenfranchised in a way that was true to who he was.” Ali died in 2016.

A published author, health advocate, and humanitarian, Khaliah Ali adds her name to a wide array of well-regarded public officials and private citizens — ranging from current and former Michigan Supreme Court justices, a former FBI agent, a retired police detective, state and federal legislators, and multiple private

investigators — all of whom say Kensu should be exonerated in Scott Macklem’s 1986 killing. Kensu insists that he was in bed with his girlfriend at their home near Escanaba, Michigan, at the time of Macklem’s fatal shooting about 400 miles away, in the St. Clair County Community College parking lot in Port Huron.

But despite multiple alibi witnesses, including the girlfriend who wasn’t called to testify, a jailhouse informant and a drug-addicted lawyer helped influence the guilty verdict. The informant later recanted testimony that Kensu had confessed to the crime, but Kensu was left to serve a life sentence without parole. His only known connection to Macklem, son of the mayor of Croswell, Michigan, was that they dated the same woman at different

times, says Kensu, who took two polygraphs supporting his innocence.

Kensu’s growing list of advocates, including observers as far away as Europe, encourages him, but he says meeting the fifth child of Muhammad Ali will be a highlight of his life. Jason Flom, a justice advocate and one-time major record label executive who recently teamed with Khaliah Ali, offered to let Kensu speak with her during a phone call that sparked ongoing communication.

When Ali offered that she was sorry for Kensu’s plight, “I just started bawling like a baby,” he says. “All that tough inmate stuff went out the window.”

He adds, “I just felt, like, this compassion coming off of her in waves.”

An “enormous Muhammad Ali fan,” Kensu has been a martial artist since

Temujin Kensu.

MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Khaliah Ali.

COURTESY PHOTO

childhood, noting that another hero, martial arts icon Bruce Lee, sought out Ali when Lee studied boxing.

Support from Flom, who has interviewed Kensu for Flom’s wide-reaching Wrongful Conviction podcast, is also tremendously valued, adds Kensu. Flom’s roles as chairman of Atlantic Records, Virgin Records, and Capitol Music Group helped launch the careers of Katy Perry and Twisted Sister, among others, before Flom went on to persuade Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to grant numerous prison commutations and clemencies.

“Kensu’s a special guy,” says Flom. “He’s amazingly upbeat. Every conversation starts with him asking, ‘How are you doing? Is there anything I can do for you?’”

Decades after the conviction, stillunanswered questions about the case leave Flom convinced of Kensu’s innocence, Flom says. For example, what Kensu supporters call the “phantom flight” theory — in which a prosecutor suggested Kensu could have chartered a private jet to Port Huron, killed Macklem, and flown back home — was never proven.

“Unless I’m missing something, I still don’t think you can be in two places at one time,” Flom adds. “I’m not a firearms expert, but the last time I checked you can’t shoot a bullet from 400 miles away. It’s fucking ridiculous. It’s a ridiculous situation. It would be laughable if it were in a movie script. The director would say, ‘Take that out.’”

Flom and Khaliah Ali have been actively collaborating for about four months, including an April trip to

Son of Dan Gilbert dies at the age of 26

NICK GILBERT, SON of Rocket Mortgage and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, passed away Saturday at the age of 26.

He was born with neurofibromatosis, a disorder that causes tumors to grow on nerves throughout the body and which has no cure, and had survived multiple major brain surgeries since being diagnosed at 15 months old.

“He was loved and cherished by many people including : his parents, Daniel Gilbert and Jennifer Gilbert; his siblings, Grant of Gracie, AJ and Nash Gilbert; his grandparents, Shirley, Samuel Gilbert, Murk Goddard, Pamela and Robert Feldman; and his aunts and uncles, Gary (Charlotte Gilbert), Kevin (Robin Goddard), Andrea Gilbert, Richard (Patti Gilbert), Paul (Desiree Marz) and Alicia Fox. He was also cherished by many loving cousins, friends, and devoted doctors, nurses, and caregivers,” an obituary reads.

Wearing a bow tie that would

become a trademark and an emblem for his efforts to raise money to fight NF, a young 14-year-old Gilbert was introduced to the public in 2011 when he was sent as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ rep for the NBA Draft. After watching the ping pong balls fall Cleveland’s way, Gilbert — with his infectious smile, positivity, and sense of humor — became a fan favorite and the team’s good luck charm.

“What’s not to like?” — Gilbert’s answer on the broadcast that evening when asked what it felt like to be his dad’s personal hero — became a team marketing slogan, but it also represented his view on life, even one with NF.

“Look at the bright side of everything,” he told the PD in 2011 when asked what advice he would give to someone with the disorder, which affects 1 in every 3,000 people.

The Cavs last October announced the team was dedicating the 20222023 season to Gilbert, with the bow tie emblem appearing on warm-up

jerseys and throughout Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse as it embarked on a campaign to raise further awareness and funds.

“We want to give a special thanks to Cleveland fans for always embracing Nick and showing him support and love over the years,” Dan Gilbert said in a statement before the season began. “This season, we’re using the Cavs platform to raise awareness of NF and the millions who are impacted by this disease. While there’s currently no cure, we hope to help support cutting-edge research through our efforts. So, as you cheer on the Cavs this season, we ask that you keep Nick and all those fighting NF in your hearts.”

The Gilberts in 2017 founded NF Forward, a nonprofit dedicated to finding a cure for neurofibromatosis.

—Vince Grzegorek

Originally published by our sister paper Cleveland Scene. It is republished here with permission.

Carhartt inks deal with The Weather Channel

REPORTING THE WEATHER is now officially considered real “Carhartt shit.”

The Weather Channel announced last week that it has made a deal with the 134-year-old Dearborn-based workwear company to outfit its on-air meteorologists when they report live in the field during extreme weather events.

Starting the spring, the TV network’s 30 or so reporters will sport Carhartt-branded gear designed to protect them against the elements, including insulated jackets and vests and Carhartt’s “Rain Defender” pants.

“As America’s most trusted news

brand, our meteorologists are often out in extreme weather conditions, delivering life-saving reporting,” said Nora Zimmett, President of News and Original Series for Weather Group, in a statement. “This new collaboration between The Weather Channel and Carhartt brings together two brands that know how to tough it out in difficult conditions to keep Americans safe and comfortable.”

“As the world’s premium workwear brand since 1889, Carhartt has always been a brand for all hardworking people that endure varying weather conditions on the job,” said Susan Hennike, chief brand officer at Carhartt. “Meteorologists in the field

experience some of the most extreme weather conditions imaginable, and we know that many people rely on meteorologists to inform them about the gear they wear while working outside. Partnering with The Weather Channel is a natural fit to not only keep meteorologists protected from the elements, but to showcase hardworking gear performance in its most natural element: outside and in the field.”

Amateur meteorologists — or anyone who ever has to do Carhartt shit outside — can shop for all the designs featured on The Weather Channel at carhartt.com.

—Lee DeVito

Phoenix where they met a group of 335 exonerees who’d served a combined total of nearly 6,000 years in prison. While Flom says the reality of wrongful convictions is creeping into mainstream America’s consciousness, Khaliah Ali welcomes attention for anyone who might imagine her as an uninformed celebrity, leveraging her last name.

“I invite what you might call opposition,” she says. “I call it opportunity.”

Admirers of her father might not re -

call that he was active in cases such as the wrongful conviction of fellow boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, or that Ali himself was imprisoned for refusing to be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. She adds: “If he didn’t have the name and power behind him, who knows how that would have ended?”

Almost a year after the Michigan Innocence Clinic requested that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer grant Kensu clemency, a decision is pending, but the governor’s office did not respond to

Metro Times’ request for an update. Kensu wants Whitmer to take note of Flom’s and Khaliah Ali’s advocacy.

“I’m hoping the governor sees them for who they are, and that this is who I am, too,” he says. “I’d like others to know how amazing it is that people like Khaliah and Jason are out here fighting for us.”

Adds Khaliah Ali: “I’m not gonna take my teeth out of it. I’m in it until the end. He’s coming home.”

—Eddie B. Allen Jr.

“Unless I’m missing something, I still don’t think you can be in two places at one time,” Flom adds. “I’m not a firearms expert, but the last time I checked you can’t shoot a bullet from 400 miles away. It’s fucking ridiculous.”

Detroit’s ‘Chief Storyteller’ leaves role

BACK IN 2017, the City of Detroit made headlines for creating a new government position it called “Chief Storyteller,” with other cities like Atlanta and Denver following its lead. But in a LinkedIn post published last Monday, Detroit’s Chief Storyteller Eric Thomas announced he has resigned, and the future of the position is now unclear.

“Friday was my last day as Chief Storyteller,” he wrote. “It’s bittersweet. For three years and three months, I had the coolest job in any city government.”

He added, “The love I received in this job was overwhelming, the trust almost unwavering, and I can’t thank Detroiters enough for giving me a chance. On [to] the next chapter.”

Reached by phone, Thomas says he felt like it was just time to move on. The Chief Storyteller role was the first job he had in 11 years, he says. A graphic designer by trade who had worked in marketing, Thomas says he was self-employed before he took the position.

“I’m just the kind of person that when I’m done, I’m done,” he tells Metro Times

Before he became Chief Storyteller, Thomas drew attention after publishing a widely shared May 2016 post on

LinkedIn with the headline “Why I hate Detroit,” citing the many problems that the city faces. In 2017, he also gave a talk at TEDxDetroit called “How Storytelling Can Give a Community Back its Voice.”

Thomas says that it was his friend, the late entrepreneur Marlowe Stoudamire, who convinced him to take the job. “Marlowe was like, ‘Hey, man. You’re a storyteller. You’re in Detroit. Detroit’s most of your identity. You gotta do it.’”

Thomas started in January 2020, and Stoudamire died in March of that year after being diagnosed with COVID-19, one of the first high-profile deaths to come as the pandemic hit Detroit. Thomas says he soon found his new job pivoting to COVID-19 messaging and awareness, including helping to arrange an “Everybody vs. COVID” livestream concert.

While the city launched a website in 2017 called TheNeighborhoods.org to present content created by its Chief Storyteller, it had been updated only sporadically in recent years. Thomas says they had made the decision to pivot from publishing journalismstyle articles on TheNeighborhoods. org to posting directly on an Instagram account called @storiesfromdet because the content got better reach

that way. “Doing 50,000 impressions a month on Instagram was a lot better than getting, you know, 11,000 on a website somewhere,” he says.

The “Chief Storyteller” role and TheNeighborhoods.org website were created during Mayor Mike Duggan’s 2017 re-election campaign, at a time when his administration was accused of ignoring the deterioration of the city’s neighborhoods in favor of big downtown development projects. For the city’s first Chief Storyteller, Duggan hired journalist Aaron Foley, a move that raised eyebrows among some in the local media. At the time, Foley told Metro Times that TheNeighborhoods.org would be “a platform for Detroit residents to interact with each other across districts and share what’s going on in their neighborhoods, all with the goal of showing the various ways in which the city is making progress.”

After Metro Times published a mildly critical story about the funding for TheNeighborhoods.org, Foley then used the platform to publish an article that appeared to attempt to discredit Metro Times by noting the racial makeup of its staff and misleadingly describing an advertisement campaign on metrotimes.com as an example of its reporting.

Foley left the Chief Storyteller role in 2019 to take a journalism fellowship at Stanford University.

As to whether Detroit’s Chief Storyteller role will continue, Thomas says he doesn’t know.

“I’m not sure how they’re gonna position all that stuff moving forward,” he says.

Duggan spokesman John Roach confirmed Thomas left the role.

“Eric’s departure was completely his choice and his timing, as he decided to pursue his own passions,” Roach says. “He’s been an important part of our team. He will be missed and we all wish him great success.”

Roach was also fuzzy when asked if the Storyteller role will continue.

“I’m not aware of any changes planned with TheNeighborhoods.org, but I’ll let you know if I hear any differently,” he said.

Going forward, Thomas says he’s working on a new project that he plans to launch in the coming months, but declined to share any details yet.

“I’ll be outside,” he says. “I live in Detroit, I stay in Detroit. I’m here. I will continue to talk about things in the city, I will continue to connect with people.”

—Lee DeVito

Detroit’s former “Chief Storyteller” Eric Thomas and Mayor Mike Duggan in 2020.

CITY OF DETROIT, FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS

Canceled Bangladeshi festival in Warren is back on

WARREN MAYOR JIM Fouts has had a change of heart about a Bangladeshi festival that organizers say was canceled because the city insisted it was too “ethnic.”

Fouts tells Metro Times that the Bangladeshi American Festival is back on and will take place from July 22-23 at Warren City Square.

The decision follows public outrage after the Bangladeshi Association of Michigan (BAM) said that Warren Parks and Recreation Director Dino Turcato told the organization that it could not hold an “ethnic” festival at the public space.

BAM confirmed on Saturday that it plans to hold the festival as originally planned.

“We are pleased that the Bangladeshi community will celebrate their heritage in the City of Warren, despite the City of Warren’s Mayor’s office and Park and Recreation offices attempting to block ethnic groups like the Bangladeshi Association of Michigan (BAM) from hosting a public festival,” the group said in a statement. “This is a victory for people of all backgrounds and heritage.”

Fouts denied that ethnicity was a factor in the cancellation and said two competing groups with the same name had booked a festival for the same dates. He initially said the other Bangladeshi Association of Michigan would be given the space unless both groups agreed to hold their festivals at the same time and location.

But after the first group threatened to sue Warren, Fouts agreed to let the event go on. The group had already signed a

rental agreement with the city and paid a $1,000 deposit to hold the festival.

Metro Times has been unable to reach the other Bangladeshi Association of Michigan, which Fouts says will hold a festival at a yet-to-be determined date.

“I am going to change my point of view, so we’re going to have two festivals,” Fouts says.

This was the second year in a row that Warren canceled the Bangladeshi American Festival. Last year, BAM says, the city canceled the festival after the mayor’s office received several phone calls from people complaining about the festival. BAM secretary Sumon Kobir says the mayor also accused the group of working with Patrick Green, who is running for mayor of Warren this year.

The festival’s cancellation prompted the Warren City Council to begin drafting an anti-discrimination ordinance. The council also demanded that the Fouts administration meet with BAM to put the festival back on.

Fouts says he’s received threats after Metro Times reported on the city canceling the festival last week. One man called him a Nazi, and another said he was “going to grind me up in a garbage disposal,” Fouts says.

“I’m a good person. I’m not a monster,” Fouts says.

People from Bangladesh are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the U.S. About 1.6% of Warren’s population’s population is Bangladeshi, or about 2,600 people, making Michigan’s thirdlargest city one of the biggest Bangladeshi enclaves in the country.

—Steve Neavling

American Pickers wants to see your junk

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE between being a hoarder and an antique collector? Surely, it’s in the eye of the beholder, but it probably helps if your stuff is, you know, cool.

If your collection is interesting enough, the team behind American Pickers would like to take a look. The popular History Channel show is coming to Michigan this July to film new episodes, and they want to see your junk.

“The hit show follows skilled pickers in the business, as they hunt for America’s most valuable antiques,” the show’s producers say in a press release. “They are always excited to find historically significant or rare items, in addition to unforgettable characters and their collections.”

The show is looking for interesting items with interesting stories behind them. Is that you, or someone you know? We sure do have a lot of old, weird stuff here in the Detroit area.

Note: They say they’re looking for personal collections only — not stores, flea markets, malls, auction businesses, museums, or anything open to the public. So think more like garages, basements, barns, or storage units.

If this sounds like you, send your name, phone number, location, and description of the collection with photos to americanpickers@cineflix. com or call 646-493-2184.

Who knows, maybe American Pickers will pick you.

—Lee DeVito

The

Spinners

inducted

into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

CONGRATULATIONS TO

THE Spinners, the Detroit-area R&B vocal group that was among more than a dozen acts inducted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, joining the likes of other artists like Willie Nelson, Kate Bush, Rage Against the Machine, and Link Wray.

The Cleveland-based Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced the 2023 inductees last Wednesday.

The one-time Motown act formed in Ferndale in the 1950s. But the group really took off once signing to Atlantic, becoming one of the biggest soul groups of the 1970s with Billboard-charting hits like “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love,” “One of a Kind (Love Affair),” “Ghetto Child,” and a collaboration with Dionne Warwick, “Then Came You.”

The group was previously nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.

Another Detroit act that was nominated this year was the White Stripes, the band that made Jack White a star. It was the first year the rock ’n’ roll band formed in Detroit in 1997 was eligible for nomination, but the group was not inducted. (Hey, at least rock fans got to relitigate Meg White’s drumming, though.)

Last year, classic rock band the MC5 was also snubbed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, while rapper Eminem was inducted.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees will be celebrated during a ceremony on Friday, Nov. 3, at Barclays Center in New York City.

—Lee DeVito

Detroit sues owner of abandoned Mammoth Building

THE LONG-ABANDONED Mammoth Building on Detroit’s west side could soon meet its demise.

The city of Detroit filed a lawsuit Friday against the owners of the three-story, 135,000-square-foot building at West Grand River Avenue and Greenfield Road to force them to correct numerous violations or demolish the structure.

Built in 1949, the building was home to the Federal Department Store, a discount retailer founded in Hamtramck, until the 1970s. Kingsway Department Stores operated out of the building in the 1980s. It was replaced by the Mammoth Department store, which closed in 2000, according to the lawsuit.

The building has been vacant since and is crumbling and strewn with graffiti.

“Many of us have great memories of this building,” Detroit City Council President James Tate said at a news conference Friday. “Those great memories have been eclipsed by this blight that is dragging the community down. No longer are we going to stand to allow our community to not receive what they deserve.”

Park High Apartments bought the building in 2002 and has allowed it to deteriorate to the point of becoming a danger to the public, the suit states. The building is open to trespass, and a pedestrian bridge connecting the

old department store with another structure across West Grand River is at risk of collapsing.

Since March 2022, the city has conducted at least eight inspections of the building and issued eight correction orders for more than 80 violations of city code. A majority of the violations remain unresolved, the city alleges.

With hundreds of vacant commercial structures across the city, Detroit is stepping up enforcement of its building codes. In February, the city sued a pastor over his unfinished mega-church near Woodward Avenue and Seven Mile Road. Construction of Perfecting Church began 18 years ago, and the building is a nuisance, the city alleged in a lawsuit.

Detroit is also working with demolition crews to raze about 100 commercial buildings, and another 225 commercial properties are being surveyed for potential demolition bids.

The city also began demolishing a portion of the long-abandoned Packard Plant on the east side in September 2022.

“Owners of these properties fight back,” Conrad Mallett, the city’s corporation counsel, said at the news conference. “They want to keep control of property they think will increase in value as they do nothing. … We are going to have progress. This situation is going to be resolved.”

—Steve Neavling

NEWS & VIEWS

ate the aforementioned wetlands.

Last year, the visionaries at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources had the good sense to sculpt the hill for human recreation. So they built a bike ramp and several concrete staircases to the top. (The longest is 33 steps, in three flights.)

Once you get up there, a platform offers a spectacular view of downtown to the west, Windsor to the south, Belle Isle to the east, and, of course, the river and the Ambassador Bridge.

Below you are the people fishing on shore or drifting by on boats. You can almost feel your blood pressure dropping. When it snows in winter, the hill is used for sledding.

Lapointe

Soon, you can walk, run, or bike from downtown to Belle Isle

At first, the bulletin delivered a jolt: Two persons shot and wounded on the Riverwalk in downtown Detroit. Not a good way to start the season on the Motor City’s premier pedestrian promenade.

Turns out, the shooting was only near the river, on Atwater and Rivard, on April 16. A 16-year-old male fired a gun at a passing car shortly after midnight and accidentally hit two bystanders, according to Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy.

The victims suffered minor injuries; the juvenile shooter was apprehended.

“The Detroit Riverwalk is one of Detroit’s true jewels,” Worthy said in a statement. “While every single shooting is tragic, this Riverwalk case is particularly disturbing.”

It occurred too close for comfort, a few yards from Cullen Plaza — a main entry point of the Riverwalk, a projected 5.5mile, paved waterfront path for walkers, runners, and bicycle riders that eventually will connect Belle Isle’s MacArthur Bridge and the Ambassador Bridge.

Let’s hope this shooting portends nothing sinister for one of Detroit’s most enlightened projects of the 21st Century. During this trigger-happy period in American culture, the Riverwalk has become what is generally a peaceful respite in the heart of a sometimes violent city.

Gradually growing and improving since its debut in 2003, the pathway will expand by two more stretches in the near future.

By Joe Lapointe

The first will come this autumn on the East Side with the opening of a nearly half-mile strip that will connect Mt. Elliott Park with Gabriel Richard Park and provide a pathway to Belle Isle. This extension will cross the old Uniroyal tire factory site.

On the other stretch, on the West Side, the year 2024 will see the planned opening of Ralph C. Wilson Centennial Park, plus a boardwalk in front of the now-standing Riverfront Towers, plus another parcel of the Riverwalk just west of those apartments.

In the middle of all this stands one of the sparkling, new symbols of progress: “The Residences at Water Square,” a glass-sided apartment building. Its 25 stories are rising quickly on the site of the demolished Joe Louis Arena, just West of the Huntington Place convention center.

With 496 apartments, it will open next February. In a recent event at the site, Mayor Michael Duggan bragged of riverfront improvements over the last four decades.

“In 1983, our riverfront was a collection of cement silos and asphalt parking lots,” Duggan said. “While, today, we have what is widely recognized as the nation’s most beautiful public Riverwalk.”

His timeline is a bit of a stretch. The Renaissance Center was already there by 1983 and so were Cobo Hall and Cobo Arena, as they were first known, as well as the Joe, which opened in 1979. But there were plenty of ghost

blocks, too, and toxic wastelands like the Uniroyal parcel, idle since 1979.

And Hizzoner should know that the very site of old JLA and these new apartments has great history, too. Once — long ago — it was a dark, private, quiet, gravel parking lot where high school kids would park their cars to watch the submarine races after the senior prom at the Top of the Pontch or the Top of the Flame.

And further full disclosure: Some of us grew up alongside this very river. We listened through open bedroom windows on summer nights to the fog horns of the freighters. On soft summer days, gazing toward Canada, we watched them cruise by from the shores of Fairview Park and Lakewood Park.

Some rode bicycles to Belle Isle and others rode the Jefferson-Alter Road bus through the distinctive odor of what was then called the “U.S. Rubber Co.” We remain emotionally if not financially invested in the riverfront and optimistic about progress alongside it.

Much is already there to see in juxtaposed images. Near abandoned factories and empty lots just East of the RenCen, spiffy blocks of condominiums sprout along the route like the flowers of spring. Speaking of flowers, there are plenty in bloom now, in tended beds, in Cullen Plaza.

A different form of real estate lies nearby in Milliken State Park. Just east of its man-made wetlands is a large, man-made hill, its soil excavated to cre -

If weary from your climb, grab one of the lounge chairs, in the sun or the shade. Plenty are lined up along the water, free to use. In the summer, you might hear the happy sounds of kids spinning on the carousel and splashing in the splash pad.

Despite its many delights, a few things could use improvement on the Riverwalk. One of them is the bicycle problem. The shared path is so narrow in some places that the safety of runners and walkers can be a concern.

That’s because some Riverwalk bicyclists ignore the customary etiquette to signal their presence by bell or by voice when approaching pedestrians from behind. Other bike riders seem to think they’ve signaled enough by blasting loud music from a boombox.

Those noisemakers are technically forbidden on the Riverwalk, although that rule is often abused.

A problem easier to solve is the lack of signs leading from the Riverwalk to the Dequindre Cut. The ‘Cut is the former railroad path that extends two miles north from the Riverwalk. It is beautifully landscaped, carefully groomed and colorfully decorated with approved graffiti-style art, some of it exquisite.

But just try to find it from the Riverwalk.

There are no signs for it until you get three streets north of the Riverwalk, past one of those sprouting residential clusters. Not even street signs. Not even at Atwater.

Adding a couple arrows to steer people from the ‘Walk to the ‘Cut might serve both bikers and pedestrians because separate lanes are lined there. They are wide and divided and safer for all concerned.

These are minor quibbles. Overall, the Riverwalk offers safe, clean, free, friendly surroundings that promote healthy habits, relaxation in stressful times, and new investment. Let’s hope it stays that way and keeps getting better, step by thoughtful step.

Despite a recent shooting nearby, Detroit’s Riverwalk is a bustling success.

JOE LAPOINTE

EMPLOYMENT

EMPLOYMENT

EMPLOYMENT

Automated Driving Controls Lead, Milford, MI, General Motors. Engr, design, create, &build conventional ICE psgr vehicle &BEV Super &Ultra Cruise Active Safety (AS) features incl. Lane

Keep Assist (LKA), Full Speed Range

Automated Driving Controls Lead, Milford, MI, General Motors. Engr, design, create, &build conventional ICE psgr vehicle &BEV Super &Ultra Cruise Active Safety (AS) features incl. Lane Keep Assist (LKA), Full Speed Range Adaptive Cruise Control, Emergency/ Front/Rear Braking, &Automated Driving (AD) features based on camera, radar &LIDAR sensors, fault mgmt, &commn-based (CAN, LIN, &Automot Ethernet) &OTA capabilities in External Object Control Module &Autonomous Compute Platform incl. sys on chip &embedded ECU. Execute root cause anlys of diagnostics issues &further dvlp &execute HW &SW in the Loop validation plans. Collaborate w/ GM Syss Mgmt Teams, &GM/supplier Resident Ntwk, SW, &HMI Engrs to strategize on SW integration &create prototype SW, in C++ &Python prgrmg languages for version control &continuous integration.

Adaptive Cruise Control, Emergency/ Front/Rear Braking, &Automated Driving (AD) features based on camera, radar &LIDAR sensors, fault mgmt, &commn-based (CAN, LIN, &Automot Ethernet) &OTA capabilities in External Object Control Module &Autonomous Compute Platform incl. sys on chip &embedded ECU. Execute root cause anlys of diagnostics issues &further dvlp &execute HW &SW in the Loop validation plans. Collaborate w/ GM Syss Mgmt Teams, &GM/supplier Resident Ntwk, SW, &HMI Engrs to strategize on SW integration &create prototype SW, in C++ &Python prgrmg languages for version control &continuous integration.

Bachelor, Electrical Engrg, Computer Sci, Mechanical Engrg, Computer Engrg, or other Bachelor of Engrg degree. 24 mos exp as Engineer, Developer, Lead, or related, engrg or designing psgr vehicle Super Cruise or Level II autonomous drive AS features incl. LKA, Adaptive Cruise Control, &Emergency Braking, &AD features based on camera &radar sensors, or related. Mail resume to Ref#15119, GM Global Mobility, 300 Renaissance Center, MC:482-C32-C66, Detroit, MI 48265.

Bachelor, Electrical Engrg, Computer Sci, Mechanical Engrg, Computer Engrg, or other Bachelor of Engrg degree. 24 mos exp as Engineer, Developer, Lead, or related, engrg or designing psgr vehicle Super Cruise or Level II autonomous drive AS features incl. LKA, Adaptive Cruise Control, &Emergency Braking, &AD features based on camera &radar sensors, or related. Mail resume to Ref#15119, GM Global Mobility, 300 Renaissance Center, MC:482-C32-C66, Detroit, MI 48265.

EMPLOYMENT

EMPLOYMENT

Robert Bosch LLC seeks Sr Soft Eng (Mult Pos) (Plymouth, MI). Apply at https://www.bosch.us/careers/, search Sr Software Engineer / REF194920D

Automated Driving Controls Lead, Milford, MI, General Motors. Engr, design, create, &build conventional ICE psgr vehicle &BEV Super &Ultra Cruise Active Safety (AS) features incl. Lane Keep Assist (LKA), Full Speed Range Adaptive Cruise Control, Emergency/ Front/Rear Braking, &Automated

Finance Accountant - Accounts Receivable, Brose North America, Auburn Hills, MI. Analyze, review, & report financial information incl. sales pricing, accts receivable, invoicing & logistics, recoveries, intercompany treasury, & payroll, to identify accts receivable. Perform, analyze, & monitor timely & accurate allocation of customer payments, & review w/ responsible Customer Teams, & Logistics & Qlty teams, discrepancies btwn payments vs. invoices, & other customer made deductions (based on logistics, qlty & price), using SAP Enterprise Resource Planning Finance Accounting (FI) & Controlling (CO) Modules incl. FI-GL (General Ledger), FI-AR (Accts Receivable), FI-TV (Travel Mgmt); & CO: EC-PCA (Profit Center Acctg), for Brose N.A., Inc. (HQ, MI), & Brose Automot Silicon Valley, Inc. (CA) entities. Devise & implement strategic acctg practices to identify & capture cash “trapped” on balance sheets, to manage accts receivable to the pecuniary advantage of regional Brose enterprise, w/ multi-million total receivables & risk for late/incorrect invoicing affecting company liquidity. Set appropriate levels & execute monthly dunning process in SAP FIAR module, & follow up on past due invoices w/ OEM & Tier I customers. 24 mos exp as Accountant, Accts Receivable Acctg Clerk, or related, performing, analyzing, & monitoring allocation of customer payments, & reviewing w/ responsible customer, & Logistics & Qlty teams, discrepancies btwn payments vs. invoices, & other customer made deductions (based on logistics, qlty & price), using SAP Enterprise Resource Planning FI modules incl. FI-GL & FI-AR, for automotive supplier, or related. Mail resume to Ref#2474, Brose, Human Resources, 3933 Automation Ave, Auburn Hills, MI 48326.

BOOK YOUR PARTIES & EVENTS AT THEOLDMIAMIBAREVENTS@GMAIL.COM

Wed 5/10

Happy Birthday, MARY MCCARTHY, BILLY WEST & JULIE MONAHAN!

Thurs 5/11

Happy Birthday, alex battestilli!

Fri 5/12

social meteor/tranquility/future misters

Doors@9pm/$5cover

fireball fridays! $5 fireball shots all day! mizz ruth’s grill @ 7 pm

Sat 5/13

dean overstreet celebration of life 2-5 pm salem wrecks/spur tonque/the problem

Doors@9pm/$5cover mizz ruth’s grill @ 7 pm Happy Birthday, lauren flynn & kris mason-garcia!

Sun 5/14 happy mother’s day! Happy Birthday, jovita!

Mon 5/15 FREE POOL ALL DAY

Tues 5/16 B. Y. O. R.

Bring Your own Records (weekly) Open Decks! @9PM NO COVER IG: @byor_tuesdays_old_miami topp dogg grill @ 7pm

Sat 5/20

cass-hole scavenger hunt raffle/auction/prizes @ 1 pm

Coming Up:

5/19 White Rabbit Project(Chicago)/ Ladyship Warship/Moondate

5/20 BANGERZ & JAMZ (monthly)

5/21 SOUND SESSIONS ON THE PATIO

5/25 WDET PRES. WHAT’S SO FUNNY ABOUT DETROIT? (SEE WDET.ORG)

5/26 Werkout Plan (house/pre-Movement hype)

5/27 Winestoned Cowboys/ Rachel Brooke Band

5/28 THE DETROIT PARTY w/ TONY NOVA

6/02 STRICTLY FINE/LOVESEAT!/THE RED SCARVES 6/03 lisa hurt & the consequences 6/07 partyup! prince’s birthday dance party 6/09 the fabulous henhouse boys/ billy clay & the coyotes 6/10 bizzare & foul mouth record release JELLO SHOTS always $1 Old Miami tees & hoodies available for purchase!

Detroit, MI 48265.

Forever a SATIN DOLL

TONI ELLING lives on through the Black burlesque performers who became her chosen family

BY RANDIAH CAMILLE GREEN

GiGi Holliday’s purple dress

flutters around her shins as she approaches the podium at Detroit’s Second Baptist Church. She fights back tears as she sings Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life,” wearing a leopard-print hat and shawl.

“Mama Toni Elling, our love language together was music... and we both loved Frank Sinatra,” the burlesque dancer says, her curls falling neatly down her back. “I had the pleasure and privilege of singing Frank Sinatra to her, and I am going to sing to her one more time, our favorite song.”

She wipes her eyes, kisses her fingertips, and plants it on a memorial photo of Toni Elling, one of Detroit’s legendary burlesque dancers who broke racial barriers as a performer in the 1960s and 1970s.

Elling passed away on Sunday, April 2, almost a week shy of her 95th birthday. Family members, friends, and Elling’s burlesque family gathered on Saturday, May 6 at Second Baptist Church in person and virtually to celebrate her life.

Elling’s real name is Rosita Sims, but to the modern-day burlesque dancers who cherished and cared for her in her final years, she’s “Mama Toni.”

“She was absolutely delightful and gracious,” Detroit burlesque performer Lottie Ellington tells Metro Times

“When you were around her, she had the ability to make you feel like you were the only person in the room. Everyone sort of gravitated to her because she was genuinely a pleasant human to be around.”

Elling started her career as a burlesque dancer and singer in the 1960s at 32 years old. She was working a dead-end job as an operator at Bell Telephone Company where she was repeatedly overlooked for promotions because she was Black. After a friend suggested she try stripping, she ventured into burlesque and found her calling in the art of parade, pose, and peel.

Elling wasn’t just any “stripper.” She was the epitome of elegance and grace, teasing the audience with her coy stage presence as she twirled her panel skirt. But while the rest of the world saw her as a portrait of Black beauty, she didn’t take herself too seriously.

“One time she was asked in an interview, ‘What does it take to be sexy,’

and she said, ‘Sexy? I’m not sexy… I’m a clown. I’m silly,’” Holliday tells Metro Times from her Manhattan apartment days ahead of the memorial service. “And you can see it in her performances. She was very cheeky. To dance like her, you have to know how to be shy and demure at the same time. That’s what Mama was.”

While the word “burlesque” may conjure images of women stripping down to a rhinestone G-string and not much else, Elling never showed her bare behind. She also refused to put her costume pieces on the ground and would either place them on a chair or hand them to a stage kitten.

“She did pasties, but in all of the vintage underwear that she wore, her hindquarters are fully covered,” Ellington says. “Her thing was, you’re getting what I give you. Don’t ask me about nothing else. Don’t ask me about taking my panties off. Don’t ask me about flashing folks. I’m not doing that. The interesting thing about her being so graceful is that she was also very bashful. She didn’t think she could do things other performers were doing.”

Elling’s list of friends reads like a VIP guest list to a jazz concert at Detroit’s 1940s-era Paradise Theatre. She hung out with Sammy Davis Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, and Duke Ellington. Ellington was one of Elling’s closest friends, and her stage name is a tribute to their friendship — she separated the famed jazz singer’s last name to form Toni Elling. She was often called “the Duke’s Delight” or the “Satin Doll,” as Ellington’s

song “Satin Doll” is rumored to have been inspired by her.

She met many of the blues and jazz singers whose company she kept during her job booking musicians for Jack the Bellboy’s radio show on WJBK in the 1940s when she was only 16. Bellboy was a popular Detroit DJ who played R&B, jazz, and blues at a time when Black music wasn’t getting airtime.

Fast-forward to the 1960s when Elling chose burlesque as a career to escape racism at work, and she was still facing discrimination and prejudice.

“I had a harder time than a lot of girls because of my blackness,” she told Metro Times in a 2005 interview. “It was very hard for a Black stripper in those days. We weren’t paid what other girls were paid, and we weren’t allowed to work at certain clubs.”

But Elling’s grace and poise were unmatched, and she often got booked at venues other Black performers didn’t, despite whether white audiences liked it or not. She became so popular that other dancers started copying her acts until she decided to do something off the wall that she knew they couldn’t do.

She wore an afro, painted tribal marks on her face, and danced to South African singer Miriam Makeba while beating a bongo drum.

“[I had] 40 bracelets on both arms, stripes on my face, and I’d paint my toenails orange so that they would show up in black light, and I’d go out in blacklight,” she said in an interview with the League of Exotic Dancers. “When I put the drum down and took off my cape, then I got wild. Then I’d be all over everything. I didn’t even know what I was doing. And they just loved it. Nobody else could do it, so I had it all to myself.”

Though she officially retired from burlesque in 1974, Elling continued to be part of the burlesque community, doing Q&A sessions and special performances at conventions, and attending shows in Detroit. In 2014 She received the Burlesque Hall of Fame (BHOF) Living Legend Award. In 2017, Detroit’s Lottie the Body was given the award and Elling accepted it on her behalf. She even performed at BHOF Weekend in 2012, when she was well into her eighties.

Burlesque grandbabies

Lottie Ellington picked her stage name after reading the 2005 Metro Times

article about Elling and fellow Black Detroit performer Lottie the Body. She mashed “Lottie” and “Elling” together, adding “ton” at the end for “Toni.”

At the time, Ellington knew how influential the Detroit legends were and how they paved the way for Black burlesque dancers like herself in the 1960s and 1970s. What she didn’t know was how close she and Elling would become, and that she’d eventually plan the dancer’s funeral.

“That’s my buddy,” Ellington says. “I would just sit with her and talk and she’d tell me stories or give me advice. She’d say silly stuff and then I’d say something silly back. I just wanted to make her laugh…. She started calling me ‘Ms. Fix It’ because when I’d come to visit, I’d fix whatever she needed around the house.”

Ellington, who is from Detroit and lives here now, was living in Virginia when she started doing burlesque. After picking her name as an homage to Elling, she was contacted by a disgruntled performer who found it disrespectful.

“Vagina Jenkins reached out to me and said ‘You can’t do that, you don’t take peoples’ names,’” Ellington remembers. “It wasn’t anything malicious, I just wanted to pay tribute to these amazing women from Detroit because I’m from Detroit... How do I fix this?”

Ellington says she reached out to former Metro Times culture editor Sarah Klein, who wrote the article about Lottie the Body and Elling, but didn’t get a response. Klein, who was also a burlesque dancer and performed as Sparkly Devil, died in a car crash in 2013. Somehow, Ellington was able to get Elling’s email address and contacted her to apologize, but the dancer wasn’t the least bit offended.

“She was the sweetest Toni that we all know, telling me, ‘No baby, it’s OK,’” Ellington remembers. “She asked if I would like her to send me a picture. I told her I would love that, so she did.”

Ellington would finally meet Elling when she came back home to Detroit for an all-Black burlesque show in 2012. Elling was in her eighties at the time, but a few local performers would still bring her out to shows in Detroit.

The two hit it off when Elling told Ellington she “had her head on straight.” Similar to Elling, Ellington had also started her burlesque career in her thir-

CLOCKWISE: CYBELLE CODISH, COURTESY PHOTO, WALTER P. REUTHER LIBRARY, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY, COURTESY PHOTO

ties, and the two bonded.

Every time Ellington came home to Detroit to visit her family, she’d make sure to spend time with Elling.

“I would just come hang out and see how she was doing,” Ellington says. “I hung out with her for the sake of visiting and being in her presence, not because I needed anything from her or wanted anything from her. It was a genuine thing where we just enjoyed being around each other.”

After Ellington moved back home to Detroit in 2019, she noticed Elling’s health was declining. She also noticed during her visits that there weren’t many people spending time with Elling outside of her caretaker and family friend Sharlene Simpson.

“I took her to the Michigan Burlesque Festival in 2019 and that’s when it became clear to me that she needed a lot more help than what I thought she did,” Ellington says. “She needed a wheelchair, so I had to put her in one. … I didn’t see anyone else filling in that space, so I thought if her burlesque family is going to love on her, let her burlesque family love on her.”

She continues, “If her biological family does not see the amazing human that we see, then that’s their loss but we’re going to give her her roses while she can still see them and not wait until she dies to say, ‘Oh, she was a great person.’ She told me she wanted to have a Christmas party so I got all the burlesque people together, we had a party at her house and I got her a Honey Baked Ham because that’s what she wanted. Anything that she wanted, I would give it to her.”

Holliday alludes to the absence of some of Elling’s family members due to their disapproval of her burlesque career.

“Respectability politics… it’s a curse amongst the Black community,” Holliday says. “I just think that she may have lived her life in a way that they did not respond well to, but it just is what it is.”

Elling’s cousin Juanita Green told Metro Times via email, “I don’t know that this is true… I believe she would simply want it to be known how much she really did appreciate the loving care that was shown to her by her family members and the burlesque community over the years until her transition.”

Green added, “She was a refined lady of excellence with a deeply loving heart who sincerely cared and sought the best for others. She loved and appreciated and fearlessly immersed herself in the beauty of God’s creation.”

Holliday, who has been a burlesque dancer for 13 years, says Elling was like a second grandmother to her after her biological grandmother passed away.

“Her and my grandmother were

born one week apart, and the universe knew that I missed my grandmother more than anything in this world. That woman raised me,” Holliday says. “I knew that when Toni Elling came into my life, it was my grandmother being like, ‘Oh, my baby still needs me but I can’t be there. Let me give her this other grandma.’”

Elling developed dementia near the end of her life. Ellington made the decision to put her in a nursing home following an accident in 2021 where she was taken to the hospital after throwing herself out of bed in her sleep.

“She had gotten tangled up in the sheets and I came to help her on Saturday. She had been stuck like that since Friday,” Ellington remembers. “At the hospital, they said she was in good physical condition, but she was 92 at the time, and based on her age and the fact that she didn’t have 24-hour care they couldn’t, in good conscience, send her back home. I was the only number they had, and they were like, ‘What do we do?’ And I didn’t know what to do. They were saying either someone has to tell them something or they’re going to start the process to make her a ward of the state.

“They mentioned there were some open beds at Mission Point, so I said OK, let’s do that… I know there’s some grumblings about it but I didn’t know what else to do and there was no one

else that I could contact.”

Holliday remembers visiting Elling at Mission Point Nursing Home and says watching her “sundown” — get confused and disoriented as the day progressed due to her dementia — was heartbreaking.

“It made me and Lottie more protective of her to the burlesque world,” she says. “A lot of people did not understand. They kept asking,

‘Why don’t we just interview Toni Elling’ and we’re like, this woman is wheelchair-bound, her mind is going, and her family is not 100% around. We’re legally in charge of this woman.”

Simpson said at the funeral she and Ellington just “went on loving [Elling] so she could be alright with what she was going through.”

“As it was happening, she was OK with it,” Simpson said. “One thing about her was that little lady wasn’t scared of anything. She stood flatfoot and said, ‘OK come on. Me and my lord is gonna take care of this.”

‘In every art form, there are Black women’

Elling gave Holliday and Ellington the same advice as Black performers who weren’t getting booked because venues rarely wanted more than one Black dancer on the bill.

“She told me, ‘If you can’t work where

you are, then go someplace else. You don’t have to work in your area.’” Ellington recalls. “She said, ‘I didn’t work in Detroit. I did the majority of my work out of town.’ That was like a lightbulb moment and that’s when I started to do festivals and that led me to so many more opportunities.”

Other than passing on her business advice, Elling loved to tell her burlesque grandbabies stories. One of her favorites to tell was the story of how she met Frank Sinatra and got his autograph on a napkin.

“She saw him walk by in the club, and said, ‘I’m gonna get his autograph,’” Holliday retells the tale, mimicking the confidence in Elling’s voice. “Her friend told her she was being ridiculous but she got a pen and starts to try and walk past his security guard. Of course, the security guard goes, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She was just very bold, and simply said, ‘I’m here to see Mr. Frank Sinatra and I’m here to get his autograph.’ The guard probably thought this tiny little lady isn’t going to do anything, so he lets her by.”

She continues, “She has her pen and her napkin, and she told me, ‘He looked up at me, and I’ve never been star-struck before, but he had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.’ She said he signed the napkin. That’s my favorite memory of her. Driving her around [Washington] D.C. listening to Frank Sinatra and her telling me the story of when she met him.”

Back at the memorial service in Detroit, Holliday’s voice cracks as she croons, “That’s life and I can’t deny it/ many times I thought of cutting out but my heart won’t buy it/ but if there’s nothing shaking come this here July/ I’m gonna roll myself up in a big ball and fly,” changing the last word from “die” to “fly.”

Ellington tells the church with authority, “Without Mama Toni, there is no Lottie Ellington. There is no GiGi Holliday. There is no Eartha Kitten… Jeez Loueez, Perle Noire. We are standing on her shoulders. She made it so that we could continue this art and continue to let the world know that in every art form, there are people of color. In every art form, there are Black women.”

She continued, “We are here… bringing all of the gifts that we have. We are bringing Black excellence. We are bringing our love, our spirituality, we are bringing our energy. We’re bringing our fire and we bring that every single time we step on stage. She made it possible for us to be able to do that, and I’m so thankful for her... Toni was my friend. She wasn’t just an icon in burlesque.”

Toni Elling at Mission Point Nursing and Physical Rehab Center in 2021. COURTESY OF LOTTIE ELLINGTON

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.

MUSIC

Wednesday, May 10

Against The Current + Trophy

Eyes 6 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $25.

Plini 6 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $25.

Yves Tumor 7 p.m. Majestic Theatre, 4140 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $29.50.

Thursday, May 11

Anything But Human 6 p.m.-midnight; Lawrence Street Project, 31 North Saginaw St., Pontiac; $5 donation.

Gigan, Sunless 7:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $15.

Hoodoo Gurus 7 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $35. Sullivan King 7 p.m.; Garden Bowl, 4120 Woodward, Detroit; $27.50+.

The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die with Worlds Greatest Dad, For Your Health 7 p.m.; The Blind Pig, 208 S 1st St, Ann Arbor; $22.

Friday, May 12

Gimme Gimme Disco (18+) 9 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $15-$25.

Halloween, Wreking Crue, Casting Shadowz, Animal 7 p.m.; Harpo’s, 14238 Harper Avenue, Detroit; $20-$100.

Let’s Hang On - the Music of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons 8 p.m.; Andiamo Celebrity Showroom, 7096 E. 14 Mile Rd., Warren; $35-$65.

Lucas Powell, Soloveichik, Josie Palmer, GRAYSTATION 8:30 p.m.; PJ’s Lager House, 1254 Michigan Ave., Detroit; $13.

Mark Farner’s American Band, The Stone Blossoms 7 p.m.; District 142, 142 Maple St., Wyandotte; $35-$55.

McKinley James Live in Concert 7 p.m.; Brooklyn 2000 Gallery, 2000 Brooklyn St., Detroit; &12-$20.

Mother’s Day Celebration 8 p.m.; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $59-$130.

Pearl & The Oysters 8 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $15.

Psychostick & Bit Brigade 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $20.

The So So Glos 7 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $18.

Vag Against The MaSHEine, Century Babes, Seaholm 7 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $12.

Walk Off the Earth 8 p.m.; Caesars Palace Windsor - Augustus Ballroom, 377 E. Riverside Dr., Windsor; $33-$63.

Zomboy 8 p.m.; Russell Industrial Complex-Exhibition Center, 1600 Clay Street, Detroit; $45.

Bleu Clair - New Age of House Tour 9 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $15.

VAVO: Summer Of YEEDM Party

10 p.m.; The Bull & Barrel Urban Saloon, 670 Ouellette Avenue, Windsor; $7.07.

Yaeji 8 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $25-$105.

Saturday, May 13

Babyface Ray 7 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $29.50$69.50.

Class of 98 Band, The 90s Party Palooza 8 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $15.

David Cross 8 p.m.; Royal Oak Music Theatre, 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; Emo Night Brooklyn (18+) 9 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $15-$25.

Everything Evil record release with Downers Of The World Unite, Wounded Touch, Feast For The Crows, Moral Pollution 7 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $15.

GBH, MDC, NIIS 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $25.

Laura Rain and the Caesars 8-11 p.m.; Cornerstone Village Bar & Grille, 17315 Mack Avenue, Detroit; $15.

Man In the Mirror 8 p.m.; Andiamo

Celebrity Showroom, 7096 E. 14 Mile Rd., Warren; $35-$99.

Mark Randisi 8 p.m.; Andiamo

Celebrity Showroom, 7096 E. 14 Mile Rd., Warren; $35-$75.

Nopesetic & Emma Zee 8-11 p.m.; Lawrence Street Project, 31 North Saginaw St., Pontiac; 10.

Rosanne Cash & Her Band Fight Hunger 8-11 p.m.; Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty St., Ann Arbor; $40. Stryper 7 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $30.

The Shifters 8 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $10.

Under The Streetlamp 8 p.m.; Sound Board, 2901 Grand River Ave., Detroit; $28-$40.

Sunday, May 14

Barber & Bates 7-9 p.m.; Scarab Club, 217 Farnsworth St., Detroit; $30 at the door, $25 in advance, $10 for students. Currents 6 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $18.

Kali Uchis 7 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $49.50-$79.50. Salute To Mother’s Day 6 p.m.; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $59-$189.

SWMRS 7 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $18.

The Winery Dogs , Anthony Gomes 6 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $50.

Monday, May 15

Bob Vylan 7 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $18.

Bryson Tiller: Back and I’m Better Tour 7 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $49.50-$99.50.

Harakiri For The Sky, Ghost Bath, Unreqvited 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $20. DJ/Dance

Adult Skate Night 8:30-11 p.m.; Lexus Velodrome, 601 Mack Ave.,, Detroit; $5.

Tuesday, May 16

Avatar 6:30 p.m.; Royal Oak Music Theatre, 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; $30+.

Olivia Jean 7 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $15.

Possessed 6 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $25-$75.

THEATER Performance

Anita’s Elite Dance Theatre St. Clair Shores Players Present The Old Vengers by Chris Gray. May 5, 6, 12, and 13. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and show

starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 adult, $12 student, and senior at the door.

Flagstar Strand Theatre for the Performing Arts REACH Homeschool Drama Presents: Return to Vardia $15 .Wednesday, 7 p.m., Thursday, 7 p.m., and Friday, 7 p.m.

Fox Theatre Madagascar Live! $15-$70 Saturday, 2 p.m.

Hilberry Gateway Adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando by Sarah Ruhl. $24. Wednesday, 2-4 p.m., Thursday, 7-9 p.m., Friday, 8-10 p.m., Saturday, 2-4 & 8-10 p.m., and Sunday, 3-5 p.m.

Michigan Theater Labyrinth shadowcast.This production brings the magic of this cult classic to life with screen accurate costumes, hand-made props, and life-sized puppets of the beloved characters. $15-20. Friday, 7-9:30 p.m.

The Music Hall Je’Caryous Johnson Presents BAPS LIVE. $69-$150. Friday, 8 p.m., Saturday, 3 & 8 p.m., and Sunday, 3 p.m.

Planet Ant Theatre Patty in the USA (and other places). $20 online, $25 at the door. Fridays, Saturdays, 8-9:30 p.m. Riverbank Theatre Steel Magnolias. Through May 28. $35. Sundays, 3-5 p.m. and Fridays, Saturdays, 7:30-9:30 p.m.

Rosedale Community Players

Flung by Lisa Dillman. $16. Friday, 8-10 p.m. and Saturday, 2-4 & 8-10 p.m.

Musical

Disney’s Aladdin (Touring)

Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., Thursday, 7:30 p.m., Friday, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, 2 & 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, 1 & 6:30 p.m. $45-$130.

Honky Tonk Angels Wednesday, 2 & 8 p.m., Thursday, 8 p.m., Friday, 8 p.m., Saturday, 6 p.m. and Sunday, 2 & 6:30 p.m. $46.

COMEDY

Improv

Go Comedy! Improv Theater

Fresh Sauce. $20 Saturdays, 10-11:30 p.m.; $10 Sundays, 7 p.m.; free Sundays, 9 p.m.

Planet Ant Theatre Hip-Prov: Improv with a Dash of Hip-Hop. $10 second Wednesday of every month, 7 p.m.

Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle

Jourdain Fisher with Gerrit Elzinga and Amen Alyasiry. $20. Thursday, 7:30-9 p.m., Friday, 7:15-8:45 & 9:45-11:15 p.m. and Saturday, 7-8:30 & 9:30-11 p.m.

Royal Oak Music Theatre Hannah Berner. Thursday 6 & 9 p.m.

Rockstar Music Hall Tony Lee Adult Comedy Hypnosis: Cancelling Cancel Culture Tour $28.25-$56.50. Friday, 8 p.m.

The Detroit House of Comedy

The Mother’s Day Live Music and Clean Comedy Explosion. Headlined by Only

May 10-16, 2023 | metrotimes.com

In Detroit creator and hilarious stand up T.Barb the show also features Jason Jamerson, Roni Shanell, and Ann Duke. $20. Sunday, 5:30-8 p.m.

FILM

Edsel & Eleanor Ford House

America You Kill Me. The rise, the fall and the legacy of gay rights warrior Jeffrey Montgomery. Free Tuesday, 7-10 p.m.

ART

Art Exhibition

Shain Park Art Birmingham. Free. Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Cranbrook Art Museum Constellations & Affinities: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection. Free on Thursdays, Wednesdays-Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

Museum of Contemporary Art

Detroit (MOCAD) Liz Cohen: Café

Pan-Soviético Americano. Through Sept.

3.

N’Namdi Center For Contemporary Art Tylonn J. Sawyer: Dark Matter. Through June 19.

Stamelos Gallery Center, UMDearborn Reparations of the Heart: Recent Work by Kristin Anahit Cass. Mondays-Fridays, Sundays, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

University of Michigan Museum of Art Unsettling Histories: Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism. Free. TuesdaysSundays.

WELLNESS

Wellness Week Monday, 4-5 p.m. and Tuesday, 12-1 p.m.; Bamboo, 220 S Main, Royal Oak; free.

Downtown Ann Arbor Mother’s Day Time to Teal 5k and Fun run/walk event. $40 Sunday, 8-10 a.m.

Drink

80s VIDEO NITE: OPEN BOWLING & PINBALL Open bowling and pinball (optional). Full bar. 18+ in the lounge after 9 p.m. No cover.

Food Detroit Princess Riverboat Sunset Dinner Cruise. $59-92. Fridays, Saturdays, 7-9:30 pm.

SHOPPING

Spring Shop & Sip Saturday, 11 am-5 p.m.; Ancient Order of Hibernians Hall, 25300 Five Mile Rd., Redford Charter Township.

SPORTS

Comerica Park Detroit Tigers vs. Texas Rangers. Friday, 7:10 p.m, Saturday 1:10 p.m., and Sunday, 1:40 p.m.; Tuesday 7:10 p.m.

Local buzz

By Broccoli

Got a Detroit music tip? Send it it music@metrotimes.com.

Tyvek releases unheard tracks: Since its inception, Kevin Boyer’s band Tyvek has been a revolving door of DIY punk and noise artists. On the band’s latest LP, Blunt Instrumentals, listeners take a trip back in time and hear a skeletal iteration of the band which includes Shelley Salant (Shells, XV) on bass and Matt Ziolkowski (Mountains and Rainbows) on drums. The trio holed up in a cabin during the cold Michigan winter in 2009 and recorded these jams to tape, which were then released on some ultralimited cassette runs. With all songs now remastered by the Australian DIY legend Mikey Young, plus two never-before-released bonus tracks, Blunt Instrumentals is a great snapshot of the chameleon-like band before it put out a string of popular studio albums from 2009-2012. From two-minute frenetic punk jams to ten-minute space rock, Tyvek also shows its breadth as performers on this release and offers up a wide array of musical offerings. Vinyl and digital versions are available via Tyvek’s bandcamp page.

—Joe

Zimmer

New single from Idle Ray rips: The latest project from Fred

Thomas, a figurehead in the Ann Arbor-Detroit indie rock scene over the past two decades, is called Idle Ray. The group released a self-titled album in 2021 on Thomas’s Life Like label, and is gearing up for another LP this year with the first single released last week “Eternal Fade.” Idle Ray songs are typically short, sweet bursts of guitar rock with the authentic DIY ethos that fans have come to expect from Thomas. “Eternal Fade” pushes the lead guitar to the forefront, with a light layer of fuzz reminiscent of late ’80s alternative rock like Dinosaur Jr. and ’90s power-pop the likes of Teenage Fanclub. It’s definitely a bit of a noisier track for the band, and catchy as hell. Keep a look out for upcoming live dates from the group, as they lead up to their next album release later this year.

—Joe Zimmer

Blackmoonchild tracks will give you whiplash: Coming off of a string of hot shows and in the midst of gearing up for a packed month of May, Detroit producer and selector Blackmoonchild has seemingly come out of nowhere with two insanely hot tracks that are best played back to back, because while both bring a similar speed and energy to the table, you could almost imagine the first as an ethereal precursor to the absolute dancefloor madness of the second. “PLAY” features dreamy textures and pop sensibilities rem -

iniscent of PinkPantheress, while “Whereisthebud” brings the same high-energy tempo coupled with blown out 808s and trap samples that will 100% set the function off wherever it is played. Check them both via Bandcamp, and be sure to catch Blackmoonchild at UFO Factory on Thursday, May 25 for the Blueprint party with Kiernan Laveaux, Laura Indorf, and more.

—Broccoli

Milfie drops EP: We’ve featured Milfie in Metro Times before, and for good reason; she is prolific in Detroit music, navigating different genres with ease all while maintaining her signature cute and nasty persona. She refuses to be defined in simple terms, and her latest EP Very Pretty is just another chapter in that saga. Featuring production from Ziggy Waters and Nick Speed , the tracks range from sensual and glittery ballads about clear sexual intention and reflections on romantic expectations to the single “ Hello Kitty ,” which combines all of that with a southern trap twist that would make Three 6 Mafia proud. This is the soundtrack to your next night on the town, theme music of sexual deviancy and enlightenment, and if you don’t find yourself bopping to these tracks with the windows down on a warm day, just know that you’re missing out.

—Broccoli

and Joe Zimmer

Tyvek. COURTESY PHOTO

are popular and then they kind of get forgotten. Everybody knows Pavement, but there are a lot of bands from the ’90s that’ve fallen by the wayside.”

Because of the duration of the band’s fandom, they’ve got favorite cuts. And with a pretty good base of songs from which to choose — as well as the odd cover or pull-in from solo projects — Newman says the process of choosing what songs to play in a live show can run in multiple ways. Again, the occasional new member can go a long way to re-energizing some buried tracks.

“A few years ago, Joe, our then-new drummer, was in the tour bus playing our old songs,” Newman says “He joined in 2014 and was playing songs that he wished that we’d play. ‘Jessica Numbers’ from Twin Cinema was one that we’d stop playing, but that I was legitimately a fan of. But I’d forgotten it. We learned it the next day and we opened our sets with it for about a year. It was rescued from obscurity to become one of our fan favorites. ‘It’s Only Diving Right’ from Electric Version hadn’t been played in years. And it’s a big crowd-pleaser. We should’ve played it all along! On this year’s touring, we plan to resurrect a few songs, too.”

Then there’s a series of songs of which he says, “We might get sick of them, but people want to hear them. If people are excited about hearing a song, it doesn’t matter if you’ve heard it 1,000 times.”

The ‘new’ New Pornographers

Frontman Carl ‘AC’ Newman believes a mix of new and old is the best way for the band to grow

By Thomas Crone, Last Word Features

It doesn’t take but a question or two for Carl “AC” Newman to open up about his ideas on songwriting. He can wax enthusiastic about previous experiences or future plans, with strong, yet playful, opinions.

As an example of a technique he’d like to try: Newman, in a late-March interview, wondered about a songwriting trick in which he’d take a famous song, using the chorus of which to build verses around. At the time that “song” was finished in that form, he’d take out the known passage, creating a new chorus, and, thus, a whole new song with the ghost of a song as the influence. It’d be completely removed, but still there, still heard in a sense.

Newman’s songwriting explorations have continued with the March 31 release of Continue as a Guest, the band’s new album on Merge Records.

The 10-track record is produced

by Newman and features the New Pornographers core musicians, including Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Todd Fancey, and Joe Seiders. Sax player Zach Djanikian is all over the album, the band’s ninth full-length release, and co-writing credits are given to both longtime NP contributor Dan Bejar (frontman and songwriter of Destroyer) and Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz, Sad13).

Newman remains the songwriting linchpin and the person through which the New Pornographers project flows.

He believes a mix of new and old within his crew is the best way for the band to grow, with members able to peel off for a short hiatus, or to leave entirely for new projects and opportunities.

“It’s good to have new blood,” he says. “Sometimes it can suck when members are getting to the end. They just don’t

want to be in the band anymore and sometimes that can come through. You look at a band like U2, together for 40 years. How do you do that? Or the National, when you have the same five people for the duration. Then there are bands like the Shins where it will always be James Mercer and whoever he’s playing with and no one will ever question that.”

Newman says the New Pornographers have a fan base that’s been around awhile. They’re loyal, follow both the records released by the band and solo projects of band members, too; included among them are a handful of AC Newman solo releases.

“I think that people find you along the way,” he says. “A ton of people found us within the first five years. I haven’t taken a poll or anything, but I’d like to think that people are going back and still finding us. Some bands

New songs will be a part of the mix, too, and they’re pretty fantastic, tracks that easily fit into the band’s extensive canon.

“Because of the pandemic, we had to transform a little bit,” Newman says. “We were all in different places. I didn’t have other people with me to record. John had a baby, a daughter. So not only was there a pandemic happening, he had this little daughter now. So it’s not that I could say, ‘Hey, John, come live in my cottage while we make this record.’ It all changed. I had to find people around Woodstock to play and so I thought, ‘Maybe I’ve got to embrace this.’ The New Pornographers felt like they were evolving into something else.”

He adds, “Maybe someone in the band would say ‘I don’t like what this is evolving into,’ but I like pushing the band into another era. We’ve already made Mass Romantic and Twin Cinema and Brill Bruisers. Those albums are always there and we made them. We don’t have to keep making them. You want to move forward.”

The New Pornographers perform on Thursday, May 11 at El Club; 4144 Vernor Hwy., Detroit; elclubdetroit.com. Doors at 7 p.m. Tickets are $54.27.

The New Pornographers perform at Detroit’s El Club on Thursday.

EBRU YILDIZ

FOOD

Corned beef unites Detroit

Who might you run into while grabbing a Reuben or pastrami sandwich from D Motown Deli on Detrot’s east side?

Owner Angel Preni rattles off the list of regulars at his restaurant, which is about a half mile up Gratiot Avenue from downtown Detroit. On any given day, he says he sees folks from the neighborhood, attorney general’s office, judges, attorneys, the neighborhood dope dealer, Dan Gilbert employees, working-class people, people working for local rappers, and so on.

It’s a spot, and, bigger picture, D Motown Deli’s patrons are more evidence that corned beef is becoming a Great Uniter in Detroit, a phenomenon that’s catching up with the likes of Detroitstyle pizza and coney dogs.

The city’s corned beef tradition traces back to Jewish delis that populated the city 100 years ago. Their numbers dwindled as Jews left the city for the ’burbs decades ago, but corned beef remains especially loved by many

By Tom Perkins

of the city’s Black residents, and some of the old-school delis, like Bread Basket, live on in Detroit proper, while new generations of corned beef purveyors populate the city.

It’s mostly a Detroit thing – Preni says only Chicago consumes more corned beef than Detroit. Rapper Tee Grizzly talked up Detroit corned beef sandwiches to Jamaica-based DJ Akademiks, who told Tee he had never heard of one. “Oh my god, it will change your life. You’ll fuck around, move to Detroit,” Tee tells Akademiks.

Preni’s parents, who immigrated from Kosovo, bought the former Lefkofsky’s Deli in the early 2000s and rebranded it as D Motown Deli. Preni and his brother now run the restaurant and buy their corned beef “by the pallet” from Wigley’s in the Eastern Market. It’s moist, a bit salty, and fallapart-tender brisket — different than Jewish corned beef, which is a bit dryer and more garlicky.

D Motown’s best corned beef item

was the Rueben, which came with Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and a housemade Russian dressing. I got it on rye, though one can also ask for an onion roll, and Preni says he grabs his bread from Milano Bakery almost daily, and it’s a fine, fine package.

Just as solid, however, was a sandwich with pastrami, sauerkraut, and Swiss on rye. Preni does his pastrami in house — the seasoning, salt water brine, and at least 12 hours of smoking over mesquite wood or occasionally an applewood — and it shows.

The Humdinger is corned beef, Swiss, and a house-made coleslaw that imparts a sweet element, and the Dinty Moore is corned beef Swiss, lettuce, tomato, and Russian dressing — like if a club and corned beef sandwich had a baby, Preni explains.

If you go hefty, the Grand holds three kinds of meat — roast beef cooked low and slow in-house, corned beef, and pastrami — along with lettuce, tomato, onion, Swiss and American cheese,

D Motown Deli

3750 Gratiot Ave., Detroit 313-925-1790

dmotowndeli.com

$3-$15

Wheelchair accessible

and Russian dressing. It’s a brick of a sandwich.

D Motown makes its deviled eggs a bit on the sweet side with the addition of sweet relish, and the eggs get a healthy coating of paprika, while the corned beef egg rolls are an excellent version of a Detroit classic. Also enjoyed was a hearty beef stew.

Preni said he and his brother bought an oven and filled up the Dumpster out back with failed attempts to make cakes as they taught themselves to be bakers. But they have mastered the art and their recipes on lock for options like Reese’s, Oreo, and red velvet cakes.

D Motown primarily is a lunch operation and closes at 6 p.m. Everything is carryout — there are no tables, so whether you’re having your lunch with your dope dealer or judge, you’ll have to do so at their office.

D Motown Deli’s owners buy their corned beef “by the pallet” from Wigley’s in the Eastern Market.

TOM PERKINS

FOOD

manager also resigned because of the ongoing racial discrimination against Dillard.

In an affidavit, the white manager said that he left the taproom following the 2019 racial discrimination lawsuit, but returned because of the company’s pledges to do better.

“I … was explicitly told by Founders’ leadership at the highest level that there would be changes in culture,” the manager said. “The truth is that it never happened and I feel taken advantage of.”

In another unfortunate coincidence, Founders decided to abruptly close the taproom on May 1, also known as International Workers’ Day.

“Although the complaint was filed on behalf of a single former employee facing racial discrimination, my immediate thoughts are with the large number of employees who were just terminated without any notice or time to prepare,” Schulz says.

Founders Brewing abruptly closes Detroit taproom

Founders Brewing Co. has permanently closed its Detroit taproom — making the announcement just hours after a former worker filed a new racial discrimination complaint against the company, Metro Times has learned.

In a Facebook post published on the evening of Monday, May 1, Founders blamed the closure on sluggish sales. “Unfortunately, our Detroit location has not been immune to the struggle to regain foot traffic after temporary Covid closures that have impacted restaurants and bars across the nation,” the company wrote. “We are working diligently to find new positions within the company for employees impacted by this closure.”

The Grand Rapids-based company temporarily closed the taproom in 2019 following a Metro Times report that revealed management claimed in a court deposition that it did not know an employee who had filed a racial discrimination complaint was Black. The employee who filed the suit alleged “racist internal corporate culture” at the company, including white employees using the “N word,” leading to calls for a boycott.

Founders settled the case for an undisclosed amount in 2019 and pledged a number of racial sensitivity efforts, including hiring a director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

By Lee DeVito

It then had the misfortune of reopening the Detroit taproom in February 2020 — weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S.

However, it appears that Founders’ DEI efforts were to no avail.

Attorney Jack Schulz reached out to Metro Times to tell us that his law firm filed yet another racial discrimination complaint against Founders Brewing Co. in the U.S. District Court Eastern District hours before the company announced it was closing the Detroit taproom.

According to the complaint, Naeemah Dillard, who is Black, worked at the Detroit taproom from June 2021 until April 2023, “when the work environment became so objectively racially hostile that she had no choice to resign.”

“Ms. Dillard spoke openly about her racially hostile treatment to Founders during her exit interview last Wednesday,” Schulz tells Metro Times. “It is difficult for me to objectively accept that Founders’ abrupt announcement to permanently close the Detroit taproom mere hours after Dillard’s complaint was filed as being due to COVID-19.”

In her complaint, Dillard alleges she was promoted to an unusual “parttime” management position “for purely optic purposes.” She also alleges other instances of racial discrimination

including co-workers intentionally mispronouncing her name and someone telling her that she has “not struggled enough to be Black.”

In another instance, Dillard brought her 6-year-old daughter to work, prompting another manager to tell her to “make sure [she] didn’t steal any money.”

The other managers, all white, had their own “focus areas” like overseeing the taproom’s event space or training employees, according to the complaint, while Dillard did not. She was also the only manager who worked additional shifts as a server, during which times she was compensated as a server, not a manager, the complaint states.

When Dillard reported the incidents to management, she alleges that she received drastically reduced hours as retaliation or was ignored. The complaint also states she worked as a parttime manager for nearly a year without moving up, while white managers were promoted within months.

The complaint also details alleged instances of sexual harassment from a fellow worker. When Dillard complained about the behavior, she says she was ignored. But once a white employee complained about the same behavior from the same worker, the offending worker was fired.

Things were so bad that a white

We reached out to Founders Brewing Co. for comment. The company’s full statement appears below:

We are deeply saddened and concerned to learn of the recent accusations that have been brought against the Detroit Taproom. We take these claims very seriously, and we are conducting a thorough internal investigation.

Since 2019, we have instituted mandatory bias, discrimination and harassment training throughout our organization. We have reexamined our policies and enacted new policies, along with implementing new procedures for the reporting of workplace concerns.

Closing a business is a difficult decision, and this decision was made after a several year evaluation of the Detroit Taproom’s financial performance that began prior to COVID and was made worse by the pandemic. During the closure of our Detroit facility on Monday, we were unaware of the filing. We announced the closing to all of our Detroit staff on Monday morning, and did not learn about the lawsuit filed against Founders until that evening when a reporter contacted us. As with any closure, there was a lot of work that needed to be done to prepare for the loss of this extension, including redistribution of internal assets, conversations with our landlord and pulling together a comprehensive severance plan, all of which take time.

As to the pending lawsuit, we are sorry that this individual did not have a good experience with us, and to the extent it was due to our actions or inactions that contributed to that, we are deeply sorry.

Founders Brewing Co. closed its Detroit taproom.

SHUTTERSTOCK

FOOD

in, our drink master of ceremonies emphasized the importance of smacking fresh mint in one’s palms to fully release the herb’s flavor. A second later, the guy next to me with two empty martini glasses already in front of him decides to clap a slice of charcuterie board Prosciutto to test that theory.

“Look, Honey,” he announced to his fiancée, “I’m slapping my ham!”

“To ‘fully release!’” added a girl in a green dress gleefully from across our table, sucking down the last sip of her gin fizz.

As for me, when the opportunity presents, I’ll propose my favorite toast (any wine varietal will do):

“Here’s to a fun night of great company and fine wine; bold yet delicate, with just a kiss of underpants in the finish.”

And that’s how things can go at such frilly affairs. Folks might dress to impress, even put on airs. But once the drinks start flowing, most let down their hair.

Chowhound

Out of the frying pan, into the fire

By Robert Stempkowski

Chowhound is a bi-weekly column about what’s trending in Detroit food culture. Tips: eat@metrotimes.com.

Playing chicken: I love me some great fried chicken. But is it to die for? Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken is my go-to here in Michigan. There’s none better. Only the bird served at venerated Mrs. White’s Golden Rule (in Phoenix) seems its equal. In both places, I’ve waited in line many times to get my next fix. Now I can say I’ve actually risked life and limb for the pleasure.

Another Lee’s just opened near me. Not surprisingly, business is booming. Picking up a phoned-in order for a friend recently, I walked inside to find what reminded me of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. People desperate for attention were packedin elbow to elbow, waving hands and tickets in a buying panic that new and too few store staff struggled to keep up with. Walking into a scene teetering on complete customer service chaos, I asked a few folks milling about where to find the pick-up line, only to be pointed in different directions. When I couldn’t make out a clear queue anywhere in sight, I inquired again at the counter, clarifying that so-andso’s order had been called-in, paid by

phone, quoted a pick-up time, and that I was here to accomplish that task. Two extremely harried young men helped me, instantly finding my order packaged and ready as arranged. Granted, I felt I’d dodged a bullet getting in and out quickly.

Until a guy followed me out into the lot. He wasn’t happy.

“Way to cut the line, Motherfucker!” he yelled. “It’s all about you, right, asshole?” Sure, I should have taken the higher road, but things took another turn. I fired right back. And then some. Frankly, I’m shocked it didn’t get physical. What did happen was we each got in our cars. He screeched his big pickup out and around, stopped behind me and shot me his best death stare before speeding off through a crowded parking lot. Then I slammed my little Subaru into reverse and followed him for a few blocks in the opposite direction of my destination, just because. We weaved in and out of rush hour traffic waving fingers like the two mindless idiots we were, over causes we considered life-and-death: our entitled sense of liberty, freedom of expression, and the pursuit of quick service and fast food.

Fried chicken. As American as apple pie, reckless disregard, and road rage.

On the other hand, try this, relax, and tell me everything: Nothing breaks the ice between strangers in civil society better than alcohol. Consider the wine pairing dinners I attend as part and parcel to my duties as a cardcarrying member of the local food press.

These events begin with the noblest epicurean intentions. Gathering with fellow gastronomes, we exchange proper introductions as corks start popping over conversations and considerations of terroir, varietals, and vintages. We sip, swirl, and take polite twirls around the table conversationally, letting everyone in turn exercise their best “winespeak.” And we keep sipping while some real experts in attendance wax professorial (over most of our heads) on topics ranging from residual sugars and Malolactic fermentation to leathery and vegetal flavor notes. By the time it’s all said and done — five or sixplus glasses into a no-longer-academic exercise — there’s enough truth serum flowing through everyone’s veins to turn any well-intended tasting into a borderline Bacchanal.

A cocktail pairing dinner I attended most recently illustrates the point perfectly. While talking us through preparation of a libation a few rounds

Roach problem: Years ago, I called for service on a walk-in fridge that wasn’t holding temperature. After spending a few minutes trouble-shooting, the repairman came and got me.

“There’s something you should see,” he said ominously. I imagined a worstcase scenario. The compressor was probably shot. It’s always the compressor. Instead, the guy escorts me into the walk-in and points to the top of the fan unit.

“Run your hand along here,” he tells me. “You’ve got a roach problem.”

“Huh? I’m not touching those,” I refused in disgust. “Get rid of them. Just fix it.”

The guy smirked, shook his head at me like I was stupid, then swept his hand along the flat top of the fan unit until a dozen or so unsmoked joint butts toppled over the side onto the floor.

“Actually, you just needed freon,” he laughed a little. “But I thought you should see what’s going on here.”

“I’ll let the owner know,” I promised, telling him I was just the manager. But the restaurant was half-mine, and those roaches were all ours. My partner and I thought we were sneaky smart to blow our smoke out the roof through those fans. We were just too stoned to remember to get rid of all the other evidence.

And that’s the thing about pot-smoking, as I recall. I used to see it as a tool that could actually sharpen perception’s pencil. In honest hindsight, it proved more of a mind eraser. It’s been many years since I last smoked. Honestly, I sometimes still miss it.

Now, where’d I leave those car keys…

Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken is good... perhaps too good.

COURTESY PHOTO

WEED

term was racist and should be replaced by “cannabis” in statute.

Interestingly, the caucus cited a study by Dale Gieringer, director of California Norml, on cannabis prohibition in California to justify their statements.

However, that paper actually corroborates what Campos says: That marijuana got swept up in the movement to ban opium, which some companies were adding to medicines without people’s knowledge. And many of the northern states that began the marijuana bans didn’t have Mexican immigrants yet.

“Yet even without the Mexicans, the Board would likely have proceeded to outlaw Indian hemp anyway, just like Massachusetts, Maine, Indiana, and Wyoming,” Gieringer wrote.

Why some people believe ‘marijuana’ is a racist word, and why it doesn’t offend me

I was talking to a cannabis business owner I’ve known for a while and respect. The man, who is white, told me he refused to use the term “marijuana” because it’s racist.

It was one of my first conversations on the cannabis beat, which I’ve been on for a month now. And my mind was bursting with questions.

Should I be offended by the word marijuana??!!

This Chicana journalist has been on a mission to get answers ever since.

Immediately, I turned to Google and realized that he was talking about the numerous accounts saying that in the 1930s, American politicians leading the charge of prohibition popularized the term “marijuana” in the U.S. to paint the drug as a “Mexican vice” and to have an excuse to persecute Mexican immigrants.

Yet now after talking to scholars, lawmakers, fellow Latino journalists and even my parents, I’ve learned that — yes — race is involved, but not in the way I expected.

First, I spoke with Isaac Campos, a professor of Latin American History at the University of Cincinnati and author of Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs.

About a month ago, Campos published findings online of his long study on the history of cannabis terminology, and it’s compelling work.

Bottom line: He said the claim that politicians intentionally popularized

By Rebecca Rivas

the term during prohibition is false — because the word was being used decades before then in the United States. And in his view, people shouldn’t have a problem using “marijuana.” In fact, erasing the word brings its own problems.

The first reference to the intoxicant “marihuana” was found in 1842 in Mexican newspapers, and then the term made its way to the United States in the 1890s.

After looking through thousands of American newspaper articles between 1910 and 1919, Campos found that “hashish” was by far the most common word used for intoxicant cannabis during that time — and “marihuana” came second.

Here’s the thing: Throughout the world, people were getting high off cannabis largely through hashish, by putting a lump in their mouths or smoking it in a pipe.

Americans began using the word “marihuana” to describe the method found in Mexico — smoking it through cigarettes — which had much milder and more controllable effects, Campos said.

“That’s why the word sticks,” Campos said, “because the word was associated with this particular way of taking the drug that came from Mexico.”

He compares using “marijuana” to the word “salsa.” Rather than just saying “sauce,” it’s really specific to the way Mexicans make sauce for tacos and

other things.

The myth, he said, that hardly any Americans had heard of the word before “an aggrieved William Randolph Hearst decided to pound the term into the American lexicon… to facilitate its demonization” was first introduced by marijuana-reform activist Jack Herer in the 1980s.

Was there racism against Mexicans? Absolutely, he said.

“But there is not one piece of evidence that suggests that word was used purposely by anybody to stain cannabis,” Campos said. “There was absolutely no need for it. It was already associated with the more foreign-sounding word ‘hashish.’”

The idea that it was “racialized” became another argument from activists to push to overturn prohibition, he said.

“The fact that those arguments worked out, I think that’s great,” he said, noting that the laws disproportionately impacted communities of color as well as Mexico. “But I’m a professional historian, so my job is to try to set the record straight.”

Herer’s influence can still be seen today. Last year the state of Washington banned using the term “marijuana” in state statute, and Virginia and Maine introduced legislation to do the same.

After talking with Campos, I found two resolutions by the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators passed in 2017 and 2021, arguing the

I reached out to Gieringer, and he told me in an email: “There is nothing racist about the word marijuana/juana. It is the proper term for smoked cannabis buds and leaf. Our organization, Norml, is proud to represent marijuana and cannabis users of all sorts.”

I had a great conversation with New Mexico Sen. Antonio Maestas, D-Bernalillo County, who chairs the Hispanic caucus’ law and criminal justice committee.

He didn’t have a hand in writing the resolutions, but he took the lead on the 2007 legislation that legalized medical marijuana in New Mexico.

He was surprised the caucus called the word racist and isn’t personally offended by it. This claim never came up in his many years advocating for decriminalization in New Mexico, he said, but he believes it’s “better messaging.”

“The word cannabis kind of has a plant connotation,” he said. “The word marijuana kind of has an illegal connotation. It’s in our interest to use the word cannabis exclusively when dealing with cannabis policy.”

I told him about another academic study I read on how successful campaigns for marijuana legalization — in Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon — heavily relied on “white individualism,” meaning the face and focus of their campaigns were responsible, middle-class white people.

Maestas says it makes sense because when they were pushing legalization in New Mexico, they were targeting moderates and “rural conservative Chicanos.”

“If you’re trying to go mainstream and sell a product, you market to the average-Joe white person,” he said.

Using Mexican-sounding words probably doesn’t fit into that strategy.

Originally published by The Missouri Independent. It is republished with permission.

SHUTTERSTOCK

CULTURE

Artist of the Week

Detroit artist Marcel Stewart spreads positivity through abstract geometry

By Randiah Camille Green

After Marcel Stewart was arrested following a misunderstanding with police, he started to paint “from the belly.”

He was detained for 10 hours after police mistook his gestures for aggression when he was trying to help a woman who didn’t speak English in downtown Detroit. But instead of going back to his canvas with rage and painting political commentary, he decided to focus on positivity.

“Where I came from is the east side of Detroit, and when I was a very young child outside of my windows, all I saw was abandoned buildings, burnt-out cars, and liquor stores, so from adolescence I knew in the future I just wanted to see positivity,” he says. “So my thing is, for young people who don’t have any control over things right now, they can look at [my art] and see something that they’ve never seen before, and that will give them hope.”

Geometric shapes, splashes of bright colors, and paint drips appear throughout Stewart’s abstract paintings with waves of paint flowing through like the passing of time.

A piece called “Midnight Dreams” bursts with colors that soothe the mind and emit childlike joy on the wall of Umoja Fine Arts Gallery in Southfield, where Stewart is showing his latest work. This is the positivity he’s talking about. Six square cutouts jut off the canvas in various sizes. The shapes are how Stewart simplifies life.

“Abstract is the most simplistic form of any art, and once you really break everything down, including the human figure, it’s just blocks,” he says. “Look at anything in the world and it’s literally a rectangle... So if we think about that in the aspect of life and society, you have this big rectangle, mother nature itself, and a spitting image of what’s coming out of it — people.”

Mother nature is the canvas and the blocks within “Midnight Dreams” are us, metaphorically. Each block is a different size with a unique pattern of paint splashed on it. Though we all have our differences in appearance, culture, and beliefs, we’re all squares in the end. Though Stewart notes some of the blocks do appear similar since human beings created a status quo that they believe is “natural,” even if it isn’t.

“Who are we really?” the young artist asks. “If someone could look at us and say you’re just a Black male, or you’re just a Caucasian female, then how would they ever get to what’s underneath the tip of that iceberg? Just like looking at an abstract piece at face value is only going to give you beautiful colors or a beautiful frame.”

Stewart thought he knew who he was before he started painting in this geometric style. Prior to that, his trademark was an abstract “swoop splash” that he put on posters and clothing. That changed following his incident with the police in 2020, during the civil unrest around the murder of George Floyd.

Umoja Fine Arts CEO and lead curator Ian Grant pushed Stewart to dig

deeper in his art, as he saw something inside of him that wasn’t yet translated through his work.

“When Marcel came on board three years ago, I told him, ‘We want to you grow, so this will be the last swoop splash that you do for a while,’” Grant says. “We call it ‘art from the belly’ when an artist goes deep inside of themselves. When the cops came and tackled him and locked him up, he called me and I said, ‘You want me to get you a lawyer?’ He said no, that he just wanted me to know what happened. And I thought, now is the time that you come from the belly. Put that experience of how you felt on canvas for me. That was the beginning.”

Stewart has been an artist since he was 5 but stopped making art in high school because he felt discouraged.

“I always knew I wanted to be an artist my whole life but I never had that encouragement or motivation… no one pushed me to say you can go further, you can take this and flourish in it,” he says. “When I came to Umoja I really found a friend in Ian Grant. He was able to show me that this is not just a marketplace to grow in [monetary] value, but you can express yourself, tell

your story, give back to your culture, and preserve history.”

Stewart’s “Midnight Dreams” piece is part of his environmental series. Other paintings come from other themed series like music, culture, and ancestral heritage. Another piece in the show, “Liberation, The Rise from Oppression” is an abstract version of the kente cloth and the metaphorical wealth, tranquility, and spirit in its traditional colors.

Stewart is influenced by abstract greats Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Piet Mondrian but still adds his distinct point of view.

“I’m able to tell my own narrative from my past, which isn’t this vibrant, but I wish for my future to be and I want to give the youth hope for the future as well,” he says.

Where to see his work: Stewart’s work is part of Umoja’s Blooming in Color III exhibition, which includes work from decorated Black artists LaShun Beal and Della Wells, alongside emerging artists like Stewart. It’s on view until June 30; 16250 Northland Dr. Suite 102, Southfield; umojafinearts.com.

“Midnight Dreams” by Marcel Stewart. COURTESY OF MARCEL STEWART

The final huzzah?

By Craig D. Lindsey

Guardians of the Galaxy

Vol. 3

Rated: PG-13

Run-time: 150 minutes

It seems like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was made to be the final installment of this cosmic-superhero trilogy — even if Marvel Studios doesn’t want to wrap up this section of the Marvel Cinematic Universe just yet.

Several of the key players have already moved the hell on. Dave Bautista announced months ago that he was done playing chiseled dumbass Drax the Destroyer. Zoe Saldana recently admitted that her days as green warrior Gamora are over. And, of course, there’s writerdirector James Gunn. After churning out an R-rated reboot of The Suicide Squad and the gleefully vulgar HBO Max spin-off show Peacemaker (made during the time he was briefly canceled

for old, off-color tweets and dismissed by Disney), he’s now co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Films, where he’s been planning to reboot the DC Extended Universe — and piss off fans who are still loyal to the Snyderverse.

If this is the last hurrah, the series is going out in typical fashion, with this mostly uncouth crew being annoying and dysfunctional as hell — until it’s time to kick ass in the most rocking way possible.

They spring into action to save dying friend Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper, sounding as always like an even more irritated George Constanza), after some shiny, unkillable being (a buff but goofy Will Poulter) plows through their headquarters and leaves Rocket clinging to life. This being was dispatched by the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), a power-mad geneticist and the main Big Bad of this installment. He wants to wipe out Rocket, one of the Evolutionary’s former guinea pigs who became smarter than intended.

This Guardians volume once again

shows off Gunn’s knack for creating kitschy, smart-ass chaos (something Taika Waititi shamelessly lifted for the inferior Thor sequels he directed). Our heroes continue to be bickering, badass bottom-dwellers you’d love to have on your side — just as long as they don’t stick around much. Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) is still a Zune-listening dunce, carrying a torch for the Gamora he once knew. (Since Gamora died in Avengers: Infinity War, we’re stuck with an alternate post-Snap Gamora, who’s a cynical pirate rolling with Sylvester Stallone’s space ravagers.) Gamora’s sis Nebula (Karen Gillan) is even more surly now that she’s the most competent Guardian of the pack, mostly chewing out Drax and the mind-altering Mantis (Pom Klementieff) for their screwball antics. And somehow, they can all understand Groot (Vin Diesel) now. So, consider this the second summer blockbuster sequel coming out this month starring Diesel and an unlikely “family” fighting baddies.

Your endurance may get tested when-

ever the Guardians are on screen together. All through their journey, they bicker, yap, and make the usual amount of dunderheaded decisions. (I’m shocked no one says they’re gonna turn this spaceship around unless they keep quiet.) For more soothing moments, there are flashback sequences where a comatose Rocket remembers all the good times he had with other caged, talking creatures who were mutated by the Evolutionary, who’s basically a screeching sadist who wants to create a perfect civilization. (I gotta say, I’m not digging this new direction the MCU is taking of giving us unsympathetic villains of color who are just fucking insane.) The Guardians even visit his first draft, Counter-Earth, which is just like our messed-up Earth — but the people are half-animal.

As with most MCU productions, you gotta take the good with the bad. The Guardians films have always been relentlessly riotous trips to Cosmic Crazy Town, managing to mix juvenile frat humor with ultra-CGIed action sequences and moments of surprisingly sincere emotion. (This volume also exhibits a theme of respecting and protecting all creatures great and small.)

Just like with the last one, Gunn doesn’t scale back the verbal-visual mayhem. He goes a bit overboard in every department: comedy, action, pathos. Even the needle drops are in overwhelming abundance this time around. (The “Awesome Mix” soundtrack for this one will definitely sound like another Now That’s What I Call Music comp.) At least there’s an awe-inspiring, allegedly one-take shot of the Guardians obliterating goons to the sounds of Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” — which, along with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, makes this the second Chris Pratt movie this year to feature this song. (I wouldn’t be surprised if this is Gunn’s homage to the one-take beatdown from Oldboy.) And for a superhero series that’s always given off a grungy, grimey vibe, I was pleased that I could fully see a lot of it. Gunn and cinematographer Henry Braham made sure several sequences looked shiny and colorful on-screen, like the trip the gang takes to the Evolutionary’s headquarters, a station resembling intestines that looks like Gunn’s tribute to David Cronenberg.

As noisy and flawed as it is, the third Guardians is an acceptable, consistently whacked-out swan song. Sure, the postcredits sequence indicates that we’ll definitely see a Guardian in another MCU installment sometime down the line. But even in this era of unstoppable IP, at least this Guardians timeline knows when it’s time to pack up and leave not so quietly.

Guardians Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Chris Pratt, and Karen Gillan are back — and predictably bickering. JESSICA MIGLIO, MARVEL

CULTURE

Savage Love

Chick Lit

By Dan Savage

: Q A lot of studying is being done on pornography and what it does to our brain. My question: are there any studies being done on erotic writing?

“Women’s Romance Literature” is absolutely exploding in the online selfpublishing sector, and my wife is an avid consumer. “Spice” is the euphemism they use but — wow — romance lit is a hot dish. My wife consumes countless ebooks and audiobooks, and there seems to be a huge community of readers like her out there. Erotic lit has been very good for our relationship; we listen to scenes together and I help bring my wife to orgasm with my hands or tongue. It’s a fun way to be intimate! And listening is definitely less intrusive when we’re “coupling” than watching other people go at it on a screen. Anyway, back to my question: There are lots of studies looking into the effect of porn movies and pornographic images on the brain. But has anyone studied the impact of erotic literature on the brain? It’s got to be the oldest form of titillating art we have. What’s it doing to us?

—Lessons In Titillation

: A “I haven’t come across neurological studies of erotic writing or literature,” said Dr. Kelsy Burke. “That doesn’t really surprise me since the questions scientists ask about sexuality usually reflect broader social and cultural interests — in this case, research on ‘porn’ is almost exclusively about it as a visual medium, not the written word.”

Dr. Burke is a sociologist and the author of The Pornography Wars, a terrific new book about the never-ending culture war over pornography. Suffice it to say, LIT, if Dr. Burke hasn’t run across studies into the kind of dirty stories your wife enjoys reading, those studies don’t exist. And while there are a lot of warring studies that look at the impact of pornographic images — moving and still — on our brains, much of the data being generated are pretty useless.

“There’s a lot more talk about pornography and the brain than there are definitive empirical studies,” said Dr. Burke. “And a lot of the talk stems from groups with a political or religious

interest in opposing porn. Academic studies, on the other hand, offer mixed results and no definitive conclusions about how porn impacts the brain.”

So, despite all these warring studies and claims — from opponents and supporters of porn — we simply don’t know if pornographic images and videos are warping our brains.

“Here’s what we do know: our brains process visual images 60,000 times faster than text,” said Dr. Burke. “One of the better arguments, in my opinion, about the potential harm of internet porn — which is actually not exclusive to porn at all and applies to all videostreaming websites — is that the quick succession of videos and rapid processing of all of those images is what sucks us in, sometimes for longer than we would like.”

We all know people who watch too much TV, play too many video games, and spend too much time on TikTok, all media served up on the exact same screens that serve up porn, and all serving up the exact same dopamine hits. But while people express concerns about “screentime” when it comes to Ted Lasso or Minecraft, the combo of sexual pleasure, sexual agency, and the potential for sexual exploitation fuels a unique moral panic about the porn we watch. And there’s generally little concern expressed about people who spend “too much time reading,” even if they’re masturbating to what they read.

“And while we can have a huge queue of romance lit on our Kindles,” said Dr. Burke, “we aren’t likely to stay up all night binging one after the other, as we might do with, say, Netflix because our brains will tire from all that textual processing.”

So, your wife could be a graduate of the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics speed-reading program, but there’s a limit — a much lower limit — to the number of dirty stories she can consume in a single day and/or wank. (Evelyn Wood? Anyone get that reference? Anyone? Bueller?) But the same moral scolds who’ve successfully banned books with LGBT themes and characters, as well as books that delve into wrongs committed against Black people and other people of color (slavery, Jim Crow, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Internment of the Japanese, etc., etc.), are starting to go after romance novels. Books written by Nora Roberts, a popular (and PG) romance novelist, were just pulled from the shelves in a high school in Florida after an activist with the rightwing group Moms for Liberty complained. (You know who

was reading Roberts’ books before they got banned? Teachers. You know who’s reading them now? Teenagers.)

“I doubt we’ll see a surge in research on what effect Roberts’ writing has on our brains, not only because banning books is purely political theater,” said Dr. Burke. And we may not see a surge in that kind of research because we ultimately don’t need it. “Neuroscientists already know that the stories in our heads are hugely important to our sexual pleasure,” said Dr. Burke. “These stories — our thoughts and feelings — can help or hinder our sexual experiences. It sounds like for you and your wife, it’s helping.”

Follow Dr. Burke on Twitter @kelsyburke. Visit Dr. Burke’s website — www. kelsyburke.com — to learn more about her work.

: Q I’m a 32-year-old gay man living in a large U.S. city. I sometimes hook up with college guys through the apps. I’m always up front about what I’m looking for and I try to honor the campsite rule. Occasionally I see the same person more than once and will take them out for dinner or drinks, where I always pay since I remember being a broke college student. This year, I started hooking up a couple of times a month with a 21-year-old guy. Turns out he’s from a very wealthy family — not household names, but super rich. I don’t know exactly how much money he gets from his family, but he let me know money isn’t an issue for him and insists on paying if we go out. I asked him to alternate who pays so it doesn’t feel uneven. He also bought me a small gift for my home that cost less than $40. When it’s just dinner or small things, I don’t mind too much. But this summer he’ll be doing an internship in Europe. I’ve always wanted to go to the city where he will be working, and he’s offered to fly me out around my birthday, pay for nice hotels, and cover other expenses like meals. If he were my age, I would accept, but it feels wrong somehow due to the age gap. It’s just so much money for someone that young to be spending, but is it OK since he has access to a family fortune? Based on everything I know, he can easily afford it, but would I be wrong to accept? What are the ethical concerns of having a sugar daddy fuckbuddy who’s so young?

Additional context: I’ve been very clear I’m not interested in dating, and he’s expressed the same. We describe each other as friends, we both date and hook up with other people, we’re both on PrEP and I’ve encouraged him to get tested for STIs regularly. I have no connection to his family, I don’t work in the field he’s going into, we don’t use terms like daddy/boy, and he knows I’m finan-

cially comfortable, so this gesture seems to be motivated by generosity, not pity.

—Spendy Holiday On Wealthy Undergrad’s Pocketbook

: A His motives could be pure — he could just be generous — or he could be motivated by a desire, possibly subconscious, to control you. When an extremely wealthy person brings an urchin like you or me into their orbit, SHOWUP, we get a glimpse of a world we could never access on our own. The conscious or subconscious awareness that we could be exiled from this world at any moment might lead us to put up with things we wouldn’t tolerate from someone who wasn’t flying us all over the world and picking up the tab for fancy hotels.

That said, it doesn’t sound like your fuckbuddy is being excessively and/ or manipulatively lavish, only appropriately and proportionately generous, and I think you should accept his offer. Pick up a few checks, SHOWUP, and enjoy the ride.

P.S. Don’t marry Connor.

: Q My sister died last year as a result of breast cancer. I was moved at how, during the last six months of her life, my brother-in-law, niece, and nephew bonded in a manner that allowed them to support each other as they faced the daunting task of caring for my sister. My niece has returned to college, while my nephew moved in with his father during my sister’s illness. Last month, I arrived several hours earlier than expected (some miscommunication involved) to a house sit; when I let myself in, I learned that my brother-in-law and 27-year-old nephew had been sleeping in the same bed. I think they may even have been naked. When I questioned my brother-in-law privately as to the propriety of this practice, he responded that the intimacy of sharing a bed was facilitating their healing from my sister’s death. I retain some reservations with regard to their sleeping arrangements. Several friends in whom I’ve confided have stated that the matter is none of my business. What do you think I should do?

—Keep Exclaiming “Yikes!”

: A I think you should knock — on front doors, not bedroom doors — when you arrive early, even if you’ve been entrusted with a key.

P.S. I’m so sorry for your loss.

P.P.S. Since your nephew and brother-in-law are both adults...

Read the full version of this column at Savage.Love. Send your burning questions to mailbox@savage.love. Podcasts, columns, and more at Savage.Love!

CULTURE Free Will Astrology

ARIES: March 21 – April 19

All of us are always telling ourselves stories — in essence, making movies in our minds. We are the producer, the director, the special effects team, the voice-over narrator, and all the actors in these inner dramas. Are their themes repetitious and negative or creative and life-affirming? The coming weeks will be a favorable time to work on emphasizing the latter. If the tales unfolding in your imagination are veering off in a direction that provokes anxiety, reassert your directorial authority. Firmly and playfully reroute them so they uplift and enchant you.

TAURUS: April 20 – May 20

A famous football coach once said his main method was to manipulate, coax, and even bully his players into doing things they didn’t like to do. Why? So they could build their toughness and willpower, making it more likely they would accomplish formidable feats. While this may be an approach that works for some tasks, it’s not right for many others. Here’s a further nuance: The grind-it-out-doing-unpleasant-things may be apt for certain phases of a journey to success,

but not for other phases. Here’s the good news, Taurus: For now, you have mostly completed doing what you don’t love to do. In the coming weeks, your freedom to focus on doing fun things will expand dramatically.

GEMINI: May 21 – June 20

Most of us have an area of our lives where futility is a primary emotion. This may be a once-exciting dream that never got much traction. It could be a skill we possess that we’ve never found a satisfying way to express. The epicenter of our futility could be a relationship that has never lived up to its promise or a potential we haven’t been able to ripen. Wherever this sense of fruitlessness resides in your own life, Gemini, I have an interesting prediction: During the next 12 months, you will either finally garner some meaningful fulfillment through it or else find a way to outgrow it.

CANCER: June 21 – July 22

Many of us Cancerians have high levels of perseverance. Our resoluteness and doggedness may be uncanny. But we often practice these subtle superpowers with such sensitive grace that they’re virtually invisible to casual observers. We appear modest and gentle, not fierce and driven. For instance, this is the first time I have bragged about the fact that I have composed over 2,000 consecutive horoscope columns without ever missing a deadline. Anyway, my fellow Crabs, I have a really good feeling about how much grit and determination you will be able to marshal in the coming months. You may break your own personal records for tenacity.

LEO: July 23 – August 22

hasn’t been easy. There has been luck involved, but your Virgo-style diligence and ingenuity has been crucial. I also predict that you will locate the door that the magic key will unlock. Now here’s my challenge: Please fulfill my two predictions no later than the solstice. To aid your search, meditate on this question: “What is the most important breakthrough for me to accomplish in the next six weeks?”

LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22

Losing something we value may make us sad. It can cause us to doubt ourselves and wonder if we have fallen out of favor with the Fates or are somehow being punished by God. I’ve experienced deflations and demoralizations like that on far more occasions than I want to remember. And yet, I have noticed that when these apparent misfortunes have happened, they have often opened up space for new possibilities that would not otherwise have come my way. They have emptied out a corner of my imagination that becomes receptive to a fresh dispensation. I predict such a development for you, Libra.

By Rob Brezsny

microbiology into a scientific discipline. In accordance with astrological omens, I propose we make him your inspirational role model in the coming months, Sagittarius. What hobby or pastime or amusement could you turn into a central passion?

CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19

I wonder if you weren’t listened to attentively when you were a kid. And is it possible you weren’t hugged enough or consistently treated with the tender kindness you deserved and needed? I’m worried there weren’t enough adults who recognized your potential strengths and helped nurture them. But if you did indeed endure any of this mistreatment, dear Capricorn, I have good news. During the next 12 months, you will have unprecedented opportunities to overcome at least some of the neglect you experienced while young. Here’s the motto you can aspire to: “It’s never too late to have a fruitful childhood and creative adolescence.”

AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18

We are of the opinion, that the lemmings supporting English royalty, are the same lemmings that supported Brexit….Visionaries all. You know who doesn’t have a royalty problem?…Us and the French. I always favored the way the French dealt with it.

GOD SAVE YOUR MOTHER, HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!!

Why do migrating geese fly in a V formation? For one thing, it conserves their energy. Every bird except the leader enjoys a reduction in wind resistance. As the flight progresses, the geese take turns being the guide in front. Soaring along in this shape also seems to aid the birds’ communication and coordination. I suggest you consider making this scenario your inspiration, dear Leo. You are entering a phase when synergetic cooperation with others is even more important than usual. If you feel called to lead, be ready and willing to exert yourself— and be open to letting your associates serve as leaders. For extra credit: Do a web search for an image of migrating geese and keep it in a prominent place for the next four weeks.

VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22

I boldly predict that you will soon locate a missing magic key. Hooray! It

SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21: Kissing is always a worthy way to spend your leisure time, but I foresee an even finer opportunity in the coming weeks: magnificent kissing sprees that spur you to explore previously unplumbed depths of wild tenderness. On a related theme, it’s always a wise self-blessing to experiment with rich new shades and tones of intimacy. But you are now eligible for an unusually profound excursion into these mysteries. Are you bold and free enough to glide further into the frontiers of fascinating togetherness?

SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) worked at a variety of jobs. He sold cloth. He was a land surveyor and bookkeeper. He managed the household affairs of his city’s sheriffs, and he supervised the city’s wine imports and taxation. Oh, by the way, he also had a hobby on the side: lensmaking. This ultimately led to a spectacular outcome. Leeuwenhoek created the world’s first high-powered microscope and was instrumental in transforming

As I’ve explored the mysteries of healing my traumas and disturbances over the past 20 years, I’ve concluded that the single most effective healer I can work with is my own body. Expert health practitioners are crucial, too, but their work requires my body’s full, purposeful, collaborative engagement. The soft warm animal home I inhabit has great wisdom about what it needs and how to get what it needs and how to work with the help it receives from other healers. The key is to refine the art of listening to its counsel. It has taken me a while to learn its language, but I’m making good progress. Dear Aquarius, in the coming weeks, you can make great strides in developing such a robust relationship with your body.

PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20

Can we surmise what your life might be like as the expansive planet Jupiter rumbles through your astrological House of Connections and Communications during the coming months? I expect you will be even more articulate and persuasive than usual. Your ability to create new alliances and nurture old ones will be at a peak. By the way, the House of Communications and Connections is also the House of Education and Acumen. So I suspect you will learn a LOT during this time. It’s likely you will be brainier and more perceptive than ever before. Important advice: Call on your waxing intelligence to make you wiser as well as smarter.

Homework: What’s the most fun experiment you could try right now?

JAMES NOELLERT

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