Metro Times 05/24/23

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EDITORIAL

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EMPLOYMENT

Electric Drive Controls Engineer, Pontiac, MI, General Motors. Design, dvlp, implement, release &continuously improve motor control algorithms for hybrid, plug-in, &electric vehicle platforms. Define, dvlp &optimize electric drivetrain performance by enhancing efficiency of electric motor (surface-mounted permanent magnet (SPM), interior-mounted permanent magnet (IPM), &induction machines) &Traction Power Inverter Module (TPIM). Engr, dvlp, test, validate &release motor control algorithms incl. TPIM power loss estimator, junction temperature estimator, inverter derating, junction temperature rain flow counting, inverter damage number estimation, &backup sensorless algorithms, using MATLAB, Simulink, Stateflow, Piecewise Linear Electrical Circuit Simulation &Simplorer tools. Perform thermal mgmt of silicon &silicon-carbide power modules, &dvlp thermal models for threephase TPIM. Support dvlpmt of advanced inverter protection algorithm for active thermal derating based on maximum device temperature for high speed &stall operating conditions to enhance vehicle performance. Improve motor control performance using Design of Experiments &Design for Six Sigma processes to determine different temperaturebased derating strategies for improvement of vehicle performance. Master, Electrical Engrg or related. 12 mos exp as Engineer, dvlpg &optimizing electric drivetrain performance by enhancing efficiency of electric motor (SPM or IPM) &TPIM, or related. Mail resume to Ref#456, GM Global Mobility, 300 Renaissance Center, MC:482-C32-C66, Detroit, MI 48265.

EMPLOYMENT

Industrial Engineer - Seats, Brose North America, Auburn Hills, MI. Review CAD drawings &production models of seat syss &seat cmpts, using SAP ERP Materials Mgmt, Production Planning, Qlty Mgmt, &Logistics modules, &AutoCAD tool. Plan &dvlp concepts, reqmts &layouts for eqpt, workstations &production lines considering ergonomic theories &standard Methods Time Measurement (MTM) using TiCon &AutoCAD tools, &design workstations &production lines to produce Brose mechatronic composite high strength steel, aluminum &injection molded plastic seat syss &subsyss incl. manual &power seat structures, manual &power backrests, lumbar assemblies, headrests, seat adjusters (incl. power &manual cushion length adjusters in high volume mfg plant environments. Provide estimated investment for new assy lines required for new prgrms or capacity increases on existing assy lines. Create, dvlp &implement high automated &error proofed mfg process &workflows incl. conveyors, fixtures from initial interface with suppliers to final release &production assuring eqpt technical availability is met. 36 mos exp as Engineer or related, dvlpg or optimizing eqpt, workstations &production lines considering ergonomic theories &standard MTM, using TiCon &AutoCAD tools to produce seat syss &subsyss in high volume mfg plant environment, or related. Mail resume to Ref#860-207, Brose, Human Resources,

NEWS & VIEWS

Aowww sheeeyt �� —@momannwill, Twitter

We received responses to our annual Fiction Issue, which was guest edited by Michigan Poet Laureate Nandi Comer and Casey Rocheteau in collaboration with Kresge Arts in Detroit. Also, thanks to everyone who came to Detroit’s 27th Letter Books on Thursday to celebrate the issue and listen to contributors read their work!

Can’t wait to read this! Thank you! —Cheryl Ann, Facebook

Great work, Nandi������ —Dwight Leven, Facebook

Outstanding!!!

Satori Shakoor, Facebook

Awesome �� —Kurt Kresge, Facebook

I didn’t get any photos last night but attended the celebration of the 2023 Detroit Metro Times Fiction Issue at 27th Letter Books. The issue includes Brain Candiers: Nandi Comer co-edited it and works from Esperanza Cintron, Jazmine Cooper, Carole Harris, Katelyn Durst Rivas, Yasmine Rukia, and Sterling Toles (three of whom read last night). Was a packed house--very nice to see.

—Dan

Wickett, Facebook

Have an opinion? Of course you do! Sound off: letters@metrotimes.com

NEWS & VIEWS

Duggan slams new census estimates

DETROIT SHED NEARLY

8,000 residents between July 2020 and July 2022, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Thursday, but Mayor Mike Duggan says he isn’t buying it.

The population in Michigan’s largest city dropped to 620,376 during that period, a 2.7% decline from a year ago, according to the data.

Detroit now ranks as the 29th most populated city. At its peak in 1950, Detroit was the fifth largest city in the U.S. with 1.85 million people.

The city’s population has steadily shrunk since the mid-1950s.

But Duggan insists the census is undercounting residents and called the bureau “a complete clown show.”

According to the mayor, the U.S. Postal Service reported an increase of 6,300 residential homes in Detroit since 2021. He also pointed to rising home prices and 25 new housing projects that are under construction “as the market struggles to keep up with the demand.”

“The only people in America who could conclude that Detroit’s population is decreasing is the Census Bureau,” Duggan said. “Maybe it’s time to move the Census Bureau under the U.S. Postal Service so it will be run by people who actually have some clue about who is living where in America.”

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, has also repeatedly called out the Census Bureau for undercounting residents and previously joined Duggan in calling for a more accurate tally.

“For years I’ve been raising alarms alongside other elected officials about the Census Bureau consistently undercounting Detroit’s population, and our concerns have yet to be addressed,” Tlaib tells Metro Times. “I support Mayor Duggan’s efforts to ensure a full and accurate count, and I’ll continue to work to address these unacceptable shortfalls at the federal level.”

Census estimates are important be -

cause the population counts are tied to federal funding. For each resident missed in the tally, the city loses out on roughly $5,000 a year for resources ranging from Medicaid and food stamps to foster care and education assistance.

An Associated Press analysis in 2019 found that Detroit is one of the toughest cities to count because of vacant homes, multi-family apartments, high poverty, sparse internet access, and a large population of immigrants and people of color.

Detroit challenged the census count last year, claiming in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that the city’s population grew in 2021. The census estimated that Detroit lost 71,50 residents in 2021.

During the decennial count in 2020, the city’s population declined 10.5% over the past decade, according to the census.

Detroit’s Black population was hit the hardest. While the Hispanic, Asian, and white populations grew

over the past decade, the number of Black residents declined from about 586,000 to 500,000 between 2010 and 2020, according to the data.

The Census Bureau acknowledged that the 2020 figures undercounted the nation’s Black population by 3.3% and the Hispanic population by 5%.

According to the decennial count, Black people account for 77.2% of the city’s overall population, compared to 82.2% in 2010, when Detroit had the highest percentage of Black residents in the country.

Duggan has vowed to reverse Detroit’s population decline, telling the Wall Street Journal in 2014 that “the single standard a mayor should be defined on is whether the population of the city is going up or down.”

In March, Metro Times featured a cover story in which we talked to 10 former Black residents about why they left and where they went, after receiving dozens of messages from readers who said they left the city.

—Steve Neavling

A billboard campaign encouraged Detroiters to fill out the 2020 Census. STEVE NEAVLING

Tlaib joins fight for $14 trillion in reparations

U.S. REP. RASHIDA Tlaib is calling on $14 trillion in federal government-funded reparations for descendants of enslaved Black families.

The Detroit Democrat joined U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-MO, who introduced the Reparations Now Resolution, in urging their colleagues to help atone for the practice of slavery and hundreds of years of racist policies that followed.

“Our country promised reparations to our Black neighbors and never followed through, even as other communities were provided some form of reparations,” Tlaib said Thursday. “For centuries, our Black neighbors have endured the brutality of slavery, the violence of white supremacy, the dehumanization of Jim Crow, and the systemic racism that has left a lasting impact on the lives of Black families in our communities. By providing reparations, Congress can begin to address the racial wealth gap, end the decades of disinvestment in communities of color, and dismantle the racist systems that have oppressed our Black neighbors for far too long.”

Reparations could come in the form of direct cash payments and investments in housing and education.

The resolution urges lawmakers to take action on H.R. 40, or the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation

Proposals for African Americans Act, a long-stalled bill that Detroit’s late John Conyers first introduced in 1989.

“I am one of the 40 million people in this country descended from enslaved Africans,” Bush said. “Our ancestors were torn away from their homes and families, enslaved, and forced to fuel this country’s economy since the day it was founded. And then they were left landless, impoverished, and disenfranchised.”

The legacy of slavery impacts 57% of Black Americans, according to the Pew Research Center.

Bush said discrimination did not end with slavery, pointing to redlining, segregation, disproportionate poverty rates, community disinvestments, and disparities in education and the justice system.

The resolution includes numerous pages of the federal policies that have discriminated against Black Americans since the nation’s founding.

“Black people continue to bear the harms of slavery and its vestiges, through the Black-white wealth gap,

segregation and redlining, disparities in health outcomes, a racist and destructive criminal legal system, and countless other ways,” Bush said. “Yet our federal government refuses to acknowledge the lasting harms of slavery and the unjust world it created for Black people. We know this injustice because we experience it every day. This resolution will move us closer to a federal government that acknowledges its responsibility for this injustice and enacts a holistic and

comprehensive reparations package that begins to address the harm it has caused, the wealth it has extracted, and the lives it has stolen.”

The Democrats face an uphill battle. Reparations remain broadly unpopular among Republicans, who control the U.S. Senate.

Still, support for reparations appears to be increasing in some states and local governments. In California, for example, a reparations task force recently

approved recommendations that could result in up to $1.2 million each for Black residents older than 50.

In Detroit, 80.1% of voters approved a measure in November 2021 to create a reparations task force to develop recommendations to address the creation of generational wealth and increase economic opportunities for Black residents. The task force recently began meeting.

—Steve Neavling

Detroit moves closer to creating gun-free zones

THE DETROIT CITY Council last week took a step closer to creating gun-free zones at events and in popular parts of downtown.

The council approved two resolutions that set the stage for gun-free zones. The first called on state lawmakers to pass a Senate bill that would authorize municipalities to create gun-free zones in public spaces. The bill would amend the Michigan Firearm and Ammunition Act 319 of 1990, which prohibits cities from establishing gun-free zones in public spaces.

The second resolution orders city staff to draft an ordinance that would require public or private events that receive a permit from the city and are expected to exceed 500 people to be

gun-free zones. The resolution also endorses the establishment of gun-free zones in Greektown, the riverfront, Hart Plaza, Spirit Plaza, and Campus Martius.

“One of the primary responsibilities of this Detroit City Council is to protect the health, safety and welfare of all citizens of Detroit,” Councilwoman Mary Waters, who proposed the resolutions, said in a written statement. “Despite bullying by representatives of the National Rifle Association (NRA) to weaken Detroit City Council resolve, we fulfilled our duty to protect Detroit citizens against unacceptable gun violence and I thank my Detroit City Council colleagues for standing strong.”

Waters proposed gun-free zones following a rash of shootings downtown last month. Police responded by increasing patrols in the area and enforcing a curfew for minors.

Waters said it’s also important to address the root causes of gun violence.

“We must also deal with unacceptable poverty, systemic racism, illiteracy, and disintegration of Black families resulting in the streets raising our children with street values that don’t give a damn about human life, respect or love for self and one another,” Waters said. “We can and must do better by restoring real family structure and love to Detroit as the foundation to ending street violence.”

—Steve Neavling

COURTESY OF U.S. REP. RASHIDA TLAIB’S OFFICE

Plug pulled on queer Detroit club Flaming Embers

A SPORTS BAR in downtown Detroit’s Broderick Tower recently rebranded as an all-inclusive queer nightclub, dubbed Flaming Embers. But staff at the revamped hangout, formerly known as Detroit Sports Bar and Grille, say the queer community is now being shut out.

A source familiar with the matter tells Metro Times that several workers cut ties with the establishment on Wednesday after being told the Flaming Embers space would revert back to a sports bar because the owners “changed their mind completely.”

An employee who spoke to Metro Times under the condition of anonymity says they were told to remove an LGBTQ+ pride flag from the window and refused. That’s when they were informed the bar, located at 1570 Woodward Ave., was changing direction.

“We were really excited to bring a space of inclusion to Detroit right downtown, and apparently it was too much and we were ruffling feathers all the way to the top,” the employee says. “From inception, it was about being a queer space, but the building manager told us to take down the pride flag, which is completely rude and against everything that we started here. It’s a slap in the face to the city. It’s a slap in the face to everyone that put effort into it.”

Detroit Sports Bar and Grille’s rebrand to Flaming Embers was first reported by the Detroit News in April. Following the Detroit News article, employees say they were told not to speak to the media about it being a “queer space” under the orders of real estate developer and owner Michael Higgins.

The club’s name comes from a restaurant called Flaming Embers that operated in the space in the early 1950s and closed in 1993.

“Even though we got a lot of positivity from [the article], I think they were completely weirded out by the use of the word ‘queer,’” the employee says. “We had to explain that the word queer has been reclaimed and we use it for identity.”

A request for comment from Higgins and management at the Broderick Tower was not returned.

Staff say they were asked to stay on board and run the space as a sports bar, but they refused, saying “that’s not what we signed up for.”

“The queer community deserves a space and I feel so bad for young generations right now that don’t have that space in Detroit,” an employee tells us. “We should be a functioning city with a strong queer community and everyone together, not just a gay bar, which is typically white male.”

In 2015, a club that billed itself as a gay sports bar called Briggs Detroit opened in the former Tom’s Oyster Bar downtown. At the time, its owners said it was the first gay sports

bar in the city since a spot called TimeSquare closed in the early ’90s. Briggs closed in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

—Randiah Camille Green

Afro Nation festival coming to Detroit

ONE OF THE biggest afrobeats festivals in the world is making its way to Detroit this August.

Previously held in Ghana, Portugal, and Puerto Rico, Afro Nation will touch down in Detroit Aug. 19-20.

The live music festival celebrates genres from across the African diaspora including afrobeats, dancehall, reggae, hip-hop, R&B, amapiano, and other Afro-Caribbean and African American styles.

Detroit is the second U.S. city to host the festival, following its upcoming American debut in Miami on May 27-28. Nigerian acts Burna Boy and WizKid are headlining the Miami festival, but headliners have yet to be announced for the Detroit installation.

Afro Nation Detroit is presented in partnership with Bedrock and is expected to draw tens of thousands of people. The festivities will take place at the site of the former Brewster-Douglass Projects, which was purchased by

Bedrock and renamed the “Bedrock Douglass Site.” The area was supposed to be developed into new apartments but appears to be an empty lot.

The Bedrock Douglass Site was once home to Motown legends like Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson. It was the first federally funded housing project for African Americans in the United States and is where a sizable portion of Detroit’s Black population was forced to relocate after the Black Bottom district was destroyed to build I-375. (The historical site holds a lot of trauma for Black Detroiters, and we’re curious why it was chosen as the festival’s venue.)

Afro Nation Detroit will also “feature additional activations and events to honor Detroit’s musical contributions to the world and highlight its connection to present day American, African, and global Black culture and music,” according to a press release.

For more information on the festival, see detroit.afronation.com.

—Randiah Camille Green

STEVE NEAVLING

Metro Times wins SPJ award

CONGRATULATIONS TO

METRO Times staff writer Randiah Camille Green, who represented the alt-weekly at the Society of Professional Journalists, Detroit Chapter awards ceremony last week. Her Dec. 15, 2022 article “Upside-down braille signs on the Detroit QLine cause complaints” was awarded first place Print, Class A: Community/Local News Reporting.

The origin of Green’s story came from a voicemail message left by a reader, who suggested we look into the metal signs on the streetcar system displaying the names of the stops that appeared to be installed upside-down. While the braille for visually impaired riders would likely not be noticed by most riders, the words were accompanied by English letters that were also upside-down, drawing attention to the signs.

The QLine opened in 2017, and questions have been raised about the seemingly upside-down signs before. A spokesman for the streetcar system said that the signs were developed with input from the blind community. Others said it was not uncommon to read braille upside-down, especially while standing.

Green did the hard work of tracking down members of the blind community, who agreed to meet her at a QLine stop on a frigid winter day. Cathy McAdam said in her 76 years she’d never encountered upside-down braille signs, and Michael Patten said the placement of the signs was awkward, which are

located on the railing leading up to the stations’ boarding platforms, away from the shelter. They also pointed out that the embossed English appeared to be in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which calls for letters that contrast with their backgrounds to make them easier for riders with low vision to see. Green even found at least one braille sign that was blocked by a street light post.

Last month, QLine operator M-1 Rail said it would replace the signs, and expected the new signs to be installed within a month. Metro Times visited a QLine stop Tuesday morning and found the signs had not yet been replaced.

“While it may be technically correct for some people, it’s not useful for others and so we’re working to update that to make it useful for more people,” director Lisa Nuszkowski told Metro Times. “We’ll do whatever it takes to make it right.”

Congrats are also in order for Metro Times New Voices fellow Eleanore Catolico, who also won awards for journalism she did before the start of her fellowship. Catolico earned second place, Digital: Feature Reporting for her Bridge Michigan story “As Youth Mental Health Crisis Rages, Michigan Schools Work to Bolster Students’ Sense of Connection” and third place, Digital: Feature Reporting for her Eater article “The Soul of Filipino Food Thrives Across Metro Detroit.”

—Lee DeVito

Detroit’s Concert of Colors focuses on Latino music

ORGANIZERS HAVE

SHARED new information about the 31st annual Concert of Colors, which will have a special focus this year on Latino music and culture.

Naturally, part one of the festival will kick off with a free event in Detroit’s Mexicantown on Saturday, June 3, ahead of the remainder of the event, scheduled for July 19-23.

“It is a natural fit to align with The Concert of Colors’ mission to celebrate diversity and bridge cultural differences through music,” Mexicantown Community Development Corporation executive director Raymond Lozano said in a statement. “We welcome everyone to this wonderful, colorful event of music and dance.”

The June event will feature a performance by Los Angeles-based Chicano band Las Cafeteras, known for mixing

Detroit City Council weighs ordinance to ban evictions without ‘just cause’

DETROIT CITY COUN-

CIL will soon consider a new ordinance that would prevent landlords from evicting tenants unless there is “just cause,” but some housing rights advocates say it doesn’t go far enough.

In Detroit and most cities, once a lease expires, landlords can remove a tenant without giving a reason.

Councilman Coleman A. Young II wants to change that in Detroit, where thousands of people are evicted every year without cause. The idea, he says, is to give tenants a greater sense of housing security.

“During the pandemic, 28%33% of the evictions were based on no cause,” Young tells Metro Times. “After the lease expires, they can just terminate their tenancy. I thought that was wrong.”

Under Young’s proposed ordinance, a landlord could only evict a tenant for a legitimate cause, such as unpaid rent, lease violations, or damage to the premises.

“Just cause” ordinances in four California cities lowered eviction rates between 2000 and 2016, according to a Princeton University study.

cil to take up the issue.

The group says a “just cause” ordinance is not enough to protect tenants.

“Under a ‘just cause’ ordinance alone, tenants who are not currently in a term lease contract with a designated rent amount (at-will tenants) may still be legally priced out and abruptly displaced,” the Detroit Tenants Association said in a news release Monday. “Because the state of Michigan has had a statewide ban on rent control since 1988, these tenants are vulnerable to unregulated, and often steep, rent increases – a precarious situation in which ‘at-will’ tenants are at risk of being priced out and displaced at any time. A ‘just cause’ ordinance without a ‘right to renew’ would provide landlords a legal loophole that could easily be exploited, further contributing to displacement and community destabilization.”

Young says the group “has a good point” and that his ordinance is likely just a first step. Council President Mary Sheffield is considering a “right to renew” ordinance, he says.

spoken word and folk music with traditional son jarocho and zapateado dancing. It will also feature performances by Ballet Folklórico Raíces Mexicanas, Violines Cromáticos, DJ Cisco, Gabriel Duran, and Camilla Cantu, among others. It’s scheduled from 2-9 p.m. at Mexicantown plaza at 21st and Bagley streets.

The rest of the family-friendly fest will take place in July at the Detroit Institute of Arts, with more details to be announced including a full musical lineup.

The Concert of Colors launched in 1993 at a time when racial tensions were particularly fraught, with the goal of uniting metro Detroit’s diverse communities through music. It is one of the few local festivals that remains free to attend.

—Lee DeVito

“These results suggest that just cause eviction ordinances have a significant and noticeable effect on eviction and eviction filing rates,” the researchers concluded. “Given the budget limitations of many states and municipalities to fund other solutions to the eviction crisis, passage of just cause eviction ordinances appears to be a relatively low-cost, effective policy solution.”

Similar ordinances exist in Ann Arbor, Birmingham, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. A few states — New Jersey, California, and Oregon — also have “just cause” eviction laws.

But in many of those places, the legislation goes a step further — it guarantees tenants’ right to renew their lease.

The Detroit Tenants Association, a citywide group fighting on behalf of renters, has been advocating for a “right to renew” ordinance and recently launched a petition drive to urge the coun-

“I think this is something that will take care of itself in the long run,” Young says. “I would like to sit down with [the Detroit Tenants Association] and see if we can bounce ideas off each other and make the ordinance stronger.”

Young says the “just cause” ordinance likely would have prevented the eviction of Taura Brown, a terminally ill Black woman who was forcibly removed from her tiny home in April. The landlord, Cass Community Social Services, waited until Brown’s lease expired to evict her, even though she had paid her rent on time.

Brown received a new kidney earlier this month.

The “just cause” ordinance is the latest action the council has taken to expand tenant protections. In May 2022, the council unanimously passed a “right to counsel” measure to provide lower-income residents with free legal representation when facing eviction.

—Steve Neavling

EMPLOYMENT

Controller Integration Engineer

(CIE) - Autonomous Vehicle Controls, Milford, MI, General Motors. Plan, design, review, integrate, test, & verify embedded Electronic Control Unit (ECU) Autonomous Driving Integration Module SW & subsyss to ensure all reqmts & deliverables are met on-time for Autonomous Vehicle, in Embedded C, using Vehicle Spy, ETAS INCA, Git, Gerrit, Jenkins, Artifactory, Eclipse IDE, & Visual Studio Code tools, neoVI FIRE2, Lauterbach Trace32 & GHS Multi debugger hardware. Verify functionality on test bench & in vehicle at Function, Controller & Sys levels prior to production release, following MISRA-C standards & SAFe methodology, to meet vehicle specific electrical architecture, sys, security, safety & encoding reqmts. Analyze & collect data from CAN bus, LIN bus, & Automotive Ethernet logs using Vehicle Spy & neoVI FIRE 2 & Lauterbach Trace32 HW. Automate sys level test cases using SIL using GMSim, & HIL using dSPACE HIL tool, to dvlp automated regression testing & new features testing. Master, Mechanical, Mechatronics, or Electrical Engrg. 24 mos exp as Engineer or Design Engineer, designing, integrating, & testing embedded ECU module SW & subsyss to ensure all reqmts & deliverables are met for psgr vehicle in Embedded C, or related. Mail resume to Ref#3215, GM Global Mobility, 300 Renaissance Center, MC:482-C32-C66, Detroit, MI 48265.

NEWS & VIEWS

radio, eight-track tape players, cassette tape players, CD players, CB radio, Sirius XM satellite radio, or a podcast, or a telephone call, or whatever else you can bounce from your smartphone app through Bluetooth to your stereo speaker system.

Long gone are the days and nights of Father Coughlin, Fireside Chats with FDR, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Walter Winchell, Payola, and Top 40. Gone, too, in cities like Detroit, are the major professional sports teams, who used to anchor stations like WJR. They, too, are moving to FM.

Also absent is the Fairness Doctrine, abolished in 1987 under President Ronald Reagan. Since then, AM stations have primarily offered two approaches.

Lapointe Legacy media seeks Congressional boost

By Joe Lapointe

By even the hyperbolic standards of auto reviews, Car and Driver gushed about the noise that booms from the 2024 Ford Mustang.

“Put it into sport mode,” the magazine wrote, “and the Coyote V-8 snarls and shouts.”

That sounds just swell. But something you won’t hear from this new product of the Motor City are the strident voices of contemporary AM radio.

Following the lead of electric carmakers, the 2024 Mustang is Ford’s first internal combustion model to be marketed without an AM receiver. This illustrates a further decline in another form of legacy media. And, to a few, it reveals a plot by “them” against “us.”

“They finally figured out how to attack conservative talk radio,” snarled Mark Levin, a syndicated right-wing reactionary who rants every weeknight in Detroit over WJR (760-AM). “Most conservative talk shows are on the AM band.”

But not only conservatives are concerned about conserving an information and entertainment technology that has been on the market for more than 100 years and in automobiles for about 90 of them.

A coalition of Republicans and Democrats in Washington — in both the Senate and the House of Represen-

tatives — have endorsed the “AM for Every Vehicle Act,” proposed last week.

They say eliminating AM will remove a fallback source of important information needed during severe weather, gun massacres, terrorist attacks, or other emergencies.

One of the sponsors is New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer.

“When the cell phone runs out, the internet gets cut off, or the television doesn’t work, because of no electricity or power to your house, you can still turn on your AM radio,” he said.

Perhaps Gottheimer forgot that AM transistor radios work in the home or elsewhere even without automobiles attached to them. He criticized specifically the makers of electric cars, who don’t include AM tuners because, they say, the electricity interferes with reception.

“If Elon Musk has enough money to buy Twitter and send rockets to space,” Gottheimer continued, “he can afford to include AM radios in his Teslas.”

While Ford hopes to eliminate AM from all cars, General Motors and Stellantis have been unclear about this band of “terrestrial” radio which once drew ears with music and sports. Gradually, those shows moved to FM, which offers superior sound but less range.

Especially in its earlier formats, AM radio used to be called “the theater of the mind.” Think War of the Worlds as fiction and the Hindenburg as fact. Radio remains an intimate form of communication and there is something Rockwellian about memories from the AM dial.

In childhood, listening in bed at night to distant stations, turning and tuning the dial like a safecracker picking a combination lock. You felt connected to faraway places: the Car-

dinals’ games on KMOX in St. Louis; a local newscast from New York; some preacher from who-knows-where shouting about “Juh-HEE-zuss!”

Later came car radio memories of riding shotgun in the ’65 Mustang of a high-school friend (no seat belts, of course) listening (at loud volume) to all the hit records on CKLW (800-AM) out of Windsor, the Canadian boombox that dominated much of American pop music for decades.

After that, living in Chicago and driving along the west shore of Lake Michigan at night and picking up Tigers’ games on WJR. Its 50,000-watt, clear channel signal gently pushed Ernie Harwell’s mellow voice across the night water. Something mystical about AM radio waves.

Many years later, driving a rental car on a winter Saturday night from Missouri to Kansas, twisting the dashboard knob and catching the Grand Ole Opry from Nashville, live on WSM (650-AM), the signal bouncing across the farmlands.

Between country-western musical acts, a comedian told a joke about Valentine’s Day. He said he was in bed when his wife entered the room wearing only a skimpy nightgown and a smile. He said she was holding four, short pieces of rope.

She told him, “Honey, for your Valentine’s treat, I want you to tie me up to the bedposts and do anything you want to do,” he recalled.

“So I tied her up.”

(Pause)

“And then I went fishin’.”

Of course, the Opry — which is still on the air — evokes how radio once was, long ago, with live music and a live audience.

It is an AM throwback to the decades before car dashboards offered FM

One is right-wing talk shows, like those on WJR. These screeds feed paranoia. They pander to a fearful audience with a consistent backlash of resentment, grievance, and thinly disguised bigotry.

Reagan’s decision allowed one-sided propagandists like Rush Limbaugh to fill the void for stations like WJR. Limbaugh dominated the industry for three decades and greatly influenced the tone of American political dialogue.

Although he died more than two years ago, Limbaugh’s voice still echoes throughout a fragmenting industry and a severely embittered national conversation.

Another AM approach is to provide a rapidly rotating headline service of news, traffic, and weather reports as heard on Detroit’s WWJ (950-AM). Stations like WWJ and WJR remain relatively successful in their markets and in their niches.

But in the most recent Nielsen ratings, WWJ ranked only 12th in Detroit; and WJR was 14th. All the rest of the top 20 stations are FM.

Perhaps AM boosters like Levin will convince Congress to mandate AM radios in all new cars — electric or gasoline — and help save the platform that way. Wouldn’t it be ironic, though, for “big government” interference to bail out this diminishing segment of the industry?

Or, maybe big AM brands with call letters like WWJ and WJR will migrate to the FM band through mergers or takeovers. Or maybe AM radio stations will simply drift away like so much smoke, mist. or vapor in the air now that the free-market breeze has shifted.

After all, technology marches on. Cable TV viewers are cutting the cord. Do you still get a newspaper delivered at home? When’s the last time you got a personal letter (handwritten or typed) through the snail mail postal service? Hey, did anyone here ever get a telegram?

In your car, do you still listen to AM radio? SHUTTERSTOCK

Advertorial/Sponsored Content

started at the ripe age of nine, when he learned to play guitar. By his teens, he joined forces with a neighbor and the two added a drum set to the mix.

“We were like, ‘oh my god, we’re gonna be the White Stripes. That’s what we’re gonna do,’” Sam says. “Being from metro Detroit just allowed me to just develop a wide palette from a young age. From the Motown classics that my mom was listening to, all the way to my dad’s classic rock like Bob Seger, all of it started here in the Motor City.”

It was Sam’s sister, however, that introduced him to the world of hip-hop by way of Eminem, Ludacris, and Nelly, which Sam says opened his eyes, and ears, to the more melodic side of popular hip-hop. And by 17, Sam played his first live show and though he says looking back on that first gig makes him laugh, he also says he reflects on that performance with pride and adoration for his “never give up” attitude.

“I’ve always been very confident in my abilities as far as my music and my rhymes and all that stuff. I’ve never had that moment of doubt, like, questioning ‘should I be doing this?’”

Producer and emcee Sam Be Yourself on why Detroit’s got the beat worth seeking

By Metro Times Promotions

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scene. Once your Party Profile is revealed, shoot your shot at winning a unique 21+ VIP Red Bull Experience for you and five of your closest friends where you’ll experience some of the city’s hottest hot spots and most happening happenings all under one roof. And what would summer be without Wiiings to fuel your fun? Because, yeah, we have a can of Red Bull waiting for you.

If you’re a Beat Seeker like Detroit’s Sam Be Yourself, then you know that Detroit is the birthplace of Motown, techno, and blue collar rock ‘n’ roll, and has long since been a breeding ground for some of the most

influential beat makers and rap stars by the likes Eminem and the late J Dilla, both of whom are cited as having inspired Sam’s nearly two-decades as an independent rapper, producer, and musician in what he refers to as “the universal language of hiphop.”

“For the most part, I’m producing about 90-95% of everything I release,” Sam says. “I make the beat, mix the beat, and then I write lyrics, lay down vocals, and master everything. And then I have to put it out in the world and promote it, so it’s like I’m a oneman show most of the time.”

For Sam, his music journey

His confidence was reinforced in 2019 when he was chosen to audition for the Netflix competition series Rhythm + Flow, where he wowed hip-hop heavy hitters like Chance the Rapper, Cardi B, and Detroit’s own Royce Da 5’9, landing Sam in the top six.

With a new album out, Die With A Buzz, a collaboration with Australian producer Nathan Hui-Yi, Sam has set his summer sights on performing and visiting some of his favorite Detroit hot spots, many of which played a role in his success, like the Old Miami, a spot Sam describes as like a “warm, fuzzy embrace,” and newer performance spaces like the blacklight drenched Deluxx Fluxx and electronic music haven Spot Lite. Sam also credits the Russell Industrial Center and Tangent Gallery for championing Detroit’s DIY spirit, and TV Bar for serving up fresh house music.

“A lot of people feel like they have to leave Detroit to have success as a performer,” Sam says. “It’s just not true. In Detroit, everyone sticks together, especially in the music community, and shows up for one another.”

Sam at Deluxx Fluxx.|

PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER PHILLIP

It’s time to put some respect

DJ Minx

Minx respecton the name

It

Movement Festival 2022:

My feet feel like I’ve been walking on nails for the past six hours and the free weed from Ooze Cannabis has my mouth dry as cardboard, but I climb the pyramid at Hart Plaza anyway. DJ Minx is about to take the stage and I know that she’ll get me hype no matter how exhausted I am. As soon as she starts spinning her infectious brand of house, it’s like call and response between my feet and her turntables. My body moves how the music tells it.

Then a young man next to me snaps me out of the spell, as he excitedly informs his friends, “You know, that’s a girl playing!” Either they didn’t hear him over Minx’s soulful beats, or they didn’t believe him — so he says it again, this time with more emphasis on “girl.”

“You know, I’ve experienced that a lot

BY RANDIAH CAMILLE GREEN

only took 30 years for her to gain the notoriety she deserves

and it was deterring quite a bit,” Minx says, shaking her head, when I tell her that story over Zoom. “I even had a person that I was with at one point say, ‘I see you doing this now but when you get on Kevin [Saunderson]’s level then maybe you’ll be a real DJ.’ I always got that type of disrespect … but when people saw me play they were floored, like holy smokes!”

Now in her fifties, DJ Minx, whose real name is Jennifer Witcher, has been part of Detroit’s techno scene for more than 30 years. But instead of being celebrated alongside techno forefathers like Saunderson and Carl Craig, who she’s become friends with along the way, her name has been largely erased from the conversation until recently.

In 2021 Minx landed a cover on DJ Mag detailing her extensive career,

and 2022 was the first time she had an entire stage dedicated to her at Movement Music Festival, which she’s played since the beginning when it was called the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. The year 2022 also marked 20 years since the release of her cult classic track “Walk in the Park,” which has since been remixed by the likes of Richie Hawtin and Soul Clap.

And this year Minx is getting another curated stage at Movement, titled “DJ Minx presents House Your Life.”

Minx says it took the COVID-19 pandemic when DJs started streaming their sets at home for her to finally gain traction.

“I always said I’m not streaming because I’m already shy,” she remembers. “But I finally decided to stream and within the first few minutes, there were

like over 700 people watching. People in different parts of the world that are not able to physically come and see me play at clubs discovered me during the stream and that’s when it all started. That’s what kicked it off because a lot of people didn’t know about me before then. I’ve been totally flying under the radar for a very long time.”

Minx almost didn’t make it to this moment. There have been many times, she says, that she wanted to quit, fed up with people focusing on her gender instead of her music.

“Every time I’d do a radio show, they’d say something like ‘It’s the female DJ Minx,’ and I’m like, c’mon y’all. Why do we have to label me like that?” she says. “Someone online one day said, ‘You’re my favorite female DJ’ and I said, wait a minute. Stop. Can I

just be your favorite DJ? I’m tired of being your favorite female DJ. If I said, ‘Let me pick my favorite male DJ,’ you’d be offended now, wouldn’t you? So I’m glad people stopped saying that shit.”

Before Minx started DJing, she and some friends ran a mobile record store called Square Distribution. She didn’t even like techno at the time, calling it “that annoying stuff they played on the radio.”

“The music was glued together and I could barely tell when the track ends,” she describes her initial perception of the music that’s now become her life. “It was very noisy to me and I didn’t take the time to listen to it and love it until I got to the club.”

That club was Detroit’s techno afterhours spot the Music Institute, where Derrick May was the resident DJ in the late 1980s.

“I heard the bass coming through those walls and I was like, we have to be a part of whatever is going on in there,” she recounts, getting as excited as she was all those decades ago. “When we finally got in and they pulled back those curtains and we saw that dance floor, I was immediately sucked in, like life-changing. The music on the radio wasn’t the same anymore. It was more of a feeling and it was incredible to me. People were just jumping and when the DJ stopped playing they would stop and when he started back up they would just scream.”

Minx and her crew made their way back to the Music Institute several times but while her friends were getting funky on the dance floor, Minx was climbing the ladder to the DJ booth to watch May. After spotting her one night, May asked Minx what she was looking at, and she simply replied, “I can do that.”

The next time she came to the club May challenged her. “He said, ‘Are you doing this yet?’ pointing to the turntables. And I said, ‘Hell no, what do you think?’ He told me ‘Don’t come back until you are,’” she recalls. (May has since been accused by multiple women of sexual assault and harassment, allegations he denies.)

“I told my mentor Jerry [James] who said that I couldn’t get a challenge from Derrick May and not take it. So he brings a bunch of friends over with all these turntables and equipment to my apartment and they start plugging everything in and nobody’s saying anything. I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ Everyone leaves and Jerry gives me two records and says, ‘Call me when you mix them.’ My god, it was crazy. I called him later and he asked did I mix those records. I said no and he said, ‘Call me

when you mix them,’ and hung up the phone.”

“Jerry,” who was a close friend of Minx’s, had always heard her say how badly she wanted to be a DJ. “I talked about it continuously and since it was a dream of mine, he pushed to help me with anything I felt I wanted to come into fruition,” she says. “He felt as though I was holding myself back.”

Sitting alone on her apartment floor, Minx slowly began to mix the two records. She had no idea what she was doing but remembers Jerry telling her, “You know what music sounds like when you dance to it. Make it flow like one record.”

“I was working and it was hard as heck!” she exclaims. “I was like, ‘I can’t play anything on here!’ I mean, we’re talking about a turntable with a rotating dial. It ain’t one of the sliding fancy ones. I finally did it and I called Jerry. He says, ‘I’ll see you in a minute.’ He came over with two more records and says, ‘Mix those.’ A little while later I called and told him I mixed him and he says, ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’ That’s how it started and I was in there like swimwear. After that I was smooth. I started to pick the elements out of the tracks and I started loving it.”

Minx landed her first gig by accident. While she was delivering records to Bruce Bailey through the mobile record store, he asked her for a business card. Her business cards said “DJ Minx” on them, and after seeing that, Bailey invited her to play at a spot called The Loft on Livernois that same night.

“I’m thinking, what the hell did I give him that for!” she exclaims. She went to the club, she says, trying not to let her nerves get the best of her, but when she got there, two women working the door didn’t believe she was a DJ and wouldn’t let her in.

“I had my bag of records and about six or seven cars of us had rolled up to the club,” she says. “At the door, I said I was playing that night and one of the two women just burst out laughing. I was ready to leave but Jerry and some other friends were like a shield behind me and they wouldn’t let me leave. They said, ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ Eventually, this man came out like a side door and yells, ‘Hey Minx!’ He cussed at them saying, ‘Do you see that bag of records? You think she’s just carrying that as a purse?’”

Minx was calm on the outside but says her insides were boiling.

“I get in there and I took, I call it ‘the walk of scared,’ up to the DJ booth. I was shaking and nervous,” she remembers. “Girl, I had to put the needle on the record and my wrist was quivering. I was so done. But as soon as I started to put that first record on, you could hear a pin drop. Everyone on that dance floor just stopped. No dancing, no moving, nothing. They looked up at me as if to say, ‘What are you gonna do?’”

She continues, “When I went in there, they were playing soulful house with singing and the laid-back jazzy vibes, and all I got is techy tracks because that’s what I learned on. And I played them fast, so everyone was just like, ‘Whoa!’ and they finally started dancing. When I learned how to play, I wasn’t mixing tracks after the whole thing played, I would just let the track play for one to two minutes and then I planted them. I know how to ride them on top of each other as well. So I was foolin’, if I must say so myself. Then these girls came up to the booth and they were dancing. It was the ladies from the door. We became friends and we’re still friends till this day. But once I was done, I screamed at my friends, ‘OK, let’s go!’ and we got the hell out of there.”

That was in the early ’90s, and even though Minx would still get nervous before playing a gig, you’d never know it from watching her. She always looks focused as she takes the stage dressed to the nines, grooving to her music right along with the crowd.

She’s been on fire ever since. Though she says she used to let pessimistic attitudes toward her being able to “make it as a Black woman DJ” hold her back, now she lets her music speak for itself.

“Jerry and some other friends had opened a spot on Woodward and we turned it into an art gallery/club called the Skyloft Gallery in the ’90s, and that is definitely when I started to come out of my shell,” she remembers. “I got tired of people just coming in and staring at me and not dancing… One night I was playing, I stopped the turntable and I stood there. I didn’t say anything and I stepped back from the turntables and I just looked at everybody. Everyone’s wondering what’s going on. They’re staring at me and I’m staring at them.”

She continues, “I said, ‘What the fuck are y’all looking at? … I’m not gone keep playing this hot shit and y’all aren’t dancing! Stop looking at me!’ That was the first time people started screaming at the top of their lungs and jumping. I mean, the rest of that night was so off the hook. People were coming up to me after and saying ‘I love you so much! I’ve never heard a DJ talk before!’”

May has been a busy month for Minx in the lead up to Movement. Earlier this month she dropped her latest EP The Throne with two new tracks blending techno, house, funk, and industrial grit in the way that only Minx can.

The weekend of Movement, she’ll drop another single with Inner City on her Women and Wax label before lighting up Hart Plaza on May 27. She’s also headlining the official Movement afterparty on Monday at Spot Lite with a back-to-back with Carl Craig and Kevin Saunderson.

“I love the respect and I appreciate it a great deal to be overwhelmingly accepted and loved,” she says about her Movement stage. “I’m floored by it because I went so many decades with minimal to nothing happening. One thing that for sure made me want to keep rolling with it was being a Black woman DJ from Detroit playing techno. That was my motivation and that’s me making the people that created the music proud.”

DJ Minx performs at 9 p.m. on Saturday, May 27 at Movement Music Festival; see movementfestival.com for more information.

“ I said, ‘What the fuck are y’all looking at? … I’m not gone keep playing this hot shit and y’all aren’t dancing! Stop looking at me!’ That was the first time people started screaming at the top of their lungs and jumping. I mean, the rest of that night was so off the hook."

Cybotron THE FUNK, FUTURE AND FASHION OF

Juan Atkins dreamed of a world that included techno, science fiction and performing live at Hart Plaza

As a founding figure of techno, one of modern-day music’s most influential genres, it’s somehow surprising to see how unguarded and open Juan Atkins can be. After all, techno was seemingly created from the shadows, dispersed in dark warehouses, and heard but not seen through Detroit’s airwaves in its formative years of the 1980s. There’s a lot of mystery to unpack.

Atkins acknowledges that there was some sort of cosmic wave he and Rik Davis were following when they created the very first experimental sounds that became Cybotron, but he also never forgot his formative moments of discovering Parliament-Funkadelic and entirely new worlds with each weekend of world music festivals at Hart Plaza. In many ways, his main stage performance as Cybotron at this year’s Movement Festival is the culmination of all those early years of inspiration

and exploration, combined with what’s become a sudden future state that his music has always gravitated toward. For him personally, it’s also a vision come true.

No one expected the future to come from Belleville, Michigan. That’s where Atkins was enrolled for a Future Studies course in high school where on top of the assigned reading list was 1970’s Future Shock, written by Alvin Toffler (and his wife, Heidi Toffler, who remains uncredited). The book gives a sharp analysis of the effects of a society undergoing rapid technological change, resulting in “information overload” on a large scale, and all the societal effects that come with it. Finding a fitting protagonist in Toffler, Atkins started to view his own musical endeavors in a futuristic light.

Before he met Davis at Washtenaw Community College in a music theory

BY LIZ WARNER

class in 1980, he had just taken in Toffler’s The Third Wave, and was ready to create something from another time and space. “In his books, [Toffler] had a term called ‘Future Speak’ which was a combination of words. This was the theme that we used to create different words. We even had what you call a ‘Techno Speak’ dictionary that I and Rik developed. We were basically developing not only a new genre of music, but we were also developing a new genre of language as well to coincide with this new futuristic technological revolution that we were engaging in.”

This was the inception of Cybotron. The name itself is a Techno Speak mash-up of the words cyborg, a thenfictional concept of a being that’s both biological and technological, and cyclotron, a machine created for the purpose of experimentation with nuclear physics. Throw in a generous dash of

cyberspace for good measure.

It’s a name that could have come off like proper science fiction — too far gone in the Man-Machine dilemma to make any real sense. But by the time the first single was released in 1981, “Alleys of Your Mind,” the name (and concept of) Cybotron felt like the teleportation device everyone had been waiting for to catch a ride to that next phase.

Riding on cosmic — even psychedelic — grooves was something Atkins had been well accustomed to from an early age. He recalls a pivotal moment when Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop had his full attention. He purchased a copy of the album in the now obsolete format of the 8-track tape. “The thing about 8-track tapes,” says Atkins, “is that it was just a big loop, and so the whole album would just loop and loop and loop. I listened to the whole album

Cybotron

just continuously for hours straight.” It’s likely that the very notion of the constant looping of the 8-track had just as much influence on Atkins as the music itself.

Atkins was still a kid when he went to see Parliament-Funkadelic perform live. George Clinton, frontman of the famed New Jersey act, acknowledged the young Atkins backstage. To hear him tell the story calls up that feeling of giddiness we’ve all had when being in the presence of one of our heroes.

“[It was] one of the first concerts that I went to, if not the first concert. I was backstage like a groupie, waiting for them to come off the stage. George came past and for some reason, he rubbed my head. I must’ve been like 10 or 11 years old. He came by and just rubbed the top of my head like I was a good little boy or something. He just kept on walking past. I don’t think I shampooed my hair for about a month after that,” Atkins says, laughing.

It would be several years before he would meet George Clinton again during the Detroit Electronic Music Festival (the first iteration of Movement) in 2002. Both artists performed that year

and were provided accommodations at The Marriott adjacent to Hart Plaza. “I had been through various channels trying to collaborate with George,” Atkins says. “He actually came to my hotel room and gave me a tape with some ideas.” The tape contained a sample library but nothing that could work as a full collaboration.

It’s possible Clinton thought that a sample library is exactly what Atkins would want. It’s also possible that the idea of an electronic musician known in a world with close association with DJs was as misunderstood by Clinton as by any other casual observer. The rest of us are left to wonder what’s become of that tape, or what could still yet become of it. You can land on the same mothership, but sometimes you’ve been on a different journey.

Since starting Cybotron, collaboration has been second nature for Atkins, whether working with fellow musicians from Detroit and elsewhere or releasing his own music and supporting others on his Metroplex label. The word Metroplex itself is a Techno Speak combination of the words metropolitan “like the metropolitan area” and com-

plex “like a complex, a mall or apartment or any type of complex.” The idea of Metroplex points to a sophisticated and fashionable group of ideas and people converging at a common understanding. The name also lends itself to include those from the surrounding areas outside of techno’s origins, and the message seemed to be received by communities from around the world.

He received an invitation to visit Berlin when he met Thomas Fehlmann (The Orb, Sun Electric) while both artists were at Trevor Horn’s ZTT offices in London in the early 1990s. He accepted the offer. “I had met [Thomas] previously. He had come to Detroit with Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus — the Basic Channel and Chain Reaction crew. They were buying up keyboards and stuff from pawnshops in Detroit, and taking them back to Berlin and retrofitting them with MIDI.”

Atkins was referring to the technology invented in 1983 that allows for the syncing of electronic musical equipment. The technology is now embed-

ded in digital music-creation software today, but it wasn’t yet a part of analog equipment. MIDI’s equipment (and sound) syncing capability has left an indelible effect on all music that we hear today. “[Fehlmann] said, ‘Would you like to come to Berlin? And, you know, maybe we can do some work?’” That’s when the Detroit-Berlin connection was made.

Atkins played the famed Tresor club for the first time, where both he and fellow Detroiter Jeff Mills played in the basement. 3MB (short for 3 Men in Berlin) came together, pairing Juan with Fehlmann and von Oswald (Atkins and Eddie Fowlkes sometimes switched roles in the trio). The Berlin friendship also brought new material from Atkins’s Model 500 alias, originally created about a decade previously upon the introduction of Metroplex Records with the single “No UFO’s.” First, there was the Sonic Sunset EP, followed by the first full album called Deep Space, much of which was recorded with von Oswald as the engineer at his Love Park

Juan Atkins is considered one of the pioneers of Detroit techno. COURTESY OF PAXAHAU

Studios. “The experience for me was very enlightening because I had the chance to see first-hand how Detroit influenced artists in Berlin. And it was basically coming back through those collaborative experiences.”

It felt like his music had entered a new phase. Atkins’s classic signatures remained, and he continued to uphold a band mentality. He still refers to Cybotron as a band, with a studio, contradicting the frequent “man in a room” view of how others understand the creation process of techno. Through this next phase, what was highlighted yet again is that Atkins remained steadfastly a futurist dedicated to evolving his ideas through time, technology, and space.

It was a stroke of genius that the late avant-fashion designer Virgil Abloh included Cybotron in his unveiling of the Men’s Fall-Winter 2020 Fashion show for Louis Vuitton. It wasn’t merely the music of Cybotron playing in the background, nor was it Atkins as a DJ. Abloh enlisted Cybotron by way of a live performance. Abloh met Louis Vuitton’s sophisticated, classic cuts with a futuristic vision accompanied by a soundtrack that was as far out as the clothing itself.

The Louis Vuitton event was the last show that Cybotron has performed until now, but it was only the fifth live show ever performed by them. In fact, the first live Cybotron show ever was in London at the Barbican in 2019 — nearly 40 years after the band’s inception. Remarkably, the first-ever Cybotron live show in Detroit will be this Memorial Day Weekend at Movement.

This is where Cybotron gets a little complicated. Since developing their vision at the start, Atkins and Davis haven’t always been able to come together on the same terms. As Atkins puts it, “One time, we wanted to get together and record, somewhere around 1991. I had already started Metroplex Records and Model 500 and all of that. The techno movement had kind of taken off and I was dead in the middle of this whole thing.” The two started talking about making new music together, but couldn’t agree on how to approach it. According to Atkins, Davis wanted Atkins to devote all of his energy to the project. “On one hand, I could kind of understand where he was coming from. On the other hand, it didn’t make sense for me to quit everything else that I was doing when the ball was rolling at a million miles an hour already. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to.”

(Metro Times was not able to reach Davis for his comments.)

The two weren’t able to work out arrangements to perform together for the show at Movement, and they each take

ownership of the Cybotron brand with music releases and performances. Davis has two releases as Cybotron (the single “Eden” and the album Cyber Ghetto), while Atkins continues to perform under the name and is in the process of recording new material for a forthcoming release. Atkins’s most recent live performance as Cybotron was in Paris with Detroit musician Tameko Williams and Laurens von Oswald, nephew of Moritz von Oswald. It’s unclear if the two will ever work together again. What they have put out into the world is perhaps something all their Techno Speak had never accounted for. Atkins has always been proud of techno, even protective of the term in the

past. When asked who techno belongs to today, he’s clear. “I would say techno belongs to the world. Techno belongs to the world citizens.” Seemingly taking a spin from the latest technological advances, he adds, “Techno is short for technology. Technology and music belong to everyone. I just happen to be fortunate enough to be one of the artists at the forefront of this third wave of music — the third wave in society.”

Yet, even he could never have envisioned an annual electronic music festival taking place in Detroit. The way he remembers Hart Plaza as a child was when his grandmother would take him there on any given summer weekend for the ethnic festivals. “My grand-

mother would take us and we would see a lot of different cultures, their music and dances,” he recalls. It opened up a traveling-without-leaving idea that the world is bigger than he had ever imagined. It also set Atkins up for what to us seems inevitable. “I always envisioned myself, based on these festivals, one day being able to perform in the arena in the plaza, on the main stage of the plaza. I dreamed that I would be up there playing, and eventually, it came to fruition.”

Cybotron is scheduled to play at 8:15 p.m. on Sunday, May 28 at Movement Music Festival; see movementfestival. com for more information.

Remarkably, the first-ever Cybotron live show in Detroit will be this Memorial Day Weekend at Movement. COURTESY OF PAXAHAU

Consider A FEW MORE THINGS TO

More to know about this year's Movement Music Festival

BY LEE DEVITO

If you’re heading to this year’s Movement Music Festival, you likely already know all about the lineup, which includes more than 115 acts across six stages, and probably even already have your eyes on a few afterparties. Here are a few more things to know before you head down to Hart Plaza.

This year’s fest will maintain a similar layout as it did in 2022, which was the first time it returned since COVID-19 led to its cancellation downtown in 2020 and 2021. JARS Cannabis returns as the festival’s cannabis sponsor, but it now sponsors the Waterfront Stage this year.

The festival’s long-standing Underground Stage was moved last year, citing safety concerns following the tragedy at Astroworld Festival in 2021, to a little-known disused food court area in Hart Plaza that wound up being a major hit thanks to its larger space. (Seriously, how has that additional space been tucked away back there this entire time? The futuristic-looking Hart Plaza is truly a mystery.) The former Underground Stage space, meanwhile, will once again be used to host Respect the Architects, an educational exhibition that recognizes and celebrates some of the Detroit electronic music community’s heroes and history. The exhibition was curated by Underground Music Academy, Resident Advisor, and

Detroit Techno Foundation.

“Much has been written about the first wave of Detroit techno artists and as pioneers of one of the most impactful genres in the world,” the Underground Music Academy said in a statement. “This list is designed to shine a light on the unsung heroes who ghost-wrote classic records, created the structures, spaces, and scenarios that allowed techno to grow beyond the wildest dreams of its inventors, and the mentors who have supported and inspired the subsequent waves of Detroit techno artists in finding their sound and place in the musical world.”

It adds, “If you recognize these names we hope you will join us in telling their stories and celebrating their impact, if you don’t — we hope you take the time to listen and learn about the people who built Techno City.”

Other features include the Movement Studio presented by Sweetwater, located near the Detroit Stage, which will showcase the latest electronic music gear and offer attendees handson demonstrations and even a chance to win the equipment on display to help them become Detroit’s next hottest DJ.

The festival will also see the return of its artist residency program, in partnership with local arts organization 1XRun. This year’s artists-in-residence are Detroit artists Amy Fisher Price and Kelly Golden, who are collaborating on

an installation dubbed Detroit Techno City, which will be located near the Pyramid Stage.

Reached by phone in the days before the festival, Fisher Price and Golden are at work in a studio bringing their vision to life. They describe the piece as “an immersive alien-themed rave installation” that will combine Fisher Price’s preferred medium of textiles with Golden’s use of paint. Fisher Price is working on a scene depicting an interstellar rave made from assembled pieces of fabric measuring about 22 feet by 25 feet, while Golden is creating painted wooden cut-outs that will include shapes like an alien and a UFO that festival goers can walk around and take photos with. It’s the first time the two artists and friends have worked together professionally, they say.

Golden says they were approached by 1XRun for the project, who they sat down with to hash out some potential ideas. They then visited Hart Plaza to take measurements of the available space, which sits in a recess on the opposite side of the Pyramid Stage, and tried to imagine what festival attendees would want to see.

“It was just sort of, like, picturing ourselves at the festival and sitting in that amphitheater and thinking, ‘What would we want to be looking at?’” Golden says.

She adds, “We just wanted to do something fun that everybody thought everyone could really get into. The whole thing was just sort of meant to create a different world that people could transport to for a little bit.”

As a longtime Movement fan, Golden says she’s honored to be a part of this year’s festival. “I for one am superexcited to be doing this,” she says. “I’ve gone to Movement a ton and always have a blast.”

Fisher Price meanwhile says she has not yet attended, but is looking forward to her first time this year. “I’m really excited to go this year and be a part of it,” she says.

Festival goers can use the handy pull-out Movement guide in this week’s issue, but with so many moving parts be warned that schedules and set times are subject to change. They can also download the official Movement 2023 app on their iOS and Android smartphones for the latest information, and can also use it to create their own custom schedule, learn about the artists, view the festival map, and much more. (Also, be sure to check out movementfestival.com for the full list of items that are and are not allowed to be brought into the festival grounds.)

The best advice, however, is probably to embrace the unexpected. Maybe you’ll stumble upon your new favorite DJ.

PEOPLE party

Your guide to Movement Festival 2023 after parties and pre-parties BY RANDIAH CAMILLE GREEN

Movement Festival is about to descend on Detroit’s Hart Plaza Memorial Day weekend, May 27-29, but we all know the real partying goes down after hours. If you want the magic of Techno Christmas to keep going, check out these Movement after parties and pre-parties around Detroit. We’ve included official and unofficial ones, so get ready to watch the walls sweat. A few have sold out already so if you’re interested, you’d better snag a ticket quickly.

Fri May 26

DJ Harvey: Official Movement opening party with a five-hour set by DJ Harvey and support from Peter Croce at Spot Lite. $45; doors at 8 p.m.; 21 and up; Spot Lite, 2905 Beaufait St., Detroit; seetickets.us

Meta Ta Physika: Acidpimp, Centrific, Craig Gonzalez, Dustin Zahn, Matrixxman, Overland, Rebecca Gold-

berg, Sandrien, Uun, and Wata Igarashi at City Club.

$50 in advance, $60 at the door; 9 p.m.6 a.m.; 18 and up; Leland City Club, 400 Bagley St., Detroit; ra.co.

HUCHE Mad Hat Movement

Madness: LGBT+-centric party featuring exclusively women DJs and local fashion vendors HUCHE, PlantMilkMarket, Evolved Tufting, and Not Sorry Goods. Tiptonaires, Planet Kaia, and Stardust Sounds are DJing and JARS Cannabis will be sponsoring a giveaway

for VIP Movement tickets. $10; 6-11 p.m.; Extra Crispy Studios, 4859 Michigan Ave., Detroit; ra.co.

100% Live Techno/Opening Party: No DJs, just live musicians and “heavily reinforced sound” with Vril, Lady Starlight, Axkan, JX-216, Monix, Amnesiac Host, Coarses, and Post Modern Sleaze. The venue will be emailed to ticket holders by 6 p.m. on May 26. Tickets start at $57.15; 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.; 18 and up; ra.co.

Sat May 27

Detroit Love: Back-to-back set between Carl Craig and Moodymann, plus Andres, Dames Brown, Mirko Loko, Moritz Von Oswald, and DJ

Rimarkable.

Tickets start at $40; doors at 11 p.m.; 21 and up; The Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; ticketweb.com.

Re/Form: Los Angeles-based electronic festival Re/Form returns to Detroit during Movement weekend with Anetha, Colin Benders, David Castellani, Etapp, Kyle, ØTTA, Perc, Randomer, Rubidium, Speedy J, and Stephen Disario at Bert’s Warehouse. $55; doors at 11 p.m.; 21 and up; Bert’s Warehouse Theatre, 2739 Russell St., Detroit; ra.co.

Return to the Source: Four parties packed into the entire weekend at the Tangent Gallery from Saturday night until Tuesday morning. It starts Saturday with the Tresor 313 party with

DJ Stingray 313, Claude Young, Erika x Marco Shuttle, and Daniel Bell. There’s also an outdoor area with a food truck and harm reduction zone.

Tickets are $175 for a weekend pass, individual dates from $25; Saturday from 10 p.m. to Tuesday at 6 a.m.; Tangent Gallery, 715 E. Milwaukee St., Detroit; ra.co.

Maceo Plex and Ida Engberg: Paxahau presents Maceo Plex, Ida Engberg, and Ataxia at Leland City Club. Tickets start at $45; doors at 11 p.m.; 21 and up; Leland City Club, 400 Bagley St., Detroit; seetickets.us.

Mau5trap presents Testpilot: Testpilot, Onyvaa, and Henry Brooks at the Masonic Temple Fountain Ballroom. Tickets start at $40; doors at 11 p.m.; 18 and up; Masonic Temple Fountain Ballroom, 500 Temple St., Detroit; axs.com.

Louie Vega Expansions in the DET: Louie Vega, Derrick Carter, Daphni, Recloose, Meftah, and Ladylike at Spot Lite.

Tickets start at $45; doors at 11 p.m., 21 and up; Spot Lite, 2905 Beaufait St., Detroit; seetickets.us

Sun May 28

Kevin Saunderson at the Magic Stick: Kevin Saunderson with the Saunderson Brothers, Sam Divine, Melé, and HoneyLuv.

Tickets start at $30; doors at 11 p.m.; 21 and up; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; ticketweb.com.

Green Velvet La La Land: Green Velvet, DJ Minx, and Seth Troxler at the Masonic Temple Foundation Ballroom.

Tickets start at $40; doors at 11 p.m.; 18 and up; Masonic Temple Fountain Ballroom, 500 Temple St., Detroit; axs.com.

HouseParty Detroit: Masquenada, Sky Jetta, J House, Donavan Glover, Tamae, Blaaqgold, Totoro, Wrckles, and Lyric Leson at the newly reopened Northern Lights Lounge.

$25; 7 p.m.- 2 a.m.; 21 and up; Northern Lights Lounge, 660 W Baltimore St., Detroit, eventbrite.com.

Obscure presents Suara Night at Bleu Detroit: Cera Khin, Coyu, Lowki, The Advent, Cinna, NEKTER, and Submerge.

$40; 9 p.m.-4 a.m.; 18 and up; Bleu, 1540 Woodward Ave., Detroit, ra.co.

Into The Woods x Interference at El Club: 2Lanes, Black Rave Culture, CCL b2b Objekt, Maheras, Mesmé, Nick Dagher, and Young Muscle.

$32.50; doors at 9 p.m.; 21 and up; El Club, 4114 Vernor Hwy., Detroit; dice.fm.

Punky Jown 2 Ricardo Villalobos b2b Zip: Ricardo Villalobos b2b Zip, Shaun Reeves b2b Ryan Crosson, Andrea Ghita b2b Aboudi Issa, plus Cassy, and Loren.

$50; doors at 10 p.m.; 21 and up; Spot Lite, 2905 Beaufait St., Detroit; seetickets.us.

Mon May 29

DJ Minx presents House Your Life: Official Movement closing party at Spot Lite with a triple back-to-back set between Carl Craig, DJ Minx, and Kevin Saunderson, plus sets by Beige, Byron the Aquarius, Charlie Soul Clap, and Paranoid London.

$50; doors at 10 p.m.; 21 and up; Spot Lite, 2905 Beaufait St., Detroit; seetickets.us.

Stacey Pullen Invites: Stacey Pullen, Hector, and Ryan Dahl at Greektown’s Exodus Rooftop Lounge.

Tickets start at $30; doors at 10 p.m.; 21

and up; Exodos Rooftop, 529 Monroe St. Detroit, seetickets.us.

Big Pink Presents Habstrakt: Habstrakt, ??????, Metawav, QURL, and Cheska. Food trucks on-site.

Tickets start at $34; doors at 11p.m.; 21 and up; Big Pink, 6440 Wight St., Detroit; ra.co.

Off The Grid presents John Summit b2b Dom Dolla: John Summit back-to-back with Dom Dolla, plus Rebūke and Dantiez.

$50; doors at 10 p.m.; 18 and up; Masonic Temple Fountain Ballroom, 500 Temple St., Detroit; axs.com.

Repopulate Mars: Lee Foss, Deeper Purpose, Gene Farris, Lee Curtiss, Max Styler, SHAFIR, and VNSSA at the Magic Stick.

Tickets start at $40; doors at 10 p.m.; 21 and up; The Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; majesticdetroit.com.

Anthology 2023: 999999999, B2 (1), Dax J, Juana, Lokier, Surprise Guest, Alejandro Franco, Annika Wolfe, Damon Bradley, Remy Marc, Secus, Stacy Christine, Whipnotiq (2), and a surprise guest. Visuals by James Lost. $60; doors at 11 p.m.; 21 and up; Leland City Club, 400 Bagley St., Detroit; ra.co.

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

Concerts

Wednesday, May 24

Band-Maid 10th Anniversary Tour 7 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $35.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra at St. Hedwig Catholic Church 7 p.m.; St. Hedwig’s Church, 3245 Junction St., Detroit; free.

Helloween 6 p.m.; Royal Oak Music Theatre, 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; $67.50+.

Janet Jackson: Together Again

7:45 p.m.; Little Caesars Arena, 2645 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $39.95-$499.95.

Thursday, May 25

Cherubs, Rid of Me 7 p.m.; Small’s, 10339 Conant St., Hamtramck; $14.

Detroit Has Talent: hosted by J Cutz 9 p.m.-2 a.m.; The Compound, 14595 Stansbury St., Detroit; $15.

Dwele 8 p.m.; Sound Board, 2901 Grand River Ave., Detroit; $34-$46.

Harry Mack: Odyssey Tour 2023 7:30 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $33-$43.

Heart Attack Man 6:30 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $19.99.

Mike’s Dead 7 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $16.

Sunset Rubdown 8 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $20.

Swollen Teeth 7 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $15. THAT ARENA ROCK SHOW 6 p.m.; District 142, 142 Maple St., Wyandotte; $18.

Friday, May 26

Bop To The Top W Lucas Grabeel, Dj Jeffery + Life By Michael 18+ 8 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $17-$30.

Detroit Original Music Showcase Presents: The Detroit Hammers, Slowfoot, Bobby Murray Band feat. Lenny Watkins wsg

Smoke Jones, & The Reefermen

6:30 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $30-$40.

Mark Paul & The Red Flags w/ Jackamo + DJ Danton 9 p.m.-12:30 a.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; free.

Masala Coffee 6 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $8-$1,000.

Michael Dease Sextet 6:30 & 9 p.m.; The Blue LLama Jazz Club, 314 S. Main St., Ann Arbor; $35–$85

Rules Don’t Play Showcase with Walker & Royce (Official Movement Pre Party) 9 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $40-$45.

Bop To The Top W Lucas Grabeel, Dj Jeffery + Life By Michael 18+ 8 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $17-$30.

Striking South, Vangogo 7:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $12.

The 3148s, The Escape Plan, Vellows, Elspeth Tremblay & The Treatment 7 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $10.

The Blue Stones: Pretty Monster

U.S. Tour 7 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $20.

TOKiMONSTA 9 p.m.-2 a.m.; Russell Industrial Complex-Exhibition Center, 1600 Clay Street, Detroit; $25.

Saturday, May 27

Movement Festival 2023 2 p.m.midnight; Hart Plaza, 1 Hart Plaza, Detroit; $139.

“Remembering Our Revolutionaries” 7:30-10 p.m.; Aretha’s Jazz Cafe, 350 Madison St., Detroit; $25.

Angelus Apatrida, Salem Harem, Life of Suppression, Ten Thousand Teeth 6 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $17.

Archers, Spirit Breaker, In Our Wake, Poet The Band 7 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $12.

Awake At Last, Discrepancies, Reddstar 5:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $15.

Bitch Kraft + slizZ + DJ Nitroh 8 p.m.-12:30 a.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; free.

Brandee Younger 6:30 & 9 p.m.; The Blue LLama Jazz Club, 314 S. Main St., Ann Arbor; $35-$85.

Detroit Love: Official Movement

After Party 11 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $30-$45. Night Club 7 p.m.; Small’s, 10339 Conant St., Hamtramck; $20.

The Pharcyde, Pete Rock (DJ Set) 8 p.m,-2 a,m,; Russell Industrial Complex-Exhibition Center, 1600 Clay Street, Detroit; $20.

Rio Romeo 6:30 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $25.

Testpilot 11 p.m.; Detroit Masonic Temple Library, 500 Temple St, Detroit; $57+.

The Halo Effect 6 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $30.

The Wailers, Drew Schultz & The Broken Habits 8 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $30.

Central Scientific record release party with Whodat, The Valley And The Mountain, Drew Pompa 4 p.m.-midnight; Takoi, 2520 Michigan Ave., Detroit; free.

Sunday, May 28

Movement Festival 2023 2 pmmidnight; Hart Plaza, 1 Hart Plaza, Detroit; $139.

Bullet for My Valentine 6:30 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $35-$69.50.

Chloe Lilac & Kid Sistr 6:30 & 7:30 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $18.

Dark Funeral 6 p.m.; The Crofoot Ballroom, 1 S. Saginaw St., Pontiac; $28.50.

KMS x Defected Records: Official Movement After Party 11 pm; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $30-$45.

Logic: The College Park Tour with special guest Juicy J 8 p.m.; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $29.50-$89.50.

Heat Above, New Lord Order, Lori and The Darlings, Ivahka Glass, Wake Up Jamie, Woolly, At Water 5 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $10.

Lovejoy 7 p.m.; Royal Oak Music Theatre, 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; $27.50.

The Decibel Magazine Tour 2023 6 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $28.50.

D-LiFE 2 p.m.-2 a.m.; MotorCity Wine, 1949 Michigan Ave, Detroit; $20-40.

Monday, May 29

Movement Festival 2023 2 p.m.midnight; Hart Plaza, 1 Hart Plaza, Detroit; $139.

Gran Festival: Celebrando Memorial Day en Pontiac 3 pm; Downtown Pontiac, Woodward Ave., Pontiac; $80-$300.

Repopulate Mars: Official Movement After Party 10 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $30-$45.

Tuesday, May 30

Ella Mai: The Heart On My Sleeve Tour (moved to the Fillmore) 7 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $39.50.

Violent J: 3 Headed Monster Tour 7 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $30.

B.Y.O.R Bring Your Own Records Night 9 p.m.-midnight; The Old Miami, 3930 Cass Ave., Detroit; free.

Karaoke with The Millionaire Matt Welz 8 p.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; free.

THEATER

Performance

Riverbank Theatre Steel Magnolias. Through May 28. Sponsored by Paul Mitchell the Schools. $35. Sundays, 3-5 p.m. and Fridays, Saturdays, 7:30-9:30 p.m.

COMEDY

Improv

Go Comedy! Improv Theater

Sunday Buffet. $20. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 & 10 p.m. $20 Saturdays, 10-11:30 p.m.; $10 Sundays, 7 p.m.

Planet Ant Theatre Ants in The Hall present Fate of the Furiants 2.8 Prologue. Partly scripted, mostly improvised, and totally different every week. Thursday Nights at 8 p.m. at Planet Ant Detroit. Pay What You Want Thursday, 8-9 p.m. Stand-up

Fox Theatre Memorial Weekend Jokes & Jams. $59-$150. Saturday, 8 p.m.

Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle

Maher Matta with Dan Brittain and Ann Duke. $5. Wednesday, 7:30-9 p.m. $20. Thursday, 7:30-9 p.m., Friday, 7:15-8:45 p.m., and Saturday, 7-8:30 p.m.

The Independent Comedy Club at Planet Ant The Sh*t Show Open Mic: Every Friday and Saturday. Free. Thursdays, 10 p.m.; Fridays, 11 p.m., and Saturdays, 11 p.m.

FILM Screening

Edsel & Eleanor Ford House America You Kill Me; award winning film about the rise, the fall, and the legacy of gay rights warrior Jeffrey Montgomery. Free. Tuesday, 7-10 p.m.

ART

Exhibitions

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

David Klein Gallery Birmingham

Al Held. Through July 1.

Irwin House Gallery WE . LOOK . GOOD. Featuring Ackeem Salmon, Cara Marie Young, Dalejuan, Donald Calloway, Elonte Davis, Euba Thomas, Ivan Quinones II, Jami Young, Jimel Primm, Jimmy James Greene, Olivia Indigo, Phillip Simpson, and Rotimi Godwin. Through June 10.

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) Free Your Mind: Art and Incarceration in Michigan. Through Sep. 3. Girl Raised in Detroit by Sydney G. James. Through Sep. 3. Café Pan-Soviético Americano by Liz Cohen. Through Sep. 4.

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

Through June 19.

Northville Art House A Day at the Park: Images of Michigan State Parks.

Playground Detroit Keto Green: Against It All. Through June 17.

Stamelos Gallery Center, UMDearborn Reparations of the Heart: Recent Work by Kristin Anahit Cass.

The Carr Center Gallery at the Park Shelton The Female and NonBinary Gaze curated by Terri Lyne Carrington and co-curated by Tia Nichols. Through June 2.

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

SPORTS

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

Cranbrook Art Museum Artistdesigned Mini-Golf. Through Sept. 3.

Beacon Park Volleyball Leagues with Come Play Detroit. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, 6-10 p.m.

DINING

Detroit Princess Riverboat Lunch Cruise Dinner. $38-59 Saturdays, Sundays, 12-2 p.m.

Local buzz

By Broccoli and Joe Zimmer

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

Movement Music Festival recs: The big weekend is finally here, along with your Local Buzz columnists’ picks. Moodymann (5:30-7:30 p.m.) goes straight into DJ Holographic (7:30-9 p.m.) on the Stargate Stage on Saturday; I recommend going in the middle to catch some of both. The Main Stage is pretty stacked on Sunday, with Huey Mnemonic opening it up (4-5 p.m.), Cybotron (8:15-9:15 p.m.), and Robert Hood (9:30-10:30 p.m.). Lastly, Soundmurderer closing out the Detroit stage on Monday (9-10 p.m.) should be excellent.

—Broccoli

On Saturday, Magda B2B Mike Servito is my daytime pick (4:30-6 p.m.), followed by the one-two punch of new-school talent AK (8-9 p.m.) into the inimitable veteran brothers Octave One (9-10 p.m.) playing a can’t-miss sundown set. Sunday, like Broccoli said, is stacked, but my number-one recommendation is Cybotron (8:15-9:15 p.m.) so you hear “Clear” live from the main stage. Take your opportunity on Monday to catch rare Detroit appearances from DJ Seinfeld (6:30-8 p.m.) and atmospheric rave legends Underworld (9:30-11 p.m.). —Joe

Turntable workshop + music event: We always love a good alternative to the late-night rave scene during Movement, especially when they’re all ages! Abstract Sunday is just that, happening from 2-8 p.m. on Sunday, May 28 at Spread Art, a great DIY collective event space near Woodbridge (5141 Rosa Parks Blvd.). The event will begin with an experimental turntablism workshop led by the Pure Rave collective starting promptly at 2 p.m., and if you show up with a turntable they will let you in for free! After the workshop, Model Home (unclassifiable, from Washington, D.C.), Inner Ear (Djallo Djakate on drums and electronics, Rafael Leafar on sax and electronics), Creode (Detroit’s premier tape music synthesis duo), and Pure Rave (Detroit-based abstract turntablist collective) with bring out the sonic weirdness for anyone looking for a hard reset midway through the weekend. Tickets are $10 in advance (on Eventbrite) and $20 at the door.

—Broccoli

Free day parties: Among the downtown activity of the Movement festival, plus the seemingly infinite late-night afterparty options, it can get overwhelming (and expensive). For those looking to dance and enjoy the city over Memorial Day weekend, but not looking to shell out too much cash, check out these free options. On Friday, May 26, start your weekend early at The Skip with their “Open Air” party featuring a stacked lineup: Underground Resistance affiliate John “Jammin” Collins, the godfather of techno-soul Eddie Fowlkes, Mike “Agent” Clark, and rising star DJ Etta. The Belt is sure to be bumping. Then, on Saturday, May 27, the SMPLFD clothing and printing company is hosting their annual Feelin’ Real Good party at their warehouse (located behind Spot Lite). The party starts promptly at

noon, with music going all day into the night from Local Buzz faves like Beige, Bill Spencer B2B Scott Z, Raphy, and Charles Trees. Shopping available inside from the best vintage and thrift sellers in the city, plus plenty of SMPLFD-designed goods to help you style a weekend fit. With a food pop-up from Rando’s Sandos, you could even bring a blanket and make your own mini festival — call it the techno picnic! Finally, round out your Sunday by checking out the hottest wine bar in Detroit at Ladder 4, where they’re serving up orange wine by the glass and featuring free house music all day from Rocksteady Disco label boss Peter Croce. The event is called House of Orange, and goes from 2 p.m. till late on May 28. On Monday, you can sleep, as that activity is also free.

—Joe

PHILIPP CARL RIEDL / RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Moodymann.

A slice of Detroit in Wyandotte

Frank’s Family Pizzeria

offers the kind of backstory that everyone can love. The founders of the longstanding downtown Wyandotte pizza institution passed away and handed the restaurant off to their kids, who in 2020 sold to a new generation of entrepreneurs and pizza chefs.

The latter include Wyandotte native Josh Cade and Riverview brothers Brandon and Zane Hunt, who are co-founders of Austin, Texas’s Via 313, one of the first Detroit-style pizzerias outside of Michigan. The Hunt brothers and Cade are childhood friends who have fond memories of going to Frank’s with their parents and grandparents.

Upon taking over in 2020, they remodeled and made some smart updates to the restaurant — most notably the addition of Detroit-style pizza. They also overhauled the bar menu, and added a few different appetizers and salads, but they kept key components of what Frank’s had built, and have seemingly kept old and new generations happy. That is an achievement.

Slices of the original “old world Italian” round have been served up for decades at Frank’s, and little of that recipe

By Tom Perkins

has changed, so we focused on the Detroit-style pizzas and a few new appetizers. The first thing to note is the pizza sauce, which is Frank’s original recipe. It’s made with chunks of tomatoes that impart a bit more of a marinara personality than most pizza sauces, which are typically a bit thicker in consistency with fully pureed tomatoes. Cade describes it as a “clean” sauce that lets the tomatoes flavor, garlic, basil, etc. do the talking.

This is an excellent move that pizzerias should consider. However, we found the sauce — which is added to the pizza last, as it is wont to be on a Detroit-style pie — was fairly cold. The sauce served with the meatballs and arancini was also cold, and that contrast did not work well.

Cade said the sauce should have been served hot with the arancini and meatballs, so maybe that was a kitchen misfire. Normally the pizza sauce is not cold but closer to room temperature, Cade added, but, regardless, it was a distraction from otherwise solid slices.

The good news is a manager said the sauce can be ordered hot, and some regulars do just that, an easy remedy. Pretty much everything else at Frank’s hit the

mark — caramelized cheese ringed the edges and the crust cooked in Detroitstyle pizza pan provided fine foundation and was crunchy all around on two out of three pies. It was a bit soft on The Peterson, but the slices held an excellent grouping of toppings — sausage, pepperoni, oregano, garlic, and generous dollops of cooling ricotta cheese — that helped me overlook the crust.

Perhaps the best pie was one we built with an ample portion of Wisconsin brick cheese, and plenty of crispy, curled up pepperonis that we don’t see enough of these days, as well as white onions and jalapeños. The crust was perfect, and everything popped. We also built a version of Frank’s prosciutto pie minus the prosciutto for a vegetarian co-diner. It arrived with gorgonzola, fig, parmesan, and balsamic glaze, and was an altogether harmonious sweet and salty pie.

The meatballs before the pies were huge and fairly dense — not the lightest and fluffiest ever packed, and though some maintain that those are the marks of finer meatballs, I disagree, as long as, like those at Frank’s, they are moist and super flavorful. The arancini had a

Frank’s Family Pizzeria

3144 Biddle Ave., Wyandotte 734-282-0512

frankspizza1952.com

$6-$28

Wheelchair accessible

crunchy exterior holding a nice mix of risotto, cheese, and herbs. Another solid starter consisted of baked goat cheese, pesto drizzle, and red sauce that’s all scooped onto garlic bread.

The bar should also be highlighted. In a previous life, it offered jug wine, a few light domestics, and very limited liquor. The new iteration holds a full selection of domestics and craft beers, a short list of wines, and cocktails that work well in the context, like an aperol spritz or martini. The interior has an old-school dive vibe and there is a pleasant patio during the warmer months. More sandwiches, appetizers, and other items outside pizza are on the way now that the restaurant is in a groove. Overall, Frank’s is a strong addition to the Detroit-style pizza canon.

The Peterson, with generous dollops of ricotta cheese.

TOM PERKINS

FOOD

running during opening weekend, but expects it to be ready by Tuesday. He first announced the reopening on Facebook.

“We had some improvements to get done and we’re ready to reopen staffing-wise,” he tells us over the phone. “We had some difficulty getting all the pieces in place but I think it’s gonna be perfect timing for us.”

He tells us he made some improvements including building a shelter over the bar’s patio, fixing the kitchen, and upgrading the HVAC system.

“You can’t really see everything and it still looks like the same old place, just kind of spruced up a little,” he says.

Solaka isn’t sure when he’ll be ready to bring back the bar’s popular brunch, saying it depends on how soon he can get the place fully staffed.

“We’re still working on that but we just had to force it open,” he says. “All of us will be just pulling double duty until we can fill out the staff, but we’ve got the core staff and I’m confident it’ll be a good one. I’m hoping to do it within a month, but I really don’t know. I gotta make sure that I know how to ride the bike first and then we’ll get it all going again.”

Detroit’s Northern Lights Lounge reopens

IT’S BEEN THREE long years since we’ve seen the northern lights in Detroit. Of course, we don’t mean the aurora borealis — we’re talking about our favorite New Center hangout Northern Lights Lounge, which has been closed

By Randiah Camille Green

since March of 2020.

The bar and music venue is reopening its doors (and patio) on Friday, May 26 at 6 p.m. It also has shows lined up every evening for Memorial Day weekend, May 26- May 28, to coincide with

Movement Music Festival. The bar will close on Memorial Day, Monday, May 29, and reopen for regular business hours starting Tuesday, May 30.

Owner Michael Solaka tells Metro Times the bar’s kitchen won’t be up and

Hours at Northern Lights Lounge will be 2 p.m.-midnight Sunday-Wednesday and 2 p.m.-2 a.m. Thursday-Saturday. The kitchen will be open from 2-8 p.m. daily for now though Solaka says the hours will be extended on the weekend, once brunch gets going.

Live music is also coming back to the bar in full force with Motown guitarist Dennis Coffey returning with his residency every Tuesday starting June 6 and a monthly party with Mike “Agent X” Clark.

A restaurant dedicated to Hani sandwiches opened in Royal Oak

IN THE 1980S, a cook named Hani at National Coney Island’s Seven Mile and Mack store whipped up an off-menu item that turned out to be a huge hit: a pita sandwich made with breaded chicken, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and a special mayo sauce.

The result was the Hani sandwich, which has surged in popularity and now sells about on par with Detroitstyle coney dogs, according to National Coney Island president Tom Giftos.

“Over the years, it’s kind of slowly evolved to almost go neck and neck with our coney dogs,” he says.

Now, National Coney Island has now opened its first spin-off restaurant with a menu focused on Hani sandwiches. Pop’s Hani Shop soft

launched last month at 32538 Woodward Ave., Royal Oak.

Giftos says its the local chain’s first spin-off concept, aside from a few experiments in express service locations, such as a short-lived one near Michigan State University’s campus.

He describes the idea between Pop’s Hani Shop as an “elevated Hani experience” with a limited menu and an emphasis on using local products and making items in-house.

“We’ve just kind of tried to elevate our game a little bit,” Goftos says.

“We’re hand-rolling or pita bread and hand-dipping our chicken.” One of its partners is Grand Rapids-based Brix Soda Co., which uses natural cane sugar in its beverages.

Chicken is available either breaded or grilled, and a number of riffs of the classic sandwich appear on the menu, like a “Spicy Southwest” version with Chipotle Aioli and “The Parm,” an Italian-themed take with mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, and house-made marinara sauce. The sandwiches sell for $9.75.

The menu also includes other Greek-American coney island favorites like coney dogs, burgers, and gyros, along with soups and salads.

Pop’s Hani Shop is located in the former Kalamata Greek Grill, which closed last year. Giftos says National Coney Island approached Kalamata about moving into the space.

There is no table service; diners

order at a counter and the food is brought out to them. Pop is served from a fountain.

“I think there’s a lot of pressure on restaurants these days to shrink their footprint and take some complexity out of the equation, take some labor out of the equation,” Giftos explains of the new format.

But ultimately, Giftos says, it’s a tribute to the Hani sandwich. If the concept is successful, the company could open more locations, he says. “We’re relying on the fact that the sandwich is great,” he says. “We’ve been open for a few weeks now and seen many customers four or five times in the last three weeks, so that’s usually a good sign.” –

Lee DeVito

Northern Lights Lounge has been closed since March of 2020.

DIG DOWNTOWN DETROIT, FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS

FOOD

the middle of a conversation with an equally inebriated couple, he got called out on his own barroom carpet by another customer who took third party offense on behalf of the husband.

“Stop putting the moves on this guys wife!” Troublemaker butted in loudly. My friend wasn’t flirting, nor was the wife. He knew the couple. They knew him. The three of them were just smashed and shootin’ the shit. Tending bar at the time, I witnessed the whole thing.

Everything got quiet for a second. My friend looked at me, mortified. He was beside himself. And blasted.

“Just let it go. You did do nothing wrong.” I tried to talk him off the ledge, to no avail. He jumped right into drunken dejection and self-loathing.

“I’m so sorry,” he slurred to everyone within earshot. Nobody said a word, which my friend took as an apology unaccepted. Then, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his Porsche keys, and plunked them on the bar in front of the husband.

Chowhound

The art of setting the perfect vibe

By Robert Stempkowski

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

Music, maestro: Richardson Browne is a brilliant owner-operator of three busy Phoenix restaurants; Richardson’s, The Rokerij, and Dick’s Hideaway. Browne’s crazy-creative cuisine launched him into stratospheric success decades ago, and he taught me things about “vibe,” as he calls it, that I never considered prior to going to work for him in 1992. One of my first lessons was in acoustic ambience and subliminal customer response, which Browne harped on more succinctly as “keeping the fucking music right.” One night, he pulled me into the hallway where the restaurant’s 100-disc changer played (again, it was the ’90s). Changing songs, Browne started his crowd visibly bumpin’ to Hootie and the Blowfish, before bringing the room down to a collective, soft swoon with Marvin Gaye. From Blues Traveler to Van Morrison, he went all over the music map to prove a point, keeping everyone swaying along in their seats and spending money.

“Look, asshhole,” he said to me as he often did, “You gotta play Pied Piper with ‘em.”

Ever since, I’ve kept my ears pricked up for eateries with proprietors who

seem to know the same secret, running into two recently. At the just-debuted Alpino in Corktown, I felt those good vibrations, thanks to tunes owner David Richter was piping through his new place from his personal playlist. A bluesy Stones piece first stole my attention. Then, one after another, songs I couldn’t help but feel assured me another vibe virtuoso was at work here.

“Music’s a constant exploration, very subjective,” Richter led in. “I’ll be master of lights and music here, finding the playlist that speaks well to the background [daily atmosphere].”

Having sunk a mid-range five figures into his sound system (installed by Chris Torri of Nashville’s AVLX) and recording studio-quality, sounddampening materials to insulate the restaurant’s interior, Richter’s ready to press play. Live acts will also be part of Alpino’s program; patio performances start on June 6 with the Detroit-based “cosmic folk group” Young Supply.

A native Michigander from a musicloving family, Richter made his way to New York in the ’90s, where he catered to recording execs like Clive Davis at Midtown’s Beppe, and the City Winery, famous for its big-time but intimate epicurean-entertainment venues.

“It was a listening room, a listening crowd,” Richter recollects, intending to

recreate some of that experience in his new, wired-for-sound, Corktown digs.

Weeks earlier, Downtown’s Savannah Blue treated me to something similar. Before hearing it there, I’d never listened to Michael Jackson’s “Butterflies.” Beautiful. Or Demetria McKinney’s “Happy.” Wow. Where you been all my life, girl? J. D. Simpson (one of the restaurant’s three operating partners) insists the spirit of Detroit flows palpably through Savannah Blue’s sound system.

“We (the partners) went to grade school with guys and gals who became Motown stars. Detroit’s legacy of music is distinct and distinguished. We’ll honor that here.”

From Simpson’s lips to God’s ears, as they say. Leaving Savannah Blue after dinner, a can’t-help-but-move-to song by Detroit’s own Stevie Wonder played me out: “I’ll be loving you always.” Gorgeous. Did it just start playing in your head now, too? So ends the lesson.

When an apology fell flat: Here’s a parable on bleary-eyed perceptions and booze-induced, bad decision-making, compliments of the restaurateur I used to know. One night, after he’d been lingering too long over cocktails with his adoring public, Mr. Innkeeper got himself in deep. Physically wedged in

“Here you go, all yours,” he muttered through the most impulsively grand gesture. “If I did anything to offend, fuck it, there you go.”

“Uh, no.” I tried to intervene. Friend wasn’t having it. He took his apology even further. Grabbing his wallet, he plucked out his Platinum Amex Card and plinked it down as well. “Here. Have a good time on me,” were his last words before disappearing out the door.

And, boy, did they.

Very early the next morning, Mrs. Innkeeper called me to make one frantic and furious inquiry.

“Did you assholes get wasted again?! Where’s our fucking car?!!!” Always happy to hear that screaming, I filled her in.

“Your husband gave it away. To two customers. Door prize. Long story.”

I won’t even attempt to type the tirade she launched into after that, targeting him and me. I couldn’t resist:

“I’m guessing he doesn’t remember this, either, but he gave away the company Amex Card, too.” Her screeching was all I heard as I hung up. She called me back hours later to let me know she’d tracked down the couple at a nearby hotel through American Express. They’d spent nearly $800 dollars on a room at the Ritz Carlton and room service. And they burned out the clutch not knowing how to drive the car there.

The moral of this story? If you’ve had a few too many and do or say something regrettable, by almost all means, ‘fess up and apologize. And always, absolutely, keep everything important in your pants. Come morning, your spouse could inquire as to its whereabouts.

New Corktown spot Alpino boasts a top-notch sound system with plans for live music.

PERRY HASELDEN

WEED

Highland Park’s marijuana ordinance leads to skirmish

THREE NEW HIGHLAND Park City

Council members who were elected to bring fresh ideas to the financially struggling city have found themselves stuck in a virtual loop of mayoral vetoes, internal pushback, and insults.

Last week, they finally had enough and walked out of a council meeting, leaving the other two elected members without a quorum to proceed.

“This is crazy,” Councilman Khursheed Ash-Shafii, one of the three members who walked out, tells Metro Times. “You can’t make this shit up. Steven King is one of the most talented people in the world, and even he couldn’t make this up.”

Much of the conflict began when the trio tried to amend what they say is a problematic, unlawful cannabis ordinance that fails to ensure community benefits, gives sole authority to the clerk to dole out licenses, and exposes the city to costly litigation.

The ordinance led to several lawsuits against the city after the previous council passed it in 2020.

Mayor Glenda McDonald has vetoed every attempt by the council to amend the ordinance, and when council members tried to hire their own attorney, she vetoed that too.

Frustrated by what he considers an abuse of McDonald’s veto power, Councilman Ash-Shafii sent an email on May 11 to the city’s attorney requesting a legal opinion on the issue. Instead of getting a response from legal counsel, council President Jamal Thomas sent a series of condescending emails to Ash-Shafii, suggesting he and his colleagues weren’t smart enough to figure out their jobs.

Ash-Shafii says the emails were “insulting and degrading and disrespectful.”

Thomas also encouraged the city’s attorney not to respond to Ash-Shafii’s questions and suggested the matter should be hashed out in court — an unusual and potentially costly proposal for an impoverished city on the brink of bankruptcy.

“Its time to take these and other matters before a judge in open court,” Thomas wrote in a series of emails obtained by Metro Times. “I have retained my own legal representation, and await pending claims. Enough is enough.”

The internal squabbles couldn’t come at a worse time. The city of fewer than 9,000 residents faces a $19 million unpaid water bill to the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA). If the debt isn’t handled by the end of the month, the burden may fall on residents, whose property taxes could be tripled.

In another email, Thomas wrote to Ash-Shafii, “Congratulations on passing the 3rd grade. We all knew you could do it!”

Thomas also took aim at Councilwoman Kallela Martin, who proposed amending the cannabis ordinance. He suggested Martin didn’t understand municipal government enough to write the ordinance herself.

“How one can progress to authoring a legal ordinance in March, and take public office with no knowledge of what a parliamentarian is on January second of this year should be fleshed out in open court,” Thomas wrote.

Martin said the remark was sexist and unprofessional and asked Thomas for an apology. When he refused, she and the other two council members walked out of last Monday’s meeting in protest.

“I want the same respect as a man, and I was taking a stand for any female who has either been silenced or couldn’t use her voice or couldn’t be heard,” Martin tells Metro Times “That’s what I was doing. I deserve respect. There was a need to be heard.”

In an email to Metro Times, Thomas declined to comment and then wrote, “You are being used as a ‘cats paw’ sir. Sadly, you are being taken on the same fools errand that the other media interests have been mislead [sic] by.”

In a follow-up email, Thomas copied his personal attorney “so we can communicate freely and can all reach each other after you post your story.”

Meanwhile, the three council members are still waiting for a response from the city’s attorney. They contend the mayor is abusing her veto authority, making it impossible for them to fully execute their duties as the legislative branch. They also argue that the city charter only allows the mayor to veto ordinances and resolutions, not amendments or motions such as hiring of an outside attorney.

Son of BMF’s ‘Southwest T’ opens dispensary

METRO DETROIT’S LATEST cannabis dispensary has opened Downriver — and it has a connection to the hit Starz TV series BMF

263 Cannabis Co.’s founder is Terry Flenory Jr., son of Terry “Southwest T” Flenory of the famous BMF organization, or Black Mafia Family, depicted in the popular show of the same name.

“We are beyond excited to open our doors and introduce the 263 Cannabis Co. experience to the River Rouge community,” the younger Flenory said in a statement. “Our team has worked tirelessly to create a dispensary that combines exceptional products, friendly and knowledgeable staff, and a welcoming atmosphere. We look forward to serving the cannabis needs of our customers and being a positive addition to the local community.”

The dispensary, located at 286

Robert Davis, a Highland Park activist, filed a lawsuit against the city earlier this month, arguing that the cannabis ordinance “is void and unenforceable because it was not enacted in accordance with the Michigan Zoning and Enabling Act,” he tells Metro Times

Davis alleges the past council members “were set to benefit from the unlawful ordinance,” saying their campaigns were funded by prospective marijuana applicants.

He says the past council was “corrupt” and approved the ordinance without the required public hearings, and the Planning Commission failed to recommend the ordinance, which is required by state law.

“It quite obviously was a foolish process,” Davis says. “I applaud the three council members who are attempting to amend it so it can be done the correct way.”

Davis says he suspects Martin is obstructing the amendments because he’s

Burke St., River Rouge, is licensed for adult-use cannabis sales, available to anyone age 21 and older with a valid ID.

The real-life BMF was a drug trafficking organization that launched in Detroit in the 1980s, which prosecutors say grew to a multi-state operation that pulled in more than $270 million. Terry Flenory Sr. and his brother Demetrius were indicted in the early 2000s and convicted with 30 years behind bars.

Flenory Sr., 53, was released from prison in 2020 on a reduced sentence. In the show, he is portrayed by the actor Da’Vinchi.

Demetrius Flenory is scheduled for release in 2028.

The BMF series premiered in 2021, and has been praised for its portrayal of Detroit history and culture. It was renewed for a third season earlier this year. —Lee

DeVito

part of a group that purchased the old Liberty School, which the marijuana ordinance designated as an area for cannabis businesses to open.

Despite the lawsuit, the city recently began accepting applications for cannabis businesses, which Davis says puts the city in additional legal peril.

Since the three council members can’t get a legal opinion on mayoral vetoes, Davis is considering filing a lawsuit against the city so a judge “can provide clear direction” on vetoes.

“The council president cannot stop the city attorney from providing legal advice to the rest of the council,” Davis says. “This nonsense has to stop. It’s petty, stupid politics.”

Martin says she wants to get past the confrontations so she can do her job.

“I really want Highland Park to move forward, and I don’t know why we’re at a standstill,” Martin says. “People are ready for change.”

—Steve Neavling

TERRY FLENORY JR., INSTAGRAM (@SWTEE263)

CULTURE

Artist of the week

India Solomon launches ‘Fluid Spaces’ brick and mortar

By Randiah Camille Green

On paper, India Solomon is an unlikely artist. She went to college at 16 years old to study public policy, worked as a probation clerk for the 43rd District Court at age 17, and later got her master’s degree in urban planning.

Now she’s an abstract painter and designer who’s celebrating her first solo exhibit and the opening of her brickand-mortar Fluid Spaces.

Her work looks like an obscure city map with circle blotches, stray lines, and dots.

“I always put the meaning back on my subject,” she says. “Abstract art is not a specific, definitive thing. The words to describe it maybe don’t even exist in the English language. So, when people ask me to describe it, sure I can make up some stuff that sounds nice, but what does that even mean? It’s meant to give you that space to imagine, to dream, to dig into emotions and feelings that you don’t get to talk about. Or for some people, it’s just nice to look at.”

Meeting with Solomon, who’s bubbly and well-dressed when she greets us at Fluid Spaces, feels like chatting with a friend in their living room.

Located in Ferndale at 399 W. Marshall St., Fluid Spaces is as fluid as the name implies. It’s a retail space for pillows, blankets, mugs, shirts, and bowls printed with Solomon’s colorful patterns. Products from other local businesses like Not Sorry Goods and Konjo Me coffee are also sold here. Eventually, she hopes to host parties, pop-ups, and tiny desks in the space.

“The concept of fluid spaces just really takes us out of these traditional views of space, and it’s just another element of sustainability for me,” she says. “So this is a store, but it can also be my workspace. People have done photo shoots in here… I’ve been talking about having resident artists that completely get to transform the space themselves. I have an idea for what I want this space to be but not a full one, and the beauty in that is that we get to co-create it.”

Originally, Solomon wanted to be a lawyer as she thought it was the

best way to be an agent of change in communities of color. But the Detroitraised artist became disillusioned working in the court system at such a young age and realized she could have a bigger impact as an urban planner. After graduate school, she began working with nonprofits doing community building in Detroit neighborhoods.

“I landed my first job out of grad school with Enterprise Community Partners and I was managing grants for about 30 nonprofits across the city,” she says. “It was a really beautiful place to get to know the full range of peoplebased work that was happening across the neighborhoods, and I built really amazing relationships with leaders of those organizations… For me, it’s always been about resourcing ways for people to be their best selves, which translates to the art practice.”

But after a bout of burnout and a bad breakup, she decided to turn to painting in 2020. Growing up, her family always had a DIY attitude, and she remembers painting and decorating walls in her childhood home. She never thought about painting for expression, however, until she was an adult.

Solomon went back and forth between her consulting firm CityShares and full-time work until she realized she needed something in her life that brought her joy.

“Nonprofits have stepped in because the city has failed. But while I’m concerned with solving these failures, I’m also committed to living a version of my life where those things don’t exist… So, if you want to talk about a path without obstacles for Black people, for Black families, here’s my version of that,” she says, gesturing openly to the art-filled space.

She started off selling prints of her work and ended up meeting fellow Detroit artist Sheefy McFly, who was doing the cover art for a friend’s album at the time. She casually mentioned that she “kind of paints stuff,” and McFly invited her to his studio.

“So we got to the studio space and we did three of our first collab pieces in one

night and it was the best thing ever,” she says. “He was just about to do his biggest mural yet, which was the Monroe Street Midway. It was that same week that he had just gotten notification. He’s like, ‘I’m doing the biggest mural of my life and I don’t have a team. I’m a solo artist. I don’t know how I’m gonna get this done.’ I had just quit my job, I got all this free time and I said, ‘I can help you out.’ … So, literally, after I completely abandoned my whole nine-to-five illusion, my first apprenticeship was with Sheefy on the Monroe Street Midway.”

Solomon has since been featured in several group exhibits, including one last year at the now-defunct Nicole Tamer Gallery in Detroit’s David Whitney building with Matthew Giffin.

Places, on view at Norwest Gallery of Art, is Solomon’s first solo exhibition, featuring more than 20 paintings in varying sizes. Her hand-painted lifestyle wear and home goods are also featured in the gallery’s new “Hype Market” popup shop.

She glances over her products at Fluid Spaces, stopping at a couple of frosted mugs embellished with circles and stray lines. “This is a good story,” she says. While she was in school for her mas -

ter’s degree, Solomon did an open fellowship in Bangalore, India, where she connected with a family member who runs a school for children with autism.

After Solomon started putting her art on pillows and other home goods, she learned the family member had started a design studio in Bangalore that employed kids and young adults from the school.

“I started to see the products that they were printing and manufacturing and saw these frosted glass mugs and asked if they could manufacture them for me with my work on them,” she says. “Now it’s like this mutually beneficial relationship. So we’re growing together, two women of color-owned businesses on literal other sides of the world.”

Fluid Spaces held a soft opening on Mother’s Day and will have a grand opening from noon-7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 31.

Where to see her work: Places is on view at Norwest Gallery of Art until Sunday, May 28; 19556 Grand River Ave., Detroit. Hours for Fluid Spaces are Wednesday and Friday noon-7 p.m. and Sunday 1-5 p.m.

BRANDON PARKER

CULTURE

Monica Rated: R

Run-time: 106 minutes

perhaps the first time in their lives. Monica was hurt badly by her mother, and there’s no hiding that pain — its shadow is present in her every action, from the way she cares for Eugenia to the way she carries herself around her childhood abode. Returning to help in her mother’s time of need doesn’t make her initial decision to leave any less meaningful or right.

Likewise, Eugenia makes no mention of her daughter, even as the end nears. Does she know Monica’s true identity? Does she recognize the face so close to hers, gazing into her eyes with sympathy and compassion despite all that’s come before? If she does, she’s not saying a word about it. Lysette and Clarkson are naturally, profoundly raw in these roles, and it’s never more apparent than in the quiet moments where dignity takes precedence over all that could be said.

A trans woman comes home

By Kayla McCulloch

After seeing Monica, the new film by Italian writer-director Andrea Pallaoro, I’m sure opinions will be divided. Shot in a narrow aspect ratio and composed almost entirely of static shots, Monica could be dismissed as a chilly exercise in rigid formalism. Other (harsher) critics will label its heavy subject matter and infrequent bursts of levity an endurance test of unrelenting miserabilism. Allow me to quell the storm by simply stating: No film this quietly potent or gently restrained should ever elicit such strong adverse reactions.

A passion project of sorts for both star Trace Lysette and filmmaker Pallaoro, Monica serves as the second installment in an intended trilogy of female-led films from Pallaoro. And like any great middle act, this delicate and heartrending work makes key improvements over its spiritual predecessor, Hannah (2017).

The most prominent of these? Pallaoro’s firmer grasp of what Paul Schrader labels “slow cinema”: works in the vein of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080

Bruxelles (1975), Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó (1994), or Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry (1997) that utilize sparse camera movements, plain dialogue, long takes and minimal cuts to better immerse the viewer (and put us to work parsing out so-called essential elements like exposition or plot). A dying art, according to Schrader, but one that is alive and well here.

We meet our title character Monica (Lysette) in a tanning bed. Still and expressionless, she handles the heat like a pro — an early indication of how she’ll navigate the intense new reality that’s soon to come. A phone call from a stranger brings news no one wants to hear, especially Monica: Her estranged mother Eugenia (Patricia Clarkson) is terminally ill, and there’s not much time left. She’s rapidly dwindling, and Monica needs to get there fast if she hopes to see her before it’s too late. Unquestionably, this story sounds familiar to you — you’ve no doubt seen it dozens of times. However, upon her arrival back home, we discover Monica is taking a new approach to this conventional setup.

As it turns out, Monica and her mom haven’t seen (let alone spoken to) one another in more than 10 years. It’s been so long, in fact, that her mother seemingly doesn’t even recognize her own daughter. Time isn’t the only factor at fault, though. Monica never informed Eugenia she was transitioning before Eugenia’s memory began to fade.

Through alternating glimpses of Monica in quiet solitude and engaging in honest conversations with brother Paul (Joshua Close), sister-in-law Laura (Emily Browning), and even Eugenia herself (who believes Monica to be merely a friend helping out in her time of need), we can begin to piece together who this fractured family was, is, and — blame ignorance, blame illness, blame stubbornness, blame death — will forever be robbed the chance to become.

For Monica and Eugenia, the key word is dignity above all else. It was dignity that kept daughter alienated from mother for all their years apart, and now, in the mother’s old age and worsening state, it’s dignity that is allowing the pair to see eye to eye for

Pallaoro’s script — co-written with Orlando Tirado, who also shares a co-writing credit on all other Pallaoro works thus far — stands out to me as fascinatingly taciturn. The questions that arise throughout the film (both in the audience’s mind and the character’s lives) are not ignored, but rather … beaten around the bush. Pallaoro intentionally keeps the big things left unsaid, relegating all hints and clues to quiet conversations just off-screen, muddled arguments in the background, or one-sided phone calls that withhold key information from the viewer. That’s not to say we’re left in the dark, however: We rely on context to parse what’s really going on, making for a surprisingly involved but nevertheless rewarding viewing experience — straight out of the slow cinema textbook.

The camera is no less reticent.

Cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi stays calm and unhurried, shooting in gorgeous 35mm and maintaining a tight, almost 1:1 aspect ratio. It makes for a much-needed respite from the aggressively digital shaky-cam style that has all but taken over the subgenre of Intimate Indie Character Study. There’s a different (read: worse) version of this film littered with teary, Academy-aspiring monologues and flashy, in-your-face camerawork. Thankfully, Monica has too much respect for its characters and its audience to be so trite. Pallaoro’s film is something much more beautiful, much more extraordinary than the banality I’ve come to expect from the contemporary arthouse portrait.

Andrea Pallaoro’s beautifully rendered Monica shows the power of slow cinema.

COURTESY OF IFC FILM

CULTURE

Savage Love

How’s That?!

By Dan Savage

Dear Readers: One more from the deep archives! This column is from August 1997, back in the “Hey, Faggot” days, and features the birth of one of my readers’ favorite Savage Love-isms: “How’d That Happen?!” I’ll have a new column for you next week!

: Q HEY, FAGGOT: My girfriend and I only see each other on weekends. To overcome the overwhelming desire to jerk off during the week, I have discovered that I get great pleasure urinating on myself. I don’t know how this happened — one morning I just did it. About an hour after drinking a lot of water, I lay down in the bathtub. When I can’t hold it anymore, I direct a clear stream of urine all over my body. Then I pull my briefs back up and soak them.

I keep my eyes closed — but do I need to worry about any long-term effects on my hair or skin? Is there anything wrong with me? I don’t want to be urinated on by anyone else.

—Wet

A: We get a lot of letters here at Savage Labs. While every letter is unique, patterns do emerge, and Wet’s letter is a good example of a certain type of letter. The kids in the mailroom call them “HTH,” short for “How’d That Happen?!” letters. You see, Wet is doing this whack thing — pissing on himself in the bathtub as a substitute for masturbation (?) — and like a lot of folks doing whack things, Wet has some whack concerns. He has questions about the advisability of this whack behavior: Will urine damage my skin? Is there something wrong with me? So, he writes a letter. Something that he thinks, no doubt, took some courage. But in composing his letter, Wet chickens out: He fails to take responsibility for his actions, casting himself as a passive player in this bathtub drama. He may be peeing on himself, but it wasn’t really his idea, he writes: “I don’t know how this happened

— one morning I just did it.” How’d That Happen?!

I’ve been taking unsupervised baths for 27 years, and in all that time I never just “happened” to pee all over myself. The times I have pissed in the tub or shower, it was on purpose — I was too lazy to get out of the shower, or I was fulfilling a special request. But it never just “happened.” I did it.

So, Wet, while I’m happy to answer your questions — no, it won’t hurt you; yes, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with you — your unwillingness to take responsibility for your actions disturbs me. Admit it: You’re into piss — you like it for its own sake, not as a substitute for masturbation. Repeat after me: “I like piss.” This is not something that just happened to you, like cancer or Candid Camera. It’s something you did. You’re a perv, Wet. Own it.

: Q HEY, FAGGOT: I was dogsitting my friend’s dog and I fell asleep on the floor in my T-shirt (no underwear). When I awoke, the dog was licking my pussy. It felt so good that I didn’t stop him until I came. I was totally embarrassed and disgusted with myself, but the next night, it happened again. My questions:

1. Can I get infected in any way by dog germs on my pussy?

2. Is this harmful to me in any way?

3. How sick am I to fully enjoy this?

I am too ashamed to ask a single soul in the world these questions. I’m so afraid I’m going to catch some kind of infection from his tongue. Please answer because I need to know. I feel sick and ashamed.

—Help Me

A: This letter, at first reading, rings false. The setup — Help Me wakes to find the dog lapping away at her pussy — sounds an awful lot like an urban myth (sans peanut butter). But while Help Me’s setup rings false, her anguish seems so real that I believe this letter to be a genuine cry for help.

What rings false, of course, is her responsibility avoiding HTH presentation. The HTH, in this case, is so laughable it almost discredits the rest of the letter: She fell asleep on the floor, wearing only a T-shirt, and “awoke” to find the dog lapping away at her pussy? What probably happened was this: She was dog-sitting, feeling horny, and Mr. Dog was doing those whack horny-dog things horny dogs do (sticking its nose in her crotch, following her around, humping her leg). The dog’s behavior was similar to the behavior of males of her own species and Help Me was intrigued. Tempted. So, she did this whack thing, and it felt really good, so she did it again. And now she’s freaking out.

And she writes me a letter, but just can’t take responsibility for her actions. She can’t bring herself to write a letter that begins, “I fuck dogs….” So, she attempts to pass dog-fucking off as something that “happened” to her, not something she did. She fucks dogs. How’d That Happen?! She was innocently taking a nap on the floor, with no pants or panties on, and woke to find the dog between her legs — why, that could happen to anyone! Twice!

Not by a long shot, Help Me. Anyway, in answer to your questions:

1. Yes.

2. Yup.

3. Pretty fucking sick.

: Q HEY, FAGGOT: I’m a 200 percent straight guy, married with children. About six months ago, I went to a masseur who finished things with a terrific blowjob. If you wonder why I didn’t stop him, the truth is, I couldn’t, because he was massaging my asshole with his thumb while blowing me. It was so good that I’ve been going back to the guy just about every week, not for the massage but for the blowjob. Now I’m starting to worry that this might label me as gay. I have no interest in blowing this guy, but I wonder if the guy who gets the blowjob is as guilty as the one who does it.

—200 Percent Straight

A: This is my personal favorite: Mr. 200 Percent Straight couldn’t stop the big, bad masseur from giving him a blowjob because the masseur had his thumb up Mr. 200 Percent Straight’s butt. What, is there a system override switch in straight men’s butts? Can’t… move… thumb… in… ass… send… help! Come on. I’ve had my thumb in a few butts, provoking reactions from delight to discomfort, but my thumb has never, ever, not once, paralyzed a sex partner or struck him dumb.

But Mr. 200 Percent can’t admit that he liked it, that he didn’t object because there was nothing objectionable about this blow job — you let him continue because you were diggin’ it, Mr. 200 Percent Straight — or that he might have sought it out (just where did you find this masseur?). So, he comes up with what has to be the lamest excuse in the long, sordid history of blowjobs: He had his thumb in my butt, Your Honor, what could I do? HTH. Of course, this does not explain why Mr. 200 Percent Straight keeps going back, week after week, for more blowjobs. Did the masseur leave his thumb in your butt, Mr. 200 Percent?

Send your burning questions to mailbox@savage.love. Podcasts, columns, and more at Savage.Love!

CULTURE Free Will Astrology

ARIES: March 21 – April 19

My reading of the astrological omens inspires me to make a series of paradoxical predictions for you. Here are five scenarios I foresee as being quite possible in the coming weeks. 1. An epic journey to a sanctuary close to home. 2. A boundary that doesn’t keep people apart but brings them closer. 3. A rambunctious intervention that calms you down and helps you feel more at peace. 4. A complex process that leads to simple clarity. 5. A visit to the past that empowers you to redesign the future.

TAURUS: April 20 – May 20

Do you want a seed to fulfill its destiny? You must bury it in the ground. There, if it’s able to draw on water and the proper nutrients, it will break open and sprout. Its life as a seed will be over. The plant it eventually grows into will look nothing like its source. We take this process for granted, but it’s always a miracle. Now let’s invoke this story as a metaphor for what you are hopefully on the verge of, Taurus. I invite you to do all that’s helpful and necessary to ensure your seed germinates!

GEMINI: May 21 – June 20

Your meandering trek through the Unpromised Land wasn’t as demoralizing as you feared. The skirmish with the metaphorical dragon was a bit disruptive, but hey, you are still breathing and walking around — and even seem to have been energized by the weird thrill of the adventure. The only other possible downside was the new dent in your sweet dream. But I suspect that in the long run, that imperfection will inspire you to work even harder on behalf of your sweet dream — and this will be a blessing. Here’s another perk: The ordeal you endured effectively cleaned out stale old karma, freeing up space for a slew of fresh help and resources.

CANCER: June 21 – July 22

Testing time is ahead, but don’t get your nerves in an uproar with fantasy-spawned stress. For the most part, your challenges and trials will be interesting, not unsettling. There will be few if any trick questions. There will be straightforward prods to stretch your capacities and expand your understanding. Bonus! I bet you’ll get the brilliant impulse to shed the ball and chain you’ve been absent-mindedly carrying around with you.

LEO: July 23 – August 22

Biologist Edward O. Wilson said that the most social animals are ants, termites, and honeybees. He used the following criteria to define that description: “altruism, instincts devoted to social life, and the tightness of the bonds that turn colonies into virtual superorganisms.” I’m going to advocate that you regard ants, termites, and honeybees as teachers and role models for you. The coming weeks will be a great time to boost your skill at socializing and networking. You will be wise to ruminate about how you could improve your life by enhancing your ability to cooperate with others. And remember to boost your altruism!

Greetings, my fellow drinkers and thinkers. Don’t you worry, debt ceiling or no debt ceiling, we still take coins of the realm. We’ll let you know when it goes to a bartering system.

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY! OPEN 3-2AM

VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22

Jack Sarfatti is an authentic but maverick physicist born under the sign of Virgo. He suggests that if we make ourselves receptive and alert, we may get help from our future selves. They are trying to communicate good ideas to us back through time. Alas, most of us don’t believe such a thing is feasible, so we aren’t attuned to the potential help. I will encourage you to transcend any natural skepticism you might have about Sarfatti’s theory. As a fun experiment, imagine that the Future You has an important transmission for you — maybe several trans -

JAMES NOELLERT

missions. For best results, formulate three specific questions to pose to the Future You.

LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22

I have five points for your consideration. 1. You are alive in your mysterious, endlessly interesting life, and you are imbued with the fantastically potent power of awareness. How could you not feel thrilled? 2. You’re on a planet that’s always surprising, and you’re in an era when so many things are changing that you can’t help being fascinated. How could you not feel thrilled? 3. You have some intriguing project to look forward to, or some challenging but engaging work you’re doing, or some mind-bending riddle you’re trying to solve. How could you not feel thrilled? 4. You’re playing the most enigmatic game in the universe, also known as your destiny on Earth, and you love ruminating on questions about what it all means. How could you not feel thrilled? 5. You never know what’s going to happen next. You’re like a hero in an epic movie that is endlessly entertaining. How could you not feel thrilled?

SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21:

“Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn,” advises Scorpio author Neil Gaiman. Let’s make that one of your mantras for the coming weeks. In my astrological understanding, you are due to cash in on favors you have bestowed on others. The generosity you have expressed should be streaming back your way in abundance. Be bold about welcoming the bounty. In fact, I hope you will nudge and prompt people, if necessary, to reward you for your past support and blessings.

SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21

So many of us are starved to be listened to with full attention. So many of us yearn to be seen and heard and felt by people who are skilled at receptive empathy. How many of us? I’d say the figure is about 99.9%. That’s the bad news, Sagittarius. The good news is that in the coming weeks, you will have an exceptional ability to win the attention of good listeners. To boost the potential healing effects of this

By Rob Brezsny

opportunity, here’s what I recommend: Refine and deepen your own listening skills. Express them with panache.

CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19

Because you’re a Capricorn, earthiness is probably one of your strengths. It’s your birthright to be practical and sensible and well-grounded. Now and then, however, your earthiness devolves into muddiness. You get too sober and earnest. You’re bogged down in excess pragmatism. I suspect you may be susceptible to such a state these days. What to do? It may help if you add elements of air and fire to your constitution, just to balance things out. Give yourself a secret nickname with a fiery feel, like Blaze, or a crispy briskness, like Breezy. What else could you do to rouse fresh, glowing vigor, Breezy Blaze — even a touch of wildness?

AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18

I love to use metaphors in my writing, but I hate to mix unrelated metaphors. I thrive on referring to poetry, sometimes even surrealistic poetry, but I try to avoid sounding like a lunatic. However, at this juncture in your hero’s journey, Aquarius, I frankly feel that the most effective way to communicate with you is to offer you mixed metaphors and surrealist poetry that border on sounding lunatic. Why? Because you seem primed to wander around on the edges of reality. I’m guessing you’ll respond best to a message that’s aligned with your unruly mood. So here goes: Get ready to surf the spiritual undertow all the way to the teeming wilderness on the other side of the cracked mirror. Ignore the provocative wasteland on your left and the intriguing chaos on your right. Stay focused on the stars in your eyes and devote yourself to wild joy.

PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20

“The gift of patience opens when our body, heart, and mind slow enough to move in unison.” So says Piscean poet Mark Nepo. I feel confident you are about to glide into such a grand harmony, dear Pisces. Through a blend of grace and your relaxed efforts to be true to your deepest desires, your body, heart, and mind will synchronize and synergize. Patience will be just one of the gifts you will receive. Others include: a clear vision of your most beautiful future; a lucid understanding of what will be most meaningful to you in the next three years; and a profound sense of feeling at home in the world wherever you go.

Homework: What is the most spiritually nourishing pleasure you should seek out but don’t?

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