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Vol. 37 | Issue 34 | May 31-June 6, 2017
News & Views News............................................... 8 Politics & Prejudices.................... 14 Stir It Up....................................... 18
What’s Going On........................ 22
Feature The battle for Belle Isle...................24
Publisher - Chris Keating Associate Publisher - Jim Cohen Editor-In-Chief - Lee DeVito
EDITORIAL Managing Editor - Alysa Zavala-Offman Senior Editor - Michael Jackman Music Editor - Mike McGonigal Staff Writer - Violet Ikonomova Dining Editor - Tom Perkins Web Editor - Jack Roskopp Contributing Editors - Larry Gabriel, Jack Lessenberry Copy Editor - Esther Gim Editorial Interns - Kayla Cockrel, Joseph Cooke, Isabella Hinojosa, Emily Lovasz, Skyler Murry, Faith Riggs Contributors - Sean Bieri, Stephanie Brothers, Doug Coombe, Kahn Santori Davison, Aaron Egan, Mike Ferdinande, Cal Garrison, Curt Guyette, Mike Pfeiffer, Sarah Rahal, Dontae Rockymore, Shelley Salant, Dan Savage, Sarah Rose Sharp, Rai Skotarczyk, Jane Slaughter
ADVERTISING
Food Review: Sheeba........................... 34 Bites.............................................. 36
Associate Publisher - Jim Cohen Regional Sales Directors - Danielle Smith-Elliott, Vinny Fontana Senior Multimedia Account Executive Jeff Nutter Multimedia Account Executives Drew Franklin, Jessica Frey, Cierra Wood Account Manager, Classifieds - Josh Cohen
BUSINESS/OPERATIONS Business Office Supervisor - Holly Rhodes Controller - Kristy Dotson Staff Accountant - Margaret Manzo
Music Kathy Leisen.................................. 42 Birdcloud........................................ 46 Sigur Ros...................................... 48 Livewire........................................ 50
Arts & Culture Art: Cinetopia.............................. 52 Culture: Cleaning in Action........ 56 Savage Love................................. 58 Horoscopes with Cal Garrison...... 66
Cover photo: Mike Ferdinande Cover design: Haimanti Germain
Printed on recycled paper Printed By
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248-620-2990
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NEWS & VIEWS Making room for everyone
A ground-level look at one of Detroit’s most progressive housing initiatives yet, and why residents say it still comes up short by Violet Ikonomova
Another Midtown apartment building known to offer cheap
units has fallen into the hands of bigname developers and is about to get a face — and rent — lift. But while city officials say they’ve reached a first-ofits-kind agreement with the owners of 40 Davenport to keep some units affordable and prevent displacement, residents in the building are skeptical. Developer Broder & Sachse bought the stately 8-story building off Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and a stone’s throw from Woodward’s QLine tracks about a year ago with plans for a multi million dollar revamp. Under the deal it struck with the city, people living in units making less than a combined $40,000 a year would face a one-time five per-
cent rent increase once the renovation is complete, and no more than a one percent-per-year increase thereafter. During the year-long remodeling of the more than 100-year-old structure, residents with qualifying incomes will get assistance in finding temporary housing, with moving costs and any rent increase paid for by the developers. In exchange, the city will cover about a half-million dollars of the $12 million redevelopment and support the project’s request for a 12-year tax abatement. The developers have applied for an Obsolete Property Rehabilitation Act abatement. Things like antiquated air conditioning systems and structural damage can help a property qualify if it’s determined the project wouldn’t happen without
the added support. “This is a win for the residents and a win for the City,” Arthur Jemison, director of Detroit’s Housing & Revitalization department said in a release. “I am really pleased with the high standard [Broder & Sasche is] now setting for other developers in this community.” The developers say the plan will make the building now known as the Hamilton a “true mixed-income property.” Said Broder & Sasche vice president Todd Sachse: “Developing a plan for sustained housing and support for residents of 40 Davenport has been our top priority,” But some residents aren’t convinced. “They’re puttin’ everybody out,” said Dontrell Ford, who has lived in the building for six years. “It’s the same thing going on all around the Downtown and Midtown area of Detroit.” This is the second time a building upgrade has forced Ford out of a home in one of the city’s redeveloping areas. Before he moved to what was then known as the Milner Arms Apartments, he was given 90 days’ notice to leave his apartment on W. Adams Avenue near Grand Circus Park, and never bothered trying to return. Though, this time, the city and the developers have promised to ease his transition and help him come back, Ford isn’t buying it. “They claim that but I haven’t even received a call of what they’re gonna do, they just basically said we have 60 days and we got to go,” he said. “They’re gonna raise the rate to the point when you can’t afford to come back.” Developer Broder & Sasche says about 60 people live in the 93-unit building. Of those roughly 60 households, 44 households are estimated to make less than $40,000 according to the United Community Housing Coalition, which will help pair tenants with temporary homes.
The apartments at 40 Davenport, where developers renovating the building are offering low-income tenants a deal to help them avoid a major rent hike.
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VIOLET IKONOMOVA
With average rent for a unit in the building running about $600, tenants who return are looking at an approximately $30 rent increase. Despite Ford’s misgivings, UCHC’s executive director Ted Phillips says the plan is one of the best efforts yet by a developer in Detroit to preserve affordable housing at a building without any federal or state income restrictions. “What’s been committed is essentially a lifetime lease and a cap on their future rent and that’s, to me, incredibly progressive,” said Phillips. He does concede that the year-long renovation may prevent some residents from returning. A 78-year-old man who lives in the building and asked not to be named said he doesn’t think he’ll come back, partly because it would require moving twice. He also says he’s concerned because he hasn’t been given any indication of where he may end up during the transition. “They gotta get in touch with us and let us know where they’re gonna relocate us,” said the man, who told Metro Times that residents were first informed of the coming changes in mid-May. “They haven’t done nothing.” Broder & Sachse doesn’t have a stellar track record when it comes to helping low-income residents stay in the buildings it flips. Some view the developer’s plan for 40 Davenport as a sort of P.R. redemption effort after the company was criticized for turning an expired affordable senior housing building in Capitol Park into a market-rate luxury apartment building called “The Albert” in 2014. Now, with Broder & Sachse working to create what the city calls a “new model for responsible rehabilitation of an occupied building” with “the Hamilton,” housing advocates and others are hoping to see the city demand as much or more from development projects to come. They’d also like to see the city come up with a more cohesive plan to addressing a growing displacement problem. “Even if you look at this in the most favorable light possible, it’s still a oneoff in light of a systemic crisis,” says Peter Hammer, director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at the Wayne State University Law School. “I’d like to see a systemic approach in contrast with these sort of ad hoc deals that may or may not be what they purport to be.” news@metrotimes.com @violetikon
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NEWS & VIEWS Information UCHC is hoping to share during this year’s canvasing effort includes a new reduced-interest program for homeowners that drops fees on taxes owed from 18 percent to 6 percent. They’ll also be telling residents about a poverty exemption, which Oberholtzer says goes underutilized in Detroit, where 40 percent of people live in poverty. Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree was actually named in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union that alleges his office improperly denied some Detroiters the exemption. The case against Sabree was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds but is now on appeal.
Mayor Mike Duggan announces proposal that would force all Detroit landlords bring their buildings up to code.
VIOLET IKONOMOVA
Proposed ordinance puts Detroit slumlords on notice by Violet Ikonomova
Detroit’s buildings department would crack down on landlords who don’t have their rental properties up to code and reward those who do under a proposed ordinance introduced by Councilmember Andre Spivey and backed by Mayor Mike Duggan. “While the city has historically had an ordinance requiring registration of rental properties, it hasn’t been enforced in more than a decade,” Duggan explained at a May 24 news conference, citing a shortage of inspectors in Detroit’s Building Safety Engineering and Environmental Department (BSEED) as the problem. Tens of thousands of rental properties in the city are not properly registered and have no certificate of compliance, according to city officials. The plan to get those properties up to code will involve letting landlords use authorized private companies for annual inspections, which city officials say will help clear a backlog and free up BSEED to do more enforcement. BSEED has also added staff. “We’re not just gonna sit by anymore and let building owners ignore city code,” said Spivey, who introduced the ordinance. Under the proposed ordinance, noncompliant landlords would be given a six-month window in which to address
the problems at their properties. After that, they would have the status of their property entered into an online database that would-be residents could use to determine whether they want to live there. Current residents would be able to use the database to figure out if they’re within their rights to withhold rent. Landlords whose buildings are not up to code would also continue to accumulate the usual fines for problems at their buildings, which can result in criminal penalties if left unaddressed. Compliant landlords would be rewarded by only having to conduct inspections once every three years. The ordinance would be phased in over two years. BSEED would issue an inspection schedule to give landlords in different parts of the city a date by which to comply.
Nonprofit works to keep Detroiters in their homes as tax foreclosure deadline looms by Violet Ikonomova The United Community Housing Coalition has launched an ambitious effort to reach thousands of city residents at risk of losing their homes to tax foreclosure as a final payment deadline ap-
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proaches. Homeowners with three years of unpaid taxes who were foreclosed April 1 have until June 7 to reverse the process by setting up a payment plan with the Wayne County Treasurer’s Office. Otherwise, they risk having their home sold to the highest bidder during the county’s housing auction this fall. According to UCHC, residents in 17,000 homes throughout the county face foreclosure this year. The group says it plans to knock on the doors of more than 4,000 of those homes with help from volunteers and mapping software by Loveland Technologies. “I’ve never knocked on someone’s door and they had literally all the information,” UCHC tax foreclosure prevention project coordinator Michele Oberholtzer told a group of volunteers during a training in late May. Last year, a survey commissioned by the county treasurer’s office and conducted by Loveland and UCHC canvassers found that 38 percent of people contacted did not know the property where they lived was facing foreclosure. The survey also found that nearly half of people living in properties slated for foreclosure were renters, many of whom had fallen victim to unscrupulous landlords who never informed them they hadn’t been paying taxes on the home.
Detroit continues to lose people by Emily Lovasz Detroit’s population is continuing its downward slide according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, marking a setback for Mayor Mike Duggan — who has hinged his success on whether the city’s population will have increased by the time he’s left office. According to the Census, Detroit’s population dropped by 3,541 people between July 1, 2015 and July,1 2016 — a loss of about half a percent. Michigan’s population remained largely flat during that period, though the state did gain a few thousand residents. For the past several years, the city has steadily fallen down the list of the country’s most populated cities. In 2014, Detroit was 18th-most populated city in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. In 2015, it was ranked 21st-most populated, and the latest data positions it in the 23rd spot on the list. One of Duggan’s primary goals has been to turn the tide of population loss in the city. But his administration remains positive in the face of the drop reflected in the census figures. “We are pleased in the direction that we are heading. ... The data are a year behind,” Duggan chief of staff Alexis Wiley told the Detroit Free Press. She cited building permits, home prices, and 3,000 more occupied residences reported by DTE Energy in the city in March versus the same time a year earlier.
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on sale friday:
coming soon concert calendar: 6/1 – urban cone & nightly @ the shelter
6/2 – jackyl 6/3 – mike stud @ the shelter w/ matt citron limited tickets remain
6/13 – chon w/ tera melos, covet, little tybee sept. 22 zz ward st. andrew’s
sept. 28 lords of acid st. andrew’s w/ Combichrist
6/19 – barns courtney @ the shelter w/ foxtraxx
6/23 – grunge night feat. tributes to nirvana, alice in chains, stone temple pilots
coming soon:
6/24 – jarabe de palo 7/7 – king lil g @ the shelter 7/12 – the color morale @ the shelter
w/ the plot in you, dayseeker, picturesque, a war within, as we divide
7/13 – mother mother @ the shelter 7/14 – a will away @ the shelter w/ dryjacket, this wild life
june 14 the wailers
st. andrew’s w/ leaving lifted
june 15 saliva
st. andrew’s w/ everyday losers
7/15 – sob x rbe @ the shelter 7/16 – caravan palace 7/18 – cane hill @ the shelter w/ my enemies & i 7/20 – why don’t we @ the shelter 7/23 – jaymes young @ the shelter w/ matt maeson
7/26 – the aquabats w/ reggie & the full effect, cj ramone
june 25 bleachers st. andrew’s
june 27 r5 st. andrew’s
7/28 – piebald @ the shelter 7/29 – neurosis & converge
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NEWS & VIEWS Politics & Prejudices
Governor Abdul? by Jack Lessenberry
Let’s say you had a young
politician named Adam Elliot who is handsome, charismatic, and whose string of degrees and accomplishments sounded like those of a spy fiction hero: Three-letter athlete in high school (Bloomfield Hills’ Andover High School), star lacrosse player, and academically, at the very top of his class at the University of Michigan, where he graduated with dual degrees in biology and political science. That was followed (naturally) by stints as a Rhodes scholar, then a Marshall scholar in England. Even before that, when he gave the student address at his U of M commencement, it wowed the main speaker, one President Bill Clinton, who urged him to forget medicine and go into politics. (“You’re a natural,” slick Willie said.) Not yet, thought Elliot, who then quickly took Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Oxford University in England, and then an MD from Columbia. Just in case anyone thought that wasn’t enough, he led a medical mission to Peru as a student, and became an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia. Somehow, in his spare time, he managed to win research awards and pump out more than 100 scientific publications, from book chapters to major papers. He wasn’t chasing women; he married at 21, to a 19-year-old classmate who is now a psychiatrist. He was in charge of a Global Research Analytics for Population Health project at Columbia when Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan called and invited him to come back and rebuild the Detroit Health Department after the bankruptcy. No problem, says Elliot, who was born here. Not only did he have it whipped into shape in barely a year; he then took on the disgraceful Animal Control department, and fixed that too. Finally, Adam Elliott decides it’s time to go from retail saving of the
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planet into wholesale, leaves his health department job, and jumps into politics full time — not, that is, in an attempt to get a seat on Detroit City Council or an utterly worthless one in the gerrymandered legislature. Nope. He’s running for the Democratic nomination for governor. By the way, despite everything he’s accomplished, he is still only 32 years old. So… is this the Democratic Party’s all-time too-good-to-be-true dream of a candidate? Well, maybe… except for two little details: His name is really Abdul El-Sayed. And he is a Muslim, with a wife who wears a headscarf.
That wouldn’t matter in a world where we didn’t discriminate based on religion. But in Michigan, we do. Last fall, Michigan Democrats nominated Ismael Ahmed for a seat on the State Board of Education. There wasn’t a more deserving candidate in the state — or a more completely American Muslim in the nation. Ish, as everyone knows him, cares passionately about two things: his community and education. He helped found ACCESS, the highly successful Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in 1971, ran it for many years, and built it into one of the nation’s best and most studied private welfare agencies. Later, he was made head of Michigan’s Department of
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NEWS & VIEWS ‘I know that for 95 percent of the people I meet, my name is a liability.’ Health and Human Services. After that, he became associate provost at the University of MichiganDearborn. He is exactly the kind of person you’d want on the state board of education. Yet not only did he lose, thousands of Democratic voters refused to support him. His running mate John Austin got 1,912,983 votes; Ahmed a mere 1,698,927. Nearly a quarter of a million Democrats refused to support Ahmed, evidently just because he is a Muslim. Most don’t seem to have voted Republican for that job instead; they just didn’t cast a second education board seat at all. If they won’t vote for a Muslim for a job as low-profile and benign as state education board, do you think they’d vote for one for governor? “I think there’s something to be learned from my experience,” Ish, who hasn’t endorsed anyone for governor, said dryly. “I think he (El-Sayed) faces an uphill battle.” Abdul — he encourages everyone to call him Abdul — refuses to be daunted by all that. “I’m a different person with a different personality,” he told me. That’s true enough. To be sure, El-Sayed comes across as far more peppy. He claims to be going into this with eyes wide open. “I know that for 95 percent of the people I meet, my name is a liability,” he told me one recent morning, over coffee in downtown Detroit near the new Ilitch playpen, with taxpayer-subsidized construction activity bustling all around us. “But one thing is that they won’t forget the name Abdul,” he said, something probably true enough. “And if I can just connect with them,” Abdul says, he thinks he can win them over. That may well be largely true; he has a very winning personality. His positions on most issues ought to be appealing to most Democrats, especially Bernie Sanders fans. Matter of fact, I didn’t disagree with one of them. Trouble is, he’d have to win over about 400,000 people to win a Democratic primary, and at least four times that to have a chance of beating
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Bill Schuette in 2018. Democratic strategist Brian Stone is anything but anti-Muslim; he courted Arab-American support during a failed bid for the legislature last year. He told me that when he came out as openly gay in high school, Muslim students were among the few who didn’t pick on or bully him. Yet Stone isn’t supporting Abdul ElSayed for an entirely different reason. He doesn’t question his awesome intelligence. But he notes that as a candidate, he has pretty close to zero practical political experience. “Granholm, Snyder, and Trump all lacked legislative experience and lacked an understanding of the political landscape,” he posted on Facebook. As a result, “Their administrations have all been bogged down.” Plus, he adds, “Achieving change in a big-city health department where everyone is a Democrat is very different from doing it in a state where half the residents will question your intentions no matter who you are.” Those may be legitimate arguments. But on the other hand, Abdul’s main rivals for the nomination are likely to be Mark Bernstein, the lawyer and U of M regent, and Gretchen Whitmer. Bernstein has absolutely no Lansing experience. Whitmer does have that experience — but as a member of a perpetual minority caucus that was unsuccessful at forging many compromises or getting very much passed. So what is going to happen? I can imagine a scenario where El-Sayed wins a close multi-candidate primary, only to lose in November. But then, what do I know? Ten years ago, I explained patiently to a student ready to dedicate herself to a candidate that as much as I liked what he stood for, his cause was hopeless, and she needed to face it. There was no way that the still fundamentally racist American people were going to vote for a black guy, I told her. Let alone one with a Muslim father and an exotic African name. letters@metrotimes.com @gumbogabe
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NEWS & VIEWS Stir It Up
Mulenga and the chickens by Larry Gabriel
There I was, bouncing around
in the passenger seat of a borrowed pickup truck with a blindfold over my eyes. Mulenga Harangua was at the wheel driving us through a maze to his new secret spot. I was wearing the blindfold because he didn’t want me to know exactly where it’s at. The back of the truck was loaded down with wooden pallets we’d scrounged up around the west side, along with a few boards, bricks, and a few other things. We hit a bump and I bounced over against Mulenga’s shoulder. “Well this ain’t cuddling on the QLine, but it will do,” I quipped. “Cuddling on the QLine,” sputtered Mulenga. “I had hopes for that in the beginning, they could have built a real train, a real building block for transit for this city. But it looks like they decided to just put in something for the tourists to get around and spend money. Cruising slowly along the curb so riders can view storefronts is pretty bald-faced capitalism. That’s about making money in Midtown. It’s not about creating a transit system for Detroit.” “Well, listen to you,” I said. “The irony of it is that train lines are great development drivers when done right. But I don’t think this was done right. They didn’t need to lay tracks to put in a cute little trolley that lets you cruise the storefronts.” “Well there’s no QLine over here,” Mulenga stated proudly. “This here is the anti-Q — no train, not tracks, not even a road.” “Why are you being so secretive?” I asked. “Because I’m digging in deeper underground,” Mulenga said. “I can’t have any leaks. Look at the president. Leak, leak, leak and he’s going down. I’m not going down, my whereabouts are strictly on a needto-know basis. Pretty much at this point only I need to know.” “Well I know where you are,” I said. “What?” Mulenga asked with a bit
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of alarm in his voice. “Right next to you,” I said in a lame punch line. “And we have arrived,” Mulenga said, turning the engine off. “You can remove your bandanna.” I pulled it off and looked around. We were indeed surrounded on all sides with trees and bushes, with little to indicate that we were somewhere in Detroit — just a couple of poles with wire in the distance. There were a few lean-to looking things with barrels underneath, a small garden with young plants, and a handful of chickens scratching around. I also spotted a small fire pit and a few domestic items by one of the lean-tos. Mulenga was out and pulling pallets off the back of the truck. “So what are you going to do with this stuff?” I asked. “Chicken coops,” he said. “I’m building chicken coops.” “I thought you were a free range chicken kind of guy,” I teased. “That’s right, but some free range dogs came through here the other day and snacked on a few of my chickens,” he said. “Now I need to put them safely away sometimes. I want to grow my flock.” “How many chickens are you planning on eating?” I wondered aloud. “I don’t plan on eating all that,”
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NEWS & VIEWS ‘So you’re going to be the chicken king of Detroit?’ ‘Why not?’ he tossed back at me. Mulenga said. “I’m getting into the chicken business.” “What?” “The chicken business,” he repeated. “I’m getting in early. I think there is going to be big demand for fresh organic chicken pretty soon.” “Why is that?” “Didn’t you see that agreement the government just made to import chicken and chicken products from China?” he asked pointedly. “No.” Mulenga started dragging pallets under a nearby tree. I did the same. “A few weeks ago I was listening to National Public Radio and I heard this story about the U.S-China trade deal,” Mulenga explained. “Part of it is that we’ll be importing cooked chicken products from China.” “Cooked chicken products?” I repeated, a little confused on Mulenga’s point with his chickens. It’s not like he was about to take on Chinese imports. A couple of his chickens started pecking around near my foot. “Well mostly I’ve been getting their eggs,” Mulenga said. “But China is notorious for its food safety scandals. A couple of years ago a Shanghai company that supplied McDonald’s and KFC was selling past-date meat that had been repackaged with new dates on it.” “And?” “Sooner or later somebody is going to get sick from Chinese chicken,” Mulenga said. “After that, people are going to be looking for fresh local chicken.” He swept his arm toward the area I guess he was planning on keeping his chickens. “I will be ready when that market breaks open.” “So you’re going to be the chicken king of Detroit?” “Why not?” he tossed back at me. “So what’s up with these lean-tos?” I asked in an effort to change the subject. “These aren’t lean-tos,” Mulenga said. “These are to help me collect water in the rain barrels. “ “Why so many?” I gestured toward the others nearby.
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“That’s another project,” Mulenga explained. “See, I heard about this study predicting that in the next five years more than a third of Americans will not be able to afford their water. I plan to have plenty of water around for my garden and chickens, so why not sell a few low cost bottles on the side?” “You want to sell water?” “Well maybe I’ll just trade it for stuff,” Mulenga said. “You never know what people have that you can use. Rainwater may be the purest water available. It just falls from the sky. It might be cleaner than whatever comes out of your faucet. The bottom line is that I’m getting out front on this stuff. I got water. I got chicken. It’s not a bad spot to be in. Plus, I can gather up the chicken droppings and use that for fertilizer.” “So now you’re getting into the food industry,” I said. “That is the next step for the urban agriculture scene, but most of those folks are growing vegetables. It doesn’t look like you have much of that over here.” “I’ve got plenty of vegetables growing in my other plots,” Mulenga said. “I have to keep my spaces diversified in case somebody decides to put a development in. That happened to me once. I had a great little squat on the west side with lots of space. One day the bulldozers showed up and started clearing things out. They put up a bunch of condos.” “Ouch!” I sympathized with him. I started to take a close look around. “So where are we? I need to get going.” “Can’t tell you that,” Mulenga said. “If you need to go you need to put that blindfold back on.” I pulled out the bandanna and wrapped it over my eyes. Mulenga took my arm and led me to the truck. It may have been a case of the blind leading the blindfolded.
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UP FRONT THURSDAY, 6/1 Charles McGee exhibit opening @ Library Street Collective
A retrospective of sorts, this exhibition features the work of 92-year-old artist Charles McGee and his 70-year-long career. The array of work showcases his more frequent themes including his efforts to chronicle the black experience and his love of nature. The artist has worked across mediums from charcoal to photography to avantgarde, three-dimensional, and multimedia pieces. The exhibit coincides with McGee’s outdoor mural, "Unity,"(which measures 118 feet and six inches by 50 feet and nine inches) an addition to a new 13-story loft building in downtown Detroit. This exhibit is free and open to the public.
What’s Going On:
A week’s worth of things to do and places to do them by MT staff "Celebration" by Charles McGee.
COURTESY PHOTO
Starts at 6 p.m.; 1505 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313600-7443; lscgallery.com; entry is free and open to the public.
WED, 5/31-SUN, 6/18
SATURDAY, 6/3
SATURDAY, 6/3
SATURDAY, 6/3
Why Do Fools Fall in Love
We Rock Dope Hair: A Natural Hair Experience
The Fix
The Power of Girlhood 7.0
@ Meadow Brook Theatre
@ the Artist Village Detroit
A story of enduring female friendship set to a menagerie of ’60s pop anthems, Why Do Fools Fall in Love is an upbeat comedy musical about love, marriage, and dating. The main character Millie is set to be wed, and when her friends throw her a surprise bachelorette party they start to discuss the raunchy details of their love lives because for some reason it’s never come up before. The show features tunes like “I Will Follow Him,” “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” and “Hey There Lonely Boy,” among others. The two-hour show runs until June 18.
Shows start at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, 6:30 p.m. on Sunday with a 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday and Sunday; 378 Meadow Brook Rd., Rochester; 248-377-3300 mbtheatre.com; tickets start at $33.
For seven years a group called Naturally Flyy Detroit has been hosting natural hair showcases that empower black women by creating a sense of community and celebrating a facet that is unique to their culture: their hair. This event will feature a headwrap session, a product and accessory swap table, live demos and tutorials, a natural hair panel that will offer tips, tricks, styling, and care advice, an open air artist market of handmade items, door prizes, raffles, and giveaways, a DJ, food, and more. Children are welcome to join as well.
Runs from 1 to 8 p.m.; 17405 Lahser Rd., Detroit; WeRockDopeHairnfd2017. eventbrite.com; tickets are $12.
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@ Detroit Is The New Black
@ Ponyride
This isn't your average fashion show. Described as "a haunted house of art and fashion," each artist or designer will get one room at Detroit Is The New Black to do whatever the hell they want, creating a multi-disciplinary, multi-sensory experience that will include live models, DJs, and more. Featured designs include the BDSM stylings of Zach Zalac's Mourn the Living as well as the flourescent streetwear of Angela McBride's Peace Love Spandex; other designers and artists featured are Age of Martina, House of Raw, Simone Else, and StarGazer. After the opening event, an exhibition will run in the space through July.
Runs 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.; 1426 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-8183498; detroitisthenewblack.com; tickets are $15, available in advance at Detroit Is The New Black and Noir Leather.
Welcoming to girls of all ages, this event will feature poetry, music, exhibits, mini workshops, food, dialogue, and more. This event is the seventh of its kind and mothers, grandmothers, and aunts are asked to bring the young girls in their families for a chance to discuss what is important to them and what it’s like to be a girl. They’ll have a chance to try their hand at salsa, yoga, belly dance, and other empowering activities. There will also be health and beauty vendors, college and career booths, performing arts and mentorship availabilities, and special performances. The event is hosted by Cyrs Campbell.
Runs from noon to 4 p.m.; 1401 Vermont St., Detroit; eventbrite. com; free.
SATURDAY, 6/3 Ferndale Pride @ Downtown Ferndale
No matter where you fall on the LGBTQ rainbow, all are welcome to join this celebration of the community in fabulous Ferndale. The event welcomes residents, businesses, community groups, and all those who strive to promote pride to join in this joyous, colorful occasion. The day’s celebrations will include live music from Sarah Hood, Liquid Monk, Tunde Olaniran, Mae James, and others, plus an electronic dance music stage headlined by Alexa Rae. There will all be a gender reading hour at Affirmations, an opportunity to get married at Red Door, a Pride Prom, and more. The week leading up to Pride will also feature activities like the Summer of Pride gallery opening at Affirmations on Thursday, June 1, and a Rainbow Run on Saturday, June 3.
Runs 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.; ferndalepride. com; free. two and younger. Ferndale Pride.
COURTESY PHOTO
SUNDAY, 6/4
TUESDAY, 6/6
WEDNESDAY, 6/7
WEDNESDAY, 6/7
Corktown Neighborhood Tour
The Beer Yogis
Chris Gethard
@ Atwater
@ Magic Bag
Under the Cherry Moon screening
Do you ever want to find your center, but don’t want to lose time getting fucked up? The Beer Yogis feel you and they’ve created a yogic experience that also allows you to begin your inner journey to drunkness after pounding out a few chaturangas. No, you’re not drinking during class, but the drinking happens immediately after speaking your closing namaste. The $25 entry fee includes the time spent in practice as well as your first pint. You’re asked to arrive a couple minutes early and bring your own mat, towel, water bottle, and any other equipment you might require. The all-levels vinyasa class begins promptly at 6:30 p.m.
You might know him as the host of the Chris Gethard Show, or maybe from the Beautiful/Anonymous podcast, or maybe from any number of the books he has authored, or maybe from his role as clerk in The Other Guys. Or maybe you don’t know him at all. Regardless of your wherewithal, Gethard will be at the Magic Bag performing a batch of standup that will likely involve funny-but-sad drunken antics.
@ The Gaelic League, Corktown
Home to world famous Slows BBQ, Sugar House, Detroit Artifactry, Eldorado General Store, Gold Cash Gold, Astro Coffee, Navin Field, Bobcat Bonnie’s, and a number of other super hip joints, Corktown seems to be the neighborhood of the moment. Learn the history behind this stretch of Michigan Avenue and beyond on this five hour-tour that will take you through homes, lofts, buildings, and churches constructed during the 1840s through 1900. You’ll step inside Holy Trinity and St. Peter’s churches and learn the details about how the historic neighborhood came to be. You can pick up wristbands for this event at the Farmer’s Hand or the Gaelic League.
Runs noon to 5 p.m.; 2068 Michigan Ave., Detroit; facebook. com/corktownhistoricalsociety; tickets are $15.
@ Cinema Detroit
Runs 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.; 237 Joseph Campau St., Detroit; 503508-7185; thebeeryogisdetroit. eventbrite.com; tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door..
Doors open at 8 p.m.; 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; 248-5441991; themagicbag.com; tickets are $25 in advance.
The late Prince’s directorial debut, Under the Cherry Moon is a musical drama film starring Jerome Benton of The Time and Kristin Scott Thomas (this flick was her feature film debut). Despite all the greatness we just mentioned, the film was not considered a success at the time of its release. In fact, it was a commercial and critical flop — it tied with Howard the Duck for Worst Film of the year in the 1986 Golden Raspberry Awards. But there is no shit that ’80s nostalgia fiends and the death of a legendary, visionary musician can’t polish, so we present to you this cinematic ugly duckling, which is sure to be admired for the swan it has grown to be.
Starts at 7 p.m.; 4126 Third St., Detroit; 313-482-9028; cinemadetroit.org; tickets are $10.
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FEATURE
Gentlemen, stop your engines
As Belle Isle’s Grand Prix hits a crossroads, gearheads and park enthusiasts tussle for its future by Tom Perkins
Imagine opening up a newspaper and reading the following news article: Brooklyn, MI — Gearheads are once again protesting outside the Michigan International Speedway as naturists
begin setting up for the annual Michigan International Speedway Butterfly Show and Indigenous Bird Release. The three-month preparation for the event begins April 8, when a group of hippies and bird watchers starts converting half of the raceway into a park. As part of the transformation, crews
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seedbomb the MIS’ infield, lay sod over half of the concrete racetrack, and fill the pit area with native hornbeam and basswood trees. In the middle of the racetrack’s infield, naturists dig out a permanent 400,000-square-foot protected wetland. The late June show is marked
by the release of a rainbow of butterfly species like the great spangled fritillary, tawny crescents, and gorgone checkerspot, which flutter above the raceway as a symphony of songs from piping plovers and sharp-tailed grouse fill the air. It’s a joyous event filled with laughter and love, and is capped with a bonfire and moondance at the day’s conclusion. Yet gearheads and auto racing fans feel no joy. They view the annual event as disrespectful to car culture and a gross misuse of a facility that was clearly designed to be a racetrack, not a park and butterfly sanctuary. An activist who started a Facebook group called “Michigan International
Park or race track? Belle Isle pictured in May 26, 2017. JAMES PIEDMONT
Speedway: Racetrack or Butterfly Sanctuary?” says its members will picket outside MLS today. “I think it’s quite clear that this facility was made for auto racing, not seedbombing,” the activist argues. However, naturists see it differently. They point out that they’re only sodding over half of the race track, so drivers can use the other half during the preparation. The racetrack is located amid the rolling slopes and kettle lakes of Irish Hills, so everything in the area should be used for nature, bird-watchers argue. They also highlight that the three-day show attracts 60,000 butterfly lovers and is a boon to local businesses.
Yet the event’s well-connected and wealthy organizer refuses to speak to anyone about the issues, except sympathetic alternative media outlets.
The idea that naturists would turn MIS into a park for a butterfly show is, of course, absurd. And yet that’s arguably what happens each year — with the roles reversed — on Belle Isle, when the Detroit Grand Prix’s organizers take over nearly half of the 982-acre island park for about three months each spring and summer, turning it into a heavy construction zone and, eventually, a 2.3-mile race-
way. This year, construction started in early April, with the race scheduled for June 2 through 4, and breakdown will last several weeks beyond that. While there’s a lot of debate about the race’s impact, a few things are objectively true. The construction project to set up and break down the Grand Prix stretches between 80 and 120 days — the longest of any race in the world, as we verified with other race organizers and media outlets. Visit Belle Isle during the April, May, or June construction period, and you’ll find the island’s western half filled with concrete barriers, cables, portajohns, cell phone towers, trucks, forklifts, shipping containers, construction barrels, billboards, and miles of fencing. Next to the Scott Memorial Fountain, race organizer Roger Penske’s team laid a permanent 400,000-square-foot concrete paddock, and Belle Isle’s streets are left gridlocked with traffic jams when they start closing roads in the weeks around the race. Understandably, the intrusion is dismaying and frustrating to many regular parkgoers who visit the island for its natural beauty. Though most critics aren’t calling for the race to be canceled altogether, many want the construction timeline to be shortened to several weeks, or the race moved to a different venue — downtown or City Airport are some suggested alternatives. That would leave southeast Michigan with both a world-class race and a park, as it can’t have both in one venue, they argue. But there are two sides to the debate. The gist of race organizers’ and gearheads’ case consists of a few points. Detroit is the Motor City, they say, and in the Motor City, even parks are race tracks. Penske spent a lot of money “fixing up” Belle Isle since 2012, so he should receive carte blanche over it. The Grand Prix’s charity event raises a lot of money for the park, and the event brings around 60,000 visitors to the island — therefore, it’s worth the sacrifice. Also, there aren’t any other venues that will work. The debate over the competing philosophies reached a new pitch this year as the press coverage continued, the number of people and groups voicing frustration grew, and around 100 residents showed up to a planning session on March 29 on the island to ask for the race’s removal. Then, in May, race fans allegedly began trying to intimidate freelance reporter Michael Betzold, who wrote critical stories about the race for Motor City Muckraker, calling him on his personal phone to harass him. All this comes at an important moment for the Grand Prix’s future. The Michigan Department of Natu-
ral Resources, which manages Belle Isle, is in the process of developing a long-term plan for its use. Separately, the contract with the city that allows Penske to convert the island into a racetrack for up to 11 weeks (though they’ve been allowed to go over that timeframe) is set to expire in 2018, but negotiations for a new contract are underway. Over the next year, the DNR is going to decide what parkgoers’ experience on Belle Isle will be like for many years to come. Is the island an events venue first, and a natural treasure second? Will it be filled with the roar of race cars and months of construction? Or will the island’s management do something more in line with the Belle Isle Conservancy’s mission, “to protect, preserve, restore, and enhance the natural environment, historic structures, and unique character of Belle Isle as a public park.” To get a handle on a complicated issue, we spoke with those on all sides — the DNR, the Belle Isle Conservancy, race fans, and a loosely organized group of park users who protest the race. Penske’s team declined to comment for this story, but we previously spoke with them about many of the issues. However, the deal could already be close to done. One island official told the Detroit City Council that the DNR will sign a new contract with Penske that only shortens the 11-week construction timeline by two weeks, though island officials later stressed that discussions are ongoing and nothing has been signed. Still, that news is troubling to Sandra Novacek, who has volunteered on Belle Isle for decades and helped organize the protests. “It’s not supposed to be for a private enterprise to monopolize it for 20 percent of the year. It’s a public park and shouldn’t be taken over in that way. It’s really the only place of its kind in the city for people to go,” she tells MT. “I don’t believe (Penske’s team) is helping Detroit by destroying the natural landscape of what is a wonderful, premier park that’s for its residents, but is taken over by a private enterprise.” Ron Olson, chief of the DNR’s Parks and Recreation division, ultimately has the final say in what happens with regard to the race’s future. In 2013, the then-going-bankrupt city of Detroit leased the island to the State of Michigan for 30 years, and it became our 102nd state park, putting it under Olson’s purview. He previously said the city’s contract tied the state’s hands, and adds that he’s for striking a balance. “All big cities have these iconic events, and the race puts Detroit on
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FEATURE ‘It’s a public park and shouldn’t be taken over in that way. It’s really the only place of its kind in the city for people to go.’ the world stage,” he says, stressing the benefit to the business community. “The economic impact is another impact that needs to be thought through.” The situation is exacerbated by Belle Isle’s recent growing popularity. According to Olson, more than 4 million visited it last year, up by 600,000 from 2015. That comes as a result of both downtown’s repopulation and the DNR’s improvements to the island now bearing fruit. However, more people live nearby and want to use the island for its intended purpose, and a coexistence with the race has grown more strained. Alcatraz Of course, the Grand Prix’s benefit to the business community comes at a cost. You’ll need to visit Belle Isle to appreciate the scale of the construction project and its transformation from a park to a raceway. Like, for example, how those spectacular May and June sunsets in which the sun dips behind downtown’s cityscape are marred by billboard-sized ads hanging from steel cables and fencing that — to someone who didn’t know better — may seem in place to protect Belle Isle from a siege. Or how the four rows of fencing between the Scott Fountain and river aren’t that dissimilar from what you might find on, say, Alcatraz. But if you’re going to experience all that, then you’ll first have to get on the island, and that can prove difficult during the months of April, May, and June. That’s when the Penske construction season is in full swing and the MacArthur Bridge, Jefferson Avenue, and Sunset Drive are among Detroit’s most congested roadways during many weekends and evenings as visitors sit in hour-long traffic jams to access the island. Then when the roads are clear, there are multiple State Troopers and DNR officers who set up speed traps (oh, the irony) to pull ticket revenue out of park visitors. Even when there’s less restriction in the construction’s early and late stages, critics say the visual destruction of the island is one of the biggest issues: Five miles of cement barricades, protective fencing — which
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leave Sunset Drive looking more like the Lodge — cell phone towers, and grandstands just don’t fit in with the island’s sassafras or river birch trees. Then there’s the issue of noise pollution and the event’s environmental impact, which critics have called on the DNR to study. In past years, park users have returned to Belle Isle after the race to find that the vehicles jammed onto the island over race weekend turned acres of grass fields into acres of mud pit. Though the grass was quickly replaced, some of those areas were converted into permanent gravel pits or concrete lots. Beyond that, it’s also worth noting that no other state park in Michigan is subjected to this kind of event, and that leaves many frustrated — like Detroit resident Lizzy Emmons, who we talked to as she biked through the park. “It looks bad. Mostly I just go somewhere else or to the other side (of the park). It’s dangerous with concrete walls and everything else, so why bother?” she says. Beyond anecdotal conversations with parkgoers, there’s plenty more evidence of the increased frustration with the sustained headaches. Even the cheerleaders at The Free Press criticized the race over the traffic jams and have repeatedly reported on the annual issues. MLive questioned the construction timeline’s length, covered the ongoing debate, and wrote about protests. Motor City Muckraker has kept watch on the planning process, while Metro Times documented Belle Isle “race fatigue and frustration.” Additionally, organizations like Detroit Audubon and the Detroit Greenways Coalition have made public statements about their concern. “We do not support the programming of events like the Grand Prix or Red Bull car races,” Detroit Audobon writes on its site. “These events and the infrastructure they require are in conflict with nature, are disruptive to birds, and they do not belong on Belle Isle.” Support from race fans Despite the opposition, the DNR says there’s plenty of support for large
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FEATURE scale events among the general population. Last year, it hired a marketing firm to gauge support for the race by calling random phone numbers in metro Detroit. However, the survey’s questions asked respondents — many of whom only visit the park once per year — if they supported the idea of holding the race on the island. Not surprisingly, 67 percent of residents agreed that Belle Isle was an appropriate location for large scale events, including the Grand Prix. Why not? On the face of it, the idea of holding the race here doesn’t seem like a terrible idea.
However, actually doing so is much more complicated and controversial, and leads to a whole set of unforeseen issues that upset large numbers of park users. The DNR’s survey didn’t ask about more specific problems, which include traffic jams, the three-month construction period, limited access, and so on. In fact, no one has polled regular park users to determine how they feel about the race and the aforementioned issues — until now. Over the last year, we asked 50 parkgoers whether the Grand Prix should be moved off the island. Most
Cars race at the Belle Isle Grand Prix in 2016.
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of those who responded said they visit Belle Isle more than once per year, and 68 percent said the race should be held elsewhere. A much larger number — 89 percent — said the construction should be shortened to four weeks or less, while 71 percent said it should be shortened to two weeks or less. Of those we polled, 74 percent said they had been caught in a long traffic jam caused by Grand Prix construction, and 97 percent said traffic jams are a problem. Those we polled were most upset with the length of the construction timeline, the traffic
MIKE FERDINANDE
jams, and the visual impact. Other than our own informal survey, the DNR and Belle Isle Conservancy sought public input during a public input session for the DNR’s planning. Reports from those who attended claim nearly all of the 100 people who showed up had one concern — the Grand Prix. Protracted construction At 11 weeks, the Detroit Grand Prix construction timeline is longer than any other IndyCar or Formula One street race in the world. While Penske’s team has previously denied that their race is the longest, we verified this with other race organizers and media outlets. In Toronto, for example, the Honda Indy assembled its 2014 race in the city’s downtown in around three weeks. All work was done at night and required no full road closures except during race weekend, according to the Toronto Sun. That’s despite the fact that crews were working within a much more complicated downtown setting.The setup and breakdown for the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, Fla. was shortened from nine weeks to around three weeks following complaints from residents and the business community, according to the Tampa Tribune. And in Monaco, which hosts the largest street race in the world, construction and breakdown takes around seven weeks. Race organizers there contend with tight, winding streets, elevation shifts, and a track that runs through dense, urban areas that appear more challenging than Belle Isle. A race with a construction and teardown period of comparable length in Melbourne, Australia’s Albert Park is highly divisive and subject to annual protests, which attracted as many as 20,000 residents one year. Parkgoers in Melbourne air grievances similar to those in Detroit, saying the construction schedule is too lengthy, and an urban, public park shouldn’t be used for private auto racing three months each year. If the Grand Prix’s construction is shortened to nine weeks, then it will be in line with one other controversial race — the Long Beach Grand Prix. Detroit Grand Prix chairman Bud Denker previously told MT construction here requires months because the track is the longest in the world. But a quick calculation shows that it takes Penske’s crew 33.4 days to set up one mile of race track, while it takes Toronto’s far more efficient crew approximately 11.8 days to set up one mile of track in a seemingly far more complicated environment.
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FEATURE Denker also previously claimed that the setup on Belle Isle takes more time because Penske’s team takes extra precautions to make the race more safe. Despite this, a firefighter was injured during the 2015 Detroit Grand Prix, and the track deteriorated during the 2012 race, causing the race to be postponed. In all likelihood, it’s about the money: It costs less to slowly set up over months instead of days, and there’s nothing in the contract stopping Penske from doing so. Making the case for the race It’s true that Penske and his annual Grand Prixmiere charity raise a lot of money for the island. In 2015, it pulled in $1.1 million for the Belle Isle Conservancy, and just under $500,000 in 2016. On top of that, Penske pays $200,000 annually to use the park. The charity funds are a giant boost for the Conservancy, which previously had a budget of $500,000. Conservancy president Michele Hodges notes that the haul pays to run the aquarium and makes other programming possible. “Public-partner partnerships are important to the advancement of the Conservancy’s mission,” she says, adding that the relationship is no different from when other nonprofits partner with different enterprises. She adds, “Going forward, we will need to move into a capital campaign mode as we require a significant number of corporate and individual partnerships.” But is it possible to partner with organizations that won’t demand use of the island for three months in return for money? Novacek, who volunteers with organizations that seek donations from philanthropists and foundations, thinks so. She says it’s likely that foundations were less interested in Belle Isle 10
years ago because the then-corrupt city government mismanaged the island, and there was no guarantee that philanthropists’ support would go to improving and sustaining it. With the DNR in control and running the island properly, she says, philanthropists are much more likely to support the cause. Moreover, Novacek says the money that the Grand Prixmiere raises and Penske pays is small potatoes compared to what’s out there via foundations that won’t require converting the island into a racetrack. “If you need the money, at least get it from someone who will follow the mission of the Conservancy,” she adds. “Find other donors that share this mission to preserve, promote, and protect the natural landscape of Belle Isle, instead of using the money from an organization that doesn’t have that mission.” However, many race fans argue that since Penske paid for so many improvements to the island, he deserves control. They use colorful descriptions like “shithole” to describe the island before Penske’s team arrived, and credit him with singlehandedly cleaning it up. It should be noted that the DNR and Conservancy made some wonderful improvements in recent years. But there’s no evidence to support claims, for example, that crime on the island is down. A Detroit Police official previously told MT that there are no numbers to support that because there was so little crime to begin with. It’s also worth taking a closer look at Penske’s investment. He says he spent $4.5 million laying a racetrack and $250,000 installing a drainage system around the raceway’s footprint. He has also helped fund or paid for new LED lighting on the MacArthur Bridge, the cement paddock
The concrete barricades make parts of Belle Isle feel like The Lodge.
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TOM PERKINS
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FEATURE
The pit area pictured in early May.
for the race crews, improvements to the Casino where media and race personnel operate, improvements to the Scott Memorial Fountain, new sidewalks around the racetrack, new benches around the race, improvements to picnic shelters around his track, and so on. But critics say Penske building a raceway on Belle Isle for his own purposes shouldn’t be misrepresented as an act of generosity to improve a public park. There’s also a debate over what qualifies as an improvement. Is a permanent 10-acre cement paddock and widened roads an improvement? Critics say, “no.” Beyond that, officials argue that attendance hit 65,000 in 2015, and organizers claimed in 2014 there was a $47 million economic benefit for the city. Critics argue that the race could be moved elsewhere and have the benefit of maintaining both attractions. Also, sporting event’s economic impacts are often greatly exaggerated, and the island’s isolation leaves many especially skeptical of that economic impact. However, the isolation could be the key to the island’s appeal for the Grand Prix, says Eliot Erlandson, a 23-year-old automotive designer who races in his spare time, started a nowinternational car club in high school, and teaches an auto design course at the College for Creative Studies. He notes that race tracks around the
TOM PERKINS
nation are closing due to noise complaints. In Michigan, there used to be 192 tracks. Now, less than 40 remain. “Predominantly, the reason it wouldn’t work somewhere else in the city is because ... of noise. Try putting a track in the middle of the city — it’ll get closed down as fast as it opens,” he tells MT. “Part of it is that the noise is further away from people out on the island.” What’s next? Like Erlandson, Olson says he doesn’t know where the Grand Prix would go if the state doesn’t sign another contract with Penske. Of course, that shouldn’t be his problem. His concern is the park’s well being, and his fear over what would happen should the state not re-up with Penske reveals a lot about where Olson’s mind is at on the issue. Otherwise, it’s a joy to listen to Olson talk about all of his other plans for Belle Isle, and, with the DNR here, there’s now the kind of leadership and competence that was missing from one of Detroit’s treasures for so long. The DNR’s planning process, Olson tells MT, includes considering how to redevelop the island’s defunct zoo, redeveloping the vacant boathouse, dealing with aging infrastructure like sewer and water lines, improving services like pavilion rentals, and generating more revenue so that the park
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is in a much more sustainable position. He mentions taking landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s original vision into consideration, and nurturing and sustaining Belle Isle while improving its assets. “The big, main goal is to get the island restored, but to be careful about new ideas,” Olson says. “We have to have a very thoughtful process and make sure we don’t make enthusiastic short-term decisions without thinking about longer-term impact.” On those issues, the DNR seems genuinely interested in what’s best for the island and the park, and it will seek more public input in June or July, Olson says. But where the DNR and regular park users’ visions diverge is when the Grand Prix is brought up. There’s a little bit of concern that a new Penske deal is already done, and the Grand Prix will still have nine weeks of construction to set up — not much of a change. However, Olson says “nothing is set in stone.” While the DNR is in charge, a lot of the frustration over the race has been directed toward Hodges’ Conservancy, though she stresses that while the Conservancy has a voice in the process, it doesn’t make decisions. She notes that the city signed the contract with Penske and her nonprofit is working with it. The Conservancy, she adds, has “never made a value judgment” about the situation. In other words, it’s neutral in the debate,
which, in such an emotional debate, is a difficult position to be in. However, in response to questions about her support for the race, she clarifies, adds, “There are some things that need to be addressed, and this will be the first opportunity for the DNR to do that in earnest. The DNR will have to look hard at what is acceptable and what’s not.” Another option for those who want a future free of Belle Isle auto racing is to work with state representatives, but the district in which Belle Isle is situated was represented by Brian Banks. He was forced to resign as part of a plea deal in a February assault case, and his seat has yet to be filled. In the Senate, Belle Isle’s district is represented by Sen. Coleman Young II, who is in the midst of a mayoral run and didn’t return the MT’s requests for comment. And it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the Republican-run state government stands up to a billionaire on behalf of park users. The most encouraging sign is that the Conservancy is embarking on a new capital funding campaign. Perhaps once it’s demonstrated that the island can stand on its own without sacrificing its assets, then the state might be more inclined to run the island sans an auto race. letters@metrotimes.com @metrotimes
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FOOD
Culturally advantaged by Jane Slaughter
Lamb agdeh, lamb haneeth, malawah bread. TOM PERKINS
Back in the olden days, if you
went to a restaurant whose ethnicity you were not, the servers might warn you away from certain dishes. That stopped happening a while ago, as more white-bread people started seeking out interesting cuisines and small restaurant owners began to look for a larger audience. So it was a throwback the other night, when I ordered a “cultural platter” at Sheeba in Hamtramck, and the server said, “That’s just for Yemeni people.” Turns out he was half right, but still. If my read over just two visits is correct, Sheeba serves a mainly Arabicspeaking clientele, and servers don’t normally need a lot of English. We sometimes had to give up finding out just what was in a dish, and had to make multiple requests before certain items would be delivered. It seemed like Sheeba was the less-modernized alternative to the larger Yemen Cafe just two doors down, which brightened up considerably when it moved from its former hole-in-the-wall space last year. Neon, no less. Those who’ve been going to the Yemen Cafe or to Sheeba for a while are well aware of how different Yemeni cuisine is from the Lebanese fare we’ve grown up on. (Look at a map; the two countries are 1,500 miles apart.) For one thing, Sheeba hasn’t moved away from traditional lamb to the cheaper beef you find in many a Leba-
nese restaurant. We got three lamb chops for $13, what a deal. If you order in advance, you can get a whole stuffed baby lamb. For another thing, you’ll find unfamiliar dishes like aseed, muishakal, and seltah, and a fantastic lamb broth. Let’s start with that. The menu promises that entrées come with a choice of rice or hummus and soup or salad. In practice, we found what was brought to the table somewhat random, with extra food offered for free on both our visits. We loved the simple but rich lamb broth, with a few onions. (And maybe a hint of cloves?) It seemed even more soul-nourishing than chicken broth. A deconstructed salad of tomatoes and iceberg, on the other hand, came with a tasteless thick yellow dressing. Hummus was a bit bland but decorated with dots of tart olive oil and a heap of tomatoes and onions in the middle. It’s worth it to have your pita crisped on the tandoor, for an extra buck that may or may not appear on your bill. Rice is beautiful, glistening, and ultra-tasty, with flecks of orange (carrots?) and gold (saffron?) and allspice. The Sheeba Cocktail is rather spectacular, a brilliant gold swirled with red in an incompletely blended smoothie where mango and banana flavors alternate. Banana smoothies and carrot and orange juice are also possible. But you’re probably wondering
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about that mysterious cultural platter I was warned off of. Aseed is available just on weekends (at least that’s what it says in print) and is translated as “dumplings.” It’s a thick white-flour dough that takes a lot of kneading and produces a stiff white mound, stiffer than mashed potatoes. The Sheeba chefs make an indentation in this for a salty gravy, and serve it with roast lamb on the bone (haneeth), so tender it can be pulled apart with a fork. With just the right amount of melty fat, the lamb was the part of the dish worth paying for; it seems every culture has its super-bland comfort food (e.g., dosas, Wonder Bread). Another cultural platter is seltah (or saltah), “a boiling clay tray” which is served in a clay pot. Remove the contents to your plate, or I promise you the contents will not cool down till after your companions are done eating. I loved this thick stew, with zucchini, tomatoes, and potatoes infused with lamb broth (best guess), and, according to some recipes, fenugreek. A vegetable stew, muishakal, was frankly less interesting, but it can be made with lamb or chicken. Another stew, lamb agdah, used okra, red peppers, potatoes, and carrots, with hunks of lamb still on the bone. A companion ordered the familiar shish tawook and it was the usual: chunks of dryish chicken, green peppers, tomatoes, and onions on a bed of rice. Those bargain lamb chops were
Sheeba
8752 Joseph Campau Ave., Hamtramck 313-874-0299 sheebahamtramck.com Wheelchair accessible Entrées $8-$13, “cultural platters” $6-$18 7 a.m.-1 a.m. every day
overcooked by some standards, but I savored their charred exterior. They came with rice and a potato. Breakfast can be foul mudamas (fava beans) or fassolia (white beans), or eggs, hummus or baba ghanoush. Or liver. At dessert time, four people shared a big plate of masoob: mashed bananas and pita with cream and honey. The pita crumbs created an oatmeal-like texture, and it had a wholesome, nursery quality — more comfort food. As I said, service at Sheeba may not be what you’re used to. Used dishes aren’t removed. The language barrier is real, though not insurmountable. On a return visit I’d focus on the lamb: roasted (haneeth) or in one of the several stews. I’d leave the aseed to those who have childhood memories of it, and the chicken to… well, I don’t know why anyone would order chicken here. eat@metrotimes.com @metrotimes
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American Coney Island.
36 May 31-June 6, 2017 | metrotimes.com
HARRY R. HOPPS, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Things began to change when international media began turning their cameras on Detroit several years ago. It roughly coincided with the April 2012 release of the book Coney Detroit, a loving photographic tribute to the “coney island” restaurants that have helped keep metro Detroiters fed for generations. But the appreciation really picked up with the enlightened patronage of culinary celebrity Anthony Bourdain, who bellied up to the low counter at Duly’s Coney Island in 2013. In 2014, we sat down with Grace Keros of American Coney Island fame, and she told us: “Now, everyone wants to be on the bandwagon and be part of Detroit or have something to do with Detroit.”
Coney dog from American Coney Island. EUGENE KIM, VIA FLICKR
A century of chili
Considering the coney dog on American Coney Island’s 100th anniversary by Michael Jackman
According to the historians at American Coney Island, we mark a hallowed occasion today: the arrival of that fabled confection in Detroit with the opening of American 100 years ago. In metro Detroit, few among us don’t know that timeless creation: a frankfurter in a natural casing ensconced in a fluffy steamed bun, topped with beanless beefheart chili, chopped white onions, and yellow mustard. As with most popular foods, origin stories are easy to come by and hard to prove definitive. Take a look at the coney dog’s culinary ancestor, the classic hot dog: Its provenance is shrouded by the mists of time, attributed to perhaps a dozen different inventors, innovators, or marketers. All one can say is that the hot dog’s genesis is clearly German, and it represents both an early American “finger food” and vies with Chinese food for first dibs on what we’d call today “fast food.” Which is to say that few noted the rise
of the frankfurter in the late 19th century because, as foods go, it was considered downmarket and unremarkable. Journalism giant H.L. Mencken was one of the few to countenance them, although he dismissed the inventions as “a cartridge filled with the sweepings of abattoirs.” But he also envisioned a time when hot dogs would be made for grander appetites, writing: “Throw off the chains of the frankfurter! There should be dogs for all appetites, all tastes, all occasions. They should come in rolls of every imaginable kind and accompanied by every sort of relish from Worcestershire sauce to chutney. The common frankfurter, with its tough roll and its smear of mustard, should be abandoned as crude and hopeless. … The hot dog should be elevated to the level of an art form.” It was no doubt intended as satirical humor, and yet much of his monologue has come true. Go any place in America
and chances are you’ll find a regional version of the frankfurter. Yes, there’s the New York hot dog, overflowing with sauerkraut or sautéed onions. But there’s also Cleveland’s Polish boy, the Hawaiian puka dog, the Southwestern Sonoran, the dragged-through-the-garden Chicagostyle hot dog, Georgian creations topped with slaw, Texas-style corn dogs, and many more. They’re artful, inventive, and employ ingredients that help tell a local story. Vindication for hot dog lovers was a long time coming. The spotlight wasn’t cast on the frankfurter until about 20 years ago, when Pittsburgh’s Rick Sebak created the widely viewed A Hot Dog Program. The documentary zoomed in on various hot dog restaurants throughout the country, and helped contribute to a growing awareness of the depth and breadth of our frankfurter heritage. Sebak’s show, however, came nowhere near Detroit’s coney culture.
A Detroit original No popular dish is created out of a vacuum. Most of them come from being at the confluence of different trends, and their success tends to be a product of them. The foundation of the dish is undeniably German, but the trimmings were all pretty new to the area 100 years ago — except for chopped onion, of course. Texas-born chili con carne was making inroads around Michigan, finding early followings in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Green Bay, Wis. The R.T. French Company is believed to have first introduced yellow mustard as a condiment for domestic use on frankfurters at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The creamy yellow topping was introduced as “cream salad” mustard — and is now called “classic yellow” by the present owners of French’s. But perhaps no single event contributed to the proliferation of coney island diners like Prohibition. Though it’s seldom discussed today, most working-class men in the United States did not eat in restaurants, which were for the upper class. Instead, workingmen ate in taverns, where food was freely available for those drinking. Outlawing taverns had more than the effect of giving the tremendous profits of selling alcohol to organized crime: It meant that businesses offering meals to workingmen had to find a place to compete. Most of the practices of the modern food-service industry, with its razor-thin profit margins, find their roots in Prohibition, as the diner emerged as a viable business. Naturally, these working-class eateries served simple fare to men in a hurry to get back to their jobs. It was only natural that they should draw on the lunch wagons of the turn of the last century, the “street food” of an earlier era. Add it all together and what you get
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FOOD As the most honest of us are aware, when Americans are inflamed with passion, they often make their worst decisions. is a dish that not only met the demands of the day, but did it with a bit of style, when you consider that chili and “cream salad” mustard were bits of flair as new to Detroit as, say, poutine is today. (And, true to form, the poutine dog made its debut at Tigers games in 2014.) Why a ‘coney dog’? Another difficulty hampering the appreciation of the coney dog is how it comes by that unusual name. Why should a diner be called a “coney island” (lowercase) and its chief delicacy be known as a “coney dog?” The researchers of Wikipedia suggest that the Greek and Macedonian immigrants arrived in New York after “hot dog” signs had been banned at Coney Island, so they began calling the hot dogs “coney islands” instead. (According to multiple sources, the name “hot dog” was suppressed because it called to mind accusations that frankfurters contained dog meat — an association perhaps once true but worn away by time.) Frankly, we doubt this story a bit. Immigrants didn’t arrive all alone, figuring things out from signs. They arrived into established communities ready to receive them. Surely New York’s community of Greek and Macedonian immigrants could hip the new arrivals to the various names for “frankfurter.” And “frankfurter” is a perfectly good word, probably the best word of all. Unlike “red hots,” “wieners,” and “coneys,” there’s no misunderstanding what a frankfurter is. You’ll still hear a hot dog called by that name in New York, whether it’s covered with chili or sauerkraut. But very few Michiganders use the F-word to describe one. Here, it’s usually a “hot dog” — unless, of course, it’s a “coney dog.” So it seems sort of hard to believe that a handful of newly minted Americans arrived in Detroit ready to force a new name for “frankfurter” on three-quarters of a million people already familiar with the dish. It seems to us something else was at work here. That suspicion finds support in a
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phone call we received three years ago. The caller, reader Jerry Holowka, reminded us about just how strong anti-German sentiment was in the 1910s, just when hot dog shops were being established in Michigan. Today’s Americans might be surprised, about 100 years after the First World War, at just how vilified the German people were in 1917. For several years, American mass media had been beating a drum for war against the Central Powers. They used every tool at their disposal to condemn the Germans, regardless of whether it was true. For instance, in May 1915, the Bryce Report was published with sensationalist and evidence-free accounts of rape and mutilation, of barbaric German soldiers bayonetting babies and committing mass rape. American newspapers simply reprinted it. That same month, the British ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed by Germans, killing 128 U.S. citizens. Their deaths were played up in the news media. (Less publicized was the fact that the ship was carrying hundreds of tons of war munitions, hence presenting a suitable military target.) In the next two years, Germanophobia became a national affliction, and culminated 100 years ago with the publication of the Zimmerman Telegram in March 1917 and the United States officially entering the war against Germany on April 6, 1917. As the most honest of us are aware, when Americans are inflamed with passion, they often make their worst decisions. Such it was 100 years ago. In that environment of propaganda-driven hatred, something bizarre happened to the way Americans viewed all things German. For a more recent example, recall 2003, when France’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq prompted many restaurants to remove France completely from the name of our beloved national side order. Instead, many Americans declared our Julienne-cut fried potatoes “freedom fries” instead.
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Would you accept a hot dog from this man? We didn’t think so. Anti-German 1917 U.S. propaganda. HARRY R. HOPPS, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Though we giggle about it now, in 1917, having a German name was no laughing matter. Anything with a German connotation was relentlessly Anglicized and Americanized. Though they now remind us of America and not Hamburg, Germany, hamburgers were dubbed “liberty sandwiches.” Sauerkraut became known as “liberty cabbage.” Companies, streets and even towns with German names were changed to English- and American-sounding ones. For instance, on Sept. 1, 1916, in Ontario, the town of Berlin changed its name to Kitchener. (On the American side, in 1919, Michigan’s Berlin was renamed after the World War I battlefield of Marne.) Would a fledgling business owner be likely to tie his fortunes to a compromised name like “hot dog” (remember that charge that franks contained a little Fido?) — or a name associated with a baby-killing, power-mad country the United States declared war on last
40 May May31-June 31-June6,6,2017 2017 | | metrotimes.com metrotimes.com 40
month? In that light, doesn’t choosing neither start to look good? In that environment, why not pick a name associated with the all-American playground known as Coney Island? In any event, this new generation of immigrant hot dog shop owners would be unlikely to call their creations frankfurters. But what was that we said about a dish representing a certain time and place? Though the propaganda-driven prejudice seems ugly from today’s vantage point, for many it’s just the essence of regional quaintness for a place like Detroit to name frankfurters for a place 600 miles distant. Actually, we take that back: To New Yorkers, Coney Island is a place. For metro Detroiters, it’s a place in their hearts — and stomachs. eat@metrotimes.com @metrotimes
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MUSIC
Kathy Leisen.
42 May 31-June 6, 2017 | metrotimes.com
DOUG COOMBE
Beautiful perfect things Rejoice, for there is a new Soft Location album by Mike McGonigal
Kathy Leisen lives in a
former bait shop on an East Side canal street, has perfect teeth, and might be Detroit’s last best-kept musical secret. An interdisciplinary visual and performance artist as well as a musician, she is not in fact from California, despite everyone thinking she is all the time — from both alleged “vibes” and her blonde hair and tan skin combination. Maybe that comes from her Mom, who is from California? More likely, the vibes emanate from her output. Leisen’s work in any media is playful and intense, yet appears effortless. She doesn’t release records or perform too regularly, either with her band Soft Location or solo. But her music is haunting, melodic, and wholly idiosyncratic. And honestly, it’s as perfect as those teeth. Last week, her band Soft Location, for whom she writes all the songs, released its third LP, Land Electric. That’s cool if you haven’t heard about it yet. The group isn’t playing locally until August; the album is self-released, and they don’t have the dough to hire a publicist. A collaboration with the band Tall Firs under the name Glass Rock was released on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label in 2009, and Leisen has two other musical projects in town, but they’ve yet to release anything. You might easily live here and even be a total music nerd and never have heard Soft Location or Leisen. While a Detroit band, two of Soft Location’s members no longer live in the area; the keyboard player lives on the west side of the state in Berrien Springs, while the bassist lives in New York City. Soft Location has never toured, never had their music used in a film, TV show, or commercial, and the only radio station to ever have shown them any love outside of Ann Arbor is Jersey City’s taste-making WFMU. Their ideal show, the one they have talked about since first getting together, is a prom. Leisen started Soft Location in 2002 after Matt Kantor, an old pal from
high school, gave her a guitar and she figured out how to play it. A similar thing happened a few years ago, when a different friend gave her an electric piano, on which she now plays what producer and fan Warren Defever calls “made-up chords.” Leisen’s music isn’t avant-garde; it’s pop music, and is meant to be. And her songs are all love songs, even — hard to be more conventional than that. But the songs have their own internal herky-jerky rhythms, and often resist traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. There’s the sense that this is the only way this band can exist, that their aesthetic choices are probably not even something they talk about much. When you see Soft Location play live, the keyboardist holds his instrument in his lap and it’s falling off his legs the whole time, as if no one ever told him that a keyboard stand is a thing you can use. The drummer plays left-handed while sitting on milk crates in a way that looks a bit awkward. It’s so good. Soft Location is Ben Good on synthesizer; Matt Kantor on bass; Chris Morris on drums and percussion; and Leisen on guitar, keyboards, and vocals. Where their first two LPs — Diamonds and Gems (Senseless Empier, 2005) and Fools (Physical Things, 2013) sounded like some lost 1980s pop classic with baroque 1960s elements woven into its DNA — Land Electric (Wet Tracks, 2017) is fullersounding, despite there being less guitar in the mix. Leisen’s vocals are front and center, and it’s never been clearer that she could be a solo R&B singer if she wanted to. When she starts to sing, you don’t want her to stop. Leisen’s vocal prowess and songwriting skills themselves are the clear focus of Land Electric. The thing was recorded back in 2013, and produced by Aaron Mullan and Defever. Defever, who dislikes most contemporary rock-based music, is over the moon about Soft Location. He has also recorded unreleased solo
music by Leisen for probable use in a future solo record. “A few years ago I was leaving a party, and thought no one had noticed me slipping out the door without having said goodbye, when a friend met me at my truck and handed me an LP and said ‘I want you to have this; I think you’ll really like it,’” Defever says. “I politely thanked them, although that is what people say when they give me really terrible music, so I placed the LP in the back of my pickup, where it stayed for six months. By the time I brought Diamonds and Gems by Soft Location into the house, it was beat up pretty bad, and the cover had a record ring.” “The first time I actually listened to Soft Location, it turned out I did really like it; I loved it,” Defever continues. “It’s perfect. I couldn’t reverse-engineer it in my head. I couldn’t see the lines where the pieces had fit together; it was as if it had just occurred naturally — each song a beautiful, perfect thing. It was such a mystery, an uncrackable nut. I mentioned it to my friend Davin Brainard, and he said he knew them and they played the album all the time at the Bronx. We went to the Bronx bar, and it wasn’t just on the jukebox, but the album’s title song “Diamonds and Gems” was playing when we walked in the door. How could there be a band so great from Detroit, that sounded so perfect, that I had never heard of before, that contained nobody I already knew? Was this a dream? Did I hit my head? Was I in a coma? A short time later, I received a message from the band asking “would you record us” and again I couldn’t believe this was really happening. I told them I was their biggest fan, and the rest is history.” Leisen and I meet on a rainy Wednesday afternoon at Trinosophes in Eastern Market. Leisen drinks a Topo Chico and is still beaming over the fact that I asked her to send me the lyrics to the new album. I’m especially taken with the words to “The Park,” with their New York School poetry-type heavy simplicity. The song starts out with only the sound of drums and echoey vocals, and then slowly bass, keyboards, and more vocals are introduced. It begins “Walked in the park again/ Went around a few times/ Thinking that I love my friends/ And my new life/ And now that things have settled down/ I still feel lost/ And every time I get with a new man/ I just pause.” Which is so perfect. Who doesn’t do that with a new love or crush? A little later on the song goes, “I can dance
and drink all night/ I’m like a modern man/ I can do what I like/ But after you/ I’m so afraid I’ll let it down/ After you, I’m so ashamed I’ll fail somehow.” Metro Times: Let’s start with this song on here, “The Park.” You perfectly nail those fears anyone has when starting to fall in love. Kathy Leisen: That song definitely gets to like that feeling of, “Is it just me who can’t get this right? Because right now it sure feels like it.” That feeling is like ugh, you know. And certainly everyone feels that, right? I mean I’d imagine so; I only know what it’s like to be me. That song is very fun to play with the band because everyone seems to connect emotionally to it. To me that’s always the magic of this band, is that it’s like an emotional Voltron. You know Voltron? There are different people, and they’re all in these machines, and they come together to form a giant machine. That’s how it feels, that wonderful feeling of a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Separate, it’s not the same. I’ve always found that to be the same both musically and emotionally with this band. This band rarely plays live and the trajectory of the band is a 15-year span, at this point. This is our third real record, and this was recorded four years ago. I think because we have been a band for so long, and we have no plans of stopping being a band, it’s just that the spacing is not the same as other bands. We live in different cities, so we’re just going at a different pace. MT: How do you feel about this music four years later? Leisen: Like do I have more insight, or less insight or any insight? I would say some combination; I’m thrilled. When I listen to the songs, and the lyrics here, I think I’m less judgmental now. I’m less critical and in general, I’m more appreciative of the fact that so many talented people are involved on it. Mostly, I feel appreciative. MT: You’ve now known these people in Soft Location for close to half your life now? Leisen: Yes, well Matt Kantor the bass player who I started Soft Location with in 2002; we met in high school. The group has always been a familial relationship. Ben Good is the synthesizer player and Chris Morris is the drummer and we all met at Utrecht Art Supplies, which now is Blick. Chris and I met while working at Utrecht,
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MUSIC which was always a blast, the people you met while working there, at the corner of Warren St. and Woodward Ave. And Ben was one of them; he came to Wayne State to go to graduate school for art, so we met him. MT: Utrecht was an interesting place to work? Leisen: It was sometimes druginfluenced behavior on display, but there was always so much eccentricity, yes. That to me is continually fascinating — like, what is the line between what is art and what isn’t, you know? Personally I find the line offensive, but that’s just me. There’s that idea that I’ve heard attributed to different people, but the distinction being if it’s manipulative, then that’s not genuine. MT: That brings me to the idea of persona in your lyrics, and how directly I connect to them on an emotional level, at the same time that there is a remove here; you’re able to find humor in situations that at the time might be painful. Leisen: I don’t even know why I’m compelled to write songs, it’s just that I have a feeling and I want to do something with it. And songwriting gives me a vehicle to explore it, get it out, find comfort, share with my friends, with my bandmates. I can make this thing that is then able to interact in a much more fun way than when it’s just inside me. Now I’m 39, and I definitely feel much different as a human than when we recorded Land Electric. I would say it’s a wave that I ride. And the music just seemed to come to me as a natural thing to do. MT: You have more than one way that you express yourself. What is it that makes something come out in visual art, and what makes it become a song? Leisen: Music is much more primal. With art and visual things it’s more about ideas. Music feels like a deep place inside of me that I don’t understand. And music itself is the way I engage with that. MT: Is there a theme to this album? Three of the songs have the word “love” in the title. Leisen: Oh, yes! Though I can find broader meanings in these songs, they’re love songs in the sense of being about another person or my relationship to another person. And when we chose the selection of the songs we did it this way because we felt like at
Kathy Leisen performing.
the end of “Careless Lives,” it just becomes a loop. You can see the album as a whole, just the cycle of emotions of any romantic affair. There are just so many highs and lows, and at the end she’s in love again and then is like, “What’s this feeling, I don’t know this feeling; I don’t trust this feeling,” on and on. So now when I write lyrics, I’m not focused on that, and I think that gives a totally different feeling. MT: What are they focused on now? Have you given up on love? Leisen: I feel that I’ve expanded my definition or maybe… I’m not sure. When I think of romanticism — and I think definitely these songs have a fair amount of romanticism going on in them — I think of being removed. Because to me romanticizing a place or a person or a feeling is making it almost fictionalized. Because it’s the idea of it that is so lovely. Now when I write, I’m more focused on trying to be more direct. The songs on Land Electric sound like a person who’s conflicted, and that’s often been my experience in romantic relationships — feeling conflicted. Emotions are so complex, and I think a lot of times when I’m compelled to write a song I don’t know what’s going on, when they’re red, green, blue, purple. Like in “Careless Lives,” when the line is “I think I want to settle down/ I think I want to pick up and move.” I don’t know up or down, but I want. “I want to stare at the sun.” I want to be obliterated. MT: Will we be able to see Soft Lo-
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DOUG COOMBE
cation perform these songs live? Leisen: Yes, we’re playing at the BFF festival in August; I’m very excited. We’re making plans to record another one, hopefully when we get together then. With some of my newer keyboard songs, actually, so that will be interesting to see how that goes. MT: And you have a solo record in the works, right? What else? Leisen: Yes, that will happen when it happens. I recorded with Warren in the last year. And I have recorded with another band in New York where I play drums, and Matt is the bass player, and our friend Alex is the guitar player; it’s called No Motion. We finished half of a record and are planning on doing more. Then I play here in Detroit in a band here called Raft House which features Nathan Shafer, Jaime Lutzo, and Jordan Schug, who also plays cello on Land Electric. We recorded an album at that church near Roosevelt Park, Assemble Sound. MT: How is making a Soft Location record different from a solo one? Leisen: The past two records, and this one in particular, I spent a huge amount of energy on in terms of organizing. And I was like, “We’ve got to do this,” and worked so hard to get all these different people involved. This was an extremely ambitious undertaking. I kept wanting to add more things on. While I was recording a solo record, I had a tremendous realization about myself: Because I’m the leader of Soft
Location, and always found myself uncomfortable in that role, I’d be frustrated. What I found as I have been working on the solo record is that working with these people and being in this band gave me a tremendous amount of courage, and I didn’t even know. It’s a feeling I revel in: of appreciation, and humility. Now, Chris has taken on a leadership role, and that’s the whole reason this record is out there. He started a label to release it called Wet Tracks, and created a website, soft-location. com. MT: And what else is up with artsbased work and your own stuff? Leisen: I got a lot of stuff going on; it’s all very good. I’m working on a project to create work for a billboard downtown, above that bar Queens. And the Totems Riverfront Arts Festival will happen again in August, so I’ll do another performance there. And I have an exciting job for the summer, which is to help raise money with a crowdfunding campaign for Dabl’s MBAD African Bead Museum. Fifteen years from now, one of those deluxe reissue labels will probably do a supreme box set in whatever the preferred retro media of the time is — DAT tapes? A trunk filled with 78s? For now, you can pick up The Land Electric at fine local record stores, and catch them at the Seraphine Collective’s BFF Fest this August.
music@metrotimes.com @metrotimes
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MUSIC Filthy pie holes Nashville’s Birdcloud plays PJ’s Lager House by Amy Oprean
Country music itself
might be something of a nebulous concept here in 2017. Pop country acts have watered the genre down to little more than Pro Tools-produced pop music with a distant fiddle in the background. But Nashville’s Birdcloud is having none of it. The two-woman act, comprised of Makenzie Green and Jasmin Kaset, has spent the last few years creating music that keeps country music’s outlaw spirit alive with self-deprecation, wry humor, and truckloads of raunch. Loathe to be called a “comedy band,” Birdcloud insists that the humor of their songs is just a by-product of honest storytelling. There’s “Saving Myself for Jesus,” which calls on the ironies of “technical” abstinence in the name of religious piety. Then there’s “I Like Black Guys” — hilarious from the first tentative line, “Daddy…?” — spoken from the viewpoint of a girl essentially torturing her racist father by listing all the types of non-white gentlemen she’s into. Make no mistake; it’s not all social commentary. They also sing about washing their “Big Ol’ Pussy” in the Mississippi River and renaming Williamsburg “Vodkasodaburg” in honor of their drink of choice. For all the implicit and explicit humor their music provides, their live shows are more of a drunken spectacle than anything else. Though many a snarl and raising of a drink is directed at the audience, Green and Kaset play for themselves, intensely staring into each other’s eyes as they play their instruments or else finding themselves in sexually charged positions, a spectacle that crowds merrily lap up. Recently, they’ve also started wearing diapers onstage. Metro Times spoke with Green and Kaset in advance of their show this Friday, June 9, at PJ’s Lager House. We talked about people walking out of their shows, their weird chemistry, and why Detroit is one of their favorite places to play. Metro Times: Your music could be described as country with a punk attitude. Do you draw inspiration from punk rock, at all? Makenzie Green: Yes, definitely. I grew up around a lot of skate videos and got a lot of music from them. It would be like Charlie Daniels or Minor Threat, the Judds or the Clash. Our live show is fucking bonkers even though we only have
Makenzie Green, left, and Jasmin Kaset of Birdcloud. COURTESY PHOTO
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two instruments and two mouths, that energy is definitely why we have our diapers and lipstick on. MT: Who are the country singers, past or present, who are doing what you’re doing, which is telling a story through a song? Green: Fuck. Pop. Country. That’s not where it’s at. Tom T. Hall, Red Sovine, Roger Miller, and Warren Zevon were all weirdos with great stories and a sense of humor about horrible shit that happens just from being alive. Nobody does anything quite like us though. MT: What music did you listen to growing up? Were you in previous bands? Jasmin Kaset: Me and Mak both grew up on country radio. I started and quit playing guitar as a preteen then picked it back up in my early 20s. I was a drummer in a band before I ever started playing guitar again. Green: Yeah, country radio, punk rock. I went to a Church of Christ school where they didn’t allow anything but a cappella music, so no instruments. I got a guitar when I was 16 and played everything by ear. Fuck you, COC, I’m a recovering Christian in a naughty, naughty band. MT: What is it that makes you two work well together? What do you have in common, and where do you differ, personality wise, music taste, attitude, etc.? Kaset: I think Mak is a lot more into Aerosmith than me, and she hates the Beatles, whereas I don’t. She also likes Pink’s later stuff, and I think Pink peaked with Try This. We work well together because we both want what’s dumbest. It’s palpable. But when we aren’t on tour, we aren’t like the Monkees where we live in little bunk beds and get little jobs together and get hypnotized and stuff. Do love the Monkees though. Green: I like the Stones; the Beatles are for kids. And yeah I like Rocks and Toys in the Attic and Get a Grip, fuckin’ sue me. Jas really digs Adele, describes her songs as “powerful.” We work well together because we have similar mental disorders. Cut from the same idiot cloth. It’s magical. MT: I find it interesting the people who “get” your music and the ones
who don’t. How do you handle the nights where the crowd is upset or offended? Green: Sure, people walk out sometimes. That’s fine. Lately we’ve been wearing diapers, like I said, so people already know they’re going to see something off. It’s a fun trick; we have a ball. If you’re at a Birdcloud show, we assume you’re there to party and cut loose from the real world for a few minutes. If we aren’t your bag, I don’t see why you’d want to be there. I can’t listen to it either. Musical sadists. MT: You come to Detroit a lot. Do you love us? Green: Yes, Detroit is one of our favorite places to play. The crowds always get suuuuuuuuuper hammered. Our best friend Craig Brown lives in Hamtramck, and we always want to be with him. We will make a whole tour just to go to Detroit and Chicago. Kaset: Detroit is the funnest. We love Craig, and Brad and Patty at Kelly’s. MT: Who have you collaborated with, and who would you like to collaborate with? Green: We’ve never really collaborated with anybody. We are about to sing on (Detroit rapper) JP from the HP’s new record. That guy is a genius. So fuckin’ funny. MT: I saw on your Instagram that you’re going on a European tour in a couple months. How do you think your music will translate in Europe? Green: I know there’s a huge country and blues scene in Sweden. I don’t know what they’ll think, but we never know anyway. It’s going to be like that show An Idiot Abroad with two drunk country girls playing music. I think we’ll be a hit. Even if they don’t get all the things we’re saying, we still put on a hell of a show. Kaset: There’s never been a more appropriate time for Americans to make fun of themselves. Birdcloud plays this Friday, June 9 at PJ’s Lager House with support from Nashville’s Thelma & the Sleaze and Detroit’s own Double Winter; Doors at 8 p.m., 1254 Michigan Ave., Detroit; pjslagerhouse.com; $10.
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MUSIC
Lost in translation
Catching up with Sigur Rós founding member Georg Hólm by Jerilyn Jordan Sigur Rós.
When your editor says you’re going to interview one of the most enigmatic post-rock bands of the past 20 years, you sweat a bit. Then when you Google “Sigur Rós interview” and the first 10 results are articles detailing what might be the most painstakingly awkward, almost completely silent interview since the dawn of digital music journalism, you start to regret accepting the assignment altogether. I mean, it was 2005’s Takk that provided the only salvageable memory from the first time I made love and it was 1999’s Ágætis byrjun that served as the passageway to the mushroom trip where I saw my future spelled out on the late night waves of Lake Michigan. Sigur Rós is that band, a deeply personal road marker for memory, fantasy, and release. So, you shake off your nerves, do your research, and allow yourself to feel relieved when the band suggests an email interview to appease tour sched-
JANUZ MIRALLES
ules and time zone differences. It has been four years since the ethereal Icelandic threesome released their last record Kveikur, a moody and brooding retaliation to the swelling, sky-opening catharsis of their previous works, an incredibly unique sound which they have pioneered. While Sigur Rós keeps us guessing as to which incarnation of their tormented beauty will reveal itself next, bassist, multiinstrumentalist, and founding member Georg Hólm takes a moment to shed some light on inspiration, success, and why Sigur Rós isn’t the soundtrack to the afterlife. Metro Times: How is touring different when you’re pushing new material versus not? Is there a pressure to appease the audience, or does set-list formation reflect more of where you’re at as a band? Georg Hólm: It’s always a balance.
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I’m not sure we feel we are in the business of “pushing new material,” but we are usually most excited by what we’ve just written, since there are things we don’t yet know about the songs that we are clear to test and see what happens. It’s good to develop songs in this way live before they become “fixed,” but if you wait too long, it can then be tricky or boring trying to record them because all the experimentation has already been done. [In regards] to the show, it sounds trite, but you have to think of it as a journey, with different stages on the way. The setlist for each tour will be largely planned around how many people are onstage and what that allows us to do. If there’s 11 people, it’s going to be different to how it is now where it’s just the three of us. Right now it’s darker and rockier. MT: Touring is a remarkably vulnerable and reflective experience. What
have you learned about each other or yourselves over the course of your 20 years of touring? Hólm: That we are all very different, but bound together by this common creation. Touring is a coccoon-like existence and if there isn’t a deep-seated commonality underpinning it, it isn’t going to last so long. And, of course, the trials and demands it places on a body are more than outweighed by the feeling you get playing a great show. MT: In an interview you were asked “How do you create a song?” To which you replied, “We just sit down and create a song.” Although I don’t doubt that to be true for veterans like yourselves, I have to question the trigger. What triggers the need to write a song? What emotions or life experiences drive you to start something new? Hólm: Whatever is going on in your life at that precise moment will inevitably bleed into what you create.
If you are angry then anger will manifest itself in the writing. If you are serene or contemplative, that is what will out. As we’ve said before, we skirt analysis, even between us, and don’t ask questions or decide what is going to happen. We just play. MT: Sigur Rós is most exhaustively described as cinematic. Are there any notable films or film scores that have played a role in shaping your sound? Hólm: We are all big fans of film scores, although it is quite a broad church between the three of us. That said, I can’t think of any time a movie score has directly influenced anything we’ve done. We were once asked to make a song for the end titles of the U.S. remake of Let the Right One In, and that allowed us to approach writing in a different way, because we were making music for a vampire movie. The song wasn’t used in the end and ended up as “Varúð” on the Valtari album. MT: Is it a conscious decision to make an anti-pop (or as closely anti-pop as you’ve come) record like Kveikur? Or was it an organic channeling of change and resistance?
Hólm: Most artistic ventures are a reaction to what’s gone before, and Kveikur was the record we made after the overt beauty of Valtari, which was conceived as an ambient album. It was also the first record we made without Kjartan Sveinsson, and there was a desire to go to a less pretty place than perhaps we had been since ( ) a decade earlier. MT: Are you ever surprised at how deeply connected people are by your music despite language barriers and traditional hook-chorus structure? What do you think makes Sigur Rós so transportive and transformative? Hólm: The lack of meaning allows the listener a lot of room to maneuver within the music. Also, I don’t think Sigur Rós is a communal experience; it’s very much a one-on-one between us and the listener, and that allows for immersion and the transport you talk about. MT: Your sound is, for lack of a better word, atmospheric. How has Iceland and your many travels impacted your sound? Or is the world your music inhabits/weaves more fantasy? Hólm: We are in Iceland and Iceland is in us just by osmosis. We resisted this line of enquiry right up until Heima
when we accepted that being Icelandic might have something to do with our sound. Prior to that we always felt it was completely irrelevant. We certainly do not make any conscious effort to “write Icelandic.” MT: Who do you make music for? Hólm: Another cliché: ourselves — first and foremost at least. But we are always amazed and humbled by people’s response to our music. Old, young, happy, sad, anywhere and everywhere. There’s an unintended consequence of it being meaning-free is that people seem to find themselves in the music somehow and for that we are grateful. MT: Jónsi said in an interview that “Music is a totally spontaneous, pure art form.” When do you know a burst of spontaneity has resulted in something “good” or “true” or that the timing is right? Are there plans to release new music this year, or is that as spontaneous as the creation process? Hólm: There’s a phrase, “Inspiration finds you working.” So you just have to go to work, make music and every once in awhile some of it might turn out to be touched by the light of inspiration. You generally know right there and
then if it’s good. The rest you can use as b-sides : ) Seriously, we have a recording system on the road with us and are beavering away at making new music day by day. Some of this should emerge in some form or another in the not too distant future. MT: How do you define success? Do you believe you’ve achieved it? Hólm: Success can only be defined in artistic terms, and no artist will ever consider any work perfect or even finished. So, in that sense, you are always about whatever’s next since there’s the chance and expectation that perhaps next time everything will fall into place. MT: Finally, do you believe in heaven? If so, how likely is it that Sigur Rós is on eternal rotation there? Hólm: Being Vikings, we believe in Valhalla, and no, it’s Mayhem. Sigur Rós performs on Friday, June 2 at the Masonic Temple; 500 Temple St., Detroit; Doors at 7 p.m.; Tickets $39-$105.
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MUSIC Livewire
This week’s suggested musical events by MT staff
THURSDAY, 6/1 Anthony Hamilton @ Sound Board
Grammy award-winning (and 10-time Grammy-nominated) R&B singer-songwriter Anthony Hamilton returns to Detroit with his signature great music and 2016 album What I’m Feelin’, which will definitely please fans. He also did the fantastic and memorable song “Freedom” for Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Hamilton, who burst onto the scene in 2003 with Comin’ From Where I’m From, has legions of fans across the R&B scene and beyond because of his solid music and great lyrics.
Doors open at 8 p.m.; 2901 Grand River Ave., Detroit; olympiaentertainment.com; Tickets are $57 - $75.
Anthony Hamilton. COURTESY PHOTO
THURS, 6/1 -SAT, 6/3
WEDNESDAY, 6/7
FRIDAY, 6/2
FRIDAY, 6/2
Fuzz Fest 4
Gregory Porter & One Freq
Fresh2Life
Tin Foil
@ UFO Factory
@ PJ’s Lager House
This show is the release party for Detroit hip-hopper Mixo’s Fresh2Life (The Man Who Sleeps in Time Machines). In addition to the Mixo performance, a bunch of other great underground Detroit acts will be there, including DJ JMac, Blizzard, Blue Raspberry, Undifined G, Sacremento Knox, and the always-solid Nick Speed. The album, which focuses on experiences worldwide living under oppressive systems is definitely relevant to the times and is more than worth buying.
You’ve probably heard about Tin Foil, and how they are one of the best bands around these days. Those voices speak the truth, and for their record release party, the propulsive quartet has put together a diverse crew to support. The Beauticians and Werewolf Jones playing, while the Deadly Vipers DJ in-between acts. There will be $2 Pabst throughout the party.
@ The Blind Pig
@ Chene Park
Another year, another Fuzz Fest at the legendary Blind Pig. Not just an Ann Arbor hotspot, the Blind Pig is one of the coolest venues around, which is why you shouldn’t miss this chance to see 33 bands (11 bands each night) within its walls. Day one’s line up alone is enough to sell those interested in going. Just have a look: Child Bite, Human Skull, JUNGLEFOWL, Wild Savages, Bubak, Minihorse, Duende, the Jackpine Snag, Warhorses, Visitors, and — always excellent — the Gruesome Twosome will be there.
Doors open at 8 p.m.; 208 S 1st St., Ann Arbor; blindpigmusic. com; Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, and $20 for threeday passes.
Chene Park kicks off its Jazzy Nights Series with a performance by Gregory Porter, who will be joined by musician, composer, producer, and teacher Emanuel Harrold. Harrold has received multiple Grammy Awards and nominations, including playing the drums in Porter’s band. The performance marks the beginning of Chene Park’s riverside summer concert series.
2600 Atwater St., Detroit; 313393-7128; cheneparkdetroit.com; Tickets are $15-$20.
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Doors open at 9 p.m.; 2110 Trumbull St., ufofactory.com; Tickets are $10.
Doors open at 9 p.m.; 1254 Michigan Ave., pjslagerhouse. com; Event is free.
Mdou Moctar stars in a Tuareg remake of ‘Purple Rain’. MARKUS MILCKE
SATURDAY, 6/3
SUNDAY, 6/4
TUESDAY, 6/6
WEDNESDAY, 6/7
Mr. Big
Beat Match Benefit Brunch
Skin Lies
Rain the Color Blue with a Little Red in It
@ The Token Lounge
Mr. Big claims to be the first hardrock supergroup, and while we could offer up Blind Faith or a handful of others, who could deny them the glory of such an achievement? Despite being around since the ’80s, Mr. Big has managed to keep putting out records, like this year’s The Stories We Could Tell. It’s pretty rare for a band that’s 25 years old to have the same lineup, but Mr. Big has managed to pull it off with Eric Martin on vocals, Paul Gilbert on guitar, Billy Sheehan, on bass and Pat Torpey on drums, as it’s always been.
Doors open at 6 p.m.; 2849 Joy Rd., Westland; ticketweb.com; Tickets are $ 35.
@ Trixie’s Bar
@Trinosophes
@ Bank Suey
In April of last year, the Seraphine Collective started something special. In order to help out the ever-growing, everchanging musical culture of Detroit, it began its first workshop series, Beat Match Brunch. The workshop showcases local female-identified DJs who are trying to break onto Detroit’s scene. The collective recently won a Knight Arts Challenge grant for $15,000, but the catch is that it’s a matching grant, so in order to get the money, the collective first must earn $15,000. If you’re interested in hearing some great DJs that you’ve likely never heard of, eating delicious brunch, and helping out a very good cause, this might be the event for you.
In an early stop on his tour, Portland’s Skin Lies will swing by Hamtramck to bring his great music and multimedia art back home (he’s originally from Ann Arbor). Joining Skin Lies are Tyler Hicks and Jordan Halsey. Hicks is a fantastic guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, and he might be a genius but don’t tell him that because the dude is super sweet and we don’t need him to get cocky. Halsey hails from Toledo, and like everyone and their mom these days he makes ambient music. You’ll want to get there early enough to catch his set.
wDoors open at 6 p.m.; 2656 Carpenter St., Hamtramck; facebook.com/ trixiesbarhamtramck; Tickets are $5.
Doors open at 11 a.m.; 10345 Joseph Campau, Hamtramck; eventbrite. com; Tickets are $75.
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In an age of constant remakes of beloved films comes one that absolutely breaks the mold, at least partly because the participants were unfamiliar with the source material. Rain the Color of Blue With a Little Red in It adapts the classic artist-inturmoil narrative of Prince’s Purple Rain, but set in Niger. Sahel Sounds founder Chris Kirkley made the film in collaboration with members of a nomadic tribe. The music is loud, guitar-heavy, Tuareg-rock — a hypnotic sound that choogles, bristles, and occasionally explodes. Mdou Moctar is an absolute international breakout star; come see why on Prince’s birthday. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; 1464 Gratiot Ave., cinemalamont.com; Tickets are $8.
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CULTURE Around the world in 11 days
Cinetopia Film Festival returns with an international marathon of top-notch flicks by Lee DeVito
It seemed like a no-brainer:
Other Midwestern cities like Chicago, Cleveland, and Indianapolis all had world-class film festivals — so why not Detroit? That was the original premise behind Cinetopia Film Festival, which will celebrate its fifth year of bringing some of the best movies from festivals around the world to metro Detroit. The fest kicks off on Thursday at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theater and continues with 10 days of screenings at theaters across metro Detroit. “We were going to film festivals and we were seeing a lot of great films that just weren't playing in the metro Detroit area, and the only places that they played were these international film festivals,” says Russ Collins, the festival’s founder and executive director of the Michigan Theater. “We wanted to make sure that that was available for audiences here in southeastern Michigan.” And as Collins points out, not every film that is screened at these big fests gets a wider release. “So the Detroit area was missing out on these great films that were playing in these festivals at Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Sundance, Tribeca, and SXSW,” he says. Now, Collins says Cinetopia is officially a stop on the film festival circuit. “We developed relationships with some of the best distributors,” he says. “So now after five years they're coming to us and saying, ‘Can we do this during Cinetopia?’” With more than 60 films and well over 100 screenings across metro Detroit and Ann Arbor, the festival’s programming is wide-ranging and eclectic — a mix of big-name festival breakout hits as well as the obscure. It kicks off on Thursday with The Hero, starring archetypal cowboy Sam Elliott, who this time plays the role of a washed-up actor from the ’70s. There’s also Sundance hit Patti Cake$, which tells the story of Patricia Dombrowski, a plus-size white rapper from New Jersey. (It reportedly sold to Fox Searchlight for roughly $9.5 million.) The film gets two screenings at Cinetopia; Saturday, June 3, at the Michigan Theater and Saturday, June 10, at the College for Creative Studies. Another festival hit is
McLaren, a documentary on the New Zealand racecar driver Bruce McLaren, will have its U.S. premiere at Cinetopia Film Festival. COURTESY PHOTO
the comedy Band Aid, which stars Zoe Lister-Jones and Adam Pally as a married couple who deal with their relationship problems by starting a band (with help from Portlandia’s Fred Armisen). That film also gets two screenings, at the Michigan Theater on Friday, June 2, and at Cinema Detroit on Saturday, June 10. Other screenings are special to Detroit. On Friday, June 9, the Detroit Film Theatre will screen an excerpt of Ken Burns’ upcoming documentary, The Vietnam War. The full doc is 18 hours long and officially airs on PBS in September, but the DFT screening offers a sneak peek. Co-director Lynn Novick will be present for a Q&A following the screening. Meanwhile, the festival will serve as the U.S. premiere of McLaren on Friday, June 2, a documentary on New Zealand racecar driver Bruce McLaren. (Fittingly, the film will be screened at the Henry Ford.) The festival will have a strong presence of locally made films as well. Destined, written and directed by Detroiter Qasim Basir, follows the alternate histories of a man named Rasheed. In one timeline, he’s an architect used to gentrify his old neighborhood; in the other, he’s a drug lord. The film screens on Saturday, June 3 at the Michigan Theater and Friday, June
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9 at the College for Creative Studies. Another Detroit film, 12th and Clairmount, is made of found footage from the time of the Motor City’s infamous 1967 summer of civil disturbance. It premiered at the Freep Film Festival earlier this year; it screens at Cinetopia on Saturday, June 3, at the Michigan Theater. Meanwhile, Symphony in D is a doc about composer Tod Machover’s ambitious 2015 effort to capture the character of the city with a performance of a song with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; it screens on Saturday, June 10, at the Detroit Film Theatre. And a returning series called “Detroit Voices” will close out the festival with a series of Michigan-made short films on Sunday, June 11, at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. And then there’s the oddball: Rat Film is the genre-defying documentary on Baltimore’s rats we didn’t know we needed. Cinetopia marks the film’s Michigan premiere; it screens at the University of Michigan on Saturday, June 3 and Cinema Detroit on June 10. And Bugs provides a dispassionate look at cultures that eat insects (don’t cringe; if human population continues the way it’s been going, we’re going to need to find
other ways of getting protein soon). The film screens at the Michigan Theatre on Friday, June 2 and The Henry Ford on Sunday, June 4. Of course, it would be impossible to see everything Cinetopia has to offer. But Collins says he hopes audiences will keep an open mind and see things they weren’t planning on seeing. “You go to a festival differently than most events that you go to. You go to the Jazz Festival, there are of course a few headliners, but there are also a lot of folks that you probably have never heard of unless you're a real jazz head,” he says. Cinetopia festival-goers should adopt a similar mindset, he says. “If you can, set aside three days, or four days, or if you have the capability, all 11 days,” he says. “Just go to film after film after film. You're going to stumble into stuff that you had no idea that you wanted to see.” Starts Thursday, June 1; various venues; see cinetopiafestival.org for the full schedule. ldevito@metrotimes.com @leedevito
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CULTURE
SHUTTERSTOCK
Savage Love
Looking by Dan Savage
Q:
I’m a middle-aged homo trying to figure out Grindr. Is it impolite to go on Grindr if you’re not looking for an immediate hookup? My preferred form of sexual relationship is the friendwith-benefits situation. I go on Grindr looking to make friends who could, at least potentially, be sex partners, but I like to do the friend thing before the sex. I’ve had guys call me an asshole because I exchanged messages with them for 20 minutes and then didn’t come right over and fuck them. Do they have a point? Does logging into a hookup app like Grindr imply openness to an immediate sexual encounter? — Talking Online Repulses Some Others
A:
Always be up front about your intentions, TORSO. The best way to do that is by creating a profile — on Grindr or elsewhere — that clearly describes what you want and what you’re up for. Because good partners (sexual or otherwise) communicate their wants clearly. Adding something like this to your profile should do it: “My preferred form of sexual relationship is the friend-withbenefits situation. I go on Grindr looking to make friends who could, at least potentially, be sex partners, but I like to do the friend thing before the sex.” Grindr is an app designed and marketed to facilitate hookups, but some
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people have found friends, lovers, and husbands on the app (usually after hooking up first). So being on a hookup app doesn’t automatically mean you’re looking for “right now,” and it certainly doesn’t obligate you to fuck every guy you swap messages with. But if you’re not clear in your profile or very first message about what you’re doing there, TORSO, guys looking for a hookup on that hookup app will be rightly annoyed with you. (The time and energy he sunk into you could have been sunk into someone looking for right now.) If you are clear, guys seeking instacock have only themselves to blame for wasting their time on you. Your timing could also have something to do with guys calling you an asshole. Are you exchanging messages at two in the morning for 20 minutes? Because most guys on Grindr at that hour are seeking immediate sexual encounters. If you’re just chatting in the middle of the night, then you’re probably wasting someone’s time — if, again, you’re not being absolutely clear about what you’re doing there. Also, TORSO, Grindr is location-based, which means you’re going to get a different experience based on where you’re using it. Some neighborhoods seem to be filled with messy guys looking for chemsex, bless their hearts. In others, you’ll find unwoke twinks who are on Grindr to swap (highly problematic) GIFs of black
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CLASSIFIEDS CULTURE women pulling faces. And if you’re in a rural area, it’s likely you’ll message your full cast of Grindr torsos within a few days. Think of Grindr as a giant gay bar — most guys are there to hook up, a few just want to hang out and chat, some dudes are really messed up (avoid them), and no one is at their best around closing time.
Q:
TO ADVERTISE WITH DETROIT METRO TIMES, CALL (313) 961-4060
I’m a 25-year-old gay woman and I’ve been looking for a girlfriend for the past two years. I post on dating websites, go to the lesbian club, take part in the LGBTQ+ scene at my university, and put myself in places where I might meet women. But I’m worried that my persona deters women: I’m extremely analytic, a doctoral student and university instructor. Whenever I meet a girl, our conversation always goes in the same direction: She thinks it’s cool I work with literature and then brings up her favorite pop-culture novel like Harry Potter. I say something like, “I’ve never read Harry Potter, but people rave about it. What do you like about it? I took an online Harry Potter test once for a friend, and it said I was a Slytherin.” At this point, things change. The girl I’m speaking with gets flustered. She says something like “Oh, I’m not good at describing things,” seemingly feeling pressured to give me an intellectual response, like I’m giving her a quiz. I’m not sure what to do about this. I am having trouble maintaining casual and fun conversations despite my intentions. I come off as intense. I think I’m a pretty attractive person, but my dating life is starting to make me feel differently. I work out regularly and take good care of myself. How can I find a woman I jibe with? — A Lesbian Obviously Needs Excitement
A:
You’re doing all the right things — almost. You’re getting out there, you’re not shy about initiating conversation, and you’re moving on multiple fronts — online, club nights, LGBTQTSLFNBQGQIA+++ groups. Join a women’s athletic organization — join a softball league — and you’ll be moving on every lesbo front. That said, ALONE, I’m surprised this hasn’t popped into your extremely analytic head: If Y happens whenever I do X, and Y isn’t the desired outcome, then maybe I should knock this X shit the fuck off. Your response to the mention of Harry Potter drips with what I trust is unintentional condescension. (“I’ve never read
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it… what do you like about it… I took an online test once for a friend…”) Don’t want women to think you’re administering a quiz? Don’t want women to get the impression you’re too intellectual for them? Don’t want to seem like someone incapable of keeping things casual and fun? Don’t administer quizzes, don’t subtly telegraph your disgust, and keep things casual by offering a little info about yourself instead of probing. (“I haven’t read the Harry Potter books, but I’m a huge Emma Watson fangirl. Who isn’t, right?”) And maybe go ahead and read Harry Potter already.
Q:
I’m a married woman whose hot, hung husband is into “beautiful women and pretty boys” (his words — and he means boyish men of legal age, of course). It took a dozen years to get that out of him. I’d watched him drool over pretty male baristas and waiters, but it wasn’t until I found twink porn on his computer that he came out about his “narrow slice of bisexuality.” (Again, his words.) Now that it’s out — now that he’s out — he’s anxious to have a three-way with me and a femme guy. I’m up for it, but the pretty boys we’re finding online who are into my husband aren’t into me. My husband says he would feel too guilty doing it without me, which means he may not be able to do it at all. I want him to do it. It turns me on to think about. I don’t have to be there. — Hubby’s Underlying Bi Biological Yearnings
A:
Let your hot, hung husband find a pretty boy he likes, HUBBY, then ask for the boy’s email or phone number or IG handle or whatever, and have a quick back-channel convo with him. Let him know your hot, hung husband (HHH) wants his ass and that you’ll be there — but only at the start. Once drinks have been served, the ice has been broken, and a little spit has been swapped (between him and HHH), tell him you’ll invent a reason to excuse yourself (your period, bad clams, whatever), leaving him alone with your HHH. At that point, HHH can decide for himself if he wishes to proceed without you but with your blessing (which you can toss over your shoulder on your way out of the room). Good luck! On the Lovecast, Rachel Lark and the Damaged Goods: savagelovecast.com. mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage
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Horoscopes
CULTURE ARIES (March 21- April 20):
God knows what it looks like where you are. The way I see it, the long awaited dream is about to hatch. My crystal ball is filled with images of love and success. What sounds too good to be true is contingent upon your ability to give everything you’ve got to this situation. Don’t get too wound up about getting it right to make good use of your intuition whenever the signs are clear enough to show you a change of plan is in order. Long lost loved ones are due to come around and add their support to whatever you’re doing. This reunion couldn’t come at a better time.
by Cal Garrison
LEO (July 21-Aug. 20):
What you assume will be like this forever is on the brink of change. This is one of those turning points that could slip by unnoticed, but is by no means insignificant. At the point where the wishes of the ego merge with the purpose of the higher self the scenery changes forever. Your light is beaming through the cracks. Not knowing what to do about it, you feel naked in the face of all the life that is filling up your heart. Those closest to you are there for you, in the spirit and in the flesh. The planets are on your side and everything will be coming up roses for a few more weeks.
TAURUS (April 21 -May 20):
VIRGO (Aug. 21-Sept. 20):
People won’t leave you alone. This could be feeling good or bad, depending on your situation. All the attention is less of an issue than what it’s taking to manage your internal affairs. You have no control over anything but your own actions. There are decisions to consider. Outside input may not be useful when it comes to certain things. You could be hearing one side of the story, or are only privy to what people want you to hear. Isn’t it interesting how it always comes down to maintaining your autonomy and remaining strong enough to handle everything yourself?
You want to approach things from a totally truthful place but you’re dealing with people who are completely deluded. Maybe it’s time to do what’s expedient. Knowing what you know, it would make more sense to blow this clambake, or at least let absence allow time to let the truth come to the surface. Things will blow over if your presence doesn’t keep reminding everyone of what they think you did. You don’t really need to stick around and keep an eye on this; it’s a tempest in a teapot that will die down the minute everyone sees that there’s absolutely nothing to it.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
You may not be 100 percent clear about what lies ahead, but your heart is connected to the pulse of things that are vibrating at the speed of light. Your heart’s desire lives on that frequency band. What you really want to be doing, as opposed to what circumstances call you to do, could be two different things. Losing the attachment to certainty will free your mind to focus on what you would do with nothing to restrict you. You’ve already stepped foot in a new frontier. What you find here will empower the deeper part of you to grab hold of what’s true and bring it to life. CANCER (June 21-July 20):
It would be great if you didn’t have so much going on. The weight of responsibility always makes it harder for you. Anyone else could overlook some of this, but you couldn’t live with yourself if you did. Kids, work, pending deals, and/ or side issues that have to do with ‘who’s taking care of who’ are all complicating things at a time when you’re in over your head and it’s enough already. You haven’t got the energy or the hutzpah to deal with half of this so cut down on your terminal need to be there for everything and focus on yourself and what you need for a change.
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LIBRA (Sept. 21-Oct. 20):
You know better than to get overly involved with this. The impulse to want to step in and manage situations that other people can’t handle needs to be held at bay, just long enough for life to iron things out without your help. As you wake up to the fact that you have better things to do, the bigger issue will turn out to be: “What’s next?” That question is about to answer itself, if it hasn’t already. The fates have conspired to put you exactly where you need to be. From this point on, as long as you continue to put out 100%, and show up on time, the miracles will keep on coming. SCORPIO (Oct. 21-Nov. 20):
Getting sucked back in to the stories that drove you crazy a few years ago, doesn’t feel like a good idea. It’s your choice, but you need to know that whoever’s enlisting your support won’t necessarily make a good ally. It is usually the case that people who need a partner need you way more than you need them, so before you sign up for this, check in with your real self. In other areas there are flames burning on various fronts. All of them hold a wealth of potential. Don’t put so much stock in the past and be patient as you wait for the next new leaf to turn over.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 21-Dec. 20):
The feeling that you need more information before you make your move could be misleading. No one can tell you what to do, but I have a sense that you’ve seen enough. You’re already awake to the fact that it’s your turn to assert yourself in a situation that could make you look like the bad guy. You have no way of knowing what will happen on the other side of this decision - but you’re more than clear about what will happen if you remain rooted to the spot. Hedging your bets and playing games that feed your denial mechanisms will cost you a lifetime of joy. CAPRICORN (Dec. 21-Jan. 20):
The intricacies of your situation defy analysis! If you could only find your way back to the point where everything started to get gnarly. In your world, the desire to maintain your decorum battles with revolutionary tendencies that get out of control. What’s happening right now looks like the end result of actions that were being undermined by ambition and greed. When you get to the bottom of the story that faces you now, best of luck finding a way to come to terms with the things that people do when they’re too cowardly to face either themselves, or the truth. AQUARIUS (Jan. 21-Feb. 20):
Overwhelmed by a flood of change, it’s OK to let yourself get swept way. This is one of those times when you’re better off going with the flow. As life opens up to a new sense of who you are, you need to hold steady and pay attention to the signs. Different people, places, and things have shown up to deliver a message that sounds more like what you want to hear. There are bound to be moments where you begin to see that your preconceived notions have reached their expiration date. The next few months will give you a chance to envision something entirely new and different. PISCES (Feb. 21-March 20):
Don’t be alarmed by what people keep telling you needs to happen. At the gut level, whatever’s going on has nothing to do with them. Your efforts to steer a new, more sensible course have taken a turn that will make it harder for others to take advantage of you. I see a couple of opportunities to branch out. This could involve some travel. It could also include a chance to study or teach. As the next few months unfold pay less attention to what people expect and focus more on your work. Give yourself plenty of space and time to bring what you’re doing to completion.
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