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Vol. 37 | Issue 38 | June 28-July 4, 2017
News & Views News....................................... 8 Visiting View....................... 12 Politics & Prejudices............ 18 Stir It Up............................... 22
What’s Going On................ 26
Feature After American Idol, Jena Irene Asciutto starts over................28
Food Review: El Catracho............ 36 The joy of Lebanese cooking with Al Ameer’s chef........... 38 Bites...................................... 40
Publisher - Chris Keating Associate Publisher - Jim Cohen Editor-In-Chief - Lee DeVito
EDITORIAL Managing Editor - Alysa Zavala-Offman Senior Editor - Michael Jackman Staff Writer - Violet Ikonomova Dining Editor - Tom Perkins Web Editor - Jack Roskopp Contributing Editors - Larry Gabriel, Jack Lessenberry Copy Editor - Sonia Khaleel 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
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CREATIVE SERVICES Graphic Designers - Paul Martinez, Haimanti Germain, Christine Hahn
CIRCULATION
Music
Circulation Manager - Annie O’Brien
Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham........................... 42 On sale now........................... 44 Livewire................................ 46
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Arts & Culture Detroit 67: Perspectives...... 50 Detroit Hustles Harder........ 56 Savage Love......................... 58 Horoscopes with
Cover photo: Doug Coombe
Printed on recycled paper
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NEWS & VIEWS
Underground Resistance co-founder Mike Banks addresses a crowd gathered at the record label’s headquarters to hear how Detroit can turn drag racing and techno into economic drivers for the city. Mayor Mike Duggan attended. PHOTO BY RAPHAEL MERRIWEATHERS JR.
Beat-driven
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan considers proposals to make Detroit a destination for techno and drag racing by Violet Ikonomova
Last week, in a nondescript
East Grand Boulevard building that houses the world’s lone techno museum, a group of world-renowned Detroit techno DJs and producers convened with big names from the street racing industry to promote turning the two vibrant scenes into fledgling economies for the city. Theo Parrish was there. Omar-S was there. And, remarkably, so was Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who sat, listened, and asked how he could support.
The message of the meeting at Submerge, which doubles as the home of acclaimed Detroit techno label Underground Resistance, was clear: Detroit is sitting on a wealth of talent that it’s forced to export, and other places wind up profiting. “Around the world, when you ask people about Detroit … what they say is cars and music,” said Cornelius Harris of UR. “We spend all this time and money saying how do you brand the city, but we don’t have to ask those questions, it’s already
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there. What happens is we have to embrace them.” “When you see movies like the Fast and the Furious, all that car culture came from here,” said UR cofounder Mike Banks, noting the films on illegal street racing make up one of the highest-grossing movie franchises in history. “Electronic music is a $6.5 billion industry globally. It was created here. The question is, of course, how much of that money makes its way back into the city? And the answer is very little of that.”
Banks and a group of UR artists and affiliates are hoping to make Detroit a destination place for techno and racing, much like Berlin has become a global hub for electronic music. That city embraced and adopted Detroit techno early on, and has become a place for DJs and producers around the world to go to grow their talent. Lax policies surrounding nightlife have allowed the club culture associated with the genre to thrive, and electronic music tourism has given Berlin a
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NEWS & VIEWS huge economic boost, with hundreds of nightclubs that legally operate around the clock. Solid numbers on how much money techno tourism brings to the city are unavailable, but UR co-founder Mike Banks says the city’s economic minister has estimated it at $900 million a year. In order to make something like that happen in Detroit, the music artists and race organizers say they will need two things from Duggan and city leaders: a willingness to loosen restrictions surrounding nightlife, and permission to turn City Airport — which could soon be slated for a redesign — into a race track. Let’s take these ideas one at a time. Historically, Detroit has not offered a friendly environment for underground and all-night parties. Save for one weekend a year — when the city welcomes an influx of electronic music fans from around the world for Movement — bars generally close or stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m., and Detroit police regularly raid or break up parties in unsanctioned locations they characterize as “blind pigs.” According to those who’ve helped cultivate the techno scene here, the genre has been unable to realize its full potential because of this lack of support. In late 2014, however, with Detroit just exiting bankruptcy, city officials began to recognize the untapped economic potential in techno. It was then that the nonprofit DetroitBerlin Connection was formed by members of UR and Berliner Dimitri Hegemann — the man who founded the famed club Tresor and has said he plans to build its first U.S. outpost at the Packard Plant. The following year, the group brought Detroit city council members and mayoral staff to Berlin, where they looked at how nurturing a creative subculture and repurposing industrial spaces could aid in Detroit’s economic recovery. But little has changed since that trip, and Detroit techno insiders hoping to push the issue further are now looking to Duggan for support. Suggestions made to the mayor at the meeting included adding a nightlife liaison to his staff and designating an official entertainment district where parties can go later and be held in unconventional spaces. The district is envisioned for the North End neighborhood that is home to UR and Submerge. DJ-producers Moodymann and Theo Parrish work out of spaces within a mile of the site. “We can get the people here, we can do all that,” said Harris. “We don’t need help from the city for
The Submerge building in the North End. LEE DEVITO
that, we’re just looking for an environment that’s amenable for that kind of thing happening.” Duggan seemed open to the idea of having a staffer handle nightlife but stopped short of offering supporting for an official entertainment district. “I feel like if the government designates something as the place where the creative types should go, I get a sense that a bunch are going to go the other way, just by their nature,”
together we can do it.” The mayor was also receptive to the idea of taking drag racing off of the streets and putting it in city airport, where advocates say a race track would be a money maker and jobs creator. It would also help make streets safer and keep people from being arrested. This spring, city officials revealed they were thinking about eliminating aviation activity at City Air-
According to those who’ve helped cultivate the techno scene here, the genre has been unable to realize its full potential because of this lack of support. Duggan told those gathered. Still, he said he would look into what the city’s special events office has been doing to accommodate events in raw spaces and expressed tentative support for allowing parties to go later. “I don’t have any problem with it, I was supportive of the 4 a.m. bar activity,” he said, referencing new rules that allow some places in Detroit to stay open later on some nights of the year. “We need to do it in a way that’s sensitive to neighbors and the like, but I think if we plan it
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port, which hasn’t offered regular commercial flights in more than a decade and has been losing the city money for years. They’ve commissioned a study to look into other possible uses for the airport, with a focus on economic impact and job creation. The site’s potential as a race track will be tested this summer with a pair of drag racing events that have come together following a protracted effort to obtain regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. And, incredibly, it appears it
was Detroit Police Chief James Craig who helped race organizers gain access to the site. “I don’t know how many cities in America can say their police chief is pushing for drag races, but [Chief Craig] thinks if we can prove that these events work really well this year, then we can talk about a permanent race track if there is a basis for it,” said Duggan. “So I want you to know you’ve got a huge ally, and we’re gonna support this and we’re gonna see how far it goes.” In addition to creating new revenue streams for Detroit, those pushing to turn the city’s racing and techno scenes into productive economies see it as an opportunity to develop underdeveloped areas by utilizing the talents and skills of people who already live in the city. For them, it’s especially important in the North End, a historically black neighborhood upon which the redevelopment of the area dubbed “greater downtown” is encroaching. “We wanna make sure that … we don’t get pushed out,” said Harris. “[Gentrification is] something that we’re looking at and saying ... what can we do and what kind of help can we get from the city to make certain that doesn’t happen here. ... We can actually take our successes and help the city of Detroit be that world class city that we already know it to be.” news@metrotimes.com @violetikon
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NEWS & VIEWS Visiting View
As new development attracts new people, Detroit officials need to help keep the city affordable by Aaron Handelsman and LaToya Morgan
What makes a renaissance?
New buildings? New people? Increased quality of life? For whom? In Detroit, there appear to be competing metrics. On the one hand, the editorial pages of Detroit’s newspapers and business magazines jubilantly tout the flurry of new businesses, stadiums, and construction projects — almost all of which are subsidized by public, taxpayer dollars — in the newly minted “7.2,” or the number of square miles in the greater downtown. On the other hand, Detroit has an avoidable displacement problem. Tax foreclosures and water shutoffs alone threaten tens of thousands of households. At the same time, there is also an affordable housing crisis caused by limited federal investment in unsustainable affordable housing, and a local prioritization of middle-income households at the expense of low-income Detroiters. For Detroit to address its housing crisis and experience a true renaissance, elected representatives need to champion and create new resources for truly affordable housing. Right now, developers are generally held to an informal requirement to make 20 percent of new residential units “affordable,” and an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance in the works would put the requirement into law. But the draft ordinance does not go far enough to address the lack of affordable housing in Detroit. While it promises to create new “affordable housing,” it would actually subsidize middle-income families. This is because “affordable” housing is based on the average income of the Detroit region — the most income- and racially segregated region in the country. Affordable housing is typically defined as 80 percent of the average income of the region, or the median family income. It helps to look at the numbers to illustrate the problem. The average household income of the metro Detroit region is $68,000 for a family of four. The average household income in Detroit is $25,764. The administration’s informal policy and Councilmember
Mary Sheffield’s proposed ordinance create housing for households with incomes at 80 percent of the regional average median income (AMI), or $54,900 — an income that is more than two times higher than the average Detroit household income. This policy is not solving the affordable housing crisis and mitigating housing instability. Families earning less than $25,764 (30 percent AMI) per year make up the largest demographic in Detroit, and about two out of every three families in Detroit earn less than 80 percent AMI. In other words, all of the newly developed affordable housing built in Detroit isn’t actually affordable to most Detroiters. A partial solution to this problem would be an adequately and sustainably funded housing trust fund dedicated to expanding permanently affordable housing and accessibility for average Detroiters. Councilmember Sheffield’s proposed Inclusionary Zoning ordinance — currently before the Council’s Planning & Economic Development Committee which is comprised of Councilmembers Sheffield, Gabe Leland, Scott Benson, and Brenda Jones — includes a provision to create a housing trust fund. But Detroiters need to know the facts and advocate for an adequately funded affordable housing trust fund that works for the most vulnerable Detroiters, secures public investment for the long term, and has the public oversight necessary to ensure success. A housing trust fund is a tool used by over 550 cities around the country to create and preserve affordable housing. In Detroit, we need to guarantee that the majority of the funds will serve the most economically vulnerable. If we want to make sure that all Detroiters have access to safe, accessible, and affordable homes, we need new investments that ensure that outcome. Structural poverty will not be solved by housing solutions alone, but providing all people with a stable home does impact people’s ability to acquire and maintain jobs, education, and access to
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healthcare. Because affordable housing has historically been unsustainably funded using time-limited tax credits, Detroit faces the loss of over 4,000 affordable housing units by 2020. If those units are lost, a group nearly as large as the entire population of Ferndale would face imminent displacement, with no alternative housing options. A housing trust fund could not only help to keep those housing units online, it could also require that developments using public resources ensure the affordability of their units for at least 30 years, with a preference toward those developments and projects providing permanent affordability of 99 years. This would ensure that subsidized affordable units stay affordable over time. Finally, Detroit has an opportunity to promote accessibility standards that support those with different physical abilities. A full 15 percent of the population in Wayne County has a physical disability, including 37 percent of residents over 65 years of age. The intersection of affordability and accessibility is critical, and often overlooked. A well-designed housing trust fund can ensure that Detroiters with different physical abilities have access to safe, decent, affordable, and accessible housing. For a housing trust fund to best serve Detroit, the current proposed Detroit Affordable Housing and Preservation Fund must be amended in the following ways: • Council should dedicate source(s) of revenue that generate at least $10 million annually from sustainable sources. The current ordinance would only generate $1.5-2 million per year, as a percentage of the proceeds from city-owned commercial property, which is an unsustainable and insufficient source that pits the Commons against affordable housing. • Guarantee majority (70 percent) of the funds will be used to benefit our most economically vulnerable community members, people earning 30 percent AMI.
• Ensure that the housing developed with these funds is accessible to people of all abilities. • Secure public investment with longterm affordability requirements of at least 30 years for developments receiving housing trust funds awards, and requirements for 99 years affordability for 50 percent of awards. • Establish oversight body that includes members of the public to provide accountability on how the funds are used. • Restrict funds from use for relocation expenses incurred by private development. The Detroit Housing Trust Fund Coalition calls on all concerned and impacted Detroiters to make our voices heard. Call your council members, use the above talking points, and ask for their written commitment to begin addressing Detroit’s affordable housing crisis by creating a robust, sustainable, and adequately funded housing trust fund. If the ordinance is to pass before Council goes on break at the end of July, it will need to first be amended to incorporate the above recommendations, then voted out of the Planning and Economic Development Committee before being presented to Council as a whole for a vote. Members of the public are invited to comment at both the committee meetings (Thursdays at 10 a.m. in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center) and the Council meetings (each Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. on the 13th floor). Aaron Handelsman is a resultsoriented coach and the senior policy advocate for the Detroit People’s Platform. LaToya Morgan is the public policy manager for the Community Development Advocates of Detroit.
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coming soon concert calendar: 7/1 – daniel skye @ the shelter 7/3 – cobi @ the shelter w/ the blue stones 7/6 – myles parrish @ the shelter 7/7 – king lil g @ the shelter w/ issac castor 7/9 – aesop rock w/ open mike eagle 7/12 – the color morale @ the shelter w/ the plot in you, dayseeker, picturesque, a war within, as we divide
on sale now:
on sale friday:
7/13 – mother mother @ the shelter w/ the true blue
7/14 – This wild life @ the shelter w/ a will away, dryjacket
7/15 – sob x rbe @ the shelter w/ yung pinch 7/16 – caravan palace 7/18 – cane hill @ the shelter oct. 16 andy mineo st. andrew’s
sept. 30 the devil wears prada st. andrew’s w/ veil of maya
on sale friday:
w/ my enemies & i
7/20 – why don’t we @ the shelter 7/22 – Bryce Vine @ the Shelter w/ Zak Downtown
7/23 – Jaymes Young @ the Shelter w/ Matt Maeson
7/25 – Extreme Midget Wrestling 7/26 – The Aquabats w/ Reggie & the Full Effect, CJ Ramone
nov. 6
the shelter
haley reinhart
nov. 30 gary numan st. andrew’s w/ me not you
7/28 – Piebald w/ Baggage @ the Shelter 7/29 – Neurosis, Converge
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NEWS & VIEWS Politics & Prejudices
What’s wrong with the Democrats by Jack Lessenberry
Last month I was at a private
dinner group, where we heard from Gretchen Whitmer, now the front-running candidate for next year’s Democratic nomination for governor. Her presentation was captivating and compelling; she made a case for herself as the one candidate who could possibly work with the legislature, and talked about education. There was, however, one word she never said, something that once would have been among the first words out of any Democratic candidate’s mouth. That word was “jobs.” A few weeks later, at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual Mackinac Island event, I asked her about that. Turns out it wasn’t an accident. “I prefer to think in terms of careers,” she told me. What about the 50-year-old laidoff auto worker who is now desperately trying to keep his house? Well, the former state senate minority leader said she thought folks like that needed to think in terms of building new careers also, or words to that effect. Suddenly, I had a flash. Democrats really might lose the next election for governor after all. That would be despite what Donald Trump is doing to this nation; despite what Republicans have done to this state over the last eight years; despite the Flint water crisis; and despite the fact that Bill Schuette is a naked opportunist who spent millions of taxpayer dollars in a silly and failed effort to prevent two saintly gay nurses from adopting some special needs kids. Whitmer — whose values I essentially share — will, if nominated, win by a landslide in her native East Lansing, Ann Arbor, and in affluent Oakland County. Hillary Clinton did all that too. But she lost Michigan and lost the election. There were many reasons, but one big one stands out: Democratic voters want to vote for… a Democrat. They want someone who cares about jobs and the economy and the plight of the lower middle class and those slipping below it. They want their lives to be better. Donald Trump spoke to those
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people. Yes, he largely told them lies and gave them bullshit, telling them that he’d get their jobs back from Mexico, or that illegal immigrants had taken them. But he spoke to them. Hillary Clinton didn’t. She spoke to Goldman Sachs. Wall Street was perfectly comfortable with her. The best analysis of this campaign was written by legendary journalist H.L. Mencken: “Neither candidate gave a speech worth hearing, but one of them got down in the muck and clowned around with the fools.” Nevermind that Mencken was actually talking about the election of 1948, or that he died sixty years ago. What he said was far truer of last year’s race. But there is a far bigger issue here: Democrats have swallowed a myth that Bill Clinton was largely responsible for hatching back in the mid-1980s. That false theory was this: Democratic populism of the style made famous by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s is passé. Democrats who preach a leftwing economic message are doomed. That was the mantra of something called the Democratic Leadership Council, whose early members included folks like Bill Clinton and Michigan’s then-Governor, Jim Blanchard, in the 1980s. They had reason to think something was wrong. Democrats took a terrific pounding nationally in the 1980s, losing three presidential elections by huge margins.
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NEWS & VIEWS The Democratic Leadership Council thought this was because the party had moved too far to the left. Most people, they felt, didn’t care that much about blue-collar workers and the poor, and that, at any rate, they felt those voters would have to show up and vote for the Dems because the Republicans were worse. Their solution to take back power: Democrats should be somewhat socially liberal and economically conservative. The DLC leaders, some of whom called themselves “New Democrats,” felt this was proven when Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992. Indeed, he moved slightly left on things like gay issues, and right on economic issues. He agreed to a huge welfare “reform” bill with the Orwellian title of “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.” Clinton also signed off on a Telecommunications Act that did away with most restrictions on how many broadcast outlets one company could own, and did other conglomerate-friendly things. Not surprisingly, big business offered only token opposition to his bid for reelection the next year. But there were signs that the analysis that the Democrats lost because they were too “left-wing” may have been wrong from the start. Yes, Walter Mondale did, in an admirable burst of honesty, tell voters that he would raise taxes — and he did indeed lose every state but Minnesota. Forgotten is that he also told them Ronald Reagan would also raise them. “He won’t tell you, I just did,” he predicted. Mondale was right on both counts, but the fact is that he probably could have promised to suspend taxes and buy everyone a pony, and the popular Reagan still would have won. Michael Dukakis four years later did indeed blow a large lead and lose by eight points. But that wasn’t due to his so-called liberalism, but to the fact that he was a poor candidate who ran a lousy campaign. What few remember now is that late in the game, he announced that he was indeed a liberal, found a little backbone, and started campaigning as one. That actually narrowed the gap — though it was too little, too late. Nor is there any sign that Bill Clinton’s failure to sound traditional economic themes four years later is what won the election. Ross Perot’s nutty third party campaign likely took more voters from incumbent President George H.W.
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Bush, who Perot hated, than from the Democrats. Clinton, in fact, got a smaller percentage of the vote than the hapless Dukakis had. In years to come, New Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry lost too. Now, Hillary Clinton’s candidacy has shown the ultimate intellectual bankruptcy of the whole Democratic Leadership Council approach. Think about this: Bernie Sanders, according to their theories, should have gotten nowhere last year. He was not only a left-wing rabble rouser, he was an admitted — gasp! — socialist. What’s more, he was a cranky old irreligious Jew who would have been the oldest (75) major party nominee ever. Basically, he shouldn’t have gotten past the first primary. Except, in a process clearly rigged against him, he got more than 13 million votes and won states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Young voters were overwhelmingly for him. Could it be that in this frightening world where workers’ incomes and benefits are falling, standing up for the oppressed might not only be good policy, but politically smart? I wouldn’t bother to ask Hillary Clinton about that. Meanwhile, across the herring pond: Twenty years ago, Tony Blair followed Bill Clinton’s lead and reinvented his party as “New Labour,” which largely meant turning their backs on the sort of people Labour was founded to look out for. Blair was popular for a while, but then was discredited by his slavish support for Bush’s Iraq war. Two years ago, after a second straight humiliating defeat, the party returned to its roots and picked an authentic left-wing populist, Jeremy Corbyn, as its leader. When a new election was called this spring, commentators and pollsters forecast a landslide for Theresa May’s conservative party. Some said she’d have a majority of 200 seats. But when the votes were counted, Corbyn’s Labour had made massive, stunning gains. The Tories were left a minority trying to cling to power with an unstable coalition. Something may be happening out there, and too many politicians and commentators still haven’t a clue.
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NEWS & VIEWS Stir It Up
In search of humanity amid the ruins by Larry Gabriel
I got tears in my eyes while watching the film The United States of Detroit last week. The movie covered the usual vista of ruins in the city. But that’s not what moved me to tears. If that stuff made me cry then tears would be an everyday occurrence for me. The moment that moved me in the film was a scene at the Church of the Messiah on the east side. A group of young basketball players who meet at the church gym are gathered to hear Pastor Barry Randolph speak, who explains to them the church’s financial situation and the possibility of ending the basketball program. The young men don’t visibly react. They retreat into the stoic mode of the streetwise wherein nothing can touch them emotionally. Their faces show no vulnerability, showing nothing to a cast of adults who are trying to sell them on a dream. As the scene unfolds Randolph’s voiceover finds the vulnerability in me. He discusses the fact that these young men have been disappointed so many times in their lives and, despite the fact that the church faced a possible closure, he didn’t want to deliver another disappointment to the young men. That’s when it got to me. It was a combination of feeling some of that disappointment along with knowing how hard Randolph is working to keep the church and its place in the community functional. Tears ran down my face as much for the pastor as for the ballers. “It was extremely emotional,” Randolph told me the next day when I spoke with him. “Even though we had a lot of financial trouble, that bothered (me) the most. A lot of our young people have been let down by adults, people coming out of our lives. We convinced them that greater things were coming.” The United States of Detroit is not a tear-jerking kind of movie, but it is an eye-opener that focuses on three forces for positive change in looking at the areas of urban gardening, arts, 22 June June28-July 28-July4,4,2017 2017 | | metrotimes.com metrotimes.com 22
and real estate development along the Grand River Creative Corridor project and the Church of the Messiah. During a post-viewing discussion moderated by former co-hosts of CNN’s “American Morning,” director and co-writer Tylor Norwood revealed that his team was planning on doing a movie that profiled three cities. Once they came to Detroit they dropped the idea of going anywhere else pretty quickly. That’s how compelling they found the Motor City. All of the stories the movie focuses on are pretty compelling. The cameras follow Derek Weaver and DJ Valdez who create murals in the Grand River corridor; Kadiri Sennefer Ra of DTown Farm along with Oya Amakisi of the Greening of Detroit focus on the agriculture side of things; and Pastor Randolph, who seems to face adversity at all times. There are a lot of aerial shots showing open fields stretching in every direction in the city. While the film acknowledges the development of areas such as downtown, Midtown and Corktown, the subject matter here takes viewers into neighborhoods and personalizes it. For instance, rather than go on about the number of abandoned houses in the city, we get a close-up of Valdez visiting the home where he grew up, exploring the nowempty rooms, talking about the crayon pictures he drew on the walls and searching for a spot where he scratched his name onto the porch.
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NEWS & VIEWS
Still from The United States of Detroit. COURTESY PHOTO
People once had their lives in there. “The neighborhood is fine,” says Valdez. “There’s just no one left to take care of it.” Ra spends a lot of his time at DTown working the compost pile — where materials are hastened through decomposition in order to nurture the growth of vegetables. “Composting is the work of transformation,” says Ra as he works, creating a metaphor for what is going on all across the city. While on the panel, Randolph alluded to his own transformation, a “burning bush” moment that led him to take on the mission of the Church of the Messiah. In 1998, “God literally spoke to me,” Randolph told me. “It was on October 20, and (he) said great things would happen at Messiah and I would give him the praise and credit.” It certainly helps to have God on your side when you look at what Randolph is up against. Membership was low and the church owed money. When this was being filmed a couple of years ago Randolph had taken a job at a Harbortown market in order to pay the bills at the church. In one sequence the pastor speaks about sitting with a grieving mother whose son had been shot. During the counseling he is watching the clock because he has to go to work in an hour, but the grieving mother needed more than an hour of his time. It’s a dilemma — he needs to minister to church members but there will not be a church if he doesn’t go to work so the bills can be paid. In the few years since then, things have changed a little. For one thing, Randolph no longer needs to work a job outside the
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church. “The church was going to close, drowning in debt,” he says. “Now we are debt-free. The membership grew even more. There was an increase in tithes and offerings, not a whole lot but at least I don’t feel like we can’t pay the bills.” So while the wolves are still nipping at your heels, they no longer have their teeth in your flesh. The undercurrent of all the efforts considered here is that the system as currently comprised is not working for a lot of Detroiters. What we see are people who have taken it into their own hands to do what is necessary, even when the city gets in the way. Weaver and Valdez both have narratives describing how the city gets in the way of mural painting and graffiti art in places where it’s a distinct improvement over what was there. The post-film discussion was more political, with some from the audience and those onstage offering analysis as to why things are the way they are. All of that is relevant and needs to be addressed. But The United States of Detroit is more about the heart of Detroit — about the people who make the city worth fighting for. I don’t remember which panelist said this, but whoever did said it for us all: “The work is joining the people in the community. Detroit is a place that can help you become more human if you chose that.” I’m on the human side.
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UP FRONT What’s Going On:
A week’s worth of things to do and places to do them by MT staff
THURSDAY, 6/29 Sonic Visuals @ Ferndale Area District Library
Brian Rozman has been a fixture in the Detroit music scene for some time now. Not only is he sonically gifted, but he’s also a stunning photographer with artistic vision. In fact, he’s captured many musical events for this very paper. Now, Rozman’s fastidious work capturing the local Detroit music-makers will be featured in a month-long exhibit at the Ferndale library. The show will feature photographs of artists such as BevLove, Flint Eastwood, the White Stripes, the Beggars, and Ryan Dillaha, among many others. This opening reception will also feature music by the High Strung as well as light refreshments.
Starts at 6 p.m.; 222 E. Nine Mile Rd., Ferndale; free. Angel Haze. BRIAN ROZMAN
WEDNESDAY, 6/28
THURSDAY, 6/29
THURSDAY, 6/29
THURSDAY, 6/29
10,000 Free Scoops of Ice Cream
Detroit Flyhouse: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Tension
Vault of Midnight game night
@ Cadillac Square
@ The Eastern
This concept is going to be a hard one to wrap your head around, but give us a chance to explain. Denali Moose Tracks Ice Cream is giving away 10,000 free scoops of Country Fresh ice cream, and for every scoop they’ll donate $1 to charity. So, to be clear, the company is donating ice cream to you and also donating cash to charity. It’s kind of a strange concept, since all you have to do is accept free ice cream with no strings attached. This whole thing will go down in Cadillac Square and it’s open to the public. The money will go to the Salvation Army Eastern Michigan Division to help fund ongoing projects.
Runs 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Cadillac Square, 800 Woodward Ave., Detroit; free.
Based on William Shakespeare’s popular play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this Detroit Flyhouse production will feature winged fairies, woodland creatures, and a beautiful enchanted forest. Flyhouse, a circus school that specializes in aerial acrobatics, hosts infrequent showcases, making each a bit special. Show nights always feature two productions; one is kid-friendly and the other is adults-only. This time around their 6 p.m. show will be geared toward families, while the 8:15 production is for those 18 and older. This allows everyone to enjoy the show in an atmosphere that best suits them.
Shows start at 6 p.m. and 8:15 p.m.; 3434 Russell St., Detroit Ste. 208; 313- 674-6424; detroitflyhouse.com; Tickets are $5-$15.
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@ Play House Detroit
@ Checker Bar
A workshop like you have never experienced before, this event will bring together performance ensemble the Hinterlands and Fringe Society, an Allied Media Project run by Levon Kafafian that hopes to connect communities through fiber arts. Tension, a collaborative effort to explore collective creation, will use the metaphor of weaving to viscerally explore concepts such as working in the space between opposition and union. The three-hour workshop also seeks to teach attendees how to identify deep relationships, connect with others, and broaden your proverbial toolkit. No performance art or textile experience is necessary.
Starts at 7 p.m.; 12657 Moran St., Detroit; eventbrite.com; Tickets are $30 to $50 on a sliding scale.
Are you a gaming newb but wish to more deeply explore your inner nerd? Then we highly suggest you attend this evening wholly dedicated to board games. Or maybe you’re a highly skilled mage and you’ve been secretly hoping for a chance to publicly flex your gaming muscles — whatever! Come play games with the experts from Vault of Midnight who will be on hand to introduce patrons to new and undiscovered games. Yeah, you can just pop into Checker Bar on this evening and nose your way into the event, but if you buy a ticket you’ll get 10 percent off any game available for purchase inside Vault of Midnight, plus a $5 drink ticket.
Starts at 7 p.m.; 124 Cadillac Sq., Detroit; 313-481-2165; vaultofmidnight.com; Entry is $10.
FRIDAY, 6/30-7/3 Salute to America @ Greenfield Village
If you’re going to spend four hours sitting on a blanket in the grass waiting to celebrate our independence with the boom and sparkle of fireworks, then you might as well do it the right away. The Henry Ford puts on, arguably, the best Independence Day celebration by incorporating historical and modern aspects. For example, a fife and drum band in full traditional attire will march the grounds, yet you will still be able to purchase a can of beer. The best part, though, is the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s performance. They’ll play Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture during the fireworks finale and if that doesn’t give you goosebumps then you’re not really an American.
Starts at 6 p.m.; 20900 Oakwood Blvd., Dearborn; 313-982-6001; thehenryford.org; tickets are $29 for nonmembers.
Salute to America and The Henry Ford. COURTESY PHOTO
THUR, 6/29-SUN, 7/2
FRIDAY, 6/30
FRIDAY, 6/30
FRIDAY, 6/30
Stars and Stripes
Night at the Museum @ Detroit Institute of Arts
No Passport Required: Africa
LAX/DTW
@ Suburban Collection Showplace
@ Inner State Gallery
@ Urban Consulate
Summer festivals in Detroit are at once joyous and somber occasions. On the one hand, there are carnival midways and there is no real unadulterated happiness quite like that derived from a ride on a tilt-a-whirl. And yet Rick Springfield, Smash Mouth, Spin Doctors, and Marcy Playground will also be performing, likely to induce a bit of a somber nostalgia for certain festivalgoers. However, the festival also features a BMX stunt show and a monster truck rally. Plus, an arts and crafts village!
Starts at 2 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, noon on Saturday and Sunday; 46100 Grand River Ave., Novi; funfestevents.net; Entry is free before 6 p.m. and $3 after on Thursday, $3 before 6 p.m. and $5 after on Friday and Saturday, and $3 on Sunday.
The Detroit Institute of Arts is a treasure not only to the city but to Michigan as a whole. Yet, so many never discover this enormous amalgam of art. In an effort to cultivate more awareness of the museum’s exhibits and programs, the DIA has partnered with Cool Smart, Inc. to host quarterly evening events. These happy hour-style events will feature live music — Detroit’s Queen of Blues Thornetta Davis will be performing on this evening — as well as a cash bar and curator talks. This inaugural event will feature a introduction to European modern art by curator Jill Shaw.
Starts at 6 p.m.; 5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-833-7900; dia. org; Entry is donation-based and pre-registration is encouraged.
Detroit is home to a less homogenous population than most people are led to believe. Folks from all over the world call the Motor City home, and this speaker series seeks to increase our knowledge and understanding of these Detroiters. This is the third and final installment of the series (the first two featured locals from the Middle East and Caribbean, respectively). Gracie Xavier and Chase L. Contrell will serve as hosts, serving up questions to WDIV’s Tati Amare, ABISA’s Fatou Seydi-Sarr, and Chido Johnson of the Zimbabwe Cultural Centre of Detroit. The event is free, but space is very limited. Early arrival is advised.
We’re not saying oil painting and sculpture are going the way of the dodo, but it does seem that mediums like graffiti, comics, street art, and illustration are skyrocketing in popularity. That’s what you’ll find at this exhibit curated by Los Angeles gallery Thinkspace. There will be work by both local and international artists, and the event is also a kickoff for Murals in the Market 2017. Featured artist James Bullough as well as Ouizi and Michelle Tanguay will contribute murals to the annual art installation.
Starts at 6 p.m.; 1410 Gratiot Ave., Detroit; 313-744-6505; innerstategallery.com; free.
Starts at 5 p.m.; 4735 Cass Ave., Detroit; urbanconsulate.com/ detroit; free.
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FEATURE
Jena Irene Asciutto released her debut record in June, featuring the pro-pot anthem “So I Get High.” DOUG COOMBE
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Going deep and getting high
After American Idol, Jena Irene Asciutto starts over by Jerilyn Jordan
Twenty-year-old rising pop star Jena Irene Asciutto puts her blinker on and adjusts her sunglasses, her tight curls spiraling in the wind. “We should get away from the Wayne County sheriff van if we’re going to get stoned,” she says. Her British, Emma Thompson-esque manager laughs from the backseat while I watch the mural-covered landscape of Eastern Market from the passenger-side window. I find myself silently singing the Talking Heads lyric, “Well… how did I get here?” Because, really. How did I get here? To compare, Asciutto is a former American Idol runner-up, days away from the release of her debut fulllength record, Cold Fame, a remarkably well-rounded collection that flirts with the space between spotlight and darkness. (The record was released earlier this month on Original 1265 Recordings, a label launched by the Detroit Institute of Music Education.) Meanwhile, I had just received an overdraft notification from my bank stating that my account is currently in the red by $14. Asciutto is unabashedly optimistic about the future. Yet I can’t help but find myself a bit callused, bitter, and resentful of her endless supply of ambition and positivity, and her blindingly white teeth. In this moment, I feel old. We drive aimlessly for several minutes, looking for smoke-friendly solace in the early afternoon sun. Asciutto is wearing a Mickey Mouse tall-tee with fishnets and I wonder if I’m trying too hard to look young in my leather mini-skirt and what I jokingly call my “Yeezy” sweater. “This is so cool,” Asciutto says. “An interview where I get to smoke weed? I love it.” Our decision to have an interview smoke session is inspired by “So I Get High,” Asciutto’s pro-pot power ballad on Cold Fame. The track is masterful in being both discreet and to the point and could just as easily be about finding God as it is about smoking the devil’s lettuce. In its accompanying video, a moody black-and-white close-
up of an emotional Asciutto ends with a clip from a Bernie Sanders campaign speech calling for an end to mass incarceration for marijuana possession. “Were you a supporter? Or I should say are you?” Asciutto asks. I tell her that I choose to live in a fantasy land where cats can talk and Bernie Sanders is my president for all of eternity. Asciutto still feels the Bern, too. “For the first time we had someone who represented the positive rather than the negative,” she says. With the taboo of politics out of the way, we disclose intimate details about why we chose to get our medical marijuana licenses and why smoking a joint is far more enjoyable than vaping, and, despite our high tolerances, why edibles are reserved only for special occasions. “I’m the type of person that if I wake and bake every single day, I won’t get shit done because it’s a constant cycle like, ‘Let’s just smoke more!’” she says. “I think it’s because I started smoking later in life than my friends. It’s still kind of new to me.” Asciutto admits she’s “still a new adult.” “But I have very strong opinions,” she says. “The hypocrisy (a word she phonetically breaks down when speaking as if coaching herself through its meaning) from the internet and the media upsets me. There are so many people that aren’t vocal about how they smoke weed but dog other people for their views, and that stigmatism is something that really grinds my gears. That’s where the song came from… being pissed off.” Of course, she means “stigma,” but her misuse of the word reminds me of the years I spent mispronouncing the word “myriad,” and her frequent use of platitudes and mixed metaphors does nothing but make me wistful for the days where I too didn’t know any better. I don’t correct her. When asked about the first time she smoked pot, Asciutto surprises when she says it was after a photo shoot with American Idol sponsor Ford. “Everyone smoked weed on American Idol,” she says. “Those are like 12- to 13-hour days. I was stressed and exhausted and
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American Idol host Ryan Seacrest and Asciutto in 2014. FOX/GETTY IMAGES
‘Everyone smoked weed on American Idol,’ she says. ‘Those are like 12- to 13-hour days.’ everyone was like, ‘Let’s go back and have a joint.’ I was like, ‘Fuck it, let’s do it.’” We park on a residential side street and she is handed her grinder and papers with one hand as she digs in her purse for her medical marijuana container with the other. “This is going to be a skinny-ass joint,” she confesses and I admit I never learned how to roll, despite having managed Detroitbased dispensaries for several years. I show her my stash and my thick, squat pre-rolls. “Oh my God! You brought some!” she says. “I guess we have some smoking to do.”
In 2002, I was 14. That year, Fox premiered American Idol and Asciutto was too young to use a touch-tone phone to vote for Kelly Clarkson. Idol, of course, would continue to be a massive hit (it finally ended on Fox in 2016; it returns to ABC next year), opening the door for the musically gifted, and giving hungry hopefuls and societal cast-offs an audience — as long as they were willing to play along with the then-new concept of reality television. I, like the rest of America, was transfixed. I would spend Idol nights on the phone with my mother as we watched every episode together, pausing during performances and erupting into what we felt was very valuable commentary just before the judges could chime
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in. Since our TV transmissions were out of sync by several seconds, one of us would react to news the other had yet to hear. We watched this way for several seasons, over the phone. I like to think that if my mom were still around, we would agree that Jena (pronounced “Gina”) was robbed of the number one spot during Season 13 because, really, the girl can fucking sing. Now, Asciutto is a far cry from the 17-year-old who auditioned for American Idol back in 2014. The Farmington Hills native and then-senior at North Farmington High School had just quit her stint in what she calls her “cheesy” cover band Infinity Hour when she auditioned with Adele’s power hit “Rolling in the Deep” in front of Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick, Jr. Looking back at Asciutto’s audition tape, it seems as if the judges initially almost didn’t know quite what to make of her. “You do something with your tongue, it’s like you close things off sometimes,” Connick noted, and wondered aloud if she had a “speech impediment.” Asciutto admitted that the tongue thing could be a bad habit as she bashfully moved her hair behind her ears, looking every bit of 17. Urban, however, praised her unique enunciation and Lopez watched with a glassy, almost tearful gaze. Despite her vocal tic, the judges waved Jena through. Her most memorable Idol perfor-
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Asciutto is now a vocal proponent of medical marijuana. DOUG COOMBE
mances include her takes on Radiohead’s “Creep,” Coldplay’s “The Scientist,” and Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” often providing her own musical accompaniment on piano. Her signature warble and ability to hold a note and still make it sound powerful, pretty, and emotive enchanted America throughout Season 13, and made J.Lo grant several standing ovations and even a postperformance hug and kiss (something she claimed to “never do”). Eventually, she lost to fellow contestant Caleb Johnson. Since Idol, Asciutto has visibly grown up. Now rocking a Skrillexesque side-shave, vibrant, natural curls, a plethora of tattoos, and a whisper of mascara, she now looks
less like the over-styled Kohl’s catalogue version of herself presented on Idol and more like, well, Jena. Asciutto describes her life post-Idol as “an unlearning process.” “They teach you how to smile, you know?” she says. She seems happy to distance herself from that time in her life. “The more press and shows and content I put out means I’m moving farther away from those years and that period of my life,” she says. “It’s going to get pushed down, which is why I’m excited for this album to come out.” We light up and sit quietly as we blow the first clouds of smoke out of open windows. When asked if she is glad she ultimately didn’t win American Idol, Asciutto says, “Fuck yeah, dude.” She
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finishes her toke with broken breath. “I wouldn’t have been able to write my own songs. They have songwriters,” she says. When she brought up the idea to perform her own songs to the show’s executive producers, she says they wouldn’t even listen to them. “It’s so degrading when you’ve written songs from the age of like, 12, for someone to like, not even hear you out,” she says. After Idol, Asciutto says she shopped around to a few different labels, only to find more of the same kind of music industry mentality. “The first few label interviews I went to after Idol, it was just businessmen in suits with a bunch of interns that like, you know, didn’t really care. I was on the bottom of the totem pole.
I guess that’s how it is when you’re fresh off American Idol,” she shrugs. “I’ve come to accept the stigmatism that comes with that.” I smile to myself at Asciutto’s repeated malapropism, but also because everything she says feels so sincere. “Do you want to smoke one of yours?” she asks.
I’ve listened to Cold Fame at least five times all the way through, though I may have lost count at this point. At first it was purely for research purposes, but soon I found myself driving solo, trying to hit her breathy high notes, bopping around to the incredibly catchy chorus of the Amy
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FEATURE Winehouse-esque track “White Girl Wasted,” complete with handclaps and frequent use of the phrase, “No fucks given.” The album is clever, honest, and totally unexpected from someone who isn’t even old enough to drink legally — its orchestration is lush and mature, mixing moody, tender moments with fun and defiant indiscretions. It’s not a cry for instant, radio-ready pop stardom, but rather a plea to be heard, following a trajectory that is delightfully more complicated than one might assume for a debut pop record. There are traces of Coldplay and Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine here, but Asciutto manages to steer Cold Fame from genre to genre with vocal prowess and unique flare while avoiding sounding like a carbon-copy or indecisive. Asciutto sports a “Cold Fame” tattoo scrawled in a blurred cursive on her left hand, but she says it’s not to commemorate her record — she says it’s actually her favorite song by Band of Skulls. “That’s where a lot of the inspiration for my record came from though, through my interpretation,” she says. “The first line of that song is, ‘What’s the point of fame if it’s been abused?’ and I felt that on American Idol. If you went in a certain direction you could easily abuse your fame.” She pauses for another hit. “And I saw it happen,” she says. “I saw it with guest stars and contestants who thought they were hot shit. You’re not shit. You’re just another person in this whole pond. There’s a lot of blue and coldness that comes from fame and it’s not all peaches and cream. You have to know what you’re signing up for.” I pass Asciutto my Death Star joint. She sparks, pauses and continues. “I hate not being myself. I hate being guarded and filtered,” she says. “Yeah, some people are offended by swearing or offended by smoking weed. Finding my own audience in this whole process has been really scary, but it’s definitely been very humbling.” She says the process of writing and recording Cold Fame took almost a year because she kept going back to the recording studio to make changes — a reflection of changes she was going through in her own life. “I’m glad we went back because this is the time where I changed and evolved the most as a person,” she says. “It was super hard for me to go from being this, like, pop princess, American pie,
good starting point for me.” I suggest she call it a “restarting point,” but it seems ridiculous to think that a 20-year-old needs to restart anything more than a Snapchat video. But as I watch the wind catch her rogue curls and she wipes her eyes still red from hot-boxing her car and still damp from her epiphany, it suddenly doesn’t seem totally unbelievable. I may not be anticipating the release of my first record and I may never know what Ryan Seacrest smells like, but I have started over. Many times, in fact. Asciutto untangles her crossed legs and passes her grinder back to her manager, looking down and smiling to herself as she dusts stray weed flakes from her lap. I can see that no matter the years that may separate us or the experiences that may divide us, in this moment, we are both high. Like, really fucking high. “Should I drive?” she asks. The author and Asciutto, both very blazed. COURTESY PHOTO
‘It was super hard for me to go from being this, like, pop princess, American pie, American Idol contestant to discovering who I actually am.’ American Idol contestant to discovering who I actually am. I’m ready for the record to be out. The whole thing feels like a fucking lifetime ago, ya know?” I nod and respond with a super stoner-y, “Totally,” but the truth is I don’t know. I have no fucking clue. I double-fist a cigarette and a joint and refuse to admit that I might be too high to keep smoking. Tiny little Asciutto, though visibly high, doesn’t flinch at the offer of another toke. Now seemed like the perfect time to discuss success. I mention how my definition of success has changed over time and continues to shift as I evolve. “Success, at this stage in my life, is most centered around being happy,” I preface before explaining that I can’t possibly understand what success must mean to someone so young who has, already, with grace, achieved so much. She passes the joint to me and I refuse to give up. I take a hit and ask what success means to her. “That’s, like, a really good question,”
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she says. “I never thought I would have been able to come out with a full-length record this young. It’s totally fucking weird, but, um, other than that I can’t even imagine, like, being completely myself and having this much support from my label.” She waves her hand over her eyes. “Shit, I’m going to get really emotional… um, support from my family, my friends, and from new people I meet all the time … it just makes me really happy to know that being myself is good enough, you know?” she says. “OMG, I’m crying.” And she was. Her manager and I take turns consoling her, but unlike last time, I do know what she’s talking about. A van drives by without a door blasting what sounds like Middle-Eastern hip-hop. “Damn, that’s ratchet,” Asciutto says. “Good for them.” Asciutto, who currently lives in Ann Arbor, says she prefers Detroit to New York or Los Angeles. “Not that I don’t love those places, but there’s something special here,” she says. “Out there it’s like, every man for himself. This is a
I make the choice to stop recording here because we had entered the classic stoner talking-in-circles territory. Very stoned circles. Sentences became choppy and answers swell around excessive use of the word “like” and long, unproductive pauses. At this point, truthfully, if it weren’t for Asciutto’s manager, we may never have found our way back to the coffee shop where my car was parked. Our conversation continues over iced lattes and avocado toast while we fill the time between her next scheduled interview. At this point, Asciutto feels less like an American Idol and more like a friend. We gush about our shared love of the indie band Big Thief and I reference Bright Eyes to her unknowing wide eyes and she tells me she’ll add them to her Spotify playlist. “What album should I listen to?” she asks, and I suggest I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning while realizing that Bright Eyes is likely considered classic rock now. Instead of feeling old, however, I feel more like my mother — doling out advice, providing new reference points and maps of entire worlds to explore. This feels like a gift. As her manager steps away for a moment, Asciutto makes a confession. “Please don’t print the part—” she says, but I stop her there. “I know. And I won’t,” I say, tapping her hand. I was 20 once too. I know that a young woman is nothing without a few secrets. letters@metrotimes.com @metrotimes
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More than Mexican by Jane Slaughter Pupusa, baleada, carne asada, tostones, platano maduro and tajadas. TOM PERKINS
Go figure: a restaurant in South-
west Detroit that’s looking for more Mexican customers. Obed Hernandez and Sandra Padilla, owners of 7-yearold El Catracho, say they get more traffic from Central Americans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and gringos (my word, not theirs) than from Mexican immigrants. They moved to their current location near Clark and Vernor last December, to be closer to the heart of the community than their old place on McGraw. Hernandez, who’s from Veracruz himself, and Padilla, from north central Honduras, believe Mexicans want spicier dishes. But chief cook Padilla is sticking to what she grew up on: pupusas, baleadas, pastelitos, and super-rich tamales. I hesitate to call such delights “snacks,” because a couple can fill you up real quick. But the prices are snacklike, and although El Catracho (“The Honduran”) offers a list of dinners ranging from chicken through pork and seafood to beef, these smaller treats are what customers gravitate toward. Most popular is the $2.25 baleada: a flour tortilla filled with lightly scrambled eggs, beans, and some tangy cheese, folded over and toasted slightly crisp. Some folks order 10 or 20 to go, and they will always be handmade fresh, “nothing from the refrigerator,” Hernandez says. Chorizo, steak, chicken, avocado, sausage, cheese — anything can be added. I found the baleada quite satisfying,
but to really take advantage of what’s different about El Catracho, you must order something made with hand-patted corn tortillas. They don’t have much in common, texture-wise, with storebought. They’re thicker, softer, cornier. All corn tortillas are handmade that way: “every day, every plate,” Hernandez says. Also labor-intensive, and a heartwarmer, is the atol de elote (corn). This thick, pale yellow, hot breakfast drink is most popular in the winter, for obvious reasons. To make it, Padilla grinds corn and pulverizes it in a blender with milk, sugar, and “tres dedos” — three fingers, a tiny pinch — of salt. A stick of cinnamon is added. Feels and tastes like a mother’s love. Horchata is multi-step, too: rice, morro seeds, and cinnamon are roasted and then whirled in a blender with water and milk. Morro seeds are the secret ingredient (but not so secret in Central America) to a good horchata. One of my favorites was the $3.99 platano campesino — a ripe plantain split and stuffed with crema, beans, and cheese. This is on the breakfast menu, which is served all day and evening. Add ground beef to make it more savory than sweet. Pupusas are a mainstay, of course — just a tortilla closed around lots of choices of filling, including chicharrones, the loroco plant or even jalapeños (for those who do want spicy). They come with big jars of marinated cabbage
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and marinated red onions, the latter quite hot. The pastelito is similar to a pupusa but more interesting because it’s deep-fried — good and crisp but not greasy. As always in a Central American restaurant, tamales are stand-outs. And cost $2.25. Hernandez was blatantly disloyal to his native land when he described to me the difference between Mexican tamales — dry, small, little stuffing, cylindrical — and those Padilla makes: moist, square, substantial, cooked in a plantain leaf. I tried the shredded pork tamale, cooked with some peas and carrots, and loved the texture of the masa, embued with some pork juice but solidly satisfying on its own. Chicken is the other option. The tamal de elote is different: There’s no filling; ground corn is mixed directly into the masa, along with sugar, for a fluffier texture. A few corn kernels escape the grinding and add their goodness. Platanos (plantains) are ubiquitous in Honduras, as in some of the Caribbean islands: Thus, the Puerto Rican and Dominican customers. Hernandez and Padilla cook them two ways: ripe and green. Maduros (ripe) are the sweet treats we’ve grown to love, served just with crema or as an accompaniment to any kind of meat. Tostones (green) are fried slices that, to my taste, have little flavor. (It seems every culture has a really bland comfort food that the natives swear by.) And then tajadas are
El Catracho
4627 W. Vernor Hwy., Detroit 313-784-9361 Wheelchair accessible 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday Breakfasts $2.25-$7.99, lunches $5.99-$8.99, dinners $7.99-$12.49
green bananas, also sliced and fried, also bland. They’re served with a mayoketchup-garlic sauce that does not redeem them. In this gringa’s opinion, anyway. On weekends, Padilla and her helpers cook up three fresh soups that are each whole meals: tripe and coconut milk; beef with yuca and vegetables, including corn on the cob; and seafood. The vegetables in these soups are not diced like Campbell’s, they’re cooked whole, and it’s up to you to figure out how to cut them without splashing. The soups are a better bet than the dinners I tried: a charred carne asada and a whole fried tilapia, quite browned and crusty. No chance of underdone meat here! “Tenemos el sabor de su tierra” (“We have the flavor of your homeland”) says the writing on the window at El Catracho. Hondurans and their neighbors agree. Note there’s no liquor license and a $10 minimum for use of a credit card — and at these prices, you can make a couple of meals before getting to $10. eat@metrotimes.com @metrotimes
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FOOD MT: Many people feel that Al Ameer is consistently one of the best Lebanese restaurants in Detroit, and that opinion could be supported by your recent James Beard Award. What are you doing that sets you apart? Hachem: We host a friendly atmosphere and the prices are reasonable. All of our produce comes from within our own community, and we try to be as authentic as possible, and try to be consistent.
Dishes from Al Ameer. TOM PERKINS
The joy of Lebanese cooking ...and how to win a James Beard award by Tom Perkins
The dish that Dearborn’s Al Ameer is known for in the Lebanese community is the boneless char-grilled chicken, a common plate at the nation’s weddings and celebrations. While it perhaps sounds like a slightly American menu item, the name is modest — it’s comprised of thin, char-grilled breasts with blackened edges that arrive in a small puddle of a deeply flavorful, lemony, garlicky “gravy.” As a manager explained, there are a lot of recipes for char-grilled Lebanese chicken in Dearborn and Al Ameer remains a trusted source in town. But, then, you could blindly point to just about anything on Al Ameer’s menu and end up with something that’s considered authentic and deeply flavorful. In fact, the restaurant consistently runs at such a high level that the James Beard Foundation chose it in 2016 for its American Classic’s Award, which goes to eateries that “have timeless appeal and are cherished for quality food that reflects the character of their community.” Long before the national exposure, Al Ameer was considered one of metro Detroit’s best. It opened in 1989 at Warren Avenue and Miller Road just as Dearborn’s Lebanese population spiked because of the civil war in Lebanon and the jobs at our region’s auto plants. Co-
owner Ali Hachem says his dad and uncle — Zaki Hachem, Khalil Ammar — were chefs back home and met here before launching the restaurant. It remains a tightly run operation, owing partly to the Hachem family’s continuing hands-on involvement. There’s also experience in the kitchen, where longtime chefs, some of whom have been with the restaurant since the beginning, man the vertical spits on which dozens of layers of beef, lamb, onion, and spices baste in their own fat and juices to produce what’s among the fullest, richest shawarma you’ll find. We talked with Ali Hachem about Lebanese cuisine — arguably the best of the Middle Eastern foods for its Mediterranean bent and heavy reliance on the sort of holy trinity of garlic, lemon, and extra virgin olive oil — and what it takes to catch the attention of the James Beard Foundation. Metro Times: When people say ‘Middle Eastern” food they’re covering a lot of turf. Like we don’t say “European” food when we’re talking about French cooking. What are the differences between Lebanese and other Middle Eastern cuisine? Ali Hachem: Ethnicity mostly, because Middle Eastern cuisines are
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very similar in each culture. Each has its own twists on each meal. Some of them make salads with extra wheat, some with no wheat at all. It’s more of a cultural diversity thing. MT: What are some of the ingredients that are common to Lebanese dishes? Hachem: Chickpeas, lemon, olive oil, and meats, like poultry and lamb — really healthy food. Lebanese is more attracted to the Mediterranean diet with lots of fish, as well. Nothing is deep fried — everything is grilled. MT: What about spices? Hachem: Salt and pepper mainly goes into all the dishes. Sumac is a spice we use that goes in the fattoush. Lots of cayenne, black pepper, white peppers — all different peppers. MT: I’ve heard that Lebanese cooking is the French cuisine of the Middle East. Would you agree, and, if so, why is it a superior cuisine? Hachem: I agree because I am biased. It’s more attracted to the Mediterranean diet. It’s very healthy food. We use a lot of garlic — anything that’s better for us, for our body. Not like American or Italian, which is heavy and has a lot of bread and pastas. Ours don’t attract cholesterol.
MT: Is Lebanese cuisine that one will find in Detroit different than what one will find in Beirut? Hachem: They’re similar, though I can’t speak on behalf of other restaurants. But the reason we’re always favored is partly because the family members are invested at all times. One of us is always here. In regard to meals, we try to offer a broad range of Lebanese meals, and we try to carry all the dishes of the country on our menu. MT: The James Beard Foundation noted your sujuk sausage and shredded lamb, which it described as tender and rich. How does one prepare lamb that is described as such and appeals to the James Beard Foundation? Hachem: We have our own meat market next door, so we choose our own meats, we produce our own meats, we cut or own meats, and we have our own butchers, so we know what meats are coming in. We’re masters of the cooking process. We cook meat at certain temperatures for a certain amount of time. Depending on the meal, the shish kabob skewers — fully prepared — take 10 to 15 minutes on the grill. But the stuffed lamb may take 4 to 6 hours in an oven to be heated and roasted well enough. MT: I wasn’t aware that you guys own a butcher shop. Tell me about that. Hachem: That was something that came in the early 2000s, so we can get our own beef, lamb, and we’re our own supplier. That way we know what we’re cutting, buying, and selling, and also because of the halal process. It’s about cleanliness. We have always been halal, but with the addition of the meat market, now we have control over it. Al Ameer is located at 12710 W. Warren Ave., Dearborn; 313-582-8185; alameerrestaurant.com. eat@metrotimes.com @metrotimes
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Avalon breads. COURTESY AVALON/FACEBOOK
Bites
Avalon will take over former Cafe Con Leche space in New Center by Alysa Zavala-Offman
Avalon International Breads has long been considered
one of the great companies born out of Detroit, and the bread-making organization seems to be experiencing a surge in popularity as they today announced yet another Detroit location will open on West Grand Boulevard in New Center later this summer. The company hopes to capitalize on the neighborhood’s redevelopment amid projects recently launched by companies like the Platform as well as a plan to bring the Detroit Pistons’ training facility to the area. “As an emerging commercial and residential area, New Center is the perfect place to introduce our new biscuit bar, while offering the favorites that our regulars have loved for two decades,” CEO and co-founder Jackie Victor said in a press release. “The cafe will be just a few blocks away from the end of the QLine and will offer area residents, visitors, and employees a place to get fresh, delicious
foods at a new local gathering place.” The space, located inside a former Cafe Con Leche spot at 2990 W. Grand Blvd., will seat up to 70 patrons with ample outlets to make it easy for locals to work from the cafe. There will also be a private meeting space area available for reservation. It will be free as long as you pay for Avalon catering during its usage — not a bad deal. The new location, billed as a “cafe and biscuit bar,” will focus on serving freshly baked “Bellevue” buttermilk biscuits that can be complimented by a variety of seasonal toppings. Sticky buns, sea salt chocolate chip cookies, fresh salads, and made-to-order sandwiches will also be on the menu, according to the press release. Avalon has also partnered with other companies on the new cafe. Mighty Good Coffee items, handcrafted ice cream from Reilly Craft Creamery, and Faygo floats will also be available in the cafe.
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Bigger, better Alley Taco opens in Cass Corridor
by Alysa Zavala-Offman Last year, Alley Taco owner Jason Frenkel announced his taco joint located inside Marcus Market would move to a stand alone location next to Avalon International Breads on Willis in Cass Corridor. That strip of Cass seems to become denser each day, as places like Cass Collective, Royale With Cheese, and now Alley Taco add to the already lush offerings of the little shopping and dining district. The joint will be open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m everyday at 418 W. Willis St., Detroit. Iconic Telway Hamburgers owner Earl Owens dies
by Tom Perkins Telway Hamburgers owner Earl Owens has died, an employee at the southwest Detroit slider joint confirmed last week. The employee said Owens died at his home on Sunday, June 18, but declined to provide any more information. Telway opened in 1944 at 6820 Michigan Ave., and the 24-hour shop thrived through the decades with little
alteration, steadily maintaining its position as one of the best greasy slider spots in town — especially at night. Sliders somehow still cost just 70 cents. A sister location operates at John R and 11 Mile roads. Seven new restaurants and bars planned for Wurlitzer Building
by Tom Perkins The Siren Hotel, a boutique hotel that’s renovating downtown Detroit’s Wurlitzer Building, will be home to seven restaurants and bars. Eater reports that Chef Garrett Lipar — a former chef at Torino and James Beard Foundation’s Rising Star of the Year semifinalist — is planning an eight-seat, tasting menu-only restaurant called Albena. Bay City’s Populace Coffee shop and roaster will roll out a new cafe in the hotel lobby, while former Standby bartender Dorothy Elizabeth is developing the Candy Bar — a roughly 30-seat craft cocktail lounge — on the Wurlitzer’s ground floor. Elizabeth tells Eater that she’ll employ her background in chemistry and molecular mixology in the project. eat@metrotimes.com @metrotimes
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MUSIC All in the family
Christine McVie returns to find new (and old) magic with Lindsey Buckingham by Chris Parker
Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie. COURTESY PHOTO
As badly as our friends and family
may hurt us, even sparking decade-long feuds, the same spirit that once passed between you often lies dormant, awaiting rediscovery. So it was for Christine McVie and her Fleetwood Mac mates, who helped pull McVie from her funk and record a self-titled duet album with Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. McVie essentially abandoned Fleetwood Mac in 1998, shortly after their Rock Hall induction, a year after the release of their 1997 live concert reunion album, The Dance, and shows celebrating Rumours’ 20th anniversary. “She moved from Los Angeles and burned all her bridges having to do with Fleetwood Mac,” says Buckingham matter-of-factly. “She really needed to make a break and wanted to completely change her life, and that was a journey she made completely on her own terms.” McVie escaped to the rolling bucolic English countryside near Kent and renovated an old manor house for four years, essentially dropping off the grid. She divorced keyboardist Eddy Quintela after more than a dozen years of marriage, and painted the heartbreak in 2004’s In
the Meantime, recorded with nephewguitarist-producer Dan Perfect. Things went downhill from there as McVie developed a phobia of flying which further isolated her. “I just actually spiraled down into I suppose it could be described as a depression and deeper isolation,” McVie says in a separate interview. “And I woke up one day and thought, I have to get over this fear of flying otherwise I’m never going to go anywhere. I was feeling trapped.” McVie says she found a new psychologist, which is “where the serendipity starts happening.” The psychologist asked McVie where she would like to go if she could go anywhere in the world. McVie said she would love to visit Fleetwood Mac drummer and co-founder Mick Fleetwood in Maui, and the psychologist encouraged her to buy a ticket. She bought one for a month later, which is when Fleetwood called her out of the blue. Fleetwood Mac was doing promotion in London and Fleetwood wondered if she was about. When she told him about the ticket, he couldn’t believe it, and offered to stop by and later fly back with her
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to Maui when they finished. “I went back to Maui with Mick and never even felt the wheels reach the ground,” McVie reports. She’s not experienced any more flying fears, even on prop planes in Africa. But something else also happened. “The long and short of it is that Mick invited me to play a couple songs in his little blues band in Maui and I got the bug again,” she laughs. “I thought, ‘What have I started here?’ Then I asked Mick what would it be like if I asked if I could rejoin? And well, you know, his jaw dropped.” On with the show Everyone welcomed McVie back to Fleetwood Mac, though Buckingham cautioned she couldn’t leave again; she had to be committed to it. Yet that’s not the end of the story, just the beginning. McVie subsequently started putting down some musical ideas and sent them to Buckingham for his opinion. “She started sending me all these very rough ideas and suddenly I realized, ‘well this is pretty cool,’” Buckingham says. “And I talked to Mick about maybe getting her into the studio before we started
rehearsing for this last tour as a welcoming overture, and to try to make something a little more concrete.” He saw it as a low pressure way to help McVie get back into the swing after so long away. These sessions could be “a sort of interim kind of decompression chamber before getting into rehearsals where the politics and the pace and everything is a little bit more hectic,” he says. It was also a chance to check the musical chemistry between them. McVie noted in the past that she and Buckingham were the only ones in the band “that played more than a note at a time.” Since the lineup’s beginning in 1975 — with the addition to Fleetwood Mac of Buckingham and his girlfriend Stevie Nicks — they had been working off each other, yet had never considered doing an album together. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie had cut some tracks with Buckingham a few years earlier that he thought might go onto a solo album, but now seemed right for this project with McVie. They were game. But would it still work? “He said, ‘Why don’t we go in there and see if there’s any of the old magic
left?’ because you never know after such a long absence whether we had any of that magic between us,” McVie remembers. “I still didn’t know how the dynamic would be when we actually got in a room together to work on it, and I thought it’s very possible there won’t be anything there after all this time,” Buckingham says. “We sat in the room and suddenly our entire creative vocabulary came back in a flash and then some. It really kind of blew our minds.” What had only meant to be a week or so of work turned into three weeks as they started cutting the basic tracks. Their efforts pushed right up against the beginning of Fleetwood Mac rehearsals, as John, Mick, Lindsey, and Christine dug in with vigor. They felt they were onto something. So much so that after spending months on tour with Fleetwood Mac, they didn’t return home but instead to the studio to work on this album. “We all felt it was powerful stuff and it wasn’t finished. There were just basic tracks but the basic tracks were giving off this fantastic atmosphere,” she says. “We just thought let’s just make it a duet album, keep it simple, and so that’s what we did. We finished within a total of about two months or three months at most.” This is of course lightspeed for a band that spent 18 months just mixing 1987’s underlooked classic Tango in the Night. But Buckingham is quick to point out the importance of context in such discussions, even beyond the greater technical challenges of working with tape. “You have to put (into perspective) the lifestyle we all embrace today versus the lifestyle that not only Fleetwood Mac was embracing [read: drug-addled] thirty years ago but the whole subculture was into,” he snickers. “Let’s just leave it at the observation that it didn’t necessarily make for any sort of fast pace for anything.” Duet in a blend of styles There’s odd sort of symmetry to this story because like McVie, Buckingham also left Fleetwood Mac for a time, and it continued to release albums and tour without him. After joining the band, Buckingham produced the music, bringing a vision and meticulousness to his sophisticated pop craftsmanship which has influenced countless artists from Fountains of Wayne to Sheryl Crow. But the band wasn’t always comfortable with Buckingham’s dramatic, time-consuming production. It was fine when Rumours was on its way to selling 40 million copies worldwide, a commercial success that stood in stark contrast to the interpersonal dysfunction and drug abuse that wracked the band. (In his autobiography, Fleetwood recalls picking up packets of cocaine from the label, like provisions for making the
album.) “Rumours was this huge thing that was so commercially out of proportion, at some point the success of the album actually detached from the music or the content and started to become about the success,” Buckingham says. “That’s a place where you might start to find yourself being painted into a corner, if you were trying to chase that. Tusk was obviously sort of the undermining of that so that became a kind of an influential thing for a sort of indie sensibility.” Things came to a head after the comparative commercial failure of Tusk, with Buckingham’s bandmates telling him “no more of that.” The tensions boiled over again two albums later with 1987’s Tango in the Night, which began as a Buckingham solo project. By then the debauchery had reached epic levels. Nicks checked into rehab and barely spent two weeks recording vocals, leaving Buckingham to essentially paste something together in the production. It was the second-best selling album by this lineup, but Buckingham was done, and left that summer before the tour supporting the album. During his time away Buckingham worked on his craft and making music less in thrall to pop, delving into minor keys and smaller scales on 1992’s Out of the Cradle. After the millennium he returned to his solo craft with a vengeance, releasing several terrific albums in this vein — 2006’s Under the Skin, 2008’s Gift of Screws, and 2011’s Seed We Sow — touring them in small clubs, in-between the huge Fleetwood Mac tours, and comparing the difference between a motorboat and a cruise ship. He finds them both rewarding. “If you look at what I had done in those 15 years [McVie was away], you could make a case for saying I was doing things on my own terms as well,’ Buckingham observes. “In many ways [I] maintained this balancing act between these big tours for Fleetwood Mac, aka the big machine, and the small machine, which is really where you continue to grow as an artist and continue to redefine yourself.” In this way Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie manages to bridge Fleetwood Mac’s still percolating pop instincts and Buckingham’s sophisticated, left-of-center songwriting, turning it into a you’ve-gotchocolate-in-my-peanut-butter moment. “A lot of people have said that — it sounds familiar yet new at the same time. I suppose it sounds familiar because you do have John and Mick playing bass and drums on it but there is also a freshness on it,” McVie says. “Lindsey can be a bit on the edgy side and he leaned in more toward the fluffy center side of himself and I think the songs are all very listenable and it’s a flowing, really great record.” The album indulges both aesthetics like
yin and yang. The tense riff underlying “In My World” pulses like a siren tugging against the breezy California shimmy of the rhythm section, while McVie answers Buckingham’s brooding (“maybe we’re lost without the cost of who we used to be”) with exuberance (“Bless my soul, let the night unfurl, dancin’ spinnin’ dreamin’, singing in my world”). This balance of tug-and-pull also resides in the jangly “Love Is Here to Stay,” which pulls close as though shielding against a gust in the verse as it bids farewell (“I lay this soul to rest”) but doesn’t let go, rising instead in a resounding chorus: “Wind blows one way, time goes, but love is here to stay.” Exploring this creative spark, the pair found new ways of working. “I would bring in whole tracks that were arranged already and had chord changes and intimations of melody played as a lead guitar player and she would sort of articulate the melody and write lyrics,” Buckingham says. “That’s something we’d never done.” Between the tracks that Buckingham had cut with Fleetwood and John McVie before Christine had an inkling of coming back, the work he’d done building up her rough sketches, and the collaborations in-between, they found a balance that represented them both and shared a common space. “It really does strike this sort of ground that was, on the one hand, quite informed by the more left side of the palette, those sensibilities, and yet some of that certainly even got brought into the work I did on her songs,” he says. “But there was that whole from the left coming a little more to the center and there was also the center coming a little bit more to the left from the other side. “What we ended up doing was finding this really interesting place where there was a heart and a familiarity that does reference Fleetwood Mac in some ways,” he continues, “and then there was also this edginess that references more where I’d be coming from if left to my own devices.” Carnival begin As McVie notes, the album has a wonderful flow and even seems to gather strength, closing with two of its most memorable and appropriate tunes, Buckingham’s “On With the Show,” and McVie’s “Carnival Begin.” The former features Buckingham’s trademark pragmatic perseverance — and perhaps a reference to his National Lampoon’s Vacation soundtrack hit — as he sings, “There’s nowhere to go, but on down the [Holiday?] road, let’s get on with the show!” The latter is McVie’s heartfelt meditation on her isolation and subsequent rescue by her mates, with a chorus that subtly evokes the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’.”
“Not knowing where I’m going, but I know I’m gonna win, I can fly again,” McVie sings. “I want it all, those sparkles and swings, a new merry-go-round, carnival begin.” The entire experience has changed McVie for the better, and she’s so happy to have rediscovered her muse, which helps her work through her issues. “There is no question it’s therapeutic,” she says. “I didn’t know if I could write and I didn’t know what my voice was going to be like either because I hadn’t really sung. It was all just a revelation to me and I’m just filled with joy. It was seemingly so easy. I mean truly I can’t lie: It wasn’t hard work.” She’s also happy to have found her way back. Even for all they’ve been through over the years or maybe because of it, there’s a connection that goes deep, as deep as the personal hole McVie fell in, before her friends pulled her out. “Absolutely, no question of it. Today I regard them as my musical family,” she says, thinking back on their first gig back together at O2 Arena, where the British Olympic ceremonies were held. As she came out and sang “Don’t Stop,” her knees knocked as the enormous crowd roared back. “The whole thing was such a fantastic sensation. It’s wonderful. It’s a miracle really.” Meanwhile, Buckingham’s been enjoying his own miracle that seemed equally improbable in his day — a happy family life with three children. “I was just lucky enough to have that happen to me after most of that garbage had been done with. It was a great gift and it was a wonderful place to sort of reconnect with real life,” he chuckles. “This is what you aspire to as an artist — to somehow live in the surreal world but also somehow connect that with real life and I think it’s been helpful in seeing and constantly reminding yourself of the bigger picture and also being reminded of how small your life can be in the be.” Everybody needs some ground to plant their feet. Maybe Buckingham didn’t get that back in the seventies when he was going his own way, but he does now. “It’s been helpful in terms of artistic growth which does not go with the cliché,” he concludes. “Because you used to think family was death to the artist, but that’s not the case as it turns out.” Buckingham and McVie perform on Sunday, July 2, at the Fox Theatre; 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-471-3200; olympiaentertainment.com; Doors at 7:30 p.m.; Tickets start at $29.50.
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St. Vincent. COURTESY PHOTO
Recently added
Mark your calendars for these upcoming shows by MT staff July 1, Steve Miller Band and Peter Frampton at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre; palacenet.com; Tickets are $29.50, $45, and $79.50. July 23, Incubus at DTE Energy Music Theatre; palacenet.com; Tickets start at $29.50. July 23, J. Cole at the Palace of Auburn Hills; palacenet.com; Tickets start at $49.50. July 26, Kendrick Lamar at the Palace of Auburn Hills; palacenet.com; Tickets start at $79.50. Aug. 1, Mary J. Blige at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre; Tickets start at $26. Aug. 1, Cyndi Lauper and Rod Stewart at DTE Energy Music Theatre; palacenet.com; Tickets are $30-$385.
Aug. 4-6, Charivari Detroit festival at West Riverfront Park; charivaridetroit.com; Tickets are $25 in advance. Aug. 4, Lyle Lovett and his Large Band at the Michigan Theater; michigantheater.org; Tickets are $49.50 and $75. Aug. 11, Rasputina at the Magic Bag; themagicbag.com; Tickets are $17. Aug. 17, ‘Yestival’ with Yes, Todd Rundgren, and more at DTE Energy Music Theatre; palacenet.com; Tickets start at $25.
Sept. 17, Wire at El Club; elclubdetroit.com; Tickets are $20 in advance.
Sept. 18, Gorillaz at the Fox Theatre; olympiaentertainment.com; Tickets start at $125. Oct. 17, Queens of the Stone Age at the Fox Theatre; olympiaentertainment.com; Tickets start at $25. Oct. 22, Chelsea Wolfe at El Club; elclubdetroit.com; Tickets are $18 in advance. Oct. 28, Leo Kottke at the Ark; theark.org; Tickets are $40.
Sept. 15, Paramore at the Fox Theatre; olympiaentertainment.com; Tickets start at $38.50.
Nov. 1, The Weeknd at Little Caesars Arena; olympiaentertainment.com; Tickets start at $39.75.
Sept. 16, Savoy Brown at the Magic Bag; themagicbag.com; Tickets are $25.
Nov. 1, Arcade Fire at the Windsor Credit Family Union Centre; livenation. com; Tickets start at $40.
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Nov. 2, Guns N’ Roses at Little Caesars Arena; olympiaentertainment.com; Tickets start at $64. Nov. 3, LCD Soundsystem at the Masonic Temple; livenation.com; Tickets start at $46.25. Nov. 7, Lady Gaga at the Little Caesars Arena; olympiaentertainment.com; Tickets start at $51. Nov. 13, St. Vincent at the Fillmore; livenation.com; Tickets go on sale on June 30. Dec. 6, Katy Perry at the Little Caesars Arena; olympiaentertainment.com; Tickets start at $50.50.
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MUSIC
Livewire
This week’s suggested musical events by MT staff
MON, 6/26 - MON, 7/3
Prude Boys play the Corktown Strut. COURTESY PHOTO
THURSDAY, 6/29
FRIDAY, 6/30
FRIDAY, 6/30
Libby DeCamp
Daniel Romano
@ PJ’s Lager House
@ El Club
Marshall Crenshaw y Los Straitjackets
Have you seen local folk musician Libby DeCamp yet? The young artist sings “broken folk,” with a super dark approach to both subject matter and her singing style. You’ll love her if you dig both Tom Waits and Patsy Cline. She’ll be at PJ’s with Fifth and Main, a super cool folk-rock brother band with a lot of heart, a great sound, and plenty of local shows coming up. Joshua Black Wilkins will also play, and he is a really great folk singer from Nashville.
Ontario-based poet, artist, and musician Daniel Romano plays a bunch of instruments and knows his way around song arrangement pretty well. His latest album, Modern Pressure, is super cool and it really reaches out to people and pleads for human kindness. Romano got pretty ambitious with this album; all 12 songs are more experimental than those on his previous album, but they’re definitely better and more grown-up. The album was very quickly recorded in August of 2016, but it doesn’t feel rushed at all. Romano is a true artist, and you won’t want to miss him.
@ The Ark
Doors open at 8 p.m.; 1254 Michigan Ave., Detroit; pjslagerhouse.com.
Doors open at 8 p.m.; 4114 W. Vernor Hwy., Detroit; elclubdetroit. com; Tickets are $10-$12.
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Starting his career playing John Lennon in 1978’s Beatlemania on Broadway, Marshall Crenshaw has been performing smart people pop music for close to forever. In four decades he’s had 13 fantastic studio albums, some Grammy nominations, and a slew of TV and film appearances. He’s committed to rock ‘n’ roll, and he’s spent a lot of time crafting his fantastic style. He’ll be joined by the infectious act Los Straitjackets. Los Straitjackets are an instrumental guitar duo who put on Lucha Libre Mexican masks at their shows, which is definitely campy and definitely fun to see.
Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; 316 S. Main St., Ann Arbor; theark.org; Tickets are $30.
Corktown Strut @ Corktown
For the second year in a row, Corktown Strut will liven up the 4th of July weekend while giving artists and musicians a platform to get their work out there (and hopefully make some money). Last year, the summer festival helped local music venues to get 46 percent more business than they did on Strut-less 4th of July weekends. The six stages will feature great local bands like George Morris and the Gypsy Chorus, the much beloved super kickass Prude Boys, the also beloved and kickass Kickstand Band, and many more. Venues include favorites like the UFO Factory, PJ’s Lager House, and specially transformed spaces including Dean Savage Park. Attendees will be able to grab a bite at a number of awesome restaurants that are participating, making for a pretty rad festival.
Festival starts at 5 p.m.; Corktown, Detroit; corktownstrut.com; Tickets are $10-$55.
WEDNESDAY, 6/28 Will Downing
Will Downing. COURTESY PHOTO
@ Chene Park
FRIDAY, 6/30
SATURDAY, 7/1
SUNDAY, 7/2
Will Downing — who went to the same Brooklyn high school as Clive Davis and Barbra Streisand, and is the stepbrother of Boyz II Men’s Michael McCary — has had a busy music career. From working as a young college graduate with Jennifer Holliday and Kool and the Gang to 19 studio albums (including two released in 2015) to getting a Grammy nomination, Downing has stayed ridiculously involved in R&B. On tour, he also organized Strike Against Stroke bowling events to raise awareness about the elevated stroke risks that African-Americans face. His smooth sound and winning songs will make all who attend swoon and sway.
Peeling, Village Wives
Steve Miller Band
Dispatch
@ Kelly’s Bar
@ Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre
@ Meadow Brook Amphitheatre
When Annabelle Lee started writing Peeling’s first EP in 2015, she probably didn’t know how awesome it was going to go. Now, the band has released 7 Years of Blood, which is absolutely fantastic. It just came out at the beginning of the year, and you definitely will want to hear it live. They finished it up as they finished their last tour, where they totally amazed audiences. You might recognize Annabelle Lee from Mexican Slang, which is awesome as well. They’ll be joined by Village Wives, who are rad, as well as NATCAM.
Steve Miller is probably one of the most versatile musicians to stay really popular from the ’60s and ’70s well into the ’80s. The difference between “The Joker” and “Abracadabra” is vast, to say the least. And while millennials may have had their first interaction with Miller through Seal’s version of “Fly Like an Eagle” (used in the opening montage of Space Jam), beginning in the ’90s, Miller actually rebranded himself as something of a blues-rock god. Whether you’ve been a fan since “Take the Money and Run” or “Jungle Love,” the one thing that is certain is that Steve Miller is beloved. He’ll be there with Peter Frampton, who had some of the best hair of all of the 1970s.
Friends Brad Corrigan, Chad Urmston, and Pete Heimbold have been in your older brother’s favorite jam band for over 20 years now. Dispatch shot out four albums in four years at the very beginning, then went on a ridiculous hiatus with only a few benefit performances. Then, 2011 happened: Dispatch returned to making music and released their first album in 10 years, Circles Around the Sun. They played two sold-out benefit shows at Madison Square Garden in 2015, and now thankfully they are back, doing their thing for the people, with aplomb and groove. Some of the profits from this tour will go to charity.
Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; 2600 Atwater St., Detroit; ticketmaster. com; Tickets are $15-$20.
Doors open at 9 p.m.; 2403 Holbrook St., Hamtramck; facebook.com/kellys.hamtramck/.
Doors open at 6 p.m.; 14900 Metro Pkwy., Sterling Heights; palacenet. com; Tickets are $29.50-$79.50.
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Doors open at 5:30 p.m.; 234 Festival Dr., Rochester; palacenet. com; Tickets are $26-$61.
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CULTURE
Detroit 67: Perspectives. COURTESY PHOTO
Why the Detroit Historical Museum's new 1967 exhibit needs to be seen by Michael Jackman When it comes to looking back on what went down in Detroit in late July of 1967, the fable of the blind men and the elephant was never more apt. Depending on who you are — and where you live — chances are there are people who register what happened very differently from the way you do. It's the sort of situation where people are not only likely to disagree, but just as unlikely to see the full truth of the matter. So as we head into a summer that looks to be chock-full of recollections of our city's deadliest incident of “public disorder,” it's important to ask: How do you take a tumultuous flashpoint in Detroit's history and present it for discussion when there are such widely different takes on it? As in: You can’t even get most people to agree on what to call it. Those are the sorts of dilemmas faced by the the many local organizations preparing to mark 50 years since tanks rolled down the streets of Detroit.
Fortunately, one local organization has provided something of a roadmap for us all to get there: It's the Detroit 67: Perspectives exhibit at the Detroit Historical Museum. The exhibit acknowledges right in the title that there is more than one perspective. In spirit, it invites people of all perspectives to come together, to see, hear, and feel how others may have experienced it. It seems driven by the hope that, 50 years later, Detroiters of all stripes can discuss those different standpoints, see if they are borne out by the facts, and maybe even learn something new. Upon entering the exhibit, attendees will find themselves confronted with many names 1967 goes by: Civil strife, crisis, disorder, disturbance, eruption, insurrection, melee, rampage, rebellion, revolution, riot, and uprising. The exhibit acknowledges them all without raising one above the others. At the very least, it shows how, from the media to the man
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on the street, the words we use color our perceptions. The next area invites the public to survey the half-century preceding 1967, how the Great Migration of African-Americans fleeing the South in search of social and economic freedom changed and challenged Detroit like no other Northern city. It also offers a finer-grained view of the frustrations in the immediate run-up to the summer of ’67, including segregation in labor, housing, and schooling, and an unfair, unrepresentative police department that resisted even token changes. It's a neutral presentation of fact. But when the exhibit gets to the fire, the shooting, and the looting, those disparate perceptions loom larger and larger. One space simulates a midcentury modern living room of a suburban-style home, with a picture of JFK on the wall, a front lawn out the window, and a rotarydial Michigan Bell phone on the credenza. A couch faces a bay of three televisions
showing actual news coverage from that week. It's a clever bit of “political positioning,” acknowledging how most metro Detroiters experienced the event through the prism of mass media. A nearby wall board reminds attendees that they will see no female journalists, no journalists of color, no shots of whites looting or being incarcerated, and no minority law enforcement. In the corner of one room, a bit of technical magic presents a compelling, street-level view of things: A storefront stocked with wares is projected onto the wall, with shadows of people walking by. In short order, the window shatters as the sound of breaking glass fills the air. Those silhouettes of pedestrians stop to mill in front of the goods, the temptation finally proving irresistible as the display is cleaned out. Eventually, flames consume the looted store. It's a neat trick, sound effects and all, and has to be seen to be appreciated.
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CULTURE A cutaway of a tank occupies the center of one room, and screens on the inside show artful drawings on three panels that illustrate oral histories collected for the exhibit. On the outside, however, is your opportunity to take a selfie with a Sherman, so to speak. The rest of the exhibit shows how changes in government and policy began to address many of the root causes of the riot, as people and perspectives that had been shut out began to be heard. It's a story that deserves to be told again, how many good people at all levels of society came together in the aftermath hoping to find a way forward. Most importantly, the exhibit asks those who visit for what they have to say. There's a time capsule of sorts, where attendees can write their comments and have them viewed by the Detroiters of the far-off year of 2067. There's even an interactive quiz, enabling you to see how your perceptions stack up against those of others who have viewed the exhibit. Near the exit is a cozy chill-out space where attendees can sit down, speak with one another, and even compare their own views. In short, it's utterly unlike the exhibitions typically mounted at the Detroit Historical Museum, which have tended to present artifacts and use note boards to tell the story. Detroit 67 uses some high-tech tricks, including touchscreens that help walk you through the story. But it's also quite an experience: When you're in the thick of the thing, hearing sirens, glass breaking, and frantic reporters describing the action, it begins to feel just the slightest bit jarring — as it should. Much of the credit for the exhibit is due to Marlowe Stoudamire, born and raised on the east side of Detroit, a Cass Tech grad who went on to become chief of staff at Skillman. As director of the 67 project, he has been at the center of its creation for five years, working with community, internal staff, funders, corporate partners, and board members to create something that would resonate with as many people as possible — and would avoid stepping on any of the topic's many land mines. “The exhibition is not a commemoration,” Stoudamire tells us. “It provides people with multiple perspectives about what happened before 1967, what happened during that time, what occurred after, and more importantly how to connect people to opportunities to move Detroit forward in the future.” It's not about celebration or commemoration, Stoudamire says, but our duty to recognize what happened here.
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“It's an opportunity for us to come together and get a baseline understanding of our collective history and let multiple voices and perspectives tell what really happened here,” he says. “We’re not commemorating or celebrating anything. But you have to acknowledge the fact that it’s been 50 years, and this is a critical, pivotal opportunity, as well as a responsibility. “Fifty years later, people are paying attention, the world is watching us. Detroit is a classroom. So do we let them tell the story or do we tell it? Do we invite the community in and give their voices a place to live in perpetuity?” Stoudamire says that community engagement paid off big-time. He says it consisted of “unlikely conversations with unusual suspects.” “We gave people a chance in safe environments to say what they mean, to get it off their chest," he says. "We brought in people with expertise with race relations, historians, we developed a relationship with the Detroit Police Department. We made an effort to leave no stone unturned in making sure all the voices had either had a chance to listen, ask, or learn.” No small task when, as Stoudamire notes, “there were people who lived on the same block who didn’t experience it the same way and don’t define it the same way.” And by offering various views — supported by the facts — he hopes visitors gain something, if only an appreciation of how others see things. “We’re not defining it for you. We’re providing the information,” he says. “You can’t have a project this big and skate around some of the hard facts and realities of what happened. But there’s also some mythbusting in this exhibition to tell you what didn’t happen. It wasn’t a race riot. Coleman Young was not in office. … It wasn’t just black folks.” “It’s really deep and it’s not a laughing matter and it’s not something that needs to be celebrated,” he says. “But it happened, and the story needs to be told — and the conversations need to be had.” Detroit 67: Perspectives opens to the public Saturday, June 24, at the Booth-Wilkinson Gallery of the Detroit Historical Museum, 5401 Woodward Ave., Detroit. The museum is open 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; closed Mondays. For more information call 313-833-1805 or see detroithistorical.org. jackman@metrotimes.com @ michaeljackman
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CULTURE
SKYLER MURRY
Still hustlin’
10 years of Detroit Hustles Harder by Skyler Murry
It’s 2007. The car companies are
going bankrupt and Kwame’s still the mayor — ultimately, the city is in a state of turmoil. But even in the face of uncertainty about their city and livelihoods, Detroiters remained resilient and on their grind as their pride for their city pushed them forward. For then-19-year-old Brendan Blumentritt and 20-year-old Joseph “J.P.” O’Grady, it was no different. With no jobs and just enough money between the two of them for a starter screen printing kit, they started their company Aptemal Clothing. Ten years later and they’re still going strong. “It was just an idea,” Blumentritt recalls as he sits on the couch in his and his business partner’s stylish Eastern Market store. “We didn’t have a business plan; we didn’t have any experience. It was all trial and error. We really didn’t have anything to lose. When you’re inside of it, you don’t always see the big picture of everything — like all the people in the town wearing your clothes, or influencers and celebs like
Eminem and Sir Richard Branson wearing your stuff. We never would have imagined this. But it’s just always being on the grind, getting your name out there, meeting new people.” In almost the same breath O’Grady says, “Well, I always knew we were going to make it: I had a dream,” and the two burst out laughing. The bearded duo’s first designs included handwritten fonts and the Detroit skyline; Kwame’s face and blunts; and renditions of the “RUN DMC” logo. Their major hit came in 2008 with “Detroit Hustles Harder.” This tagline has become the unofficial motto of Detroit and its comeback as it embodies the city’s entrepreneurial and relentless spirit. What started as two kids needing money and wanting to collaborate with their artistic friends grew into a business venture bigger than themselves and extended itself to the city and it’s community of creatives and local brands. “It’s kind of a big reason why we started this, as well as why we opened
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a boutique. A big goal of ours was to...” Blumentritt says as O’Grady cuts in to finish, “To showcase our friends.” Recently they collaborated with Detroit-based artist Ouizi. They sold 50 limited edition bomber jackets and patches that incorporated the muralist’s unique floral style. They have also worked with many others like Murals in the Market, Slow Roll, Our Issue, and the Movement electronic music festival. For the last few years, Blumentritt and O’Grady have helped design and print the official Movement merch. They both agree that working with Movement has been one of many “started from the bottom, now we’re here” moments they’ve been glad to experience. “We would roll up our shirts with our designs, throw them in backpacks, and hit the streets,” Blumentritt says. “We started at Movement festival with a backpack full of shirts.” And since then, they and the businesses they have worked with have grown so much. “We have an online store too, so we’ve shipped all over the world basically,” Blumentritt says. “And that’s cool because you see every order and are like, ‘That’s our shirt and it’s representing the city on a worldwide scale.’ And you know, having the creativity or no bounds on your creativity as well
as working with other creatives and Detroit businesses is really rewarding. And seeing them grow too. A lot of the people we’ve worked with, we have been working with for the last 10 years. Growing business-wise with other brands and business and friends has been cool to see.” They say it hasn’t been an easy 10 years, but the guys haven’t let that stop them. “I think that’s the hardest part, just making shit happen,” O’Grady says. “You’ve got to cannonball into it. Don’t bullshit around, you’ve just got to do it like you said. That’s the main thing: just making it happen. If you have an idea, you’ve got to try it or it’s never going to be anything. Trial and error is the best way to learn how to run and do anything, I think.” And as the city grows and prospers, so do they. “You know, when we started it was 2007 and the city was going through (hell), the car companies were going bankrupt, we had the Kwame scandal, like everything was bad about the city of Detroit,” Blumentritt says. “And now in the past few years, you’re hearing and seeing a lot of positive things throughout the city as far as the business end of it and downtown coming up. It has always been a tight art community, and I see that growing; that just widens our reach of who we can work with, and what we can do, and what can happen next.” For the last ten years Blumentritt and O’Grady have kept their heads down and focused in the grind; just kids from the east side that found a way to encapture the true spirit of Detroit in their clothes. “It’s always been our main focus to get out there, to get Detroit out there and I think Detroit’s growing so much right now as a city so I mean the sky’s the limit when it comes to the future,” Blumentritt says. “We’re going to try to work with as many artists as possible and hopefully we can continue growing and keep doing what we’re doing.” Detroit Hustles Harder is hosting a 10-year anniversary party on Friday, June 30 at Marble Bar; 1501 Holden St., Detroit; divisionstreetboutique.com; starts at 8 p.m.; tickets start at $10. Skyler Murry is an editorial intern with Metro Times.
letters@metrotimes.com @metrotimes
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What’s your Pleasure?
CULTURE Savage Love
The Music Box by Dan Savage
I had a great time at the live taping of the Savage Lovecast at Chicago’s Music
Box Theatre. Audience members submitted questions on cards, and I tackled as many questions as I could over two hours — with the welcome and hilarious assistance of comedian Kristen Toomey. Here are some of the questions we didn’t get to before they gave us the hook…
Q:
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If your partner’s social media makes you uncomfortable — whether it’s the overly friendly comments they get on their photos or vice versa (their overly friendly comments on other people’s photos) — do you have the right to say something?
A:
You have the right to say something — the First Amendment applies to relationships, too — but you have two additional rights and one responsibility: the right to refrain from reading the comments, the right to unfollow your partner’s social-media accounts, and the responsibility to get over your jealousy.
Q:
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A couple invited me to go on a trip as their third and to have threesomes. I am friends with the guy, and there is chemistry. But I have not met the girl. I’m worried that there may not be chemistry with her. Is there anything I can do to build chemistry or at least get us all comfortable enough to jump into it?
A:
Get this woman’s phone number, exchange a few photos and flirty texts, and relax. Remember: You’re the very special guest star here — it’s their job to seduce you, not the other way around.
Q:
Incest porn — what is the reason behind why it’s so hot?
A:
I reject the premise of your question. There’s nothing hot about incest porn.
Q:
My partner really wants an open relationship; I really don’t. He isn’t the jealous type; I am. We compromised, and I agreed to a threesome. I want to meet him in the middle, but I really hate the idea of even a threesome and can’t stop stressing about it. What should I do?
A:
You should end this relationship yourself or you can let an ill-advised, sure-to-be-disastrous threesome end it for you.
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Q:
Any dating advice for people who are gay and disabled?
A:
Move on all fronts: Go places and do things — as much as your disability and budget allow — join gay dating sites, be open about your disability, be open to dating other disabled people. And take the advice of an amputee I interviewed for a column a long, long time ago: “So long as they don’t see me as a fetish object, I’m willing to date people who may be attracted to me initially because of my disability, not despite it.”
Q:
Why do I say yes to dates if I love being alone?
A:
Because we’re constantly told — by our families, our entertainments, our faith traditions — that there’s something wrong with being alone. The healthiest loners shrug it off and don’t search for mates, the complicit loners play along and go through the motions of searching for mates, and the oblivious loners make themselves and others miserable by searching for and landing mates they never wanted.
Q:
My boyfriend keeps talking about how much he would like for me to peg him. (I’m female.) Should I wait for him to buy a contraption or surprise him myself? We’ve been dating only three months.
A:
Traditionally, straight couples exchange strap-on dildos to mark their six-month anniversary.
Q:
Gay guy, late 20s. What’s the best timing — relative to meals and bowel movements — to have anal sex?
A:
Butts shouldn’t be fucked too soon after a meal or too soon before a bowel movement. For more info, read the late, great Dr. Jack Morin’s Anal Pleasure and Health: A Guide for Men, Women, and Couples — which can be read before, during, and after meals and/or bowel movements.
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CULTURE Q:
My sister’s husband describes himself as sexually “vanilla.” She says she hasn’t had an orgasm without a vibrator in seven years. They are currently separated, and he wants her back. If he makes some lifestyle changes (stops smoking so much weed, goes to the gym), is there hope for her sex life?
A:
Does your sister want him back? If so, taking him back is the only way to find out if he’s willing to make these lifestyle changes and make them permanently.
Q:
I went to a big kink event. Why are the people so fucking creepy? How can you find kinky folks who aren’t super pervy?
A:
They’re hanging out with the kinky folks who aren’t super judgy.
Q:
Why do all of my gay friends make passes at my boyfriends at some point? It’s not just harmless flirtation, either.
A:
Your boyfriends are irresistible, and your gay friends are irredeemable.
Q:
My girlfriend and I are having a debate. Which is more intimate: vanilla sex or sharing a whirlpool bath with someone? Can you settle this?
A: No. Q: Three great dates followed by a
micropenis. What do I do? Him: six-footfour, giant belly. Me: five-foot-five, normal proportions. Great guy, but the sex sucked.
A:
If you require an average-tolarge penis to enjoy sex, don’t keep seeing this guy. He needs to find someone who thinks — or someone who knows — tongues, fingers, brains, kinks, etc., can add up to great sex.
Q:
As a trauma/rape survivor, I found myself attracted to girls afterward. Is this because I’m scared of men or am I genuinely attracted to girls? Is this a thing that happens after trauma?
A:
People react to trauma in all sorts of ways — some of them unpredictable. And trauma has the power to unlock truths or obscure them. I’m sorry you were raped, and I would encourage you to explore these issues with a counselor. Rape Victim Advocates (rapevictimadvocates.org) can help you find a qualified counselor.
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Q:
Do you think a relationship in this day and age can last forever?
A:
Some relationships last forever and should, some last forever and shouldn’t. “Forever,” here defined as “until one or both partners are dead,” isn’t the sole measure of relationship quality or success.
Q:
My boyfriend refuses to finish inside me. When he’s about to come, he pulls out and comes on my chest. Every time. I told him I have an IUD and there’s no risk of pregnancy. How do I remain a feminist when my boyfriend comes on my chest every night? I know he loves me, but I feel very objectified.
A:
A woman who enjoys having someone come on her chest doesn’t have to surrender her feminist card for letting someone come on her chest. But you don’t enjoy it — it makes you feel objectified in the wrong way. (Most of us, feminists included, enjoy being appreciated for our parts and our smarts.) Use your words: “I don’t like it when you come on my chest. So that’s over.” He’ll have to respect that limit or he’ll have to go. If he doesn’t feel comfortable coming inside you, IUD or no IUD, you’ll have to respect his choice. He can pull out and come somewhere else — in his own hand, on his own belly, or in a condom.
Q:
My boyfriend wants me to talk more in bed. I am not a shy person, but making sentences during sex doesn’t come naturally to me — though I am very uninhibited with my vocals! What’s a good way to get more comfortable talking during sex?
A:
Tell him what you’re gonna do (“I’m gonna suck that dick”), tell him what you’re doing (“I’m sucking that dmmffhm”), tell him what you just did (“I sucked that dick”).
Q:
Hey, Dan! I’m 27 and I just lost my virginity. Thanks for all the help!
A:
You’re welcome!
On the Lovecast, Dan chats with the author of Everybody Lies: savagelovecast.com.
mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage
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Horoscopes
CULTURE ARIES (March 21- April 20):
by Cal Garrison
LEO (July 21-Aug. 20):
The future is wide open. Up until now that has been just a concept. Now that you know more about how things go, you see that it’s time to be on your way. Just for now, your best bet will be to get your bearings and sit tight. It will take about nine more months before the latest clue to what’s next will show its face. I see opportunities to work with experts and a chance to travel, study, or teach. Between now and then stoke your visions with things that matter to you, and don’t let your fears or the misgivings of your inner child keep you from making this happen.
After all of this you’re wondering if it’s worth it to keep nursing a situation that has “leave it alone” written all over it. If persistence pays off, you haven’t seen much reward for your effort. Even if you’re feeling appreciated, whoever’s telling you whatever you want to hear hasn’t offered anything concrete to show you how much they care. Without it you get the sense that you’re being used. As the next few weeks unfold, take a good look at what you’re getting out of this because it looks like you’re fed up and are just beginning to realize that it’s time to let go.
TAURUS (April 21 -May 20):
VIRGO (Aug. 21-Sept. 20):
You know enough about how things work to keep good tabs on yourself. If there are amends to be made, don’t hesitate to make them. Others are too proud, or too stuck, or too afraid to come around. Life has reached a point where things are either going to come together exactly as you wish, or you will have to switch to Plan B. In some cases it may be time to uproot yourself and move to a new locale. No matter who you are, you would do well to tidy up your accounts and attend to any loose ends that could easily get tangled and keep things from coming to fruition.
You’re still heavily stuck on something that will not release you from its grasp. Letting things go isn’t as easy as it looks. Your mind is totally OK with releasing all of this, but your heart keeps running back for more. Don’t make it harder by being self-critical; this stuff isn’t easy for any of us. Time heals, and so does the idea that we never know what we need. On another note, I see plenty of evidence that work is where it’s at for you. If your relationships and your personal life are going to be harmonious, everything needs to revolve around streamlining your work routine.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Whatever’s left of you is being called to support those closest to you. With very little left in the form of energy, finding ways to restore your soul is what matters right now. You’re beginning to see that the desire to help has to walk a thin line, in light of the fact that everyone wants a piece of you. There is something satisfying about being the answer to everyone’s prayers, but at this point, your own prayers will wind up in the toilet if you keep it up. When enough is enough you will need to summon the courage to say no and mean it in the face of multiple demands. CANCER (June 21-July 20):
Those closest to you think they know what you need. Sometimes you think they might have the right idea, because your mind isn’t as clear as you think it is, and your heart isn’t sure about anything. For the time being all you have to do is stay put. Things will come together better if you hang out long enough to get in touch with where this is going. Everything is about to meet with challenges that will require a steady, confidant hand. Stabilizing your energy and making things clear on every possible level will support your goals and get your relationships back on track.
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LIBRA (Sept. 21-Oct. 20):
This is all new to you. It’s a good thing life has taught you a few things. Now that you’re here, give yourself plenty of room to make your situation better. There are rumors that you are less than happy with the way other people are treating you. In some cases, it’s kind of like, “what did you expect?” and in others it’s not your problem. Getting around this will take every ounce of diplomacy that you’ve got. It could even be time for the “iron hand in the velvet glove” for anyone who thinks you’re a pushover, or too wimpy to stand up to their need to hold you down. SCORPIO (Oct. 21-Nov. 20):
You’ll need the wisdom of Solomon to figure this one out. Close ties make it hard to be objective. As your staunchest allies tell you it’s time to make a move, the thought that you might hurt someone by leaving everything behind makes you doubt yourself. Sifting through the feelings you are 100 percent sure that there’s another way to go about things. And you are beginning to understand that your spirit has a life of its own. The need to shift gears and move on is the spirit’s call to greatness. Don’t allow lesser mortals to convince you that you need to stay put.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 21-Dec. 20):
Balancing things is less about going up and down than it is about finding your center. You bring more to this situation than anyone in it. If you are thinking in terms of balance, you might start by leveling off with the need to overdo everything. And if this has anything to do with finding your center, do you know where it lies? It doesn’t matter which mast you decide to tie yourself to, the road ahead is opening up, but there is no guarantee that it will be paved with gold, or love, or whatever it is that you’re shooting for. Like I said; find your center. It knows what you want. CAPRICORN (Dec. 21-Jan. 20):
Nobody knows how much you need to make everything right. Your whole life testifies to this. When things are less than perfect you go crazy wondering where you messed up. Sometimes life takes us away from our best laid plans, not to make us wrong or punish us for our mistakes, but to show us how to mend things. In the process something new is born, and it is what comes out of that that gets poured into the plan, or the dream, or the creation. Before you can continue with the heart of this vision you need to come down from the clouds and get real about a few things. AQUARIUS (Jan. 21-Feb. 20):
After a deep breath you have a clear sense of what it takes to keep you centered and happy. Months of pressure and stress have given way to a feeling of acceptance and surrender. With this much peace to still your heart, the things that really matter have boiled down to what’s left. As the weight of life recedes, you’re coming to a deeper place. Reconfiguring your options is bound to be part of this. Others don’t necessarily have to understand what you’re going through. You are finding your way to another shore — those closest to you will follow you anywhere. PISCES (Feb. 21-March 20):
You have come a long way. The business of finding yourself has taken you down a million different roads. As past experience wells up to show you where things are at, you’re starting to wonder if it’s time to go back. Reclaiming things that were meant to be left by the wayside may not be the best idea. On the other hand, there could be good reasons to get back in the saddle. The answer isn’t the same for all of you. One thing is for sure — your intuition has already informed you with the truth. Trust it and let that insight show you whether it’s time to stay or go.
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June 28-July 4, 2017
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