Metro Times 071917

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Vol. 37 | Issue 41 | July 19-25, 2017

News & Views News....................................... 6 Politics & Prejudices............ 14

What’s Going On................ 18

Feature A radical’s oral history of Detroit in 1967.........................20

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, Tess Garcia, Isabella Hinojosa, Emily Lovasz, Skyler Murry, Faith Riggs Contributors - Sean Bieri, Stephanie Brothers, Doug Coombe, Kahn Santori Davison, Aaron Egan, Mike Ferdinande, Cal Garrison, Curt Guyette, Mike Pfeiffer, Sarah Rahal, Dontae Rockymore, Shelley Salant, Dan Savage, Sarah Rose Sharp, Rai Skotarczyk, Jane Slaughter

ADVERTISING

The women of the Summer

Associate Publisher - Jim Cohen Regional Sales Directors - Danielle Smith-Elliott, Vinny Fontana Senior Multimedia Account Executive Jeff Nutter Multimedia Account Executives Drew Franklin, Jessica Frey Account Manager, Classifieds - Josh Cohen Marketing Intern - Kasey Rechter

Beer Festival........................ 44

BUSINESS/OPERATIONS

Food Review: Gather.................... 42

Bites...................................... 46

Business Manager - Holly Rhodes Controller - Kristy Dotson Staff Accountant - Margaret Manzo

CREATIVE SERVICES Graphic Designers - Paul Martinez, Haimanti Germain, Christine Hahn

Music

CIRCULATION

Billy Davis gets his dues........ 48 Livewire................................ 50

Arts & Culture Higher Ground..................... 54 Savage Love......................... 58 Horoscopes with Cal Garrison.......................... 66

Cover photo: Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University Design: Robert “Nix” Nixon

Printed on recycled paper Printed By

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Circulation Manager - Annie O’Brien

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NEWS & VIEWS Gilbert’s Bedrock promises affordable housing in deal critics say does little

by Violet Ikonomova

Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock

made headlines last week for its promise to create or maintain 700 “affordable” units in greater downtown Detroit as part of a commitment with the city to redevelop the area as an “inclusive, mixed-income community.” But affordability advocates say the plan — and a broader agreement for residential developers that requires they make at least 20 percent of their units “affordable” — will not succeed in addressing the housing needs of Detroit residents.

The “affordable” units will make up 20 percent of the 3,500 residential units Bedrock plans to develop over the next several years, putting the real estate company in line with Mayor Mike Duggan’s affordability requirement for residential developers receiving grants from the city or building on city land. Bedrock says 54 affordable units will be available at a new building at 124 Alfred Street, near the site of the new Little Caesars Arena, and 85 units will be available at the new 28 Grand in Capitol Park.

You may have noticed that we’ve opted to put the word affordable in quotes. That’s because affordable means different things to different people. In this case, almost all of the units will be affordable for people living at 80 or 60 percent of the Area Median Income, which — as we’ve reported in the past — is inflated for Detroit residents because the median relies on a regional grouping of incomes in the Detroit-Warren-Livonia Metropolitan Statistical Area.

This year, the federal government calculated AMI for a family of four in the region at about $55,000. In Detroit proper, however, median household income is listed at around $26,000.

Affordability requirements are based on the regional average.

To put that in terms of single-person household incomes, someone making 80 percent of AMI makes a little over $30,000 per year. Their rent would then be reduced to make sure they spend no more than about a third of their income on housing and utilities.

While that may sound progressive, a recent study commissioned by the city found it doesn’t actually address the greatest housing need in Detroit. The study by real estate firm HR&A Advi-

sors found that 97 percent of rental units throughout the city are already affordable for households making 80 percent of AMI. Meanwhile, 86 percent of Detroit’s rental units are affordable for those making 60 percent of AMI. It’s people living at 30 percent AMI and below who would benefit most from the housing help. The HR&A study found that for those poorest Detroit residents, just 23 percent have affordable housing options. But the city’s housing and revitalization director has pointed out that developers can’t provide units that cheap because they would lose money on their projects.

While the 54 units at 124 Alfred will be designed for people living between 30-60 percent AMI, affordable housing advocates say several dozen such units will do little to address the rapidly dwindling supply of adequate affordable housing in Detroit.

“There are far more already existing affordable units disappearing than there are affordable units being built and preserved,” says Aaron Handelsman with the Detroit People’s Platform, a network of Detroit-based social justice organizations. “So there’s already a gap and the idea that [Bedrock is] doing anything to help plug the gap is misleading.”

Yet, Detroit officials framed Bedrock’s low-income units as helping address the rental assistance expirations looming for people at 2,000 units in the city. Researchers at the University of Michigan have found much of those are located in the greater downtown, where, without intervention, expiring units will likely flip to market rate and drive longtime Detroiters from their homes. More than 2,000 units receiving the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit will have expired in that area between 2016 and 2020.

But even if Bedrock’s affordable rental units are just a drop in the bucket, there are other efforts underway to keep affordable housing options available for Detroit’s poorest residents. Last week, Duggan and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority announced they would create or preserve 400 units of affordable housing for “those at the city’s lowest income levels.” Other such announce-

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Bedrock’s 28 Grand building in Capitol Park will include 85 units for households making 60 percent of Area Median Income or less. IMAGE COURTESY OF BEDROCK

ments have been coming in regularly from the mayor’s office. And Duggan has also said he’s on board with a plan to create a so-called housing trust fund as part of a coming inclusionary housing ordinance that builds on his 20 percent affordability rule for residential developers (though Handelsman and other affordable housing advocates say a draft version of the ordinance does not provide enough money for the fund).

Regardless, when developers are championed for creating and maintaining “affordable” housing, it helps to put what they’re offering into context.

Not one local media outlet that covered Bedrock’s announcement

explained the difference between AMI and median Detroit household income (those outlets include WDIV, WJBK, D Business, Curbed, and Crain’s, though the latter outlet did appear to allude to the issue by putting the word affordable in quotes). Noting that affordability rules in Detroit — a city where 40 percent of households live in poverty — are not exclusively based on the incomes of Detroit residents seems like a key step in covering developers who claim to be working to make Detroit’s most wealthy areas “inclusive.” news@metrotimes.com @violetikon

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NEWS & VIEWS A lifeline demolished

Detroit is razing houses with money intended to save them

by Steve Neavling

A row of dilapidated houses at Crane and Charlevoix on Detroit’s east side. Eleven houses on this block have been foreclosed since 2002. STEVE NEAVLING

Detroit’s decade-long wave

of tax and mortgage foreclosures has wiped out large swaths of the city’s neighborhoods as Wayne County continues to seize thousands of occupied homes a year.

And while the city’s neediest homeowners were supposed to receive federal assistance to save their homes as part of the Treasury Department’s sevenyear-old Hardest Hit Fund, Michigan squandered its originally allotted $498 million by creating unnecessarily stringent requirements — according to a scathing audit issued in January by the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP).

As a result, more than 80 percent of Detroiters making $30,000 or less a year were denied assistance to save their homes from tax or mortgage foreclosure. By contrast, the other 17 states with Hardest Hit Funds rejected 53 percent of homeowners making less than $30,000.

“Michigan and Ohio are among the states that have the most TARP dollars set aside, but also have some of the highest percentage of people turned down for the Hardest Hit Fund,” the audit reads.

SIGTARP said Michigan’s high rejection rate “raises questions about whether these programs are as effective and efficient as they can be to reach those people who are the hardest hit.”

With a surplus of unused money, Michigan became the first state in 2013 to demolish homes using money intended to save them. The idea was that demolitions would revitalize neighborhoods by increasing the property values of surrounding houses, attracting new homeowners, and reducing crime rates.

A report commissioned by the Skillman Foundation and Rock Ventures found that each demolition in Detroit increased the value of adjacent homes by 4.2 percent. Since 2013, Detroit has razed more than 10,000 blighted and abandoned houses using the federal funds.

But the Treasury Department’s decision to allow Michigan and several other states to use the money for demolitions has come under fire because the federal government created no rules or controls to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, according to a 2016 SIGTARP investigation.

The investigation found that demolition programs are “vulnerable to the risk of unfair competitive practices such

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as bid rigging, contract steering, and other closed door contracting processes” because the “Treasury conducts no oversight” and therefore cannot determine whether the cost of demolition is “necessary and reasonable.”

The SIGTARP report added that “the vulnerability of the Hardest Hit Fund to fraud, waste, and abuse significantly increased with blight elimination, which Treasury could have mitigated, but did not.”

In a report to Congress in April, a federal inspector slammed the state of Michigan for “skyrocketing demolition costs,” indicating that the average price to raze a house had increased 90 percent, from $9,266 to $17,643 by the second quarter of 2016.

The Detroit Land Bank’s handling of the demolitions has become the subject of an ongoing federal grand jury investigation. The Land Bank declined to comment for this story.

Foreclosure experts question why Michigan, one of the states hardest hit by the Great Recession, would prioritize demolition over foreclosure prevention.

Over the past decade, more than one in three homes in Detroit — a total of about 140,000 — have been foreclosed

because of unpaid taxes or mortgage defaults.

“Many of the houses now being demolished could have been saved if there wasn’t a lack of preventing foreclosures,” says Jerry Paffendorf, co-founder and CEO of Loveland Technologies, a Detroit-based property and mapping company. “If you don’t prevent foreclosures, you’re going to have more houses to demolish.”

In 2010, Michigan originally received nearly $500 million to provide loans to eligible homeowners who were facing tax or mortgage foreclosure. But the program, called Step Forward Michigan, rejected funding for about 5,000 Detroiters, while assisting more than 2,000 homeowners who earned at least $70,000 a year.

SIGTARP found that Michigan’s eligibility requirements were more stringent than most states. Michigan, for example, declines assistance to homeowners whose income was not cut by at least 20 percent, while other states don’t require a specific pay reduction to be eligible. Michigan also denies funding to homeowners whose unemployment benefits ran out more than a year ago.

Of the $761 million that Michigan received in Hardest Hit Funds since 2010, half was committed to demolitions.

“Michigan’s requirement does not reward a responsible worker whose paycheck was cut more than one year ago and has exhausted unemployment benefits, savings, family help, or low-paying part-time work to pay their mortgage,” SIGTARP wrote in January 2017.

Michigan’s focus on demolitions left the state without money to help new applicants for foreclosure assistance for the first four months of 2016.

Sen. Coleman Young II, who is running for mayor of Detroit, rolled out his plan to save the city’s neighborhoods last week and said he would lobby state and federal officials to use the demolition funds for their intended purpose — helping homeowners avoid foreclosure.

The key, he said, is getting the state to make more people eligible for the funds.

“I want to use the Hardest Hit Funds to help people stay in their houses,” Young said. “Imagine how many people would still be in their homes if the state didn’t reject more than 80 percent of the people making $30,000 or less.”

About 4,000 occupied houses are facing property tax foreclosure this year.

Steve Neavling is the editor and publisher of Motor City Muckraker. news@metrotimes.com @metrotimes

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NEWS & VIEWS

Republican-led House bill rejects Trump’s Great Lakes cuts

by Lee DeVito Silver carp jumping in the Fox River in Illinois. RYAN HAGERTY/U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE

The Republican-led U.S.

House Appropriations Committee released a draft bill last week that would push back against President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts to the Great Lakes.

The bill would fully fund the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative with $300 million for 2018. Earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed eliminating the clean-up program.

The legislation would also push back against Trump’s proposed $2.4 billion cut to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It is still beyond me why the president, whose political fortune is so tied to the Great Lakes states, would gut funding for such a valuable environmental and economic resource as the Great Lakes,” says Rep. Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat and member of the Appropriations panel who also co-chairs the House Great Lakes Task Force, in a statement. “I will keep the pressure up to ensure Congress provides the resources necessary to ensure the health and productivity of the Great Lakes.”

Additionally, the committee also released draft language for an Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill that would call for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to release a report recommending ways to keep Asian carp and other invasive species out of the Great Lakes. In February,

the Trump administration delayed the Army Corps study following concerns from the commercial barge industry.

On June 22, an 8-pound, 28-inchlong silver carp was found beyond an electric barrier meant to keep the invasive species out of Lake Michigan.

Environmentalists have warned that an unchecked Asian carp invasion could have dire consequences for the Great Lakes.

Michigan marijuana legalization effort running ahead of schedule, organizers say

by Violet Ikonomova The latest effort to let Michigan voters decide whether marijuana should be legalized is running ahead of schedule, according to organizers, with more than 100,000 signatures gathered so far to put the issue on the November ballot. A similar effort was derailed last year when proponents failed to obtain the appropriate amount of signatures in the allotted time.

The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has a total of 180 days to collect 252,523 valid signatures from people in support of the measure.

Spokesman Josh Hovey said the group started its effort around Memorial Day. “If we can keep up this momentum,

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we will have all signatures in four months rather than the six months required by state law,” says Hovey.

If approved by Michigan voters in November, the marijuana initiative would: • Legalize personal possession, cultivation, and use of limited amounts of cannabis for adults 21 and older • Legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp • License marijuana businesses that cultivate, process, test, transport, and sell marijuana • Protect consumers with proper testing and safety regulations for retail marijuana • Tax marijuana at retail levels with a 10 percent excise tax and 6 percent sales tax, which will support K-12 public schools, roads, and local governments.

The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is being spearheaded by the Marijuana Policy Project, a national organization that has been responsible for successful legalization efforts throughout the country.

Coalition members include the ACLU of Michigan, the Drug Policy Alliance, the National Patients Rights Association, Michigan NORML, MI Legalize, the Michigan Cannabis Coalition, and lawyers from the State Bar of Michigan Marijuana Law Section.

’White Boy Rick’ granted parole after years in prison

by Jack Roskopp Michigan’s longest serving nonviolent juvenile offender “White Boy” Rick Wershe Jr. was granted parole on Friday, July 14, after the Michigan Parole Board voted in favor of Wershe’s plea for freedom.

Wershe was just 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a drug conviction. Now 47, Wershe could be out of prison in Michigan by August.

However, Wershe may have to serve time in Florida for committing racketeering while behind bars.

Wershe was given the nickname “White Boy Rick” when he was arrested at 17 years old for selling drugs. He was convicted of possessing more than 650 grams of cocaine in 1988. Wershe was also an underage informant to police, and says after feds cut him loose law enforcement characterized him as one of Detroit’s most notorious drug dealers.

Michigan’s Constitution has changed since Wershe was convicted and no longer allows minors to be sentenced with life in prison without parole on drug charges..

There is currently a film being made about the life of White Boy Rick. It was filmed this spring in Cleveland. news@metrotimes.com @metrotimes

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on sale now:

aug. 26 emo night brooklyn: st. andrew’s detroit

on sale friday:

sept. 13 beach slang the shelter

w/ *repeat repeat

sept. 9 sleeping with sirens the shelter

on sale friday:

sept. 19 coast modern the shelter

oct. 13

the shelter

secondhand serenade w/ he is we, the red jumpsuit apparatus, kenny holland

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sept. 23 electric six st. andrew’s

oct. 3

oct. 14 wheeler walker jr. the shelter

nov. 11 that poppy the shelter

st. andrew’s w/ them evils

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NEWS & VIEWS Politics & Prejudices

Blowing up our firecracker law

by Jack Lessenberry

Karen Mouradjian is passionate, intense, and has dreamed of becoming a lawyer for years — in large part because she is concerned about animal rights and animal abuse.

She wants to help those who cannot speak. Getting a law degree has been a long process, because she doesn’t have much money. But on the Fourth of July, she learned that she evidently doesn’t have any right to be free of noise, and there is a risk of her house burning down thanks to outof-control fireworks.

Six years ago, the State of Michigan passed legislation that basically said when it comes to fireworks, it’s a freefor-all — and essentially took the right to regulate fireworks away from local communities. That, by the way, is a perfect illustration of the core GOP philosophy — conservatives are always in favor of local control, except when they aren’t.

What likely was really going on was that some businessmen, some of whom might be persuaded to donate to politicians’ campaign funds, saw a way of making a quick buck.

Lawmakers claimed that the state, too, would share in the tax revenue, and so they basically said… anything goes.

The result has been hell. WXYZ meteorologist Dave Rexroth blew his left eye out of his head three years ago.

He’s not the only one. Kids have lost fingers and been scarred and mutilated, and there’s been a rash of fires.

Frantic, terrified dogs have destroyed carpets and suffered through emotional agony, and lots of us have had to clean the remains and ashes out of our yards and off our roofs.

Technically, you aren’t supposed to set off any fireworks between midnight and 8 a.m., a provision that may just be Michigan’s most poorly enforced law.

Ask law student Mouradjian, who lives in Eastpointe. “I lost the entire 14 July July19-25, 19-25,2017 2017 | | metrotimes.com metrotimes.com 14

night of studying, because I had to sit on my porch babysitting my house,” she says. “Dumbasses two doors down were shooting them off and I could hear metal hitting my awning.”

When she politely asked her neighbors to stop, they ignored, sneered, or swore at her. “The cops are absolutely worthless,” she says. Perhaps, but the problem has become far too big for any suburban police force. Warren Mayor Jim Fouts planned to spend the night patrolling the streets.

“Continually, I have residents say, I feel like I’m in a war zone, and I don’t want to be in a war zone,” he told The Detroit Free Press. Mouradjian was right to guard her house.

That night, long after midnight, a homeowner’s garage and part of their house in Sterling Heights was destroyed by a fireworks-caused fire.

Damage was estimated at $150,000.

Plainly, this was a stupid law.

Plenty of people, and a growing number of legislators, including some Republicans, have introduced bills that would modify or repeal the anythinggoes fireworks laws. But that apparently isn’t going to happen.

That’s because of one little man.

Meet State Rep. Brandt Iden, a 34-year-old Republican from Kalamazoo County, the fireworks merchants’ best friend. He’s the chair of the House Regulatory Reform Committee, and his philosophy seems to be

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NEWS & VIEWS “no regulation and no reform.”

He’s not interested in rewriting the fireworks laws, he has said, adding that he hadn’t heard any complaints from “down in [his] neck of the woods.” That’s maybe because he doesn’t listen.

I couldn’t find evidence that Iden got direct contributions from the fireworks lobby, though I can’t say that he didn’t. But he is heavily beholden to the Republican Party.

He’s won two elections to the state house by close margins — and the House Republican Campaign Committee kicked in $536,929 to get him elected to a job that pays $71,685 a year.

That’s according to the non-partisan and reliable Michigan Campaign Finance Network. Lots of other deplorables kicked in to further prop him up.

He got $18,000 from the DeVos family, which wouldn’t even be enough to restore one hand destroyed by fireworks.

This is an issue that is having a major and devastating effect on people’s lives. If the legislature is too cowardly to avoid taking up the fireworks issue, they could at least put it on the ballot and let the people decide.

They won’t do that either, unless they are pressured to. They are hoping and betting people will soon forget about it.

Till the next time they and their terrified pets are kept up all night by fireworks. Karen Mouradjian doesn’t intend to let people forget. She’s deluging legislators’ offices with calls.

She’s touting a MoveOn petition called “Repeal the Michigan Fireworks Safety Act of 2011,” which so far has more than 38,000 signatures.

“Money doesn’t come before public safety, and these businesses (that sell fireworks) far exceed being a nuisance and have created a public safety issue that has endangered homeowners and wildlife,” she says.

Selfishly, I just hope she sets aside enough time to make sure she passes her final courses and the bar. Then she’ll be in a far better position to give the evildoers fits.

Should our tax dollars be used for private schools?

Your legislature thinks so. You’d think they’d be content with severely damaging public education by treating hundreds of essentially

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unregulated charter schools as public schools.

We’ve shelled out many millions for charters, some of them owned by for-profit companies, and some which have unexpectedly gone out of business in the middle of the year.

Tough luck, kiddies! Now, the legislature wants to move down the slippery slope of aiding private schools, something that is explicitly prohibited under the state constitution.

Last year, the legislature set aside $2.5 million to help them pay, not for teachers, but for things like fire drills and playground inspections, etc. What could be wrong with that?

Well, everything, as the ACLU has argued in court. Earlier this month, Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens rightly slapped a restraining order that prevented the state aid from being distributed to private, including religious, schools.

This country has been founded on the absolute separation of church and state, period. Taxpayers pay for a system of public schools open to everyone.

Forcing taxpayers to pay for a system of schools that they may not be able to get into or that teach doctrines they don’t believe in is clearly anti-American.

Not only that, this whole issue was settled by the voters of this state not that long ago. Back in 1970, the legislature, the governor, and the Michigan Supreme Court were all gung ho to supply state money to private schools, as long as it wasn’t used for instruction in religious subjects.

The voters, however, thought that was a terrible idea. That fall, they overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the state constitution that said “No public monies or property shall be appropriated or paid or any public credit utilized … directly or indirectly to aid or maintain any private, denominational, or other private, pre-elementary, elementary, or secondary school.”

I know many lawmakers, like our great President Donald J. Trump, don’t like to read much.

But what part of “no” don’t they understand? By the way, I wonder what someone who thinks the state should aid his local Catholic school would feel about state aid… to a Madrassa? letters@metrotimes.com @metrotimes

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UP FRONT What’s Going On:

A week’s worth of things to do and places to do them

THU, 7/20-SUN, 7/23

by MT staff

@ various locations

Ann Arbor Art Fair This massive street fair is actually made up for four separate entities, but you’d never know, judging by the way they weave together through the streets of downtown Ann Arbor. This absolutely enormous fair will feature everything from fine arts to those hippie wrap skirts you can wear 1,000 different ways — and everything in between. You’ll be in the middle of an already bustling Ann Arbor shopping district, so expect lots of opportunities to nosh on food from local vendors and shop at sidewalk sales at local stores.

You’ll never get a spot near the fair, so we recommend parking at a nearby mall or high school. Some offer shuttles for free, while others are a mere $3 for a round trip.

Check the street fair’s website for more details.

Fairs on State Street, Liberty Street, and Main Street; 734-663-5300; theannarborartfair.com; free entry.

Ann Arbor Art Fair. COURTESY PHOTO

THU, 7/20-SUN, 7/23

FRIDAY, 7/21

FRI, 7/21-SAT, 7/22

FRI, 7/21-SAT, 7/22

Beacon Park Grand Opening

Jim Gaffigan

Blueberry Festival

@ DTE Energy Music Theatre

@ downtown Imlay City

Michigan Brewers’ Guild Summer Beer Fest

Jim Gaffigan may not be a very pretty man, but he is funny. OK, maybe his ruminations on the divinity of bacon and his overwhelmingly pale complexion are not the fodder most social justice-seeking millennials are used to hearing, but sometimes we just need a break to talk about the delicious wonder that is pig fat. The last time we saw Gaffigan live he performed his then-current album, Beyond the Pale, front to back. So, if you’re already familiar with his recent release, Cinco, you’ll likely be reciting jokes word-forword. Not that it won’t be fun. It will totally be fun.

In Michigan, there is a summer festival for everything, but the Imlay City Blueberry Festival is one of the originals. It’s been around since 1980, celebrating the indigo-flavored fruit with live music, a Little Miss Blueberry pageant, and a parade. Each day there are eating contests that ask participants to shove their gourds full of anything from pickles to Little Caesars Crazy Bread to blueberry pie. The whole thing is basically just an old-fashioned celebration of classic, American values.

@ Beacon Park

This brand new park in downtown Detroit belongs to DTE, but the Downtown Detroit Partnership is curating all the amazing events that will be held therein. This grand opening weekend will feature over 50 separate events and everything is free. Thursday night there will be free live music

by Robert Randolph and the Family Band. Friday there will be a craft beer garden hosted by Griffin Claw plus a live concert by Lord Huron. Saturday there will be yoga, a shopping market, and music by Plena Libre. Sunday, a live performance by the Michigan Philharmonic will set the mood for a screening of Back to the Future. Plus, there will be adult-friendly light-up seesaws at the park until mid-August.

Start times vary; 1903 Grand River Ave.; Detroit; 313-566-8250; downtowndetroitparks.com/ parks/Beacon-Park; free entry.

@ Riverside Park

Doors open at 6 p.m.; 7774 Sashabaw Rd., Clarkston; 248377-0100; palacenet.com; lawn tickets are $30, pavilion tickets start at $40.

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Festival opens at noon on Friday and 10 a.m. Saturday; 150 N. Main St., Imlay City; 810-7241361; imlaycityblueberry.com; free entry.

For as long as we can remember, the Michigan Brewers’ Guild Summer Beer Fest has been the best place in the state to sip and sample locally made brews.

The huge fest is two days, but it always sells out, so we recommend buying your tickets ahead of time. You’ll have access to over 1,000 Michigan-made beers from over 100 local breweries, making hydration and a pre-event carb-load key. Your ticket will come with 15 sample tokens and if you’re still coherent after using those up, you can purchase additional tokens for continued drinking.

Runs from 5 to 9 p.m. on Friday, 1 to 6 p.m. Saturday; 2 E. Cross St., Ypsilanti; mibeer.com; Friday tickets are $40 in advance and $45 at the gate, Saturday tickets are $45 in advance and $50 at the gate.

SUNDAY, 7/23 Tim and Eric Show @ Royal Oak Music Theatre

It’s hard to believe 2007 was already 10 years ago, but alas, that is the ugly truth. That’s the year Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim started a little sketch comedy series on Adult Swim called, brilliantly, the Tim and Eric show. Now, in celebration of their decade of work, they’re taking to the road to share more sketch comedy, spoofy skits, and satirical humor with fans across the country. The pair are booked to perform two shows while they’re in town, but the first is already sold out.

Doors open at 7 p.m.; 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; 248-3992980; romtlive.com; tickets are $45.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. COURTESY PHOTO

SATURDAY, 7/22

SUNDAY, 7/23

SUNDAY, 7/23

TUE, 7/25-SUN, 7/30

Living Art Tattoo Convention

Say It Loud: Art, History, and Rebellion

Bring It! Live

Traverse City Film Festival

@ Royal Oak Farmers Market

@ Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History

Gone are the days when getting some ink on your arm could be considered taboo. Now, everyone and their mom has imbued their skin with a permanent work of art. This convention is not only a place to appreciate your fellow ink addicts’ tats, but it's also a time to meet with a slew of new tattoo artists and piercers. They’ll be doing work at the convention, so you can get a new piece on the spot or discuss options for setting up an appointment at their local shop.

Runs 4 p.m. to 11 p.m.; 316 E. 11 Mile Rd., Royal Oak; 813-331-5503; eventbrite.com; tickets are $20.

Detroit has been abuzz with stories commemorating the 50th anniversary of the civil unrest of 1967. This exhibit features politically and socially informed works by more than 40 nationally recognized artists, including native Detroiters, across multiple generations and disciplines to show how African-American artists have responded to injustice and transformed the national consciousness over several decades.

The museum is open 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday; 315 E. Warren Ave., Detroit; 313-494-5800; thewright. org; admission is free for members and children younger than 3, $8 for adults and $5 for seniors and kids 3 through 12.

@ Fox Theatre

@ Various locations

Lifetime’s original reality series Bring It! is an over-the-top look inside the dealings of a dramatic dance group led by outspoken Miss D. Whether you’re already addicted to the show’s farcical fits of vocal sparring and killer dance numbers or you’ve never heard someone utter the words “bring it” before, this night of choreographed intensity is sure to be entertaining. Want to meet and greet with Miss D? A photo opportunity add-on is available at all price levels, as well as a VIP package that comes with premium seating.

Starts at 7 p.m.; 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-471-6611; olympiaentertainment.com; tickets are $33-$60.

Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore co-founded this festival and the board is a cast of venerable and award-winning directors, filmmakers, actresses, writers, and musicians. This year they will screen films about Detroit, Standing Rock, Bill Nye the Science Guy, James Rigato, transgender murders, and more.

There will be documentaries, fiction, and even a screening of Cool Hand Luke. The festival offers more than just movies. There will also be after parties and activities for kids, too.

For a full schedule with times and locations check traversecityfilmfest.org; general admission tickets to regular movies are $12.

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FEATURE Rebellion

A radical’s oral history of Detroit in 1967

by Michael Jackman

National Guardsmen patrol Detroit during the summer of 1967. THE TONY

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SPINA COLLECTION, WALTER P. REUTHER LIBRARY, ARCHIVES OF LABOR AND URBAN AFFAIRS, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

This perspective on the events of the summer of 1967 comes from a few Metro Times fellow travelers in the form of John and Leni Sinclair, and Fifth Estate staffers Harvey Ovshinsky, Peter Werbe, and Frank Joyce. We also sought out John’s old pal Pun Plamondon, as well as author, activist, and longtime MT editorial adviser Herb Boyd, and scholar, journalist, and Hush House co-founder Charles Simmons. Additionally, we talked with Reggie Carter to represent the teenage black radical contingent of the day.

Between all of these folks, we hoped to gain some insights into what political radicals and the “hippie counterculture” — a phrase many of them privately grimace at — have to say about that time.

In our interviews, we heard the words “rebellion,” “riot,” and even “ri-bellion” to describe what happened 50 years ago, but the “rebellion” in the title of this feature is not a reference to the incident. It’s rather an allusion to the subversive spirit of those who were generous enough with their time for this entertaining oral history. See the online version of this story for more detailed narratives from this uncommon group of freethinking Detroiters.

Charles Simmons: Why did ’67 occur? What led up to that? When I start thinking about it, well, the coming of Columbus was the beginning of it. There’s an unbroken continuity of struggles against injustice all the way back to that period. [laughs] Harvey Ovshinsky: It started when we took Belle Isle from the Indians. It’s inherent. Detroit was an American city.

It has American problems. And slavery is the curse of America. Until we work it out, it’s just going to bite us all in the ass.

Charles Simmons: It’s like Langston Hughes said: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? … Or does it explode?”

Harvey Ovshinsky: It was incremental. It was both big and incremental, but mainly it was incremental. I mean, how much shit can you put up with before …

You put a pot of water on the burner, and if you don’t lower that heat it’s going to boil over. And that’s what happened.

Charles Simmons: There were so many issues. Economic issues: At that moment, you’ve got the speed-up in the factories with the new technology. There was also the Vietnam War. And we’re see-

ing this war on television, and then we’ve got the soldiers going back and forth, and they’re sharing their experiences about racism in the military, as well as the racism at home. Discrimination: We didn’t have any black foremen or any black people working in the offices. And then you’ve got the housing stuff. We were paying high rents. And, earlier in the decade, the City Council had actually voted to support segregated housing.

Peter Werbe: Just 24 years earlier, there had been this horrible race riot in Detroit, and so the contradictions of race were still really throbbing. You add to that the beginning of the disintegration of the economic structure and this brutal, corrupt police force, and it’s a prescription for what we saw.

Herb Boyd: Relations between police and black Detroiters have a long and troubled history.

Frank Joyce: Enough can’t be said about the politics of the white police as an occupying force in the city of Detroit.

This notion that it was the job of the police to sort of keep control of the black community in general, and black males in particular, was a very entrenched feature of life at the time.

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FEATURE Harvey Ovshinsky: There were two policings of Detroit citizens. If you were black, you got one style of policing, and if you were white, you got another style.

If you were white, you didn’t worry, you respected the police. If you were black, it was another story.

Peter Werbe: We always got treated very badly by the Detroit cops. Even when I was 13 and 14 years old, these cops regularly would stop us and steal our cigarettes. They’d say: “Got my pack today, Pete?”

Frank Joyce: Joining the civil rights movement was eye-opening in many ways, including being with black people when they had police encounters, which were, of course, nothing like anything I’d ever experienced, in terms of the hostility, the fear.

Peter Werbe: We began running into cops when we were with the civil rights movement. When they attacked the group, they didn’t discriminate then.

John Sinclair: I don’t know if they had 10 percent black officers. I’ll bet it was less. Certainly in the command structure, there might have been two blacks.

Reggie Carter: The police department was overwhelmingly white, and even the few blacks that they had on the police force had a reputation for viciously assaulting blacks.

John Sinclair: They knew they were wrong, too, in terms of policing the populace in a rough, and rude, and illegal manner. So I guess they expected something to happen. They had to. They were probably shocked that it took so long. [laughs] Some of the roughest, most illegal policing came from elite units known as “the Big Four.”

Frank Joyce: The Big Four were beefy white guys who rode around in Chrysler 300s. They were correctly reputed to have in the trunks of their cars an arsenal of shotguns and other weaponry beyond the pistol and nightstick of the average beat cop.

Peter Werbe: They were just the meanest, ugliest, stupidest guys you’d ever run into.

John Sinclair: The Big Four could do whatever they wanted. They were

Harvey Ovshinski at a Vietnam War protest. LENI SINCLAIR

patrolling the black community to make it safe for the white merchants, and landlords, and city government, and white people in the suburbs.

Charles Simmons: I knew of the Big Four since childhood. And I witnessed them beating up people, young teenage boys. Young black guys would stand out in front of the pool halls. Standing outside, in the black community, is a cultural thing. But the police would threaten you and curse at you and say, “If you don’t give me that corner, I’m going to kick your ass when

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I come back, motherfucker.” That was their style. The composition of the Big Four was one uniformed white dude and three big brutes in suits, and they had baseball bats, billy clubs, brass knuckles, all sorts of torture stuff, and they would whip your ass. And God forbid they should take you to 1300 [Beaubien St., Detroit Police headquarters]. You’d just get stomped, and you were lucky to leave there alive.

Herb Boyd: You knew when the Big Four was cruising around the neighborhood, really harassing and intimidating

people, saying, “You’re kind of dark over here, gang. You better get away from here.” It was like a continuation of the plantation experience, you know — unlawful assembly: too many black people in one place. We may be plotting, scheming to do something.

So we were always wary of that growing up, even in our little doo-wop sessions under the lamplight in the North End. Because we knew: They come through, they’ll hit you upside the head if you disobey.

Harvey Ovshinsky: We had been

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FEATURE reporting on the relationship between the police and the black community for a while. The troubles that were brewing were not a surprise to us.

John Sinclair: They just harassed you at all times. And the thing about hippies was, like black people, you could see them. You could tell them by their long hair, different clothes, headbands, so we stood out against the landscape, and that was all they needed for “probable cause,” you know? In our neighborhood around Wayne State, you couldn’t walk from one side of the expressway to the other without getting stopped. And they’d go through your pockets. “He’s gotta have some weed in his pocket.” And usually you did.

Leni Sinclair: They would stop and frisk anybody they didn’t like.

They called us names, like “longhairs.”

But we just kept on doing what we were doing. The only thing that they could hold against us — and did us in eventually — was the marijuana laws. I mean, making poetry and music were not against the law. But smoking a joint is. And it was so much against the law that they used that to bust John three different times.

Against the backdrop of repressive policing, Detroit was a fermenting hotbed of liberation groups. Far from dampening the expectations of innercity residents, the unfair conditions seemed to radicalize people.

Reggie Carter: In 1967, I’d had some exposure already to radical politics. I had an older brother at the time who was involved, and I was heavily influenced by him. Detroit, primarily because of the Great Migration, was a center for social movements. It had [the] Nation of Islam, the Republic of New Afrika, black Christian nationalism with Albert Cleage, the All-African People’s Union, Grace and Jimmy Boggs, Dan Aldridge, what emerged as the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, the Pan-African Congress.

Ed Vaughn’s bookstore on Dexter was a hive of activity, where anybody with a social conscience came through at one point or another.

Charles Simmons: There was something wrong with the economic and political system that had to be changed. Organizations like the Black Panther Party, Uhuru, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and some of the SNCC [Student Nonvio-

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lent Coordinating Committee] people, the activist youth of the 1960s, raised some fundamental questions about the system that our elders in the civil rights organizations did not address. NAACP and CORE — their position was that desegregation was the solution, period.

And after that, we’ll live happily ever after. But they couldn’t restrain the young people. In the ’50s and ’60s, the youth didn’t want to hear anything about “go slow.” Martin Luther King appealed more to the older people and the Southerners. But Malcolm X appealed more to the young men in the North.

Herb Boyd: We realized we could go ahead and flex our muscles politically and otherwise. We were empowered and emboldened, I think, to a great degree. And of course it was happening internationally too. We were being fed and energized globally because of the winds of change that blew across Europe, Asia, South America, and, of course, the African continent, and many of us began to connect with revolutionary movements across the globe.

Those were very powerful symbols of change and self-determination, and many of us bought right into that. Hey, we thought the revolution was right around the corner.

Charles Simmons: So you’ve got the Vietnam war, you’ve got economic conditions that are physically brutal, and racism, and, because of segregation, we generally only interacted with whites who were police.

It’s cumulative. You could never say, “It’s going to happen this year.” Every year they would announce, “Well, there might be a riot this year, when it gets hot.” You know: Negroes like to come out and riot in the hot weather. [laughs] The mostly young and white radical contingent had created a small community at Warren Avenue and the Lodge Expressway, with the Detroit Artists Workshop, the Fifth Estate offices, the Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and a couple of Victorian townhouses dubbed “the Castle.” The group’s own troubles with the police were already boiling over.

Leni Sinclair: On Jan. 24, 1967, the whole Detroit police department came swooping down, “Lightning Dope Raid on Wayne Campus: 56 people arrested for marijuana.” Oh, man. Including myself. The next thing I know I’ve got handcuffs on, and I’m off to jail with 55

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FEATURE ‘He was throwing a bottle because of slave ships and chains and whips and what have you that coalesced right in that moment.’ other people. [laughs] And my case got thrown out by Judge Cockrel. And everybody else’s case got thrown out. They were only after John Sinclair. They had to arrest 56 people just to arrest John.

Yeah, those were the “good old days.”

Police made the decision to arrest these people. They went off and fought a war.

You come back and this is how you get treated. You put your life on the line for a country that you come back to and nothing has changed.

John Sinclair: At the end of April we’d had our maximum hippie event, a Love-In on Belle Isle. The police raided it and drove everybody off the island.

So that was our relationship with the police. We hated them. And when the black people rose up against the police, nobody could have been happier than us.

John Sinclair: It was just a party at an after-hours joint. They weren’t hurting anybody. Booting those people out of the blind pig at 5 in the morning into the paddy wagon, people just said, “Wait a minute. Fuck this!” and started throwing shit at them. And then they set some shit on fire and they overturned some police cars, and then people said, “Wow! Finally! It’s bustin’ loose!” That’s the way I looked at it.

You heard about this isolated incident, at 12th and Clairmount, and by the time you heard about it at noon it was already raging. Raging!

Leni Sinclair: I remember how it started. The evening before the rebellion, we were invited to a party by people who had a house on Grosse Ile that extended over the water. I remember it was kind of the very tasteful, classy, laid-back atmosphere of the beautiful people. The lady of the house had a long dress on that was topless. At the time, even fashion was rebelling. And then at midnight somebody took us on an enchanted walk through this incredible garden at night. It was just mind-blowing. And then we went home, and then the next day it started. I just remember that it started with such a beautiful evening.

In the early morning hours of July 23, 1967, a crowd confronted a police raid on an unlicensed bar — or “blind pig.”

Peter Werbe: There were longstanding grievances. When that man threw that bottle at the cop, it wasn’t just because he was a little pissed off. He was throwing a bottle because of slave ships and chains and whips and what have you that coalesced right in that moment.

Charles Simmons: What happens in a riot is that all of those years, decades, centuries of abuse just explode.

Reggie Carter: When police went up in that blind pig, they found more people than anticipated at a party for returning black vets from Vietnam.

Pun Plamondon: The corner of John Lodge and Warren was a real center of the community in a lot of different ways, aside from being a gathering place at the Detroit Artists Workshop.

It was the real heartbeat of the community, and I just happened to come down one morning and was asked if I heard about the riots.

the street, because this was early, before the police or National Guard or any kind of Airborne could come in there and do anything.

Reggie Carter: I wanted to go out in it, and my stepfather stood at the back door and said, “You aren’t going anywhere.” He and I didn’t get along the best, but I thank him even today for that. Because I had no reason to go out in it. Anything could have happened.

Frank Joyce: On July 23, 1967, I was in London, England, at the Dialectics of Liberation Congress, meeting with people from worldwide liberation movements. As news of what was going on in Detroit was reaching London, all of a sudden I became a person of interest in a way I had not before. Here I am at a conference where people are talking about anti-colonial struggles all over the world, and then come the headlines of Detroit in flames and troops being called in. And I was frantically trying to rearrange my travel to get back to the United States!

Harvey Ovshinsky: Where we were, the Warren-Forest area, the looting was more like a circus.

Herb Boyd: The A&P and the Kroger, some of the larger outlets — they didn’t have a chance. People

running up and down, cars pulling up, loading up with all kinds of groceries.

If you were near anything like that or a pawn shop, or jewelry store, or something like that, it was obviously like a domino effect.

Leni Sinclair: We published some fliers during the rebellion. One of the fliers said, “Loot: It’s the American way!” [laughs] Peter Werbe: On the front page of the Fifth Estate was the headline “Get the Big Stuff.”

John Sinclair: We went over on Trumbull and did some looting. We had our Trans-Love Energy cars that we used to ride around the neighborhood and pick up hippies and give ’em free rides. We saw you walking down the street, we’d stop and pick you up. That was our concept, you know? We were hippies. On acid. [laughs] So we would give people a ride with their goods that they’d gotten from the store. [laughs] We’d drive them home. We got a few goods ourselves. I remember we went into a store on Trumbull by Forest. It was a yard goods store.

Leni Sinclair: I have a picture of someone from the Artists Workshop walking down the street with a bolt of material that he had liberated from

Charles Simmons: I was sitting on the porch over [on Wabash Street] when it started. I saw smoke and then I saw people coming around with shopping carts full of stuff. [laughs] I ventured out … I think neighbors told me there was a riot going on, and then I heard about the curfew.

Herb Boyd: When the thing went down, I was living on Richton between Lawton and Linwood, about 10 blocks north. That Monday, as soon as I heard it happened, I jumped in the car with my two sons. In fact, while we were driving around, we ran into Kenny Cockrel. [laughs] We ran into Kenny out there. And we had a nice discussion about what was going on, and then I drove on off and started to survey and look at all of the stores and people. I mean, there was still a lot of action in

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“We ran into Kenny Cockrel. We ran into Kenny out there.” LENI SINCLAIR

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FEATURE the five-and-dime. For years afterward, we used that material to sew band clothes for the MC5. [laughs] John Sinclair: If you showed a picture of them, I could tell you which parts came from the store.

Peter Werbe: Harvey and I were out in the streets and found no hostility toward us whatsoever. We were around Trumbull and Forest, which was an integrated neighborhood, so there was integrated looting. And I remember Mayor Jerry Cavanagh took a tour while the riot was going on and said he was horrified there was a “carnival-like atmosphere.” And I always wondered, “What did he want?

Did he want it to be like a race riot like 1943?”

Harvey Ovshinsky: The looting was biracial. [laughs] … The looting was permission to fight back anonymously, in a way that you couldn’t get caught. Because things were out of control. I mean, when Peter and I were down there, we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. There was a picture in the Fifth Estate that covered the riot of this young kid — he must have been 13 or 14 – carrying a rifle around. That was weird. It was a Fellini movie.

Peter Werbe: At the A&P [supermarket] at Trumbull and Forest, there was a young black kid about 12 years old, the whole front window was shattered and people were entering, and he had all these bags. And he would snap open these bags, like a bag boy, and hand them to people going in. [laughs] Herb Boyd: People wandering down the street with a mannequin?

I mean, come on. Just to grab something. Like mismatched shoes!

Leni Sinclair: When the rebellion started, on the first or second day, I think, we had a ball. We thought that it was just the greatest. We could drive down the street ignoring all the traffic signs. There were no cops. There were hardly any people on the street. We would see fires and everything.

Pun Plamondon: I guess you could say this was thrill-seeking: John Sinclair and I rode for three or four miles on the wrong-way side of the Boulevard, which was just unique. It was just unusual; there were no cops around. Where were the cops? The

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cops were out protecting the white property or firemen putting out fires.

So if you were away from the action, it was true freedom.

Peter Werbe: My favorite counterculture thing was that people were playing out of the windows, “Light My Fire” by the Doors. And the cops would go running into these apartment buildings on Prentis, which was, like, student housing from one end to the other, trying to find out who was playing it.

Pun Plamondon: Have you ever gone 100 miles per hour in a car, squealing around corners and throwing gravel, losing your hubcaps and then you end up at the bar saying, “Man, wasn’t that cool?” That’s what it is, it’s just a rush of dodging the cops. If you get caught up in it, you either get grief from the police or get shot or firebombed.

Leni Sinclair: And some of the hippies who lived in the Castle took a TV up on the roof, probably a case of beer, and were watching the riots on TV, and at the same time you could see the fire.

I thought, “Wow. This is great.” [laughs] But you know, that was in the first moments of rebellion. You think this is the end of the old order and the beginning of the new!

Pun Plamondon: Me and my wife at the time, we crawled up through the ceiling; there was an access door in the attic, and we got up to the roof, where you could see what looked like about 12 blocks or 15 blocks that were on fire.

When you looked to the east side you could see fires. And then in about two hours you looked back to the east side and those fires had doubled. Fires on the west side had doubled. When you looked down toward downtown, you could see Grand River was ablaze. We were just smoking joints, listening to tunes and making reports to each other.

Peter Werbe: That’s right! I haven’t thought about that. We went up on top of the roof of John’s apartment. And people were dropping acid too, which wouldn’t have even occurred to me to do. And I just remember seeing fires everywhere. It looked like a city that was being bombed. And I remember thinking this was the end of Detroit.

John Sinclair: On our second floor, we were watching the riot coverage on television. We never watched television, so it was extraordinary to be sitting there watching this, ‘cause then you

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FEATURE

An aerial view of Grand River as buildings are consumed by fires. WALTER P. REUTHER LIBRARY, ARCHIVES OF LABOR AND URBAN AFFAIRS, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

could look and see all the fire and see smoke and all of that right out your window. We were watching TV to see what they were doing in other parts of the city, because they had kind of a secondary riot area on the east side.

The report we watched most avidly was when they said the 10th precinct was pinned down by sniper fire. We were exhilarated! [laughs] I have to say the truth. We thought this was the beginning of the end.

Pun Plamondon: I had a pretty significant attitude against the government when I moved to Detroit in May. Seeing the relationship between the Detroit police and the citizens, primarily the black citizens, added to an already organic distaste for government and oppression. So that people were kicking the Detroit police’s ass was just a thrill. I never took a joy in anyone getting killed.

I was just thrilled about the resistance of the population against the police.

Reggie Carter: You could hear gunfire, particularly at night, and there was looting on Dexter and there was looting along Davison, but it didn’t penetrate into the residential community. Thing is, one or two blocks away, houses were burning up. People were living in stark fear that they were going to lose their homes, their investment.

Harvey Ovshinsky: Depending on your socio-economic-racial situation, that generally impacted how you felt. I

‘It looked like a city that was being bombed. And I remember thinking this was the end of Detroit.’ knew black middle-class parents who were furious at the rioters.

Herb Boyd: Fires were raging all over the place. A lot of people got burned out. You had a whole block that was extinguished, on Euclid and Woodward Avenue — boom-zoom: The gas station went up and took out the whole block.

Peter Werbe: People put up “Soul Brother” signs. We had one on the Fifth Estate office — which could have been why the National Guard threw a tear gas grenade through the Fifth Estate office window.

Pun Plamondon: There was a historical marker that identified a house as the birthplace of Charles Lindbergh.

In big 3-foot letters across the front porch, someone wrote, “Lindbergh was a fascist,” and I just thought this was so cool. And then someone burned it down.

Charles Simmons: I had lived on Philadelphia between 12th and 14th, so I was aware of the various businesses that were burned down, and I remember there was one store, the owner was

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a very mean person. He was just nasty to everybody. He got burned out. So it seemed like they were selective about who they got. I’m told there was one of these rip-off furniture companies on Grand River where they had extended credit at high interest rates and all that, and people broke in there and stole all their records, [laughs] so they couldn’t catch up with all the debtors.

Harvey Ovshinsky: The neighborhood of the Grande Ballroom, at Joy Road and Livernois, that was pretty much on fire, and buildings were being destroyed. And Russ Gibb came down with Tim Buckley to get their equipment, and they were shocked to see that everything was still standing at the Grande — but not around the Grande so much. And Russ asked one kid, “Why is our building still here?” And the young black kid said, “Well, that’s where they make the music, man!”

Pun Plamondon: In the daytime, there’d be three or four black dudes riding down the street in their car, hanging out the windows, pumping their fists, giving the “V” sign. At night it was a lot different.

Harvey Ovshinsky: At night it was scary. There was the night riot and the day riot. By day, at least in the WarrenForest area, it was a circus. By night, you didn’t know who was going to hurt whom.

Pun Plamondon: There weren’t civilian cars on the road. The only cars I remember were police cars, and they were driving around with their lights off, and some of them would have four cops to a car. And the back doors would be open, so they could jump out real quick with their shotguns. That was scary; there’s no doubt about it. They would creep along at 5 miles per hour down an alley, and you wouldn’t really see them unless the streetlight reflected off their chrome.

Frank Joyce: I don’t remember what day I arrived back in Detroit, but by the time I got back to the city it wasn’t that there were lots of new fires starting — there was just this enormous military and police presence.

Harvey Ovshinsky: It was surreal.

You were watching the president on television saying, “I’m calling in the troops” — and then you’d look out your window and there were the troops. It was like he was narrating our own story.

Herb Boyd: As the National Guard and Army arrived, it was a whole different climate then, in terms of clampdown. It was just the Detroit Police

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FEATURE

“We had a banner … and it said ‘Burn, Baby, Burn!’ … We were flying the freak flag.”

LENI SINCLAIR

Department in the first day or two. But then quickly Governor Romney unleashed the armed forces. They came here in, like, in waves, you dig it?

John Sinclair: We were clearly on the side of the residents, not the police. And especially not the National Guard.

Reggie Carter: Then you’ve got these weekend soldiers, folks who lived up in the northern part of Michigan and come down here with all of their prejudices. I talked to black people who were part of the National Guard at that time, and they say they overheard some whites saying they were “going out to kill some niggers.”

Harvey Ovshinsky: Most of these rural folks had never really set foot in Detroit or an all-black community, so I think they were out of their element.

And as a result, people got hurt. People got killed.

Charles Simmons: The guardsmen were looking very frightened.

They were white guys from upstate.

They had never been in Detroit. But then also some of the Regular Army, who had been in Vietnam, came.

Reggie Carter: Federal troops had experience in Vietnam, and they were more disciplined and more accustomed to dealing with situations.

Frank Joyce: To this day, one of my

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memes about 1967 is that the reason the 82nd Airborne federal troops really came to Detroit was to get the National Guard under control. They basically had a shoot-first, ask-questions-later mindset.

Peter Werbe: The National Guard was just shooting all the time. They shot so much they ran out of ammunition.

Herb Boyd: Many of them were as terrified as some of the people they were supposed to be corralling. I came face-to-face with several of them. They were a little nervous in the face of all the stuff that was going on. And their reflex! They heard a noise or a flash of light, their reaction was: boom! They were shooting first, asking questions later.

Harvey Ovshinsky: I do remember saying, “Well, the war is now home.

It’s official. Welcome to the ‘60s. It’s there and it’s here. It’s everywhere.”

Charles Simmons: I was listening to the radio, and they were in this neighborhood, on 12th Street or something, and the reporter was riding along while they were going to wipe out this sniper. The sniper had some small-caliber weapon compared to what the soldiers had. And you hear this pop-pop-pop-pop-pop, and then the military opened up with tanks and all kinds of shit: “WHAM!” You know, it sounded like Vietnam.

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FEATURE Herb Boyd: The tanks in ’67, boy, you got .50-calibers on top of these tanks. They’d damn near knock a building down.

Charles Simmons: And they said, “Well, we got the sniper’s nest,” and they drove off. And then a few seconds later you’d hear the pop-pop-pop-poppop. [laughs] Herb Boyd: I lived not too far from La Salle Boulevard. We drove over there and, in the night, we cut all our lights off, because the word got out, “Man, you don’t want to have your lights on.”

You could see the tanks drove right across people’s lawns. You could see some of the pockmarks where these .50-caliber shells had hit up against the buildings and left gaping holes.

The hippie contingent on Warren didn’t escape encounters with police and the National Guard. In some ways, they invited them.

Leni Sinclair: Just before the rebellion started, Gary Grimshaw had taken a bedsheet and painted a black panther on there and “Burn, Baby, Burn,” and hung it out the window. Even though that “black panther” looked more like a little black kitty-cat. [laughs] Oh, god.

And then the riot started, of course that thing came down in a minute. I can’t blame them for thinking we had snipers in the closet.

John Sinclair: The Grimshaw flag!

I don’t remember the taking-down part, but certainly we had a banner that had a picture of a black panther and it said “Burn, Baby, Burn!” hanging on the downtown side of our building at Warren and John C. Lodge. We were flying the freak flag. See, I don’t think they liked that very much.

Leni Sinclair: When the National Guard came into our apartment, John had a confrontation with them. Now, mind you, our daughter Sunny was born May 4, so she was just a few months old, and I was standing there with the baby in my arms while John was hollering at the National Guard: “Get out of my house! You don’t have a warrant! You can’t come in!” He always had a bad temper when it comes to the police.

John Sinclair: I’m sure a lot of my memories are warped … by terror! [laughs] It was frightening. Because they came up to our apartment and

36 July 19-25, 2017 | metrotimes.com

banged on the door, and then they called me by name. That was the worst part of the whole thing. And I just had my baby daughter, who was three months old, and I just snapped and said, “Well, shoot us or get out of here!

You can’t do this! If you’re going to do this, you might as well shoot me, because I don’t even care about living in this kind of an environment if you can walk into my house and just put a gun in my face! Fuck you!”

And they left! [laughs] Leni Sinclair: The commune members in the Castle were very adventurous. They thought they would hold off the police by barricading the street, and they put out sofas and couches on the John C. Lodge. That was no deterrent to the tanks. And the cops went in and beat the people up. I think some of the people in the MC5 got arrested too. I never got the whole story.

Meanwhile, in many quarters of the city, an unsympathetic occupation by inexperienced, trigger-happy soldiers ensued. News reports talked of “snipers,” and tanks rolled down main streets.

Charles Simmons: I remember going down on 12th Street and I ran into a guy who I knew who was a hustler. He had gone into a jewelry store or pawn shop and stole a lot of jewelry. He had all kinds of bling, and the National Guardsman, the soldier, was standing right there while I was talking to him.

They didn’t know what was going on.

Peter Werbe: All the hostility I saw, with numerous incidents personally, was threats to me from National Guardsmen and the cops. One of the bivouacs was at Central High School, and we rolled up there. This guy sees these two white guys, and says, “Can I help you?” And I said, “Yeah, we’re from the Fifth Estate.” And he raises his Garand and says, “I know who you are.

Get the fuck out of here!”

Herb Boyd: You had this feeling that obviously it’s an occupying army and the best thing, my mother told me very well, as she learned in 1943: Take cover.

Go in, cut off your lights, and get down, because there’s a certain madness out there. You flick the light in your apartment and suddenly they start shooting at the apartment building, scattering bullets all over the place.

Harvey Ovshinsky: And then coming home to hide under our beds

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37

FEATURE

“The tanks in ‘67, boy … they’d damn near knock a building down.” WALTER

because the tanks are rolling down our street, and you daren’t light a cigarette, or turn on a flashlight, or attract any attention because there were reports of snipers everywhere. … Yeah, the war came home — and we were in it.

John Sinclair: And then they had the National Guard and s coming down the street. Whew. That’s pretty severe.

I’d never seen anything like that in my life. What? A tank? On Warren Avenue?

Are you nuts?

Peter Werbe: One morning, we were in a friend’s apartment on Jefferson and Rivard. Why were we smoking dope in the middle of the day? Probably just because we had it. And someone says, “Wow. Look what’s rolling down Jefferson.” And we look out the window at personnel carriers and go, “Whoa.”

Frank Joyce: Now, everybody says this, but I have to say, there is something about just seeing tanks rolling down the streets of your city that is powerful.

Peter Werbe: My wife Marilyn and I lived on Third and Delaware. After we’d gone to sleep, we heard some commotion outside at like 3 in the morning. We look outside, and this National Guard contingent in front of a Jeep has this black man spread eagle on his face wearing just a tank top and boxer shorts. I

P. REUTHER LIBRARY, ARCHIVES OF LABOR AND URBAN AFFAIRS, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

‘I’d never seen anything like that in my life. What? A tank? On Warren Avenue? Are you nuts?’ have no idea where he came from or why he was there or anything, and they’re all yelling and nervous as hell, pivoting around, pointing their guns everywhere, and there was nobody on the street — at all. And they were yelling at this guy, and I said to Marilyn, while we were crouching down by this window, I said, “Those sonofabitches.”

And I didn’t realize on this carport right below us there was a guardsman and he turns around. I guess I’m lucky I didn’t get my head blown off. He said, “Get down!” and Marilyn and I both froze, and I remember he put the bayonet — they had fucking bayonets — and pushed it against the screen and said, “I said, ‘Get down.’” And I just took Marilyn and just pushed her head down and we just lay there. And I remember they got in their Jeep and they went. I don’t know what happened to the guy.

Marilyn said, “Can we get up?” And I said, “Let’s just wait a minute or two.”

Frank Joyce: It was already known on the street, meaning in the black community, that the police, and the military, and the National Guard in

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particular were out of control. That they were randomly both arresting people, shooting people and killing people.

Harvey Ovshinsky: In our very earliest reporting, we took for granted that it was the rioters who were doing the sniping and the shooting. We didn’t find out until later, with our investigative reports and from elsewhere, that a lot of the shootings were done by the National Guard.

Frank Joyce: I don’t think there were any snipers. If there were any, it was like one or two people. And not necessarily because they were part of any political group, but simply because then, as now, we’re a weaponized country.

Herb Boyd: They were talking about [how] there was some kind of armed resistance. Well, you might have one or two that may have fired back at the National Guard, but there was never a concerted effort in that direction because it would have been absolutely suicidal.

Peter Werbe: The Detroit News and

The Detroit Free Press were essentially just bullhorns for whatever the established powers in Detroit wanted to see in print.

Harvey Ovshinsky: I remember it felt like they were getting it wrong because they were focusing on what was obvious. It didn’t feel like they were on the ground. You have to understand, in those days, the black community was pretty much invisible. Unless you were in trouble or arrested, young people and black people were mostly invisible to the media. And women, forget about it: They were quarantined to the society section.

Frank Joyce: I wrote a front-page piece for the Fifth Estate called, “Who killed John Leroy?” Leroy was shot in cold blood by, I believe, a National Guardsman. We were really reporting on the rebellion from the point of view not of what the rebels were doing, but what the authorities were doing.

Peter Werbe: Frank Joyce found out that a carload of black men coming home from their jobs were stopped at a National Guard checkpoint, these frightened young white guys from Escanaba. Who knows — maybe somebody made a sudden move. And these guys just shot up the car, killed a man named John Leroy, and severely maimed

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From left to right: Peter Werbe, Frank Joyce, Leni Sinclair. JOYCE PHOTO COURTESY KEN CASTLE, OTHERS COURTESY LENI SINCLAIR

somebody else. I thought this was pretty deep investigative reporting that nobody did about the riot dead in Detroit until a few years after that.

time for a lot of our friends who were taken out to Belle Isle, getting brought into night court where Judge Crockett was letting them go left and right.

Harvey Ovshinsky: We really rose to the occasion. It really tested our skills as journalists. The paper demanded that we not cover it but uncover it. And obviously the Michigan Chronicle did too. And I’m sure there was some fine reporting done at the News and Free Press; I just can’t speak to it. Because their sources were mainly in the police.

We had different sources. Who were we going to call?

Charles Simmons: When you look at who got locked up, I’m sure some white people got arrested, but it was mostly black people. And the houses that got burned were our own houses.

Frank Joyce: I recall having a sense that there’s going to be hell to pay for this, there’s going to be a backlash for this, and just this physical destruction is going to have profound and difficult effects for the city and the people who live in it. It was sobering in that way. I do remember saying, “Hmm, maybe this isn’t the whole romantic thing we imagined.”

John Sinclair: After the National Guard and Regular Army troops had established control of the streets and stopped the fires, they just started picking up people, getting them off the streets. At least 4,000 people were arrested. And most were arrested just for being out after 8. People of every kind got swept up. If you went to the store after 3 p.m., you didn’t get home, you know?

Herb Boyd: It was a very nervous

Leni Sinclair: We had to leave. We gathered a few people and went to Traverse City for refuge, because we didn’t know what was going to happen. It was very scary after the National Guard took over the city. It was like war, with tanks driving down the street, and we had to escape.

John Sinclair: We fled to Ann Arbor in ‘68 because of the street-level relations between the hippies and the police. Because after the riot, the police were really in charge then, and we just had to get out of there. We thought, “Ann Arbor? They’ve got like 10 police cars.”

Frank Joyce: I wrote one thing in early ‘68 that was about the repressive response that was coming. The City Council passed a bond issue so they could buy machine guns and armed personnel carriers. There was a transition from the Big Four to the Tactical Mobile Unit. That was, in turn, followed by STRESS. Charles Simmons: What I remember most was that the attitude of

40 July 19-25, 2017 | metrotimes.com

the people had changed so radically.

There had been this fear of police. And that vanished after that week. And the idea of racial pride and black pride in general, and identification with African and African-American culture, there was an explosion of it — suddenly. After ’67, immediately you saw people identifying themselves culturally with the dress, the attitude, and the pride, that all spread immediately after the rebellion.

Herb Boyd: The ’67 rebellion kind of fueled our struggle at Wayne State University. We could put pressure on Wayne State University because they were so fearful that possibly we would have another eruption. So we created the Association of Black Students.

Charles Simmons: I wanted to be a journalist. But when I had applied for jobs as a student in Detroit, they basically laughed at me. All of a sudden, they wanted us to come in. Well, one reason was that white reporters were not allowed into the hood because of the rebellion. They would chase them out. So they had to hire people of color to go in and do interviews and stuff in the midst of all the fires and people getting shot. [laughs] Pun Plamondon: I wouldn’t say it improved things, but it definitely changed things. There’s more black cops on the force, though I hope everyone quickly learned cops are cops — it doesn’t matter the color of your skin.

Charles Simmons: We said we wanted black people on the board of directors, we wanted black foremen, we wanted black people as secretaries and all that. Well, they did all that. But that didn’t change the nature of the exploitation of the system that continues to rip us off. We saw the face of the exploitation change its color.

Reggie Carter: Even when you have the ascendancy of Coleman Young in ‘73, a black mayor, and a significant black presence on City Council, and suddenly you get black judges, and so on, in the long term we’ve seen how meaningless that can be. Because what happens is you get a black mayor on one side of the coin and then you get disinvestment on the other side of the coin.

Harvey Ovshinsky: It was exciting. But in retrospect, it’s only worth exploring, investigating, and remembering if you learn from it. If people are just commemorating and having exhibitions and writing articles and books, and the intention is just to recall it and remember it, then I think an opportunity is wasted. I think we have to try to learn from it and understand it and make sure it doesn’t have to happen again. It had to happen. It had to happen. Make sure it doesn’t have to happen again.

Leni Sinclair: The rebellion was a wake-up call. But you know, people never woke up. [laughs] jackman@metrotimes.com @ michaeljackman

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Crunch Crunch salad and charred carrots. TOM PERKINS

A welcome addition to Gratiot

by Jane Slaughter

A welcome focus on affordability is driving the newest entrant on the voguish Gratiot block that also houses Trinosophes and Antietam. “We couldn’t afford to go out much in the last year ourselves,” co-owner Kyle Hunt says, referring to him, wife Leah, and chef Nate Vogeli. “We wanted to make it a place that anyone would be able to come to.”

On a recent evening my party of three spent $75 on five dishes, a drink, and a tip.

The goal, says Hunt, is for the diner to be able to order any item and make a meal of it. That would include a bowl of wings, a burger, a Caesar, various iterations of mixed vegetables, tomatoes with feta and almonds, and three types of mussels — all from a vegetarian-friendly but eclectic list. Much of the fare comes from Eastern Market across the street.

It’s more fun, of course, to come with a group and share. Parties of two to four can splurge on a whole fish, a whole chicken, or a rack of lamb, with sides for $32, $28, and $50. At happy hour (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday), $5 will get you smaller versions of some of the menu items, with beer at $2.

I’d say the trio is succeeding at their

affordability goal.

Diners in the compact space sit at three steel communal tables, and there’s nothing on the white walls except Kyle’s 49-star American flag, manufactured during the hot minute when Alaska was a state and Hawaii wasn’t. Fans keep the place cool without AC. Those steel tables may contribute to the noise levels, which is my only beef with Gather: When the place is packed, it is loud.

So come prepared to shout; the food is worth it.

Emblematic is a bowl of 10 charred wings with Buffalo sauce and celery yogurt. I asked my Buffalo-native companion whether they were authentic and he said, “Better than authentic.” Meaty and at a good spice level, they benefit from a high-caliber yogurt laced with celery seeds.

Even better is char-braised pork belly with cabbage: thick, crisp, rich, fatty. I would order this again every time.

Thick ribbons of pasta with grilled vegetables come in a heavy lemon sauce that’s almost vanilla-y in its subtlety, which coats big chunks of zucchini, squash, tomatoes, and scallions.

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The chuck-short rib-brisket burger is smallish but served with crisp red onions that are cooked enough to be sweet but still with onion bite. A creamy malt vinegar aioli obviates any thought of red or yellow condiments. The BLT served for Saturday lunch is stacked high with musky bacon, far more generous than the norm. Both come with tangy pickled carrots and chewy, not-too-sweet sweet potato fries.

I thought the eggplant could have been further cooked — it needs to be taken to within an inch of its life to bring out eggplant goodness; otherwise it’s a whole nother flavor and texture. But the hunks of mild feta that come with are definitely superior.

One night the dessert on offer was mulberry ice cream sandwiched between crisp oatmeal cookies, with a side of whipped cream and two tiny mint leaves.

If I’d known mulberries were so capable of tastiness, they wouldn’t be covering the ground in my backyard.

As to drinks: They arrive quickly. I’d been advised recently to get over my negativity toward rosé, so I ordered the Hooray Rosé slushie. It confirmed my opinion of rosé but was still refreshing

Gather

1454 Gratiot Ave., Detroit 313-638-1893 gatherdetroit.com Wheelchair accessible 4 p.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 4 p.m.-11 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 4 p.m.-11 p.m. Saturday Dishes $10-$16

on a summer afternoon. Likewise on the mild and pale pink Rhubarb Mule, barely sweet, with vodka, ginger ale, lime, and a stalk of rhubarb as swizzle stick.

Other drinks are a passionfruit white beer from Denmark; a pale ale made from rice by Stillwater Artisanal; a basil gimlet; mimosas on Saturdays; and a couple of reds and whites that look like some thought was put into them ($20$28 for a bottle).

Gather doesn’t take reservations. But if you have to wait, I guarantee that Leah, the hostess, and Kyle, behind the fourseat bar, will make the delay OK. It adds to the Gather experience that they are clearly having such a good time. (Let’s assume that chef Nate is, too, as he surveys the happy throngs.) Both Hunts are welcoming in a thoroughly nonpretentious and genuine way. It’s odd, then, that they chose to grace their menu cover with the iconic 1910 photo of mean-guy Ty Cobb stealing home, spikes high.

eat@metrotimes.com @metrotimes

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Rachel Smith, left, and Chelsea Piner; assistant and head brewer at Traffic Jam & Snug. TOM PERKINS

Why Michigan women are making more beer

These suds and more are on tap at the 20th Annual Summer Beer Festival

by Tom Perkins

On a recent evening, a group of men dining at Midtown’s Traffic Jam & Snug restaurant and brewpub found the beer so good that they requested to speak with the brewer to express their appreciation and admiration of his work.

When their server retrieved Chelsea Piner from the brewery, the men — who she characterized as “old school dudes” — chuckled.

“Oh no, sweetheart,” one said patiently. “We want to talk to the brewer.”

Before turning heel, Piner quickly shot back: “I’m the head brewer, but I can get my assistant if you want to talk to him.”

The men — realizing their embarrassing mistake — quickly apologized.

Oof. Piner says they all had a laugh, but the anecdote is a small sample of the challenges women sometimes face as more get involved in Michigan’s rapidly expanding craft beer industry.

In short, women don’t always get the deserved respect from the outset.

Piner says she had to ask one brewer to “talk to her and not at her.” She and other women are sometimes forced to clarify that they didn’t get into brewing to find dates.

The good news is that those sort of perceptions, attitudes, behaviors,

44 July 19-25, 2017 | metrotimes.com

and assumptions — which fall somewhere on the spectrum between outdated and moronic — are changing as women like Piner start brewing more of Michigan’s beer and working in the industry.

“I think in general the brewery scene is a pretty progressive group of people,” she says. “For every less-than-accepting person there are countless more who are open to anyone who is passionate about their craft.”

Liz Crowe, Unity Vibration Kombucha’s national sales and marketing director, is also the communications director for Fermenta, a craft beer collective for women that offers op-

portunities to network, gain experience, and learn the trade through a variety of useful programs.

It still can be a challenge for women, Crowe says — even though women literally invented brewing.

Since ancient times, brewing was primarily a woman’s work. “Once it was a commercial enterprise, it was taken over by guys in business, because that’s how society works,” she says. “Now craft beer has opened the door and helped more and more women get into the business.”

Michigan’s craft brewing industry is among the nation’s largest: currently a $10.5 billion business, which is up from $6.64 billion in

2014. Around 225 breweries operate statewide, and the industry directly employs around 34,000 people.

The number of women represented in that figure isn’t tracked, but their ranks are growing, Crowe says. Since launching in early 2014, Fermenta’s membership has increased rapidly, and she says there are visibly more women in all parts of the industry: brewing, marketing, sales, home brewers, and so on.

“Making beer is creative,” she says.

“It’s cooking, and it’s being creative in a way that women always have been, but the craft beer renaissance, or boom, has really made it more possible to get into the industry.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge outside of male domination of the field are the physical demands, Crowe says, but that isn’t a prohibiting issue.

“There’s usually more than one brewer, so if she feels like she’s not capable, then she can get help,” Crowe says. “Also, modern breweries usually have an automated system in place, so that really precludes that issue. It’s a non-issue at this point.”

Piner is proof of that. She worked in the front and back of the house at the Detroit Beer Co. before graduating from college and moving to California to start a film career in 2012.

While there she started working at Stone Brewing, quickly made her way up in the company, and began turning what she considered a part-time job into a career.

In 2015, she moved to Germany and landed a position as an assistant brewer at Stone. With that experi-

ence, she moved back to Detroit where the Traffic Jam brought her on as an assistant brewer, but the head brewer position soon opened up. Though she was short on experience, she describes herself as willing to do the hard work in an industry in which strong work ethic is valued.

“It was basically always showing up, having enthusiasm, and doing any job with a smile on my face,” she says. “I’ve also been able to taste beer and articulate ... and identify ingredients really well. That was a huge part of it, and working my ass off.

“There were definitely people who had more experience, but I always showed up and showed people what I have to offer.”

Traffic Jam owners Scott and Carolyn Lowell give Piner total creative freedom on its seven-barrel system, which is unique in that it’s composed of old dairy equipment and open air fermenters. That’s helping her quickly grow, and she says she’s particularly proud to show off her Natural Selection peanut butter porter and Wit Dreams Are Made Of tart cherry wit at this weekend’s Michigan Brewer’s Guild 20th Annual Summer Beer Festival in Ypsilanti.

Beyond Traffic Jam, there are plenty more beers made by women that’ll be available at the Summer Beer Fest.

Fermenta partners with Michigan breweries to offer “open brew days” in which women (and men) can participate in brewing a limited run beer that’ll debut at the festival.

We compiled a list of the breweries that worked with Fermenta or are run by women, and the beer that

they produced. Among them are: Traffic Jam & Snug: Menage A Trois Belgian tripel; Natural Selection peanut butter porter; Stratus Beery New England IPA; PineapplePocalypse Hoppy Pineapple Blonde; Wit Dreams Are Made Of tart cherry wit.

Unity Vibration Kombucha: All kombuchas are made by head brewer and co-owner Dayna Tran.

Short’s Brewing Co.: Super Sounds of the ’70s dry hopped Farmhouse Ale has 61 percent ABV, and is described as “a hazy with a deep gold color and a frothy, off-white head. An enticing aroma begins with notes of slightly dank citrus, attributed to the use of Wakatu hops, and lime gives way to scents of tropical coconut as the beer warms. Light in body, this Farmhouse Ale is filled with flavors of lime and citrus. Notes of coconut contribute to a juicy mouth-feel. The finish is dry and slightly tart.”

Kickstand Brewing Co.: Jane Beere Imperial Golden Lager Tecumseh Brewing Co.: Circumspice Saison made with all Michigan ingredients, including Pilot Malt House grains, hops from ChurchKey Hops, and yeast from Craft Cultures Yeast Labs. It also includes sweet briar rose, grapefruit mint, and chamomile from DRM Farms.

Dearborn Brewing: 2 Preten-

tious to Mango American wheat ale with mango. 5.8 percent ABV, and described as bready, slightly malty wheat ale with mango added for flavor.

North Center Brewing Co.: Fermenta Berliner weisse. Described as a light sour style with some slight citrus notes to accompany the tartness. It’s served on its own or — as is done in Germany — with a flavored syrup like blackberry or strawberry coriander.

Jolly Pumpkin: Jolly Pumpkin Passion Fruit-Infused La Roja Flanders Ale. River’s Edge Brewing Co.: Moon Over Moore Lake wheat beer. Has 5.5 percent ABV, and is described as a deliciously refreshing and crisp wheat beer brewed with American Saaz hops.

Canton Brew Works: Sour Juicy sour IPA. Has 4.7 percent ABV and is described as a northeastern IPA that’s made with lactobacillus bacteria.

Fenton Winery & Brewery: Fenton Honey Amber.

Rochester Mills Beer Co.: Rochester Mills Mango Cream Ale. Batch Brewing Co.: Batch Brewing Silent Lucidity Hazy Pale Ale. Tapistry Brewing Co.: Juice in the Wheel double rice India Pale Ale featuring El Dorado Hops. Nine percent ABV, and described as holding juicy papaya hop flavors that are set against the cereal taste of flaked rice.

New Holland Brewing: A Passion fruit and raspberry wit.

Cotton Brewing Co.: Pinky Out Belgian blonde hibiscus.

Brewery Ferment: Nobody Does It Bretta pale ale.

The 20th Annual Summer Beer Festival is held from 5 p.m.-9 p.m. on Friday, July 21, and from 1 p.m.-6 p.m. on Saturday, July 22 at Riverside Park in Depot Town, Ypsilanti; mibeer.com/ summer-festival; tickets are $40 in advance or $45 at the gate on Friday and $45 in advance or $50 at the gate on Saturday. eat@metrotimes.com @metrotimes

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TOM PERKINS

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a wonderful new chocolate factory in the perfect city, Clark previously told us that her ambitions are relatively modest.

“We’re not going to try to take on Godiva.

I don’t know what else to want. I get to make chocolates in a really neat town and operate as a real business,” she says.

Bon Bon Bon’s Hamtramck spot is located at 11360 Joseph Campau Ave., Hamtramck.

See bonbonbon.com or call 313-236-5581 for more information.

A ‘gastro-mart’ and food-driven event space is planned for Detroit’s North End

by Tom Perkins

New Order Coffee.

MICHELLE & CHRIS GERARD

Bites

New Order Coffee’s Insta-worthy brews set to debut

by Tess Garcia

New Order Coffee is set to open

its doors on Wednesday at 3100 Woodward Ave., just blocks away from the soon-toopen Little Caesars Arena. With a highl equipped team of coffee aficionados, the nano-batch specialty roaster is the perfect meeting place for your next job interview or weekend gossip session.

And it’s cute. Featuring a “modern, bright façade” with soft blue accents, the 2,000-square-foot café will seat up to 60 guests, and will boast a heated indoor and outdoor patio and semi-private conference room. The café lays claim to a “gleeful defiance of the status quo” through merging a sense of approachability and whimsy with the sophisticated brews and snacks of a coffee lover’s dream.

Drink offerings include microbrewed bythe-cup coffee, handcrafted espresso drinks, cold brew and nitro cold brew, teas, and an array of eccentric specialty lattes. A Crunch Berry cereal milk latte will be the café’s inaugural rotating specialty latte. Guests are also invited to choose their bean with a range of brews, from bold Brazilians to the

“Like a Virgin” water-processed decaf.

“We are striving to marry craft coffee excellence with an energetic sense of play, all while being very sensitive to the speed and quality of our service,” says Elizabeth Rose, the Detroit native behind the café, in a press release. “From individually crafted drinks to the area’s only custom roast bar, New Order intends to live up to its name: an up-to-date, out-of-the-box café and roasterie. ... It is simply unlike anything the city has yet seen.”

For more information, see newordercoffee.com.

Bon Bon Bon’s new chocolate factory opens

by Tom Perkins Bon Bon Bon plans to debut its new 6,000-square-foot chocolate factory in downtown Hamtramck on Wednesday.

The opening comes after several months of working behind papered windows and

46 July 19-25, 2017 | metrotimes.com

putting the finishing touches on the building, including another insane Jimbo Easter mural.

Owner Alexandra Clark tells Metro Times that the extra real estate — about 10 times the square footage of the old space — allows Bon Bon Bon to remain open six days per week instead of just Saturday, and to develop an online store that will launch in October. She says she expects that the company can at least triple its output.

The move also allows Bon Bon Bon “to make smart decisions instead of scrappy decisions,” Clark adds.

“We can hustle with the best of them, but there are things that we’ve been wanting to do that we just haven’t because we’ve been ‘making it work’, so having enough space is huge,” she says.” Owning our own building is an extra source of pride for our whole company — it’s good to be home!”

In a fun twist, the second story of her 92-year-old building used to be home to the Hamtramck Businessman’s Club, so it’s nice to see it put to use by one of the town’s top businesswomen.

And Clark says she’s thrilled to stay in Hamtramck.

“As a chocolatier, I don’t think that there’s a better place to be than Hamtramck,” she says. “Hamtramck is the most diverse city in the state with the second most diverse agricultural economy in the country. For us, this means endless access to inspiration, and the ingredients we need to implement whatever our community helps us dream up.”

But though Bon Bon Bon will grow in

Austin native Paul Philpott moved to Detroit in the mid-1990s and watched from afar as his former hometown led what he describes as the “food revolution.”

Among the trends that impressed him were those that are essentially hybrid food formats. Alamo Draft House — a movie theater that serves a rotating menu of casual cuisine, craft beer, and craft cocktails at moviegoers’ seats — is one such example.

Coffee shops that double as bars or saloons is another, Philpott tells MT. But he’s particularly excited by the idea of a “gastro-mart,” a concept he says Austinbased Whole Foods pioneered by including gastropubs in its stores, turning them into a place where people go to shop and hang out.

Now, he’s planning to establish such a concept to Detroit in the Thank You Mart, a gastro-mart planned for a soon-to-be renovated building in the North End at Custer and St. Antoine Street.

“One of the ideas that I saw in Austin that got me excited was people taking old, run-down convenience stores and completely tricking them out and making them a place where people ... go to buy not commercial junk food, but the elevated, artisanal alternatives,” Philpott says. “Such a thing does not yet exist in Detroit, and given how all these other innovations have arrived, I got thinking about how this might happen in Detroit.”

The building is owned by Detroit-based developer Robin Scovill, who, among other projects, recently completed the renovation of the Treymore building. The more than 100-year-old Midtown property now holds 28 units of affordable housing. Part of the funding for Thank You Mart’s renovation will come via Motor City Match, and construction is expected to take about 18 months.

eat@metrotimes.com @metrotimes

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July 19-25, 2017

47

MUSIC It’s getting late, but still not midnight for Billy Davis Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee keeps on creating

by Chris Parker

Billy Davis. COURTESY PHOTO

48 July 19-25, 2017 | metrotimes.com

True trailblazers often

fail to reap the benefit of their innovations. In the tech business it’s the difference between leading edge and the bleeding edge. One moves quickly and breaks things, the other comes along later to reap a lion’s share of the accolades.

Over the years, Billy Davis often had his finger on the pulse; it just took time for the blood to reach everyone else.

“As I look back I was ahead, and it took a long time before I realized that,” Davis says. “The things that I was doing didn’t work for me at the time, but would work later.”

Whether it was helping pen the first, less famous version of “The Twist,” falling in love with the wahpedal before its ’70s saturation, or sharing licks with a teenage Jimi Hendrix, Davis had plenty of “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” moments, as it were. Indeed, Davis tried to get Berry Gordy interested in his music for years, but the Motown mogul had no idea what to do with him.

“I was doing feedback and backflips and going on the floor with the guitar and he didn’t see it.

He said, ‘What can I do with that?

I can’t do nothing with that kind of stuff,’” Davis recalls. “Like with my association with Jimi Hendrix. What I was trying to get over way before him was the same thing, but he took it to England and it was more acceptable to them.”

Davis finally experienced some recognition last week during his first visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was retroactively inducted in 2012 as a member of Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. Ballard was inducted in 1990; the museum wasn’t built until 1995.

“I was overwhelmed. It is the greatest event that ever happened for me in my life musically,” he says. “It made me go back to my beginning. I remember learning to play guitar, and kids in the neighborhood laughing at me because I used to carry an old acoustic to school with me and sit up in study hall. I was a big joke. I said, ‘What if I had listened to them?’ And look where I got. It’s unbelievable.”

Ballard’s R&B combo heavily influenced James Brown and his stage show, with a run of hits from 1953, until petering out in the mid-sixties as the British Invasion began. For Davis, joining the Midnighters was a

‘I was doing feedback and backflips and going on the floor with the guitar and he didn’t see it. He said, “What can I do with that? I can’t do nothing with that kind of stuff.”’ dream. “It’s just so ironic because when I first started playing guitar my favorite group [was] the Midnighters.

In five years after my first guitar lesson, I was their guitar player,” he says.

If history hasn’t always been as appreciative as Davis deserved, he’s been welcomed by his peers, developing long friendships with Hendrix, B.B. King, and James Brown, to name a few. It was Brown that suggested Davis reunite the Midnighters in the ’80s, even offering Ballard’s phone number.

Elvis invited Davis to Graceland, and Jerry Lee Lewis became a friend after meeting him in a black hotel in 1959 before desegregation. Davis had heard Lewis was staying there, and started cold-knocking on doors until he found The Killer’s room.

“Jerry Lee was sanding 10 feet away holding a fifth of Jack Daniels in his hand. I walked up to him ... took it out of his hand and took a big swallow,” Davis says. “Me and him talked and jived at least 45 minutes.

When I was getting ready to leave the guy who brought me in said, ‘If you hadn’t taken that drink with him, he’d have asked me to get you out of here.’”

It’s not surprising Davis and Lewis should get along; he’s always shared a love of country and blues music from his youth in Mississippi. That flavor cut through his playing, connecting him with Sun Records and the burgeoning rock sound.

“Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations, his ex-wife used to [say] … no matter what you do there is a country feel to it,” he says. “Hank Ballard had the same feel and you look at some of the records you can hear it — for one, ‘Finger Poppin’ Time’ or ‘Thrill on the Hill.’ That feeling separated us from the guys on the Chitlin’ Circuit.”

These friendships, stories, and recollections are the subject of a book Davis has written with Laura

Grimshaw. It’s nearly completed and looking for a publisher.

“I started the book about five years ago because I was just looking at the people that I knew that weren’t around no more,” he says. “These were friends of mine, they weren’t people I just knew of. They were actual friends I communicated [with] and I had all these unpublished personal photographs [of them]. I started thinking who will believe this in 20 years?”

Davis has also cut an album of 10 originals which is expected to be released soon. He’s teamed with drummer Wayne Craycraft (The 108’s) in a new duo to present these tracks, performing live for only the second time ever this week.

“He fit right in,” Davis says. “A lot of musicians have trouble playing my style. I tried a lot of people and it just didn’t work. Then he came in.”

After enduring some setbacks that forced him to sell the guitar Jimi Hendrix once gave him (he’ll get 49 percent of whatever it fetches) rather than lose his home, things seem back on track for Davis. He’s excited to still be releasing music and still reaching audiences.

“The song I do now that gets the biggest response and biggest connection with the audience is a song called ‘2012,’ about the Mayan calendar,” Davis says. “I wrote that song five years ago and whenever I do it, it’s the biggest song that I do.”

Some old dogs are still curious to try a few more tricks. “Music is a part of me,” Davis says, “and I promised myself I’d do it until I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Billy Davis performs on Saturday, July 22 at the Zal Gaz Grotto Club, 2070 W. Stadium Blvd., Ann Arbor; 734-663-1202; zalgaz.org; Doors at 6 p.m.; Cover is $10. music@metrotimes.com @metrotimes

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MUSIC

THURSDAY, 7/20 All Time Low @ Royal Oak Music Theater

After a two-year touring hiatus to write new music, the band is back on the road, inspiring generations of fans to bust out their Converse and Sharpies and don their checkered belts. The tour kicks off just after the release of their newest album, Last Young Renegade. All Time Low has recently secured the prestigious titles of “one of Tumblr’s most re-blogged bands of 2014”, and ‘Best Pop Punk Band” at the Top in Rock Awards for their enduring pop-punk sound.

Livewire

This week’s suggested musical events

Doors open at 5:30 p.m.; 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; royaloakmusictheater.com; Tickets are $32.50 in advance and $40 day of show.

by MT staff All Time Low. COURTESY PHOTO

WEDNESDAY, 7/19

THURSDAY, 7/20

FRIDAY, 7/21

FRIDAY, 7/21

Roy Ayers

Primus

Goddam Gallows

Vans Warped Tour

@ Chene Park

@ Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre

@ Loving Touch

@ The Palace of Auburn Hills

Everybody loves the sunshine… especially at a weeknight show at an outdoor riverfront venue. Dreamy melodies that make use of the, frankly underused, vibraphone and funky beats made Ayers popular enough to be one of the most sampled artists in hip-hop. At 76, the “Godfather of Neo-Soul” is still performing the danceable tunes that brought him to fame. The Superstars of Jazz Fusion will back Ayers for a night of jazz, funk, soul, disco, and R&B.

If you’ve never seen a live show from one of the most influential alt-rock bands, you’re in for a treat. Long featured solos and improvised renditions of their classic songs are set to visually stunning stage designs. The band also uses live sets to showcase some secret talents, like lead singer Les Claypool’s use of a whamola during drum solos. Primus defies labels with genre titles like ‘psychedelic polka’ and ‘thrash-funk’ so you never really know what you’re going to get in the live performance, but we guarantee it will be an impressive display of the band’s usual showmanship.

These rockers first began in Lansing, when the band’s three members happened to meet in a fight with the Benton-Harbor gangbangers. And from that moment, the Goddamn Gallows was created. The rockers are definitely hard-core. In 2007 they left everything behind and spent four years living out of their vehicles in order to tour the country. Their last album released in 2011 is a reflection of their four-year trip.

The premiere pop punk, hardcore, and alternative music festival is back in Detroit for the annual summer tour.

Long time rockers Hawthorne Heights and Suicide Machines are joined by rappers Feeki and Sammy Adams, as well as “pirate metal” group Alestorm.

Don't forget to bring your white T-shirt for GWAR’s genre-transcending performance that involves fake blood showers. The fest will offer Rally Bus transportation to hype up guests coming from Michigan, Ohio, and Canada on the way to the Palace.

Show starts at 7:30 p.m.; 2600 Atwater St., Detroit; cheneparkdetroit.com; Tickets start at $15.

Doors open at 6 p.m.; 14900 Metro Pkwy., Sterling Heights; palacenet.com; Tickets start at $25.

50 July 19-25, 2017 | metrotimes.com

Show starts at 8 p.m.; 22634, Woodward Ave., Ferndale; ticketweb.com; Tickets are $12.

Doors open at 11 a.m.; 6 Championship Dr., Auburn Hills; vanswarpedtour.com; Tickets start at $40.50.

WEDNESDAY, 7/26 Kendrick Lamar @ Palace of Auburn Hills

Kendrick Lamar’s name has been on everyone’s tongue, it seems, and the rapper has been collaborating with the biggest players in pop music. Now, he’s making his way to Detroit in celebration of his highly successful fourth studio album, Damn.

The record debuted at number one on Billboard's top 200 and was certified platinum in May. With hit songs like Humble, Loyalty, and Element, his lyrical ability and cultural hip-hop influence are sure to make this concert unforgettable.

Travis Scott and D.R.A.M. will open the show.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; 6 Championship Dr., Auburn Hills; palacenet.com; Tickets start at $75.

Kendrick Lamar. COURTESY PHOTO

FRI, 7/21-SUN, 7/23

SUNDAY, 7/23

WEDNESDAY, 7/26

WEDNESDAY, 7/26

Faster Horses

Incubus

Dashboard Confessional

Aquabats

@ Brooklyn, Michigan

@ DTE Energy Music Theater

@ Fillmore

@ Saint Andrew's Hall

Michigan is home to myriad music festivals, but Faster Horses is one of a kind. The country music outdoor extravaganza features huge stars like Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan, Darius Rucker, and Aubrie Sellers, among others. And the festival is about more than just music. There are also campground parties, a huge ferris wheel, foam parties, awesome vendors, and tons more outdoor fun. So pack your cowboy boots and straw hat, it’s going to be a boot-scootin’ good time.

Twenty years ago, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was released — Incubus’ first major label studio album. To celebrate, the band will go on their first tour since 2015 armed with a new single, “Nimble Bastard” off their forthcoming album.

Frontman Brandon Boyd has a laundry list of influences ranging from Red Hot Chili Peppers to Ani DeFranco, from the Police to the Beastie Boys, that has inspired the band’s uniquely inclusive genre. Jimmy Eat World and Judah & the Lion will open the show.

If you attended high school in the early 2000s, it’s likely Dashboard Confessional provided the soundtrack to your every heartbreak and lifeending teen drama. Now, the band is headed for the Fillmore where you’ll likely get the chills every time Chris Carrabba belts out, “Vindicated!” A bright red baseball hat emblazoned with “Make America Emo Again” would be a good accessory to sport at this nostalgia fest. The All-American Rejects, the Maine, and the Social Animals will open the show.

The quirky rock band “superheroes” are continuing their mission to save the world from evil through music. In addition to the recent release of their first single in six years, the band is traveling on their summer 2017 tour.

Their live shows have a reputation of being larger than life, to say the least.

Onstage battles with evil foes and instrumentalists dressed in superhero suits, who would wanna miss that?

First show starts at 1:30 p.m.; 12626 U.S. Highway 12, Brooklyn; fasterhorsesfestival.com; General admission tickets start at $199.

Doors open at 5:15 p.m.; 7774 Sashabaw Rd., Clarkston; palacenet.com; Tickets start at $29.50.

Doors open at 7 p.m.; 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; thefillmoredetroit.com; Tickets start at $42.

Doors open at 6 p.m.; 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; livenation. com; Tickets start at $23.

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| July 19-25, 2017

51

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July 19-25, 2017

53

CULTURE Higher Ground

In Detroit, it can be hard to set up a pot shop

by Larry Gabriel

My own neighborhood has been going through the Detroit marijuana provisioning center wars. The location on the corner of Eight Mile Road and Gardendale Street has been targeted by the Metropolitan Detroit Community Action Coalition (MDCAC) which has kept it closed much longer than it was ever open.

I noted a few years back when folks were working on the building for the Gardendale Provision Center and figured I would come back to check it out when it opened. I never got the chance to do that. I didn’t catch when the grand opening was, and shortly after that the place closed down — a few months at best.

For the local anti-marijuana crowd, though, it was an eternity. The traffic on Gardendale, they say, was always jammed due to the center’s customers.

They also say customers were sitting in their cars and getting high.

Apparently the GPC’s owners have applied for zoning approval and business licenses under the city’s new ordinances. According to the contents of emails between the city of Detroit and members of MDCAC, there’s some insight into how these things go down.

First of all, let’s remember that the city’s zoning ordinance for Medical Marijuana Caregiver Centers stipulates that they be located more than 1,000 feet from places like schools, parks, churches, day care centers, liquor stores, pool or billiard halls, arcades, public housing, and other medical marijuana facilities.

In other words, nowhere near where most of the people live and do business.

There are some spots here and there that are not in industrial zones, and the GPC has found one of them. It’s on Eight Mile Road nestled in a neighborhood with tree-lined streets and the residences of several lawyers and judges, an active community organization with vigilant community patrol 54 July July19-25, 19-25,2017 2017 | | metrotimes.com metrotimes.com 54

volunteers.

“I don’t have the notice in front of me, but there were a couple of reasons for the denial, including that the MMCC would be detrimental to the enjoyment of nearby property,” a volunteer reporting back to her people from a hearing about the GPC application wrote in an email. “BSEED cited the examples that neighbors gave of increased traffic on Gardendale and Picadilly Streets as well as the odor from the plants.”

Apparently as more evidence mounted to keep GPC closed, the MDCAC pointed out that the store is directly across Eight Mile’s eight lanes of traffic (and an island) from Ferndale’s Garbutt Park. On the furthest end of the park from GPC sits a Digital Learning Center operated by the Ferndale School Board, and is therefore in a Drug Free Zone.

“3845 W. Eight Mile is not in a DFZ (Drug Free Zone) because the park, outside of Detroit, is not relative per Detroit’s law department,” City inspector Lawrence Muhammad wrote to MDCAC leader Winfred Blackmon.

“Further, the school is not in business and therefore is not relative to their MMCC application. If the school was active for children then this site would be a DFZ.” A quick aside here. One of the big issues for facility owners in the licensing process is that city records are not necessarily concurrent with things on the ground. The city may have some place listed as a daycare that has been

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July 19-25, 2017

55

CULTURE A woman told me that she didn’t mind that there were marijuana stores around but would prefer that it wasn’t on her corner. closed for years, but because of erroneous records a permit could be denied.

At least the city was on top of knowing that the facility in Ferndale was not operating.

I went over to Gardendale to talk to some of the folks who lived near there.

One woman I talked to told me how terrible the traffic had been and that the marijuana users were coming right out and smoking in their cars.

Across the street from her, a man told me that he had bought his house and was working on it before he moved in while it was open. He said that traffic was a little heavier then but not that bad.

“Anything that’s popular there is going to bring traffic,” he says.

Indeed, Gardendale is a fairly busy street partly because it’s where the turnaround on Eight Mile is. It’s one of the few easy access spots in the neighborhood from westbound Eight Mile Road.

Then he told me that the folks who want to keep GPC closed had come around and “reminded” neighbors of how bad it had been when it was open and were kind of coaching people on what to say.

As I talked to neighbors I got a mix of perceptions. One guy told me that before GPC ever opened that he would

56 July July19-25, 19-25,2017 2017 | | metrotimes.com metrotimes.com 56

sometimes see people smoking marijuana in their cars. A woman told me that she didn’t mind that there were marijuana stores around but would prefer that it wasn’t on her corner. She said that a couple of times she’s seen people getting high in their cars, although she’s not sure where they came from. She says she tells them to be on their way.

“I don’t care that they can get it but they should go home with it,” she says, “or go over to Palmer Park.”

I’m pretty sure that smoking marijuana in Palmer Park is illegal. Not to mention that the Detroit ordinances have resulted in shuttering a couple of provisioning centers that were across Woodward from Palmer Park.

The GPC can appeal the decision, but Blackmon and his allies are pretty good at packing the meetings and opposing any variances. Actually, GPC would not even need a variance as it is not within 1,000 feet of any schools, churches, etc. However, there are a fair amount of judges, lawyers, and city employees in the neighborhood, and if the city deems the GPC location a nuisance it’s probably going to stick.

This shows that even a facility that satisfies the city standards for a location can still be labeled a nuisance.

Bottom line, anyone seeking to get

into the business in Detroit still does not have clear guidelines on what they need to do.

In other pot news: Detroit’s Medical Marijuana Caregiver Center zoning and licensing laws are the most restrictive in the country.

At least that was the conclusion of Ron Jones from the Sons of Hemp, who spoke on the minority panel at the recent Southeast Michigan Cannabis Business Development Conference at the Atheneum Hotel recently. The Sons of Hemp are involved in efforts to rewrite or amend those laws to add local ownership provisions.

The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol announced that its petition initiative has gathered 100,000 signatures about six weeks into its drive.

The CRMLA has to gather a little over 252,000 valid signatures by Oct. 22 to quality for the 2018 ballot. This initiative would legalize recreational use of marijuana in Michigan; if successful, Michigan would join Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Maine, and the District of Columbia in legalizing recreational use. Oh yeah, and Canada. letters@metrotimes.com @gumbogabe

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July 19-25, 2017

57

CULTURE

SHUTTERSTOCK

Savage Love

Come again

by Dan Savage

Q:

I’m a 35-year-old straight woman, recently married, and everything is great. But I have been having problems reaching orgasm. When we first started dating, I had them all the time. It was only after we got engaged that it became an issue. He is not doing anything differently, and he works hard to give me oral pleasure, last longer, and include more foreplay. He’s sexy and attractive and has a great working penis. I am very aroused when we have sex, but I just can’t climax. It is weird because I used to very easily, and still can when I masturbate. I have never been so in love before and I have definitely never been with a man who is so good to me. Honestly, all of my previous boyfriends did not treat me that well, but I never had a problem having orgasms. My husband is willing to do whatever it takes, but it’s been almost a year since I came during vaginal intercourse! Is this just a temporary problem that will fix itself?

— My Orgasms Are Now Shy

A:

“This is a temporary problem that will fix itself,” says Dr. Meredith Chivers, an associate professor of psychology at Queen’s University and a world-renowned sex researcher who has done — and is still doing — groundbreaking work on female sexuality, desire, and arousal.

“And here’s why it will fix itself,” says Dr. Chivers. “First, MOANS has enjoyed being orgasmic with her partner and previous partners. Second, even though she’s had a hiatus in orgasms through vaginal intercourse, she is able to have orgasms when masturbating.

58 July July19-25, 19-25,2017 2017 | | metrotimes.com metrotimes.com 58

Third, she describes no concerns with becoming sexually aroused physically and mentally. Fourth, MOANS has a great relationship, has good sexual communication, and is sexually attracted to her partner. Fifth, what she’s experiencing is a completely normal and expected variation in sexual functioning that probably relates to stress.”

The orgasms you’re not having right now — orgasms during PIV sex with your husband — the lack of which is causing you stress? Most likely the result of stress, MOANS, so stressing out about the situation will only make the problem worse.

“I wonder if the background stress of a big life change — getting married is among the top 10 most stressful life events — might be distracting or anxiety-provoking,” says Dr. Chivers.

“Absolutely normal if it were.”

Distracting, anxiety-provoking thoughts can also make it harder to come.

“Being able to have an orgasm is about giving yourself over to pleasure in the moment,” says Dr. Chivers.

“Research on brain activation during orgasm suggests that a key feature is deactivation in parts of the brain associated with emotion and cognitive control. So difficulties reaching orgasm can arise from distracting, anxietyprovoking thoughts that wiggle their way in when you’re really aroused, maybe on the edge, but just can’t seem to make it over. They interfere with that deactivation.”

Dr. Chivers’ advice will be familiar to anyone with a daughter under the age of 12: Let it go.

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July 19-25, 2017

59

CULTURE “Let go of working toward vaginal orgasm during sex,” Dr. Chivers advises. “Take vaginal orgasm off the table for at least a month — you’re allowed to do other things and come other ways, just not through vaginal-penile intercourse. Instead of working toward the goal of bringing back your vaginal orgasm, enjoy being with your sexy husband and experiment with other ways of sharing pleasure, and if the vaginal orgasms don’t immediately come back, oh well. There are, fortunately, many roads to Rome. Enjoy!”

My advice? Buy some stress-busting pot edibles if you’re lucky enough to live in a state that has legal weed, MOANS, or make your own if you live in a suck-ass state that doesn’t. And tell your husband to stop trying so hard — if his efforts are making you feel guilty, that’s going to be hugely counterproductive. Good luck!

Follow Dr. Chivers on Twitter @ DrMLChivers.

Q:

I’m a straight man who recently moved in with a rich, straight friend. He sent me an email before I moved in letting me know he was in a femdom relationship.

He was only telling me this, he said, because I might notice “small, subtle rituals meant

to reinforce [their] D/s dynamic.”

If it bothered me, I shouldn’t move in. Finding an affordable place in Central London is hard, so I told him I didn’t mind. But I do.

Their many “rituals” run the gamut from the subtle to the not-so-subtle: He can’t sit on the furniture without her permission, which she grants with a little nod (subtle); when he buzzes her in, he has to wait by the door on his hands and knees and kiss her feet when she enters and keep at it until she tells him to stop (NOT SUBTLE!). She’s normal with me — she doesn’t attempt to order me around — but these “rituals” make me uncomfortable and I worry they’re getting off from my witnessing them.

— Rituals Often Observed Mortifying In Extreme

A:

His apartment, his rules — or her rules, actually. If you don’t want to witness the shit your rich and submissive friend with the great apartment warned you about before you moved in, ROOMIE, you’ll have to move your ass out.

Q:

I know a teenager in a theater production who is receiving inappropriate advances from an older member of the cast.

Her refusals are met with aggression and threats that he’ll make a scene, ruining the

60 July 19-25, 2017 | metrotimes.com

show for everyone. I believe that fear is causing her to follow through with things she isn’t interested in or comfortable with. What advice would you have on how she gets out of this situation? She’s otherwise enjoying the theater experience.

— Theatrical Harassment Really Enrages Adult Torontonian

A:

The awesome band Whitehorse invited me to Toronto to celebrate their new album, Panther in the Dollhouse, which features songs inspired by sex-workers-rights activists and — blushing — the Savage Lovecast. (Luke and Melissa and the band rehearsed and played the Savage Lovecast theme live, which was magical.) Anyway, THREAT, I answered your question during the show and I kindasorta jumped down your throat. I thought you were a member of the theater company and an eyewitness — and passive bystander — to this harassment. (“You ask what this kid can do about this,” I recall saying, “but the better question is why haven’t you done something about it?”)

But there was nothing in your question to indicate you were an eyewitness and a passive bystander, THREAT, which I didn’t realize until rereading your question after the show. Sigh. I have more time to digest

the questions that appear in the column or on the podcast, and my copy editor (peace be upon her) and the tech-savvy, at-risk youth live to point out a detail I may have missed or gotten wrong, prompting me to rewrite or re-record an answer. But I’m on my own at live shows — no copy editor, no TSARY, no net — upping the odds of a screwup. My apologies, THREAT. But even if you’re not an eyewitness, THREAT, there are still a few things you can do. First, keep listening to your friend.

In addition to offering her your moral support, encourage her to speak to the director of the play and the artistic director of the theater. This fucking creep needs to be fired — and if the people running the show are made aware of the situation and don’t act, they need to be held accountable. A detailed Facebook post brought to the attention of the local media should do the trick.

Hopefully it won’t come to that, THREAT, but let me know if it does. Because I’m happy to help make that Facebook post go viral.

On the Lovecast, Amanda Marcotte on Game of Thrones: 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):

There’s no way to make sense of this. In the middle of a typhoon making sense of anything is oxymoronic. Finding new ways to remain centered in the eye of the storm is vital. Those of you who have stopped making excuses are way better off than those of you who are still using the blame game to obscure the truth. What came to life four or five years ago has yet to manifest fully. The power of intent doesn’t work when your motives are murky or ego-based. Your blind spots look like a field of polka dots! Finding clarity at a time like this will take a lot more soul searching.

You’ve got everything going for you. What happens from here on out? It all depends. Those of you who are strung out on money and things will have a tougher time than the ones who know that money and things are a trap. It would be good if you could put your power, greed, and ego stuff aside, long enough to tune in to what your heart wants out of all of this. With one foot on the brakes, and the other one on the gas pedal, before you move forward take a minute to reflect on your choices and be aware that the only one that matters will require you to make it from the heart.

TAURUS (April 21 -May 20):

VIRGO (Aug. 21-Sept. 20):

A lifetime of keeping it all together on the surface has met its limit. Until now you were under the impression that perfection lies in whatever the rest of the world calls “normal.” As the past — and your experience of it — leak through the cracks, you are confronting the truth and your own uniqueness for the very first time. Others find it so hard to embrace the real you; they are pushing to keep you right where you are. Issues that revolve around showing your true colors will show you who’s there for you and who’s not. Don’t cave in to expectations. Focus on what matters to you.

The heat of the season has warmed up your attitude in a good way. Things are over the top. Between the idea that you’ve got the world by the balls, and the fact that you are turning a corner, you can do whatever you want. Until now the issue has always been how to weave straw into gold. If this has taxed you and your resources, it has also taught you how to create from within.

The sum total of all your efforts is looking a lot like what you’ve always wanted. Friends are bound to fall by the wayside as worn out patterns dissolve and your truer longings start to materialize.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):

You have your own way of doing things. Most people don’t give themselves this much leeway. In the past few weeks it’s become quite clear that your approach is either working — or it isn’t. By the time you read this several issues, and other bones of contention, will reveal themselves to be a hell of a lot different than they look right now. Keep the faith.

You’re here for all the right reasons. What others have to say about it shouldn’t weaken your resolve. In the midst of more than one hassle, you will be quite surprised when sudden, serendipitous changes turn it all around.

CANCER (June 21-July 20):

Many of you are having a tough time watching your friends make fools of themselves. There’s not much you can do. Their issues are cloaked, and none of it is your business. As you hang around, watching a train wreck, you could ask yourself why all of this is more fascinating than your own life. On other fronts your work situation is holding steady, but it isn’t going anywhere. As much as you think a few new contacts and a little more schmoozing will be what it takes to hit the jackpot, you have to figure out how to pull this one together from an internal place.

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LIBRA (Sept. 21-Oct. 20):

The “whiff” of third-party interference is all over your story right now. As you weave your way through the B.S. that shows up in this neck of the woods, you’re totally sure you’ve got it all figured out. The need to be 100 percent conscious of your motives is huge. For the next six months, you have all the freedom in the world to explore what happens when someone (or something) else enters the equation. Forewarned is forearmed. To approach this scenario from the standpoint of sweetness and light is insane. What is now a “whiff” is due to turn into a hurricane.

SCORPIO (Oct. 21-Nov. 20):

You can’t let people take over your life. Things have gotten to the point where you’re too wound up to see this for what it is. Don’t drive yourself into the ground. Choose your battles and let everyone get used to the fact that it isn’t your job to make everything OK. With plenty of your own ‘stuff’ to contend with it’s enough to remain cheerful these days.

Those of you who manage your feelings by keeping busy are probably performing one miracle after another. If others never cease to be amazed by your productivity, little do they know that it’s how you stay sane.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 21-Dec. 20):

You are so open to everything you endow others with the same level of unconditional love and trust. There’s nothing at all wrong with this, but you can be so dumb about it. It’s time to wake up. Whoever you are giving all the space in the world to went over the top close to a year ago. If you’re playing second fiddle to them and their antics, you’d do well to step back and see how their actions and desires totally devalue you and your presence here. Between a rock and a hard place, I don’t blame you for caving in — but you might do better to grow a set and stand up for yourself.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 21-Jan. 20):

You could be fooling yourself.

It’s hard to know when we are truly being honest with ourselves. You’ve got so much invested in your own thing it confuses you when it comes to dealing with others.

Someone keeps coming around to give you whatever you need. It’s hard to see through their goodness far enough to realize that they expect something in return. If you’re OK with letting them give you the shirt off their back, you might want to try on the strings that go with it. “Just Say ‘No’” is a huge theme right now — especially to those who keep killing you with kindness.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 21-Feb. 20):

Your kids are showing up as the centerpiece in a scenario that is begging you to look at all of your stuff. If it isn’t that, you are doing whatever it takes to heal and nourish your soul. Changes in your work and your love life have opened the space for some creative decision-making. It looks like you have caught on to the need to be flexible, even to the point of being willing to turn what could be a rift into a “creative separation.” If it’s your turn to be bigger than the problems that assail you, those things will be cooking, and they will keep you on tenterhooks through the fall.

PISCES (Feb. 21-March 20):

Your situation is always complex.

This has something to do with the fact that so many people rely upon you to be the glue that holds everything together.

You understand and accept this, but you’re at a point where you’re totally drained. In the midst of this, the deeper part of you has woken up to your truer calling. Whatever that happens to be has to be considered and balanced in with existing responsibilities. You have been so good, and have held space for so many others, what has emerged from all of that is already forming the foundation for your heart’s desire.

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