Letters to the Editor
Missing pages I enjoyed reading W. Kim Heron’s “The kiss, the wall & other true tales” (Metro Times, May 15-21). As a native Detroiter, I have lived through many of the events now being written about by young (former) Detroiters. I have read Thomas Sugrue’s book, and I think it is one of the most…
Summer Guide 2002
It’s finally time to get your hands messy with melted ice cream, to go to the park and walk barefoot. It’s time to play hooky and hit the beach, or flee a hot house for a cool museum. It’s time to have lunch on a restaurant patio, stroll around an art fair in new sunglasses,…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Do you secretly long to learn to speak Navajo? This is a fine week to begin. Have you ever fantasized about sampling exotic cuisine in a quest to find a new favorite food? It’s the perfect moment to act on that fantasy. When you were younger, did you want to be…
Joys in the hood
Summertime — and the warm neighborhoods open up like begonias in the sun. Our mental muscles relax, letting us ponder things that a long, cold winter kept dormant. We start seeing kids playing games in the street, generations sitting on stoops and porches, working in their gardens, eating alfresco and cruising. Each special corner of…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
It is a little-known fact that Bob Kerns, one of the chief architects of the atomic bomb, was born and raised in the Detroit neighborhood of Delray. News Hits couldn’t help but wonder if Bob didn’t use this house at 514 Green in his old stomping grounds as a test site for an early draft…
Doing your duty
Q: I am a 25-year-old female and I have been with the same guy for about 10 years now. He has a very healthy sexual appetite; I do not. Whether this is due to childbirth (I’ve heard that women sometimes lose their libido after children) or just plain old boredom, the problem remains. We have…
Fly boys
Waxwings celebrate trust on the tracks….
Personality crisis
This is the wrong movie at the right time: the profile of a young Jewish man, with an unquenchable hatred toward his religious schooling, posing as a neo-Nazi — though at no time is he ever truly convincing in his appropriated personality. Director Henry Bean’s attempt at a momentous metaphor of inner conflict turns the…
‘The first step is here’
Gazing at the speeding cars traveling south down John R, Marilyn Chu, 54, chuckles as she describes life in Madison Heights. The reflection of the sunny day shows in the glasses that frame her excited eyes as she recalls more than 30 years in metro Detroit. Chu immigrated here in 1971 from Taipei, Taiwan, with…
Money! Money! Money!
Six years ago, I did a little magazine story on a modest man named Ron Thayer who was completely unknown to the public, but was an awe-inspiring legend to some of the state’s biggest political names. That’s because politics today is increasingly impossible without vast sums of money, and he was, and is, a fundraiser’s…
The Sum of All Fears
If you liked the earlier Jack Ryan movies, you’ll be disappointed in The Sum of All Fears. You could call it Tom Clancy lite, but that title would have suited the earlier movies. This is more Clancy for dummies: See villains buy bomb. See clever Jack figure it all out. Watch bomb go boom. Run,…
A walk in the park
Maheras-Gentry Park, off Clairpointe Street between Jefferson and the Detroit River, is a far cry from some of the neighborhoods that sully Detroit’s reputation. The 52 acres of prime riverfront land has been fought over for more than four decades. Dust and construction equipment intrude right now, but in time Maheras-Gentry Park will boast five…
Ladies in waiting
Don’t panic. That’s advice from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and good advice it is. When was the last time you panicked and it turned out great? You hear, “I panicked and shot him, but that flash of metal I saw was just an Eskimo Pie.” You never hear, “I panicked and earned a…
American Chai
Good natured to the point of being inane, director Anurag Mehta’s film is another story of culture clash and familial distress as the child of Indian immigrants in New Jersey tries to reconcile his American-bred ambitions with the traditional values and goals of his parents.
Neighborhood museum
Tucked away near burned factory shells and the fluorescent glare of strip-mall convenience lies one of Detroit’s richest sources of history. The Boston-Edison district is one of the most appealing neighborhoods in Detroit, and remains a sort of residential oasis in a city that is far too often concrete and gray. Although many Detroiters might…
Fairs & fun for everyone: Highlights of the area’s most fascinating festivals.
June 14-16 • The Earth Harp — As the largest stringed instrument in the world, file the Earth Harp under "you have to see it to believe it." Five miles of brass wires (the longest of which is about 300 feet long) will be strung between buildings on the Windsor waterfront, using their architectural qualities…
Silvio
This is a locally made documentary about a pizza maker based in Redford who spends his spare time kneading wet cement and making “primitive” sculptures that have an Italian history theme and a weird touch of the Aztec — showing Friday at the Cranbrook Art Museum.
This old house savior
Neal Cassady, the man largely responsible for the Beat movement and the inspiration for many literary works, was famous among his peers for his energy and charisma. Bob Vila, of the “This Old House” TV series, is instantly recognizable with his trademark flannel shirt and beard. Detroit, more specifically, the Cass Corridor’s historic Peterboro and…
The pope of Gratiot Avenue
Outside the gray tollboothlike box, Johnny Ringo has his hands on his hips. Thin locks of reddish hair spring from the back of his Kangol cap. Ringo squints his soft blue-gray eyes and shakes his head. He stares out past the tiny parking lot that is his dominion toward the corner, where a soiled gent…
Streets of new Mexico
Jose De Jesus Lopez is the face of Mexicantown. The 12th child of a Mexican farmer, Lopez came to Detroit in the early 1980s when he was 17 and labored in butcheries, restaurants and construction sites. In the burned-out, crime-ridden area near Dix and Vernor, Lopez bought his house for $10,000 cash in 1991. He…
You don’t schmooze, you lose
Business cards and air kisses are the official currencies of the Leadership Policy Conference.
Rays of hope in Delray
The same Detroit funk that once oozed from John Lee Hooker still hangs thick in the ozone of Delray, one of Detroit’s most historically diverse neighborhoods. A community where Hooker once trod, Delray is located in the heart of Detroit’s industrial southwest side. Originally settled by German immigrants, Delray is roughly bounded by River Rouge,…
Ears to the ground: Summer concerts that shouldn’t get under your radar.
June 7 • The Fairfield Four — They’re coming this time, really. The last time the Fairfield Four (pictured) was scheduled to bring its moaning, stomping, shouting, a cappella gospel revue to the Detroit Institute of Arts (5200 Woodward, Detroit; call 313-833-7900), it had to cancel. That just made us want it more. The group…
Pilgrimage to Dearborn
A man’s voice blares from the mosque on Dix, only yards from the southwest border of Detroit. The Arabic chant — readings from the Quran — transports one to a place far, far away. Hundreds of women in headscarves join groups of men who crowd the streets around the mosque, queuing for daily prayer. Though…
DEMF 3: No more drama
A karaoke bar in an Oak Park strip mall is a far cry from the whole post-industrial-wasteland image Detroit techno’s somber, soulful austerity usually conjures. So Thursday night’s pre-DEMF party at the Royal Kubo is a nice change for techno visitors expecting some underground party in a dimly lit urban bunker, reminding us all that…
Happy trailers to you
Even after Jefferson becomes Lakeshore Road, meanders through the Pointes and becomes Jefferson again when it touches more blue-collar climes, the waterfront along Lake St. Clair remains decidedly upscale. But up in Harrison Township just past Shook Road, near Eddie’s Drive-in (where the shakes are made with real ice cream and waitresses on skates hang…
Council districts?
Detroit City Council members tremble over question on August ballot.
Corktown afloat
On a pleasant Thursday, the Bagley-Trumbull Market bustles with business. Owner Felix Formosa busily rings up orders of canned goods, cigarettes, fresh produce and 40-ounce beers. He knows many of his customers by name or by their usual purchases. The soft-spoken Formosa expresses a deep connection to the neighborhood in which he not only works,…
Yeah, but we’ve got feather bowling
Detroit ranked near bottom of “creativity index.”
Candid camaraderie
Last year, on a Sunday morning in August, I exited my West Village apartment only to be painfully blinded by the shocking brilliance of the sun, which was amplified as it reflected off … wait a second … is that a disco ball? I retreated under my shades, then went to investigate. Spread across my…
Are you sorry, or what?
Communication channels open for local Arab-Americans and Detroit newspaper.
Tight, white troubles
Q: I’ve been going out with this cute guy for the past few weeks. There is just one problem: He wears “tighty-whitie” underpants. The first time we had sex, I didn’t notice his underpants until I saw them on the floor. I thought, “Perhaps he ran out of boxers and is only wearing those underpants…
Rank amateur
U.S Representative Joe Knollenberg remains consitent through poor ratings.
Convulsive therapy
Detroit painter-poet Maurice Greenia opens new wounds of beauty….
In tents party animals
School pranks turn tame with football-field campout.
Little Bengal
When it comes to immigration, Hamtramck is a port in the storm. So it has been for nearly a century, and so it is today as the small town that feels like a neighborhood keeps attracting American Dreamers from around the world. A Polish grandmother in her babushka strolls down Trowbridge past a Bangladeshi mom…
Bombs away
This week’s burned-out shell may have been used for A-bomb testing.
