Cover Stories
Under the table
Full disclosure: We at Metro Times were fortunate enough to host Tracie McMillan in our office, under an unofficial Metro Times fellowship, while she finished her new book, The American Way of Eating. The book chronicles her time spent undercover as a produce picker in California, as a kitchen employee in an Applebee’s, and as…
Plot by Plot
Most of Tracie McMillan’s book is devoted to her undercover work in America’s industrial food system. But this excerpt comes from her time in Detroit, where she spent several months meeting people involved with the city’s urban agriculture, and chronicling its history. Though these city gardens may not be Detroit’s savior, they offer an inspiring…
Bid to put legalizing pot on city ballot wins another round
Detroiters edged closer Monday to a vote on legalizing marijuana use. The Michigan Court of Appeals denied the City of Detroit’s motion to reconsider its previous ruling requiring a local legalization measure be placed on the ballot. The decision comes two years after the Coalition for a Safer Detroit, headed by pot-activist Tim Beck, put…
City Slang: Suzi Quatro DMA appearance in doubt
The week, not to mention the month of April, has gotten off to a shitty start, as we have learned that Suzi Quatro’s highly anticipated appearance at this year’s Detroit Music Awards is in doubt due to an accident. According to a statement from her fan club, “Suzi has asked us to inform you all…
City Slang: Audition on tour
National pop-punkers the Audition, featuring Detroit singer Danny Stevens, are going on tour in the spring, hitting Detroit’s St. Andrew’s Hall on April 12. Says frontman Danny Stevens, “After taking nearly a year and a half off of touring, I think the fans can really tell that the band has been rejuvenated and that we…
Why Am I Grinding My Teeth?
It smacks of something Voidoidian… just as Richard Hell christened his punk brethren the Blank Generation…this MC/DJ duo, by merely putting the word in ALL CAPS in a subtle sans serif, sprawled across a record cover, can come that much closer to an apt characterization of “new millennium hip-hop.” The Anonymous’ disc, Why Am I…
City Slang: Subscribe to Crenshaw
Marshall Crenshaw is inviting fans to subscribe to a two-year, six-EP series, each released on 10” picture sleeve vinyl and as a digital download. All of the information can be found here. Crenshaw is aiming to raise $32,000 to make the project happen, and at the time of writing there are 28 days left. According…
City Slang: Janiva Magness is coming home
On April 12, blues and soul singer Janiva Magness will perform at the Magic Bag in Ferndale. The singer, dubbed “one of the most fiery and original vocalists in contemporary blues and soul…thoughtful, inventive and almost unerringly on the money” by Mojo Magazine will be celebrating the release of her new Alligator Records CD, Stronger…
Child Bite’s vinyl + Terrible Twos’ cassette
I would consider both of these releases to be, how shall I put it… “engaging” listens – …makes you feel like a corked bat bungee-corded to motorboat propellers… Indeed, hard to sit still when you’re listening to either Child Bite or the Terrible Twos. Both bands are way past their 5-year marks, the first has…
City Slang: Jill Jack is a Sunflower Girl
Singer/songwriter Jill Jack will officially release her new Sunflower Girl album at the Royal Oak Music Theater on May 12. That show will be the first of a string of national dates, as Jack is releasing the album across the country. “I feel I am in a really good place in my life, says Jill,…
Mirror Mirror
Mirror Mirror B- Sometimes it’s nice to expect the worst and get something considerably better. To watch the trailer for Mirror Mirror, the first of two Snow White adaptations to be released this year, was to expect disaster. (A peek-behind-the-curtain look at Hollywood’s ever-growing list of botched marketing campaigns is long overdue.) And while no…
Goon
Goon B There is something about hockey — maybe it’s the lack of glamour, pretension and insistent mythology — that lends itself to cinema, particularly comedy. And yet its aw-shucks working-class sheen and casual approach to brutality have delivered only one film worth crowing about: George Roy Hill’s bruisingly satirical Slap Shot. That was nearly…
City Slang: “Lady Soul” revisited
Lady Soul, released back in ‘68, was Aretha Franklin’s second R&B chart-topping album. It’s not hard to see why the masses took to the record when looking down the track-listing, but it would be a mistake to think that this album is little more than Aretha-goes-pop. This thing burns. Listening to Aretha for the purpose…
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Jiro Dreams of Sushi A- Jiro Ono serves up tiny slabs of fatty pink succulence, his nimble fingers working rice and fish into exquisitely compact morsels, molding the ingredients with the same rhythmic, economical motions he has performed thousands of times before, daily repetitions in a ceaseless quest for perfection. His many admirers feel that…
A heartbeat away from the mayor’s seat
Could you imagine a worse time for a mayor to have emergency surgery? Here Detroit is desperately struggling to try to reach a deal on a consent agreement to preserve some role for those in power before the governor has to send in an emergency manager. Then, with the clock ticking — boom. Suddenly the…
Letters to the Editor
Courting controversy Regarding your recent coverage of the Wurlitzer Building ("Falling down," March 7), why did Judge Robert Colombo Jr. not find Paul D. Curtis in contempt of court for failing to repair the building as ordered by the court, specifically ordered by Judge Colombo? What is preventing the city of Detroit from having ownership…
Breaking the bridge stalemate
The debate over construction of a new bridge linking Detroit with Windsor has, until now, largely been framed by the Detroit International Bridge Company. Under the leadership of billionaire trucking magnate Manuel "Matty" Moroun, the company — which owns the Ambassador Bridge and has a near monopoly on cross-border truck traffic in southeast Michigan —…
Not that Kenny G
Not that Kenny G What: Lecture ("If We Had To Ask for Permission, We Wouldn’t Exist: A Brief History of UbuWeb") and performance ("American Deaths and Disasters: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy") by Kenneth Goldsmith, aka Kenny G. Where: Art Museum of Cranbrook Academy Art Museum (39221 Woodward Ave., Bloomfield Hills; 248-645-3320) and…
Northern appeal
Roadside Bar & Grill 1727 S. Telegraph Rd. Bloomfield Hills 248-858-7270 Handicap accessible Entrées: $12-$38 Opens at 11 a.m. daily, with brunch on the weekends, and closes at 11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, midnight Friday-Saturday, and 10 p.m. Sunday. A patio will open soon. Successful restaurateur Bill Roberts says he was thinking about roadside restaurants in northern…
Food Stuff
Carts roll again Last year, Ann Arbor businessman Mark Hodesh transformed the parking area behind his store into an open-air food court with several different food carts. Dubbed Mark’s Carts, it quickly became a focal point at midday where hundreds of people gathered to eat at communal tables, talk and listen to live music. The…
Coming of age
Q: I am the father of a recently out 18-year-old gay boy. Here’s the problem: My son is in a relationship with a 31-year-old guy. I’m not OK with that. Yes, my son is a legal adult at 18 and can make his own decisions, but he’s also still in high school. His mother argues…
Boys in the hoodies
I’m obsessed with the Trayvon Martin case. Maybe it’s the innocent aura that seems to project from his photos. He looks absolutely cherubic in the one where he’s wearing a hoodie — the garment that may have helped seal his doom. In case you’ve been in a coma these past few weeks, Trayvon Martin was…
The Kid with a Bike
The Kid with a Bike B+ Eleven-year-old Cyril (first-time actor Thomas Doret) has been discarded — and he’s pissed. Rightfully so. Left in the care of a social agency by his father, supposedly for only a month, he refuses to accept that Dad isn’t really coming back for him. Or has sold his bike and…
Worthy’s double-talk
Here at the Hits, we wonder from time to time if politicians might possess some genetic mutation that causes them to be completely immune to a characteristic the rest of us are subject to. We’re talking about the ability to feel a sense of shame, and the ease with which some officeholders separate themselves from…
Fighting foreclosures
A daylong conference focused on the issue of halting home foreclosures and evictions will be held this Saturday, March 31, on the second floor of the Central United Methodist Church at the corner of East Adams Street and Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit. Sponsored by the group Moratorium Now!, the event will feature a discussion…
Ain’t love Grande
The mid-to-late ’60s in Detroit was a time of incredibly intense contradictions. While the riots of ’67 saw the Motor City burn and highlighted the gulf between black and white, musicians were proving that multiculturalism (though it wasn’t called that then) could work. That was the time of Motown, and the time of white bands…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Remember – if you send it, it will get reviewed. That’s the City Slang promise. It doesn’t matter what genre the music is – as long as it has a Metro Detroit connection, it’ll get in. Preferably, we’d like to concentrate on new releases but, while we’re getting warmed up here, feel free to send…
HandGrenades – Album Release + Video Premier – 3/30 (Magic Stick)
Nick thinks, just maybe, this might not be the Dirtbombs’ city anymore. “I mean, I think the young crowd’s starting to take over a little bit I don’t know how ‘young,’ or what ‘young’ means ” Nick Chevillet, bassist/guitarist/singer for the Handgrenades, is pulsing with a sort of nervous inspiration; his band (with drummer Joby…
Ann Arbor’s film fest — 5,000 films later
In 1963, when the Ann Arbor Film Festival began, there were no Redbox or Netflix, VOD, YouTube, Steam, no Internet at all, no DVDs, not even VCRs. There were only three national television networks, and some UHF stations that showed movies late at night, and precious few of those in color. If you lived in…
