Cover Story
2013 Metro Times Food Issue
In today’s america, those with the means to enjoy nutritious meals are tragically outnumbered by the millions who subsist on processed, fat-laden foodstuffs. The war on poverty of 50 years ago has been transformed into a war on the poor. In the face of that, there are a number of individuals and organizations that are…
Film Review: Runner Runner
Runner Runner | C To sum up the movie in a sentence: It’s quick, slick and empty of style or tension. With quick cuts and wobbly hand-held shots, director Brad Furman tries mightily to inject some energy into this torpid online gambling thriller, but the cards are stacked against him. Writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien,…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Send CDs, vinyl, cassettes, demos and 8-tracks to Brett Callwood, Metro Times, 1200 Woodward Heights, Ferndale MI 48220. Email MP3s and streaming links to bcallwood@metrotimes.com. The Luckouts feature former Ruiners bass player Liz Scaris, now on guitar in a power-rock trio that brings to mind a Joan-Jett fronted band, somewhere between her Runaways and Blackhearts…
Film Review: Parkland
Parkland | C+ Perhaps one of the most scrutinized, debated, analyzed — and memorialized — 72-hour periods in American history occurred on Nov. 23-25, 1963, after America’s world was turned upside down by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It’s been widely declared that the murder killed not just the president but the nation’s sense…
City Slang: Fallout Fest
This Saturday, October 12, the Fallout Fest takes place at the New Dodge Lounge in Hamtramck. The action starts at 4 p.m., and cover is $5-$10 depending on how old you are and when you arrive. The lineup is awesome and eclectic, showcasing some of the best new bands in Detroit right now. Highlights include…
Banshee Murmurs
Now, ….it depends on when you listen to music… Always? Varying times? Certain times? All Times? Then there’s a time for all musics… Music made at night…for night-listens. For the more murmured moments… Like this crinkly, captivating dissection of the guitars, ringing-round-the-leaf-littered-rosy– by local up-and-coming song-sculpting instrumental adventurer Banshee Murmurs. We’re knee-deep into October, now. You should be…
Vasectomies are a snip
When the notion of blogging my vasectomy experience was first raised by my editor, I didn’t like the idea at all. Something within the deep, primitive layers of my psyche told me that this was something that I didn’t want to be talking about. My male pride couldn’t take the idea of people knowing that…
Film Review: Inequality for All
Inequality For All | B FORMER SECRETARY OF LABOR Robert Reich is a curious blend of impish geniality and pugnacious intellect, spending most of his long career waging a very public — and often lonely — war on behalf of the working class and the working poor. Inequality For All chronicles that struggle and celebrates its tireless…
City Slang: Big ’80s Flashback Halloween Bash
On Friday, October 25, Static Records will host the “BIG ’80s Flashback Halloween Bash” at the Corktown Tavern in Detroit. They say, “The Big ’80s Bash started as a jam session of bands playing songs from the era in their own style. It has now turned into a tribute party you won’t want to miss!…
What is THAT? – Oddities from the MT mailbox: Snuff
Here’s the deal. Every day here at the Metro Times, our mail delivery includes CDs, books and all sorts of other promotional items. A lot of it we can use and review – local-interest music, DVDs, etc. But we also get a lot of weird and whacky items that just kinda build up. So that’s…
12th Man Report: Tigers’ ALDS breakdown
Anibal Sanchez This whole Tigers vs. Athletics in the ALDS feels a little familiar doesn’t it? You know like maybe these two teams have seen each other before in this playoff round, and maybe it took the Tigers five games to knock off a very quality, young A’s team. It all seems familiar because that’s…
Feeding Community
Several years ago, another Food Issue found us talking to Mark Covington, a Detroiter who found a new purpose in his Georgia Street Community Garden. In early 2008, Covington began clearing out rubbish from three vacant lots around his home near Harper and Gratiot avenues. He became inspired to turn it into a community garden,…
Listen to Parquet Courts
Do Parquet Courts really need anyone else to blog about them? I know, likely not. Yet, despite my elitist hipster sense tingling begrudgingly at this once-underground indie-outfit’s current swoon of spotlighting (from Rolling Stone to Entertainment Weekly) I a.) can’t help but still dig the depths to where their rough-hewn rock sound is thrown-back -…
500 Club
500 Club — Casio Choir — Traits — Oct 11 —Old Miami Welcome to the Club… I know it’s autumn and the smell of leaves stings our nostrils, with their kaleidoscopic colors dazzling our eyes and we’re all getting geeked for all the cover-band costume freak outs we can go on during…
FilmReview: Gravity
Gravity | A The hype is mostly justified. Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity may not have any profound statements to make about the human will to survive, and its character development may be distractingly sentimental, but as a cinematic experience it’s hard to beat. In fact, it may be the most thrilling, transporting and unbearably stressful 90…
Boardwalk Empire presents Sounds of the Onyx
The HBO series Boardwalk Empire, which takes place in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, has just released a series of vintage jazz recording remixes titled Sounds of the Onyx. The artists who participated on this six-track album include top hip-hop and urban music producers, including Pete Rock, Om’ Mas Keith and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Today’s artists reconstructed…
John Abercrombie Quartet
There is no obvious theme to the exquisite new album by jazz guitarist John Abercrombie, but there are four references to film director Alfred Hitchcock — including the title itself, 39 Steps, and the corresponding title track. Three other compositions, “Spellbound,” “Vertigo” and “Shadow of a Doubt” are also Hitchcock films titles. Abercrombie has been…
Detroit Party Marching Band
If you’ve attended the Blowout Festival in the last three years, then you’ve likely seen and heard the Detroit Party Marching Band, even if you didn’t know the name of the band pushing horns into your face. In 2010, attendees at that festival started noticing a brass band that would show up between scheduled groups…
Detroit may be financially bankrupt but culturally it’s thriving
I was speaking with a Los Angeles-based journalist about Detroit music history recently when the city’s proposed bankruptcy came up. I was able to quip that, based on our musical culture, we may be financially bankrupt but we’re certainly not culturally bankrupt. The evidence from this past week shows that those cultural riches spread far…
The Tigers’ Unsung Hero
ON MOST SPORTS TEAMS, the star players shine and everybody else lets them. With the Tigers’ star-studded roster, one in which winning AL MVP awards has become the norm, it can’t be easy to play every day in the shadow of guys like Miguel Cabrera, Justin Verlander and Prince Fielder. However, despite the fame and…
Flat-Footed
Q: I am a straight male, 30, in a long-term monogamous relationship. I love my wife: We have good sex, and often. When we first got together, I had a mild foot fetish, and she has gorgeous pedis. We have done and still do foot play on occasion. But my fetish has grown stronger as…
Expanding Detroit’s Food Economy
Devita Davison is a native Detroiter who moved back from New York after 20 years when she lost her home and business in Hurricane Sandy. She was brought in to spearhead Detroit Kitchen Connect, a business incubator and commercial kitchen project in Detroit neighborhoods. The group’s goal is to expand Detroit’s food economy by working…
Finding Detroit’s Urban Farms and Community Gardens
Every autumn, folks pack the kids in the car and head out to the country, looking for a connection to the land by visiting apple orchards. But has anybody considered that the city and its suburbs are increasingly places where you can also feel that connection? We’ve put together a nowhere-near-exhaustive list of some of…
Detroit Black Community Food Security Network’s Growing Determination
A discussion of urban agriculture in Detroit wouldn’t be complete without talking to Malik Yakini, head of the nonprofit Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. An activist and educator about food justice issues who has been honored by none other than the James Beard Foundation, his group runs D-town Farm in Rouge Park. At seven…
Three Detroit chefs spread the gospel of nutrition, health and cooking
What does it mean to be hungry? Missing one meal a day? Missing every meal for a day — maybe more? For many Americans, these are realities. The rising cost of housing and stagnant wages mean households have increasingly less money available to budget for food. Making a choice between buying groceries or paying the…
Kresge Court and CaféDIA
Kresge Court and CaféDIA 5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit 313-833-7900 www.dia.org Kresge Court Sandwiches: $10-$12 Cocktails: $7-$10 Open 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. CaféDIA Entrées: $10-$13 Open 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 4 p.m.-9 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. It’s tempting to call it an oasis, though the…
The Art of Eating Locally
FOOD THOUGHT The Farm to Table Cookbook: The Art of Eating Locally by Ivy Manning Sasquatch Books; $15; 256 pp. With farmers’ markets and greenmarkets cropping up in cities and neighborhoods across the country, shoppers are no longer restricted to the same 30 items in the produce section of the local Kroger. Author Ivy Manning,…
America’s Deadly Diet
It will shock no one to hear that Americans are remarkably unhealthy eaters. A new American Diet Report Card confirms it: we eat far too much cheese, sugar, starch and red meat; we don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. We consume almost 500 more calories per day than we did in the 1970s. There are…
Michigan-made vendors make their way onto store shelves.
It’s a typical Saturday afternoon in Midtown, and the aisles of Whole Foods are buzzing with customers. The cha-ching of registers and murmuring of patrons create a white noise while the store’s employees take stock of the many products coming in and going out of the store. Business is good — due in part to…
Poisoning Ourselves
Poisoning Ourselves Dear Editor: re: “Michigan’s Silent Spring”; [Feedback, Sept. 18-24, 2013] I read with interest the letter from Nancy Davis; thank you for posting it for our information. It is very disheartening that Gov. Snyder promised us Michiganders during the 2010 elections he would support clean energy policies. As a “good green Republican,” we…
Dana Nessel’s Dream
Dana Nessel has been an attorney in Detroit for nearly two decades, not one day of which has been spent making rich corporations richer. Instead, since emerging from law school, she’s spent about half that time as an assistant Wayne County prosecutor, handling some of the grimmest cases. Nessel has prosecuted domestic homicides, chop shops…
Permaculture Landscaping on Detroit’s East Side.
Detroit’s east side has had a rather unsavory reputation, especially since the late 1960s, but as the city struggles to renew itself, some of its residents are working on a micro scale to make their community a better place to live. Residents such as Sara Swor, who came to Detroit in 2011 on a mission…
The Artwork of Jeremy Wheeler
Jeremy Wheeler can’treally remember a time when he wasn’t making art. One of his earliest pieces was a Santa with a bloody ax drawn on the back of a church handout. “I think I was way more into Silent Night, Deadly Night than I was ‘Silent Night.’” His work is mostly inspired by movies, comics,…
FAQs of a Restaurant Reviewer
People are intrigued when they hear I write about restaurants—far more than they are about my day job. And they all tend to ask the same questions: 1. Does the restaurant know you’re coming? No. That would defeat the purpose. The idea is to get the same experience that you, the reader, are likely to…
City Leases Belle Isle to Lansing
DETROIT — At Tuesday’s regular City Council session, it was announced that state and city leaders executed a lease agreement effectively turning Belle Isle, one of Detroit’s “crown jewels,” into a state park. The idea of ceding governance of the island from the city to Lansing has been floating for a while, with Gov. Rick…
A brief chat with Devil Driver’s Dez Fafara
Credit: Dean Karr Dez Fafara used to front nu-metal band Coal Chamber and, indeed, he took his old pals out on a world reunion tour last year. However, nowadays he’s all about Devil Driver, his far heavier metal band that dials up the chunky ugly riffs and forgets about pseudo-industrial imagery. Make no mistake, Devil…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Send CDs, vinyl, cassettes, demos and 8-tracks to Brett Callwood, Metro Times, 733 St. Antoine, Detroit, MI 46226. Email MP3s and streaming links to bcallwood@metrotimes.com. I’m not going to lie – I quite like the Insane Clown Posse’s When I’m Clownin’ (Psychopathic), not least because Danny Brown puts in a stellar guest performance. I don’t…
12th Man Report: Same old Lions?
Two weeks ago on Sept. 15, following the Lions’ late-game collapse against the Arizona Cardinals, NFL analyst Tony Dungy called Detroit the “same old Lions.” But after the Lions’ victory over the Chicago Bears two days ago — in dominating fashion, I might add — Dungy was taking some heat on social media for his…
