Best of the Worst
Best place to hike: Mt. Everest, Outer Drive Best intimate live music venue: Chene Park Best place to fish: The bathtub Best smoke shop: Stop smoking! Best place to spot a celebrity: TV Best place to buy organic food: Meijer Best thrift store: Target Best place to cruise: Mediterranean Best place to bicycle: China Best…
Reader’s Poll
COMMUNITY VALUES Best museum: Detroit Institute of Arts Best museum to entertain kids: Detroit Science Center Best non-museum art gallery: Café de Troit Best place to see a blockbuster film: Birmingham Palladium Best place to see an independent film: Main Art Theatre, Royal Oak Best place to see live theater: Fox Theatre, Detroit Best place…
Nutritional value
Best café pizza — Windsor Terra Cotta 318 Pelissier St., Windsor 519-971-0223 As the glorious smell of roasting pizza wafts out the door and into the street, pizza chefs behind a window flip dough and select from fresh toppings and veggies — often organic and grown by the owner — to throw onto a thin…
Picture-perfect palace
The Fox Theatre lends itself to fanciful daydreams. Reclining in one of the cushy red velvet seats and gazing upward at the dome of gold and glitz, you can’t help but imagine what it would be like sitting in that very same seat 50 years ago, when Frank Sinatra’s honeyed voice spilled forth from that…
N&D Center
WEDNESDAY-Sunday • 29-3 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival MUSIC Hey, music lovers! The city of Ann Arbor has revitalized its annual Blues and Jazz Festival for 2004! This year, the festival touts everything from music education to weekend-long jazz and blues offerings at the Firefly Club (207 S. Ashley, Ann Arbor) to outdoor family…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): We have all been guilty of desiring people and things that turned out to be no good for us. Whenever I review the history of my own relationship with longing, I’m embarrassed about some of the dumb "pleasures" I once craved. I’ve also noticed, though, that sometimes the only cure for…
Community values
Best place to see the beauty of pre-Detroit Detroit Elmwood Cemetery 1200 Elmwood, Detroit 313-567-3453 What did Detroit’s hilly landscape look like when Cadillac arrived in 1701? The closest glimpse remaining of pre-colonial Detroit is Elmwood Cemetery, where burial plots and roads have largely observed the original topography (such as the cemetery pond, where Chief…
Department of commerce
Best place to primp your car Dr. Detroit 25 W. Elizabeth, Detroit 313-529-7777 On those days when a simple $2 car wash just isn’t enough — and on those days when you feel the need to make your Rolls-Royce look the way it looked when you first bought it — you might want to check…
D-town three-for-all
The Secret Life of Suburbia Meadow Brook Art Gallery Henry Ford once famously declared, “The city is doomed. We will solve the problem by leaving the city.” Of course, the means of transit out was in Ford’s own mass-produced product, the automobile. And the destination for the majority of Americans, not just Detroiters, was the…
Cover-to-cover splendor
With approximately 420,000 square feet of space and more than 5 million items in its collection, the Detroit Public Library’s Main Branch at 5201 Woodward Ave. is the crown jewel of the 25 branches that comprise the largest library system in Michigan. Hosting lectures, special exhibits and readings, the main branch is a center of…
Fistful of fun
Did you know that the human tongue has 10,000 taste buds or that flies have such buds on their feet? Those are just two of the odd facts you will learn when visiting the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. This 44,000-square-foot space (which is constructed in part from an old fire house) at 220 E. Ann…
Steppin’ out
Best place for tattoos and suits Mephisto’s 2764 Florian St., Hamtramck If you’re a club-hopper on the lookout for a live music joint that offers a bit more than just the standard live band and cheap drinks, the kind of club that works a little harder to ensure that its patrons are fully entertained, then…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat
Market eclectic
In the decades since World War II, the American public has been sold a brave new world of convenience and speed. The result is that we’ve become easily frustrated people always in a hurry. Few things can bring this disconnect into clearer view than a Saturday visit to Historic Eastern Market, where people shop the…
Bushwhackers
Think politics is boring? Not this election. In an effort to light a fire under the collective asses of apathetic voters, artistic and fringe communities are organizing all manner of strange, enlightening and entertaining anti-Bush events. From local David Livingstone’s titillating Babes Against Bush calendar (babesagainstbush.com), to the numerous anti-Bush rock fests popping up across…
Assembly lineage
The original Rouge complex is now famous as Henry Ford’s masterpiece of vertical integration: a vast industrial facility that was fed raw materials and spit out finished motorcars. As author Ford R. Bryan writes in Rouge: Pictured in its Prime, the Rouge was “once the largest, most efficient, and most highly integrated automotive manufacturing complex…
7″pop shots
The Valentinos “Aerosol Dream” b/w “Tell Me That It’s Over” Tom Perkins Records Two big holes, 14 inches and more than 10 minutes of rock. We kneel before the single and all its potential ADD-blasting power just as we remind the bands on whom we’ve spent hard-earned dough that they have two minutes, if that,…
A park for all seasons
When the time comes that you just have to get away from it all and soak up the rejuvenating effects only nature can provide, the place to go is Kensington Metropark, a 4,357-acre treasure located in Milford. What makes Kensington so special? In a word: variety. There’s good reason some 2.5 million people a year…
Head cheese
Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn (or simply Mirah, as she’s known) has a sweet, tender, girlish voice reminiscent of Juliana Hatfield’s but fuller. She got her start fronting a jazz band, and would later join the Microphones before going solo in 2000. She’s recorded five albums since. All feature earnest (yes, earnest — just check her…
The straight ticket
We’re a swing state that can go either way, so in order to seize on our indecisiveness, the Vote for Change concerts have booked three Sunday shows in the greater Detroit area to ensnare you from the heinous hands of Bush-Cheney. (Vote for Change is brought to us by MoveOn, an organization basically bent on…
Dan’s vocab builder
Dear Readers: The resident word freak at PRI’s “The Next Big Thing” — the lovely and talented Erin McKean — regularly challenges writers to use words that might otherwise disappear into obsolescence. In awe of my success at injecting santorum into the sexual lexicon, McKean invited little ol’ me on the program and asked me…
Subdividing dance
The DJ is on the phone. So whom is Terrance Parker calling? No doubt the great spirit living in Parker’s rousing genre-blending set of gospel, house, nu-soul and rare grooves, which has about 30 members of this devotional crowd nodding heads, raising hands and shaking hips with joy. And this was done with not a…
River of return
First there was the river. It was from this strait that the city obtained its sustenance, its commerce, its very name. Colonial strategists saw a doorway to the West. With the coming of the Erie Canal, Eastern merchants saw an ideal site for an inland port, open to navigation even when the straits of Mackinac…
Way overdue?
News Hits is a firm believer in the power of the written word to change lives, to let us converse and commune with the wise elders who’ve passed … and to give us a chuckle. All of which bring us to an incident earlier this month at the kick-off of the Detroit Public Library’s millage…
Modern history
On Oct. 21, 1929, Henry Ford opened a historical attraction in his hometown of Dearborn unlike any other in the world. He built a museum that celebrated the industry of the 20th century, showcasing the innovations that changed the face of America. Outside the museum, he built a lasting shrine to the 19th century of…
Reality check
Since reading about him in this very rag several weeks back, News Hits has paid frequent visits to the site maintained by blogster extraordinaire Juan Cole, a University of Michigan history professor who specializes in the Middle East and its religions. Last week Cole produced a particularly trenchant piece that put into perspective the hell…
Strokes of genius
Lots of folks are fairly familiar with Paul Cret’s hulking off-white 1927 marble structure fronting Woodward Avenue, a building known as the Detroit Institute of Arts. But many don’t know that inside the 600,000-square-foot structure resides one of the finest collections of art in the country; the museum’s permanent exhibit of American paintings alone is…
A good front
The West Side neighborhood that is home to 16927 Sorrento, near the West McNichols Road and Schaeffer Highway area, has nostalgic value to many Detroiters. Memories of the glow-in-the-dark Pegasus mural on the wall of the long-gone Mercury Theatre, Saturday night boozin’ and schmoozin’ at the defunct Babes nightclub, and record shopping at Detroit Audio,…
Best of Detroit 2004
What makes Detroit the region that it is? What are the civic treasures that hold us together — and what are the smaller gems that each of us find and hold dear? We asked you — and you told us in paper ballots mailed to Metro Times and submitted online at our Web site. We…
Proactive
Why is it that only 36 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 24 cast a ballot in the 2000 presidential election? Conventional wisdom holds that the kids are just too damn cynical and apathetic to bother voting. But a new report by Project Democracy, an effort of the League of Conservation…
Black diamond
The hard times may not be completely over, but things are definitely looking up for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. The museum began hitting financial hard times about three years ago, struggling to deal with a deficit that eventually reached almost $2 million. Eighteen employees lost their jobs, and the future…
Art Bar
As usual there’s an abundance of activity in Detroit’s art world this week. Here are some events not to miss: Adding to the consortium of indie art ventures popping up around town, the 555 Gallery has found a home in Detroit thanks to 4731 Gallery owner Ric Geyer, who bought 555 its new space at…
Brian Wilson’s smile
After 38 years of broken promises from the Beach Boy camp that Smile is finally coming out, Brian Wilson’s advisers hit upon the best possible scenario for finishing his incomplete masterwork that wouldn’t leave fans feeling empty or cheated — just rerecord the damned thing with the Wondermints, take it on the road, and get…
Against gay marriage?
Did you answer yes to this question? That’s your right. Matter of fact, I am not sure you are wrong. I’m not sure society is ready to accept the word “marriage” for same-sex couples, and, personally, I would prefer a system of legal civil unions, at least for now. However, even if you are a…
Letters to the Editor
The race isn’t always to the Swift The reader of a Lessenberry column needs to be forearmed with a firm grasp of conventional left/right thinking on any conceivable issue and understand that when Lessenberry is stating a liberal position he is being serious, and when he is stating a conservative position you are supposed to…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Welcome to MB3! So much to review! So little time! So hey ho, let’s go! • Ramones — Too Tough To Die (Sire) :: Really? • Pitbull — M.I.A.M.I. (TVT) :: This horny Hispanic is so hot to trot, he makes early fishnet Prince look like a Castro castrato. Viva La Assa! • Seymour Glass…
The Dancing Box
No, James T. Cotton is not the Mississippi-born bluesman known for his “super-harp.” This James T. Cotton is SK-1 of Soundmurderer and SK-1 is Dabrye, is Tadd Mullinix, a multifaceted electronic musician who absorbed the most wicked sounds his young ears could register while growing up in the suburbs of Florida and Michigan. In his…
Nancy Sinatra
Unlike Nancy’s steamy mid-’90s comeback effort (the overwrought One More Time album plus that spread in Playboy), you’ll find no “Boots”-styled sex-kitten fantasies this time around. Perhaps noting her old flame/collaborator Lee Hazelwood’s latter-day hip cachet, she’s aiming squarely at the youth market via collaborations with contemporary hipsters ranging from U2 and Calexico to Jon…
9 From 5
The Beggars occupy a Saturday night niche between wiry new wave and hyper electric guitar. The Royal Oak quintet (with lead a singing drummer!) gives you your money’s worth on 9 From 5; though it’s billed as an EP, all nine of these songs have something to offer, whether dynamically or as fuel for barroom…
Chris Whitley
Like many of his fellow songwriting Texas brethren, Chris Whitley was seemingly weaned on the blues, which reaches into every corner of his songwriting without entirely defining him. Whitley’s vagabond musical nature has traveled from the spare, strummed folk-blues that’s been his staple through a major label alt-rock and grunge phase to electronically textured arrangements…
Mind, Body & Soul
Plenty of folks fell in love with the girl after her 2003 debut, the aptly titled Soul Sessions. Just a teen at the time but getting guidance from veteran “Clean Up Woman” Betty Wright, Joss Stone tackled gritty sultry soul dusties like a woman twice her age. Mind, Body & Soul is slicker, designed to…
Shaun of the Dead
Anyone who has watched a zombie movie has probably wondered: Can creatures with the intelligence and speed of a slug really be as intimidating as they’re made out to be? As Shaun of the Dead makes evident, the answer is no. Billed as a “romantic comedy with zombies” this has become a sleeper hit in…
Supple storytelling
In Sarajevo Marlboro, Miljenko Jergovic delicately orders his collection of 29 short stories into an eloquent composition that recounts the tales of Serbs, Muslims and Croats in Sarajevo during and after the devastating post-communist-era war in their homeland. Jergovic, a Croatian by birth, grew up in Sarajevo and stayed there throughout most of the war.…
Sex and poop
A parody of suburban dysfunction and a tongue-in-cheek rallying cry for sexual freedom and sex fetishists, A Dirty Shame continues John Waters’ infamous revelry of raunch with the underlying message that not only is it OK to be different and perverted, but that, in fact, deviants are better.
Home of the Brave
There are many questions about the life and brutal murder of Detroiter Viola Luizo. Home of the Brave doesn’t answer them all. But the documentary — a quest for answers by one of Luizo’s grown daughters — sheds a much-deserved light on this remarkable woman and the Civil Rights movement she died for as she…
Bright Leaves
Documenary filmmaker and North Carolina native Ross McElwee discovers a 1950 film Bright Leaf that parallels some aspect of his own family’s involvement in the tobacco empire. As McElwee tries to trace the similarities between this fictive film and his real family history, he explores cogent observations about the insidious nature of tobacco addiction and…
Bright Young Things
This sardonic commentary on the good-life propels a hilarious and fantastic journey into the lives of the fortunate. Set in glamorous 1930s London, the story follows a group of socialites whose lives consist of drinking absinthe, snorting drugs and creating slanderous fodder for the gossip columns. You’ll love most of the characters but hate a…
Playtime
French comic filmmaker Jacques Tati never really caught on in the United States; in order to enjoy Tati’s films you have to abandon your preconceptions about how a comedic film should be presented and how it should unfold. This film unfolds in an imaginary Paris; there’s no plot per se, just a day in the…
