Detroit has long been a bebop jazz town. During the 1950s, the high schools, street academies, and jazz clubs nurtured musicians such as pianists Barry Harris and Tommy Flanagan, trombonist Curtis Fuller, bassists Doug Watkins...
Read MoreI have just finished a program of WWII remembrances at a local women’s club when Luragay Olsen–known to all as “Gig”–touches my shoulder. “My first husband was a fighter pilot. He was shot...
Read MoreI heard a duo formation of the Corn Potato String Band, “the ears and eyes of America,” one Friday in February over happy hour at PJ’s Lager House in Detroit. I had been waiting for years, decades even, for...
Read More“We had a thousand people for Hash Bash, and we weren’t even [officially] open yet,” says Anthony Theodore, director of purchasing and operations for the Happy’s Pizza chain. When the spring calendar...
Read MoreDespite what’s happening on the presidential campaign trail, tolerance is still strong in Ann Arbor: in mid-April, religious groups ordered another 500 yard signs announcing, “One Human Family: We support refugees...
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Stark and soft. Huge yet intimate. Victim, villain. Dry facts, bloody horror. These contrasts make seeing Xu Weixin: Monumental Portraits at the University of Michigan Museum of Art a skin-crawling, soul-deepening experience. It...
Read MoreSue Schooner was a workaholic auto executive when a group of middle school girls “sort of started taking over my life.” What began as a volunteer stint working with girls at Peace Neighborhood Center and the...
Read MoreFormer computer engineer Eric Kampe did the first planting for his company in 2012. The following year, he sold nine varieties of seeds. This year Kampe, thirty-five, is offering seed packets for forty-nine herbs, vegetables,...
Read MoreThe former Colonial Lanes has finally completed its two-year transition into an “entertainment center” called Revel & Roll. For more than fifty years, it was an old-style bowling alley and–walled off but...
Read MoreIf you’re going to raise ninety-six chickens in a small-scale operation for the fryer, you better raise the bar on how you’re going to get them ready for the kitchen. Even though the garden-variety domestic chicken...
Read MoreThe human voice is arguably the most versatile of all musical instruments. It is perhaps the only one capable, whether coupled with words or not, of both expressing and eliciting all emotions–ones for which we have names...
Read More“I spy the Shinola Clock!” says Gaia Stanley about April’s feature. “That’s the crown on the Shinola watch at the southeast corner of Main and Liberty,” agrees Rob Utterback. “Their...
Read MoreLast month’s Fake Ad for Ripped City Nutrition (page 86 of the April issue) contained the phrase “pharm to table,” playing off the ubiquitous “farm to table” description seen in so many restaurants...
Read MoreOn May 3, the Washtenaw Intermediate School District will ask county voters to increase the special education tax from 3.9 to 5.4 mills. If approved, it will cost the owner of a home with a taxable value of $100,000 an...
Read MoreA few decades ago I spent a couple of hours in the Antelope Valley, up in the northern part of Los Angeles County. Those California counties seem as big as medium-sized European countries, and once you’re in the Antelope...
Read MoreYou could accuse She-Bop and the Riff Raff of being just another cover band, or a mere Sixties-style girl group throwback, but the group is considerably savvier and more stylistically adept than that. With vocalists Robin...
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