Kim Cattrall 'loved gaining weight for film'
By Jennifer Still, Entertainment Reporter
Digital Spy

Kim Cattrall has confessed that she loved gaining weight for the title role in Meet Monica Velour.

The AP reports that the Sex and the City actress put on 20lbs for the part of a former porn star who develops an unlikely friendship with one of her biggest fans, an experience which she relished after years of dieting.

"It was actually kind of a relief. It was like getting rid of the Barbie doll and throwing it out and starting again," she told reporters.

"We were shooting in Detroit, and there's a lot of great bars in Detroit. So I ate and I drank for about six weeks."

Meet Monica Velour opens in the US on April 8.

Cattrall previously admitted that she struggles to continue dieting to maintain her figure as she gets older.

Don't Shrink Detroit, Super-Size It

LEGO City with Detroit Buildings
from DecoJim
Don't Shrink Detroit, Super-Size It
By Mark Binelli
The Atlantic

Urban experts and politicians have decided among themselves that "right-sizing" Detroit by shrinking the city is the only way to save it. They couldn't be more wrong.

As with much of the bad news coming out of Detroit, last week's abysmal census inspired a peculiar mix of solemn pity and barely concealed delight in the media.

The U.S. Census found the city's population had plummeted a staggering 25% in ten years -- down to a pre-Model T low of 713,000. News writers rebooted their Detroit-as-failed-state storylines. Did you know the city possesses enough vacant land to hold the entire city of San Francisco? That the Pontiac Silverdome sold for the price of a modest one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan? That there are 50,000 stray dogs roaming the streets? The census numbers raced around the Internet, made the front page of the New York Times and lots of other papers.

Local politicians responded quickly, and many all but demanded a recount. City Council president Charles Pugh insisted on Facebook that the count was "way low." He even explained away the numbers by suggesting a large number of Detroit residents were doing prison time in other cities. Many of the news stories also referenced Detroit Mayor Dave Bing's euphemistic "right-sizing" plan to shrink the city. The plan is still quite vague in its outlines, but it correctly hopes to incentivize citizens living on isolated urban prairies to move to denser, more easily serviced neighborhoods.

A prominent official under former Mayor Dennis Archer's administration told me that shrinking Detroit "betrays who we are." Instead, he said, we should be doing the opposite of right-sizing.

"How did Philly grow?" he said. "It grabbed up the suburbs. How did LA grow? It grabbed up the suburbs. Think about it: Detroit is older than the country. [The city was established in 1701 as French trading post.] This place was founded with frontier spirit. And now we're here in 2010, a bunch of wusses."

I've come to learn my friend's idea is a favorite thought experiment among a certain subset of Detroit-area urbanophiles. Sometimes they will reference David Rusk, the former Albuquerque mayor whose book Cities Without Suburbs makes the case for the economic vibrancy of "elastic" cities (like Houston, Austin, Seattle and Nashville) whose central hubs have the capability to annex or otherwise regionalize their surrounding suburbs into a unified metropolitan area.

The takeaway from the census stories was that Detroit plummeted to 19th place on the U.S. city-size list, behind Austin, Jacksonville and Columbus (Columbus!). But the Detroit metropolitan area -- which we'll define, for these purposes, as Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties -- still retains a population of nearly four million. If our territorial-expansion fantasia could have been magically enacted with even two-thirds of this figure, the Greater Detroitopolis would easily vault past Chicago to become the third-largest city in the U.S., behind New York and Los Angeles. This would translate into more state and national clout (and allocated funds, many of which are based on population) and eliminate the need for much of the wasteful duplicate spending inherent in maintaining dozens of tiny separate municipalities, especially at a time when many of these suburban communities have announced their own cutbacks. (In February, the westside suburb of Allen Park announced plans to eliminate its entire fire department.)

Click HERE to read the rest of this article!



 Urbanophile

I'm extremely delighted to be able to begin sharing today a series of posts that previously appeared in the Where blog. This blog, which ran from 2007 to 2010, was one of the single most inspiring urbanist sites on the web. Originally a project of Brendan Crain, it grew into a very popular group site before going the way of all blogs. I've previously shared some material from Where contributor Drew Austin, and I'm stoked that Brendan himself has allowed me to re-post some of his pieces as well. They certainly deserve to be read far and wide. Brendan himself is not blogging at the moment that I'm aware of, but some of his old Where contributors are still going over at Polis, which is definitely worth checking out for an international take on cities. Thanks so much to Brendan and I hope you all enjoy these posts that will appear in the coming weeks and months. - Aaron ]

As the city that has fallen on the hardest times (in America, at least), Detroit has the most potential as a proving ground for new solutions. The city is a massive laboratory for urban theorists, developers, and boosters alike. How, many wonder, can Detroit be saved? Or can it be saved at all? Certainly one of the more interesting answers to these questions has come from Tyree Guyton, the man behind the Heidelberg Project, which has appropriated several blocks of the city’s near east side into a spectacularly off-the-wall community art project/revitalization effort.


It’s certainly not what you’d traditionally refer to as “revitalization,” but that’s kind of the point. On its website, the Heidelberg Project explains its vision thusly: “The Heidelberg Project envisions neighborhood residents using art to come together to rebuild the structure and fabric of under-resourced communities and to create a way of living that is economically viable, enriches lives, and welcomes all people.” What this translates to in the physical environment of Heidelberg Street is a collection of abandoned houses — and their surroundings — covered in murals, knick-knacks, mannequins, coins, pie tins, pieces of repurposed trash, stuffed animals, and (literally) just about anything else you could think up. It’s like the Watts Towers, but even more organic.

Click HERE for the rest of this article!
http://www.100abandonedhouses.com/
Maxwell Strachan
The Huffington Post 

Bank of America, the country's largest bank by assets, has announced an initiative to demolish one hundred abandoned Detroit homes currently under the bank's ownership, a task that CEO Brian T. Moynihan says will "help 'right-size' the city," according to the Detroit Free Press.

The bank, which estimates the costs at $1 million, says the land plots will be donated to the city "for green space, urban farming or redevelopment."

Bank of America also plans to donate ten renovated homes to Detroit police officers willing to move into one of Mayor Bing's two designated-need neighborhoods, Boston-Edison and East English Village. Mayor Bing hopes to draw police officers -- and eventually firefighters -- back into the neighborhoods they service. Many have left for the suburbs since a bill ended residency requirements for officers in 1999.

Click HERE for the rest of this article!


"Detroit is a blank canvas waiting for some more visionaries like Mies [van der Rohe]. People describe it as being dangerous, but they don’t describe Malibu as being dangerous, and it’s always on fire. That seems pretty dangerous to me. And Arizona is always on the brink of running out of water. That seems dangerous too."
~Toby Barlow

Move To Detroit Quickly While There's Still Time
Paul Gunther
Huffington Post

Demographers and scientists alike broadly predict that once the history of the 21st century is written, water will have emerged as the primary commodity driving the socioeconomic forces shaping world politics and the well-being of the global population estimated even by mid-century to exceed nine billion. (Almost a 30% increase from now for those keeping track...)

Whatever energy alternatives the vicissitudes of oil pricing and availability drive along the way, concerns with accessible power sources will pale alongside the specter of thirst and hunger arising from a shortage of the world's most basic source of survival, H2O.

That's why Detroit's alarming population decline first reported last week in the Times signals what can only be a temporary passage in the patterns of global settlement beginning right here in America. The built world is going to need places like a city, named after the French word for strait, along a river dividing two of the greatest freshwater lakes on the face of the globe (by size, the fourth: Michigan, and the tenth: Erie).

Pure Michigan Autum Photo Contest Winner, Kayaker's Arch by DeAnn Eddy
Lake Superior at Pictured Rocks.
With population exploding in inauspiciously stressed water zones across all continents including the deserts of the American southwest and Rocky Mountains' dry eastern slopes and their nearby badlands, the limits to growth from lack of it will soon come into sharp focus. If not due merely to literal shortages initially made apparent by periods of drought, raising costs will accelerate the awareness, especially as a handful of large international corporate conglomerates are quietly privatizing the world's aquifers and controlling their terrestrial consumption. Without natural supplies and rainfall, such corporate control will monetize ever more effectively the cost of quenching thirst and growing crops, not to mention meeting the needs of sanitation and industry.

Just 2.5 percent of the world's water is fresh, and according to environment correspondent Alec Kirby of the BBC, "two-thirds of that is trapped in icecaps and glaciers." (No reprieve therefore from global warming, as, whether one believes it's caused by man or not, the lion's share of the resulting melt-off turns salty from the first liquefied droplet.) He goes on, "The amount of fresh water available for human use is less than one percent of all the water on the planet."

Which brings us back to Detroit and the colossal supplies surrounding it. It's the Saudi Arabia of fresh water! (Add in the ease of navigation from its surrounding waterways, stretching as they do from the Atlantic to the Mississippi by lake and canal.)

Click HERE to read the rest of this article!
Doug VanDagens, director of connected services solutions for Ford Motor Co., left, talks to Ford employee Dave Hatton at one of Ford's product development sync labs in Dearborn, Michigan. “We have a whole slew of job postings out there currently,” VanDagens says. Photographer: Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg
Ryan Flinn and Jeff Green
Bloomberg

As a group of Ford Motor Co. (F) managers in blue jeans sat down to interview a suit-wearing candidate from a California technology company this month, they jokingly offered to cut off his tie to put him at ease.

Auto industry executives are trying to make Silicon Valley engineers feel at home in Detroit. With a burgeoning number of technology job openings to fill, they’re scouring Internet companies for workers, wining and dining applicants, and seeking promising students at schools such as Stanford University.

“We have a whole slew of job postings out there currently,” said Doug VanDagens, director of Ford’s connected service solutions, who has been trying to lure engineers to the automaker to design software. “We’re just on a growth binge.”

Expertise in cloud computing, mobile software applications and energy management are in demand in the Motor City as automakers replace car stereos with Internet radio and gasoline engines with motors powered by lithium-ion batteries. Technology job postings in the Detroit area doubled last year, making it the fastest-expanding region in the country, according to Dice Holdings Inc. (DHX), a job-listing website.

“There’s a war for talent out there, and it’s only going to get worse,” said Jim Bazner, vice president of human capital solutions at MSX International in Southfield, Michigan, which helps automakers find specialized employees. “There are hundreds of jobs, and all the automakers are hiring.”
Dearth of Graduates

Ford and General Motors Co. (GM) are rapidly hiring graduates from local universities as fast as they can -- there just aren’t enough of them.

“If we filled every opening that’s been posted or recruited just in the Lansing area, we’d be able to hire out all of our graduates three times over,” said Garth Motschenbacher, who helps place computer-science graduates at Michigan State University. About 70 percent of the school’s 54 students scheduled to graduate in May have jobs lined up, he said. “The number of students has not kept up with the opportunities.”

Still, attracting engineers to Detroit rather than Silicon Valley can be a challenge. The San Francisco area is home to more technology companies offering more job openings than Detroit. California’s mild climate and history of innovation are also a draw. Yet Detroit is bouncing back.

Companies that work with automakers on in-car entertainment systems, such as online streaming music providers Pandora Media Inc. and Mog Inc., have opened offices in the Detroit area. Google Inc. (GOOG), based in Mountain View, California, has an office in Birmingham, Michigan, where it’s looking for sales associates to work with the auto industry.
New Wave

Marty Zacharias is part of the wave of new hires. The former Nissan Motor Co. and Ford employee joined Berkeley, California-based Mog last month -- in its new Detroit office. He’ll work directly with companies such as Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW)’s Mini and others to get Mog’s Web-based subscription music service into vehicles.

“Many more Detroit-based automotive industry employees will follow a similar path to mine,” Zacharias said in an e- mail, “or join advanced technology divisions within the established automotive companies.”

The expansion has caught the eye of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which announced in December that it will open its first satellite office in Detroit. The region’s high percentage of scientists and engineers, as well as its patent output, spurred the decision, said Paul Fucito, a patent office spokesman. The 4,000 patents granted to Michigan in fiscal 2010 ranked seventh among U.S. states, he said. The facility is likely to create about 100 new jobs to review patent filings.
Recession’s Toll

One reason why the job growth in Detroit appears so high is because the recession’s toll went so deep, said Tom Silver, senior vice president of Dice Holdings and author of the jobs report showing a surge in the area.

“The recovery there is actually looking pretty substantial, but it’s also a reflection, to some extent, that Detroit was probably hit a little harder than the other markets,” he said.

The hiring demand comes as Detroit’s population fell to the lowest official tally since 1910. According to 2010 U.S. Census data released this week, Detroit’s population declined 25 percent, to 713,777, down from a peak of 1.85 million in 1950.

Michigan lost about 413,000 jobs from December 2007 through December 2009, including 83,200 jobs in the Detroit area, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Things picked up last year, as jobs in the Detroit-area professional and business-services sector, which include many of the tech jobs, rose almost twice as fast in December as the overall Michigan job market, according to the bureau.
Light-Rail Project

Not all tech jobs in Detroit are related to the auto industry. Dan Gilbert, chairman and founder of Quicken Loans Inc., helped fund a planned light-rail project for downtown, formed a venture capital firm to invest in startups, and purchased a historic theater with plans to renovate it as an incubator space for budding technology companies.

“I want to see this city come back in a big way,” Gilbert said in an interview. “Part of it also was for business -- we want to create that urban feel, that urban core environment downtown where people in their 20s and 30s really want to be.”

Last year Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team, moved 1,700 of Quicken Loans’ employees into Compuware Corp. (CPWR) headquarters in Detroit’s Campus Martius Park area, the center of the city’s tech industry, where he plans to add 2,000 more workers.

In the building, graffiti from local artists decorate many of the walls and floors, and mini kitchens on every floor offer free slushies and snacks. When the space is fully finished, Quicken also will have a basketball court for employees.
Venture Funding

Gilbert’s venture capital firm’s goal is to fund social media, cloud computing and other software companies in Detroit. So far, Detroit Venture Partners has received more than 200 proposals for investments and has term sheets under consideration for six that may be signed in the next 30 days, said Josh Linkner, one of the three founders, in an interview.

Venture capital firms invested $79.9 million in 13 Detroit companies last year, according to National Venture Capital Association data. That’s the most companies since at least 1990 and the third-highest total investment, the data show.

Even with efforts to mimic Silicon Valley office culture, recruiting people to move from the West Coast to Detroit is difficult, said Micky Bly, GM’s executive director of electric vehicles, battery and infotainment systems.

“I don’t want to categorize it as an issue, but it is tough,” he said. “You don’t have people begging to come to the Michigan area.”
Salary Gap

Compensation is one reason why. While average salaries for Detroit technology jobs rose 2.3 percent last year to $71,445, that’s still less than the national average of $79,384, and about 28 percent lower than the $99,028 paid in Silicon Valley, according to Dice Holdings. More than 940 technology jobs are currently available in the Detroit metro region, compared with more than 5,060 in Silicon Valley.

Still, Bly says the quality of life can be attractive for some. “They can get a whole lot of house in Michigan for what they can get in San Francisco,” he said.

The workplace culture among automakers is also relaxing, as they attempt to adopt some of the perks more common at startups, like wearing jeans to work or telecommuting. That’s a big change from when Bly started at GM 20 years ago, when everyone wore a collared shirt and a tie.

“The variation was in your pant color -- you could have gray, black or blue,” Bly said. While things have changed, the perks still aren’t the same as in Silicon Valley, he said.

“Do we have a free cafeteria like Google? No, but our stock isn’t up to $400 a share yet” Bly said. Google currently trades at about $587 a share, while GM’s stock sits at $31. “When we get $400 a share, I’ll make sure we have free meals for everyone here.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Ryan Flinn in San Francisco at rflinn@bloomberg.net; Jeff Green in Southfield, Michigan, at jgreen16@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net

Detroit: From Decay to Opportunity

Josh Linkner


The story of Detroit (my home town) is an unfinished book.

In Chapter One, our city was born with the DNA of creativity, innovation, and a passion for change.  Creators like Henry Ford put our city on the map by imagining a better tomorrow and then making it happen through entrepreneurial fire.  And with this passion, our city prospered.  Chapter One was all about original thinking, fresh ideas, and innovation.

Chapter Two, also known as the dark ages, came next.  We left our entrepreneurial roots and shifted to a mindset of entitlement.  Our arrogance and hubris changed us from creators to protecting hoarders.  We felt unbeatable.  We built stifling bureaucracies. We stopped inventing and dreaming.  We stopped creating.  And we stopped winning.

As the evil forces of bureaucracy, finger-pointing blame, and protectionism emerged – our city crumbled.  We ended Chapter Two as a national punch line.  The rest of the country gave up on us, and we were spinning with hopelessness and despair.

Now we enter Chapter Three. It’s the beginning of this chapter, and we all have a choice.  We can continue to point fingers, cry in our soup, and long for the days gone by.  Or we can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.  We can own it, fix it, and rebuild it. This is our time.  This is our defining moment.

Click to read the rest of this article HERE.
Photo From Hour Detroit
By Sarah Firshein 
Curbed

After years of disrepair, the 4,300-square-foot home that Dorothy Turkel commissioned in 1955 is shiny, new, and begging for a Mad Men party. It’s the only two-story Usonian automatic home that Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed and therefore attracts photo-snapping architecture enthusiasts to its lawn with a bit more regularity than its current residents, Norman Silk and Dale Morgan, would like. Curbed reporter (and friend of Positive Detroit) Sarah F. Cox sat down with the couple, who are partners in life and a local floral business, to talk about what it’s like to live behind all that glass.

Curbed National: When you saw this house for sale in a state of disrepair, what made you want to take that on?

Dale Morgan: We’ve lived in Palmer Woods [the Turkel House’s neighborhood] for 25 years. Most of the houses aren’t modern at all and we’d always lived in a traditional home; we had a beautiful Mediterranean villa. We wanted to do something contemporary because we had redone that house three times so we were looking around for options; at first we didn’t even realize that that this was truly a Frank Lloyd Wright home.

Norman Silk: I was driving by one day and saw the “For Sale” sign in the yard and stopped. It was a really sunny day and the light was streaming in; the whole house was empty and everything we have now was here, but badly faded, like the benches and shelves. There was old white upholstery and water-stained wood and the color of everything was butter yellow. You could see the red floors, which are polished concrete, but they still had carpet glue on them and they were dirty. But I saw the bones of the house and I thought that is really an interesting, cool house.

CN: It's pretty amazing that you just stumbled upon a Frank Lloyd Wright home. How was its history so unknown?

NS: This house had been in decline for the 25 years we’d lived here; it had never been a vibrant house. It was unkempt and overgrown, no one had ever done much with it, and there wasn’t much conversation in the neighborhood about it being truly a Frank Lloyd Wright. In our minds, we thought it was a student of Wright or just in the style of Wright; once we knew what it really was that piqued our interest.

DM: After we bought it everyone said, “Oh I was going to buy that house.” It had been on the market a lot of times over the years and so a lot of people had looked at it.

CN: How did you bring your design aesthetic into the home?

Click HERE for the rest of this article!

Nemos Makes the Top 10 Sports Bars in the U.S.

Gayot: The Guide to Good Life

Nemo's Bar & Grill Restaurant
1384 Michigan Ave. (Eighth St.)
Detroit, MI 48226
313-965-3180 |

It used to be a family could stop for a meal here, then walk to Tiger Stadium for a baseball game. Sadly, the Tigers have moved to Comerica Park on the other side of downtown, but Nemo's now arranges buses to the games, as well as to Lions football, Red Wings hockey games, and other major concert and entertainment events. Customers appreciate that kind of service, as well as one of the better burgers in town. The antique-y setting, sports memorabilia-laden décor and completely unpretentious atmosphere have been a winning combination for years under the Springstead family. The menu also includes other basics like chili and homemade soups, and throwbacks like liverwurst sandwiches. Sports fans continue to flock to what is a true Detroit classic.

Click HERE to see more details.
Photo: Tatiana Arbogast  
Grub Street Los Angeles 

Now that we have bagels from Brooklyn, tacos from Chicago, and Chinese food from San Francisco, maybe it's time for Detroit to get in on our rapidly growing sausage party. Coming this May to Sunset Blvd., across the street from The Whiskey, Coney Dog is bringing Detroit-style hot dogs, burgers, fries, craft beer, and for true Motor City madmen, bottles of Faygo, to West Hollywood. Yes, this is basically a little like Sonny McClean's Bostonian refuge, only with Detroit exiles in mind. So, what's with the name?

The business seeks to provide a den of nostalgia for those missing Michigan's Greek-influenced American Coney Island hot dogs. The popular special here is usually a chili dog and Coney's Facebook page shows the gang preparing to take on Tommy's with one of their own. Good luck guys. After all, even though we have enough regional transplant action for a few years, who isn't rooting for Detroit?

Coney Dog, 8873 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood.
Meet the 'New' Motor City
Once-Insular City's Business Climate Warms to Outsiders -- and Green Shoots Are Starting to Show


David Kiley
Advertising Age

On a recent morning at Zuma's Coffee Shop, an independently owned joint in the affluent Detroit suburb of Birmingham, a man in his mid 40s wearing jeans and a casual shirt sits in a windowless alcove hunched over his iPad, a BlackBerry on the table and a briefcase at his side. It's about 38 degrees, warm enough to melt the stubborn March snow cleaving to the roadsides -- sweater weather at worst for a native Michigander. Yet the man is clad in a down coat even inside the café.

It's Joel Ewanick, GM's global marketing chief, on the job in Detroit for 10 months and no Michigan native, having left the more seasonable climes of Southern California at Hyundai, with a brief stop at Nissan in Nashville, Tenn., before accepting a move to Detroit that he had previously resisted.

Mr. Ewanick comes to this often empty alcove at Zuma's "to get some work done and to think," he said, before making the 25-mile trek from his home in Bloomfield Hills south to General Motors' glass and steel edifice on the Detroit River. Mr. Ewanick, who went from having only marketing responsibility for GM's North American operation to the whole world two months ago, said he often tries to stay outside the office -- known as "the tubes" around Detroit because of the multiple-cylinders configuration of the building -- and has to ration his meetings "or the important work is not going to get done."

That important work is marketing the post-bankruptcy GM that is still 40% owned by the U.S. Treasury. That job, and that of reshaping the new Chrysler and surging Ford, is increasingly being done by newcomers and outsiders such as Mr. Ewanick who are re-energizing the "new" Detroit, where creative green shoots are once again springing up. Among them at GM: CEO Daniel Akerson from the Carlyle Group; North American marketing head Chris Perry from Hyundai; Goodby Silverstein & Partners CEO Jeff Goodby, who has been leading Chevrolet creative since last summer; and Chairman Pat Fallon of Fallon Worldwide, Minneapolis, which now handles Cadillac. Also new to town: Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne and chief marketer Olivier Francois from Italian automaker Fiat; Chrysler agencies Wieden & Kennedy and Richards Group from Oregon and Texas, respectively. And perhaps most prominently, Ford CEO Alan Mulally from Boeing Co. and his chief global marketing executive, James Farley, from Toyota.

"There is still a lot of money here," said Toby Barlow, chief creative officer at Team Detroit, who is speaking at Ad Age's Idea Detroit Conference this week. "The auto companies are back, and they have some of the biggest budgets, and good people and good ideas and creativity will come to where the money is." Mr. Barlow himself is an outsider who arrived almost five years ago from New York and San Francisco before that.

Some of the outsiders are laying down roots; some are transient. Mr. Barlow, for example, lives in Lafayette Park in downtown Detroit and is a frequent megaphone of creative possibilities and business opportunities around the city. He also published a novel, "Sharp Teeth," in 2008, which is being developed into a movie by "Slumdog Millionaire" director Danny Boyle.

Click HERE to read the rest of this very positive Detroit article!
 Navy Names Littoral Combat Ships Milwaukee and Detroit
U.S Department of Defense

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced Friday that the next two Freedom-class littoral combat ships (LCS) to be built in Wisconsin will be named the USS Milwaukee and the USS Detroit.

These two ships are part of a dual block buy of LCS class ships announced by Mabus in December 2010.  By procuring both versions of the LCS – Lockheed Martin’s semiplaning monohull and General Dynamic’s aluminum trimaran – the Navy can stabilize the LCS program and the industrial base with an award of 20 ships; increase ship procurement rate to support operational requirements; sustain competition through the program; and enhance foreign military sales opportunities.  Both designs meet the Navy’s LCS requirement.  However, the diversity provided by two designs provides operational flexibility.

Milwaukee and Detroit will be designed to defeat growing littoral threats and provide access and dominance in the coastal waters.  A fast, agile surface combatant, the LCS provides the required war fighting capabilities and operational flexibility to execute focused missions close to the shore such as mine warfare, anti-submarine warfare and surface warfare.

The Milwaukee and Detroit will be 378 feet in length, have a waterline beam of 57 feet, displace approximately 3,000 tons, and will make speed in excess of 40 knots.

Construction of Milwaukee and Detroit will be by a Lockheed Martin led industry team in Marinette, Wis.

The selection of Milwaukee, designated LCS 5, honors the city’s citizens and their continued support to our nation’s military.  Milwaukee has been a city of national pride since its official founding in 1846.  This makes the sixth ship to bear the city’s name.

The selection of Detroit, designated LCS 7, honors the citizens of the Motor City and their ongoing patriotic spirit and military support.  Detroit is a major port city on the Detroit River in the state of Michigan.  It was founded on July 24, 1701.  Detroit is the seventh ship to bear the city’s name.

Bastone Brewery Raises a Pint to You at Irishfest

Irishfest has come to Bastone Brewery. It is the time of year when craft-brew fans and foodies will toast a limited edition pint glass – filled with Bastone’s award-winning brew – to a mouthwatering menu of seasonal specials to welcome spring.

Irishfest, March 7-31, 2011
Bastone Brewery
419 S. Main Street
Royal Oak, Michigan

MENU 

Irishfest features the following special menu items for a limited time:

Smoked Salmon Mousse: House smoked salmon is blended with cream and spices and served alongside crackers and traditional accompaniments. $7.95

Baked Boursin Cheese: Herbed cream cheese baked with housemade tomato sauce, baked crostini points and olive tapenade. $8.50

Shepherd’s Pie: In true Irish style, this dish features braised ground beef, carrots, onions and rutabaga topped with duchess potatoes that are baked until golden. $14

Braised Lamb Shanks: Slow cooked imported lamb shanks are braised in ale sauce with bubble and squeak (also known as cabbage and potatoes). $18

Dublin Bay Pasta: Shrimp, Scallops and lobster are featured in a dill cream and served over linguine. $18.95

Jameson Chicken: Pan seared chicken breast served in Irish whiskey and grain mustard sauce with Irish potatoes and seasonal vegetables. $15.95   

BREW

Bastone’s Irishfest also features beer specials for the craft-brew fan. Limited edition Irishfest pint glass are just $4 while they last. Refills are just $3 through March 20. (Please note Bastone has now sold out of the glasses).
Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Hall of Fame 2011: Alice Cooper and Neil Diamond Get Irreverent
'My kids, I paid for their dental bills, and now I pay for their kids' dental bills,' Diamond jokes

Rolling Stone

If the first half of Monday's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction struck a note of awe and reverence, its second half, kicking off with an appropriately raucous and randy performance by Alice Cooper, was a bit more irreverent.

Cooper, who was joined in his performance both by Rob Zombie and a small pack of school children – all of them wearing stage makeup like Cooper's – celebrated the group's abiding spirit of immaturity. "I hope I never outgrow a Pete Townsend windmill chord," he said. "I hope I never outgrow a Jeff Beck lead guitar. I wish I could tell you that being in the Hall now, we'll never embarrass you, but I really can't make that promise. After all, we are Alice Cooper. It's what we do." He took those musings even further in the press room. "I kept thinking, 'Who will be the first band kicked out of the Hall of Fame"?" he joked. "And then I thought, 'Gee, that could be us!'" He praised his inductor Rob Zombie, saying "Rob gets it – horror and music and comedy, all of them in bed together. There aren't too many people who understand that."

Tom Waits was similarly wry, recalling how, at age 15, he'd snuck in to see Lightnin' Hopkins by putting "Wite-Out in my hair and drawing on a moustache," and comparing his induction to receiving the key to the city of El Paso. "They told me there was only one," he said, "but I found out there were a whole bunch of then, and they didn't open anything. So I hope there are some fringe benefits to this baby."

Elton John brought a moment of sweetness, recalling how rediscovering Leon Russell's music on a recent vacation moved him so deeply that he called Russell out of the blue, a conversation that resulted in their 2010 collaboration The Union. A deeply-moved Russell gave the evening's shortest acceptance speech, saying "About a year ago, Elton came and found me in a ditch at the side of the highway and he took me up to the hospital and treated me like a king."

Neil Diamond, who took the podium after a 25-hour flight from Australia, extemporized daffily, providing the evening's loopiest patter. "Where the hell am I?" he joked. "What are we doing here?" He took repeated shots at the audience members at the tables on the floor ("The $3,000 seats," he called them) turning his attention instead to his fans in the balcony. Since he hadn't prepared a speech, he instead embarked on a string of hilarious non sequitirs. He spent minutes on end praising presenter Paul Simon's upcoming record before admitting, "I can’t remember the title. It's a tough album title, Paul." He then asked Simon for $100 for the endorsement. "My kids, I love my kids, I paid for their dental bills, and now I pay for their kids' dental bills," he went on, concluding with, "I'm flying back tomorrow to Sydney fucking Australia. Because they love me there, and I'm gonna keep coming back until they stop loving me."
Mayor Dave Bing during his address last week to Detroit area business leaders said he believes young, talented, creative people are very important to the city’s future growth; and today he took those comments a step further with an endorsement of the Rust Belt to Artist Belt III Conference being held in Detroit, April 6 and 7, 2011.

“I am very pleased to have the Rust Belt to Artist Belt III Conference being held in Detroit next month,” said Mayor Bing.  “Creative people and businesses are vital to post-industrial cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.  We will all benefit from the ideas that emerge from Rust Belt to Artist Belt III because creative individuals are doers; they put their ideas in motion. 

“If you look around Detroit today you can see how artists, designers, architects, and other innovative thinkers are making a positive impact on the physical and economic landscape of our city.  They are opening new businesses, erecting art installations for the community to enjoy, and finding new uses for old structures.  Creative people are helping to revive Detroit and I fully encourage it.”

Rust Belt to Artist Belt III Conference is to explore how post-industrial Rust Belt cities are being shaped by creative individuals with regards to entrepreneurialism, economic and community development, and land use.  It is being hosted by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center in partnership with ArtServe Michigan and Techtown.  The Rust Belt to Artist Belt III Conference is being sponsored by The Kresge Foundation and Surdna Foundation of New York City.

To learn more about the conference and register visit www.RustBelttoArtistBelt.com.

About Detroit Creative Corridor Center
The Detroit Creative Corridor Center ("DC3") is an entity supported by Business Leaders for Michigan and the College for Creative Studies whose vision is to establish Detroit as a global center of creative business, creative innovation and creative talent. Visit www.DetroitCreativeCorridorCenter.com.  
The Detroit Revialization Fellows Program is designed to attract, develop and retain promising young professionals who will help lead the economic revitalization and development of Detroit. This talent pool is being cultivated in order to build the capacity of public, for-profit, nonprofit and quasi-public organizations, including Detroit’s anchor institutions. The Detroit Fellows program is an outstanding opportunity for those looking to build a career in the fields of economic and business development, real estate and urban planning. It is also an outstanding opportunity to be a key contributor to the transformation of Detroit... to creating the Detroit of tomorrow.

The Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program is modeled after the successful Rockefeller Foundation Redevelopment Fellowships launched in 2007 in New Orleans.  That program, administered by the Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania, enabled key redevelopment organizations in New Orleans to recruit qualified professionals from across the country to work on the rebuilding process there.

Full-time employment for a minimum of two years, working on initiatives that will turn the vision for Detroit into reality.

Each Detroit Fellow will be working in various project management and leadership roles as an employee of one of the organizations actively shaping the Detroit of Tomorrow.

During the first phase, the Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program will include up to 25 mid-career professionals working with a variety of local organizations. Organizations that have agreed to employ Fellows include the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, the Downtown Detroit Partnership, Invest Detroit, the City of Detroit, the University Cultural Center Association, NextEnergy, and the Woodward Corridor Initiative. A special effort is also being made to build capacity in a variety of other community development organizations across the city.

Organizations interested in participating in the Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program are requested to email us at: drfp@wayne.edu.

Click HERE to view their website
World's Most Underrated Cities
Jennifer Chen, Donna Heiderstadt
Travel+Leisure Magazine

Sure, popular cities have their place. But if you like exploring, there's interesting stuff in the world's most underrated cities.

During his career as a model, Phillip Cooley lived in some of the great metropolises of the world. But when the Michigan native decided to lay down some roots, he chose Detroit—a city synonymous with urban blight in post-recession America. And he hasn't looked back.

Welcome to the urban underdogs—cities that aren't on the radar for most travelers. Some, like Slovakia's capital of Bratislava, might be overlooked because of their proximity to better-known cities. Others, like Detroit, can't seem to live down a bad rap. But if undiscovered art scenes, experimental cuisine, great architecture, and interesting neighborhoods are on your travel checklist, then these cities deserve a second look.

Taipei, for example, suffered for years from both obscurity and a reputation of being one of Asia's most polluted metropolises. But thanks to official efforts to crack down on car emissions, improve public transportation, and create more parks, Taiwan's capital has become one of the region's most livable cities. Meanwhile, neighborhoods such as Xinyi and Da'an districts have grown increasingly sophisticated, with refined restaurants, elegant boutiques, and eclectic cafés and bars.

In Valparaíso, Chile, residents worked with what they had—gorgeous 19th-century houses from the city's glory days as South America's most vital port. Throughout the city, you'll find painstakingly restored houses converted into restaurants, hotels, and galleries.

And then of course there's Detroit. What most people would consider as evidence of Motor City's sad decline—empty lots, abandoned houses, and disused factories—others view as unparalleled opportunities for artists, designers, and other creative types. In fact, Patti Smith and David Byrne, two of music's eternal cool kids, recently exhorted budding artists to move to Detroit, and young people are heeding their advice, moving into neighborhoods like Midtown and Woodbridge.

For a traveler, the main appeal of these neglected cities is authenticity. "You go to the Old Town in Prague, it's mostly tourists. In Bratislava, it's all locals," says Jaroslave Vitazka, a project manager for a private equity firm who has called the city home since 2002. Or, as Phillip Cooley says about Detroit: "It's real, it's honest. You can spend the day at an urban farm, and then head off to a Tigers game or the opera, just like the locals do."

Detroit

A new breed of urban homesteader is helping to revive Motor City. Abandoned factories and warehouses like the Russell Industrial Center have been turned into studios for artists and artisans, while gardens now flourish in formerly vacant lots. The exuberant Heidelberg Art Project turns urban blight into a symbol of hope. Detroit's food scene, meanwhile, is taking off. Foran's Grand Trunk micropub, the Eastern Market, Supino Pizzeria, and Slows BBQ are just some of the gastronomic must-dos. Don't forget the city's museums, including the Detroit Institute of Art, home to Diego Rivera's "Detroit Industry" murals, and the delightful Motown Museum.

Don't Miss: If you're there on the weekend, swing by Café d'Mongo's, an antiques-filled speakeasy with live jazz that's open only Friday nights.

Click HERE to find out what other cities made the list!


With the theme of health and diet in the mix, Interactive You  is asking people to post on Facebook and Tweet what makes them "Michigan Strong". The top 3 most creative, fun, motivating responses will win a freebie. 

As we all know, times in the state of Michigan are challenging, but we remain strong! In the most creative, inspiring, humorous way possible, tell us what makes you “MI Strong” on our Facebook and/or Twitter (hashtag “#MIStrong”).
(2) 1-month gym memberships – Value $240

1-week of free meals – Value $300


















3Winners / 3 Prizes
 
Best posts and tweets get first dibs on prize! 

Contest ends Thursday at 8:00PM!

Winners announced Friday at 3:00PM!

Shifting Gears: Going Green in the Motor City





 Recycle Here

Years ago the city of Detroit was the largest city in the United States that had no city-wide recycling program. While most cities had one in place as early as the '70s, Detroit was lagging behind until Matt Naimi started 'Recycle Here', a non-for-profit grassroots organization meant to be the center of recycling in the city of Detroit. With Recycle Here's success, Naimi and partner Steve Harworth created 'Green Safe Products,' a distributor of recyclable and compostable products to restaurants and businesses. Having one of the largest stocks of compostable plates, cups, cutlery, et cetera, Green Safe has paved the way for a greener Detroit as more and more businesses use its products in an effort to be more responsible for their waste.

 
Photo From Detroit's Very Own Joe Hakim @ The Hungry Dudes


 Dearborn, MI: Miller's Bar

Signature Burger: Miller's Cheeseburger.

The popular no-frills burgers here have been served since the late 1940s.
23700 Michigan Ave
Dearborn, MI 48124
313.565.2577

Hours:
Mon - Sat 10 am - 2 am
Grill Open 11 am - 12:30 am
Closed Sunday





Laura Vanderkam
USA Today

Henry Ford and Margarita Barry don't have much in common, but they do have this: Both have aspired to create jobs in Detroit.

Ford, of course, built Ford Motor Co., one of three car companies that dominated this city for the past century — their boom making Detroit rich, and their long bust leaving a legacy of vacant lots and an unemployment rate above the national average.

Barry, 26, grew up in their shadow but always saw another side to Detroit: an artistic and rather edgy one. So last year, she launched I Am Young Detroit, a website devoted to Detroit news and events. With new funding on the way, she'll be adding a handful of full-time and part-time positions this spring. Detroit, she says, is a great place to start a business. Real estate is cheap, and "there are so many people out there with talent, primed and ready to get back to work."

Plenty of savvy entrepreneurs are discovering the same secret. Viewed in one light, the decline of Detroit's auto industry is a tragedy for the people who depended on it. On the other, the destruction has freed up an awful lot of creative energy and resources for those willing to take a gamble. According to the Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship, the rate of new business formation per 100,000 adults nearly doubled in Michigan from 2006 to 2009, before leveling a bit in 2010.

It's a very American story of reinvention — like Houston diversifying from oil, and Pittsburgh thriving after the steel mills left.

"Detroit is in some ways a blank slate," says Paul Chambers, whose two tech companies, Core3 Solutions and Quotegine, employ 15 people. It will take a flush of new businesses to equal the thousands of jobs lost here over the past decade, but like seedlings after a forest fire, start-ups are slowly giving this city a new look — and life.

'Fat and sassy'
It's hard to overstate just how much of Detroit's mind-share the auto industry once consumed. "We got a little bit fat and sassy with an industry that sustained us ... for 100 years," says Leslie Lynn Smith, general manager of TechTown, Wayne State University's business incubator, which is housed in an old auto building (the Corvette was designed on the third floor). Her father worked in the auto industry for years, and with the car companies paying high school grads well enough to afford homes and often vacation cottages, few bothered looking elsewhere.

Globalization destroyed that fantasy world, but the long decline that culminated in the 2009 GM and Chrysler bankruptcy reorganizations created space for new ventures. Entrepreneurs here argue that, despite lingering bureaucracy and a serious crisis in the school system, Detroit is one of the best start-up environments in the country for three reasons:

•First, space is comically cheap. Real estate listings seem to be missing a zero. Thanh Tran, founder of MentalNote, an electronic medical records software for mental health professionals, reports that he is paying $14 a square foot to rent a nice space for his company, a rate that would be hard to get elsewhere. Phil Cooley, co-owner of Slows Bar B Q — whose two locations employ 105 people — recently made a $100,000 offer for a 30,000-square-foot building, which he plans to turn into artists' studios. In New York, where you can't get 300 square feet for $100,000, his creative friends report that "they're not making art anymore — they're working four jobs," he says. Come to Detroit, and you can bartend at Slows three nights a week and use the rest of the time to make art, sell crafts on Etsy, freelance or invent the greatest new thing since the internal combustion engine. Renting a room in a big Victorian mansion runs $200 a month. Even if bank lending to small businesses isn't brisk, it's not hard to bootstrap that.

•Second, plenty of hard-working potential employees are more willing to consider small firms than in the days when everyone got a job at Ford. This includes former employees of the auto industry, and the surprising number of young professionals now living downtown. Whenever Saundra Little, an architect who specializes in green buildings, scales up for a new project, "there's a nice pool out there for me to pick from," she says. With the low cost of living, talented people also are more open to the short-term contracts that start-ups often use.

•And finally, unlike in some more cut-throat cities, those who haven't fled Detroit are eager to see risk-takers succeed — even another restaurant on the same block. "We're desperate for companionship," Cooley jokes. People buy local when they can and create two-hour lines outside Slows in nice weather. A civic spirit of us-against-the-world has neighbors turning vacant lots into urban farms and sculpture parks, and building a bike track next to a burned-out house.
New horizons

Of course, this new economy is one thing if you're well-educated. It's another if you worked the assembly line for 20 years and might not have the skills that Detroit's start-ups require.

Even in these hard cases, however, the death of one thing often leads to new opportunities. Margarita Barry takes design classes at a local college and reports that "a majority of my class is adults who worked in the auto industry for years and are starting to rebuild their lives." With stable, if boring, jobs beckoning, "people set aside their creative sides to work the assembly line." Now, "I see them exploring this other side of themselves," she says. They learn that "you can't depend on these large companies anymore." If you can't get a job, you can make a job, tapping into that creative spirit that resides in all of us — even in Detroit.

Says Cooley, "There's tremendous potential everywhere."

Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.
Kick off your weekend with The Salvation Army’s 6th annual Chili Cook-Off and family fun event for a good cause, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, March 18, at The Salvation Army Corps Community Center, 24140 Mound Road, in Warren.

The sixth annual event will incorporate a chili-tasting contest, bake sale and family fun center with bounce house, games and more. The winner will be announced at 8 p.m.

Event admission is $5 and includes chili and activities. All proceeds benefit The Salvation Army Warren Corps Community Center.

Applications are currently being accepted for chili contestants. To sign up, call Ed at (586) 754-7400. Prizes include a $50 gift card for first place, $25 for second and $10 for third.
 Karen Batchelor (right) with her sister Paula and her niece Madison, age 6, outside the house where Karen    and Paula grew up in the Palmer Woods neighborhood of Detroit.

The Other Detroit: The city’s grandest enclave clings to the dream.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Atlantic Monthly

Karen Batchelor’s family moved into Palmer Woods in 1967, part of the first cadre of African Americans to integrate the affluent neighborhood on the outskirts of Detroit. They moved in December, after the long-simmering city had burst into racial violence that summer. Batchelor’s father, an internist, had witnessed Detroit’s previous race riots in 1943. Out on a date at Belle Isle—the flash point of the ’43 riots—he was injured in the melee. He had no interest in reliving the experience, so he and his wife decided to move their family out.

Their 16-year-old daughter liked her old home, and was leery of being on the vanguard of integration. But her new house helped. “I remember seeing my bedroom, and it was pink, and it had a chandelier in it,” she told me. “We came from a very lovely home. But this one had seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a swimming pool, a cabana, and three kitchens.” By her memory, the Batchelors were the ninth black family to move into Palmer Woods, a neighborhood of nearly 300 homes. The following year, several families from her old neighborhood followed—including Karen’s best friend—and the path was set.

"I remember seeing my bedroom [for the first time], and it was pink, and it had a chandelier in it," Batchelor said.

Batchelor’s parents eventually moved from Palmer Woods, but many of her friends and neighbors did not. Indeed, Palmer Woods now sits on a census block group that, according to the most-recent available data, is 81 percent black, and it is arguably the American black elite’s most majestic enclave. When I first visited, in the fall of 2009, I was awestruck. I had seen well-heeled black neighborhoods before—the prosperous suburbs ringing Atlanta and Washington, D.C., Chatham in Chicago, Baldwin Hills in L.A. But the gates of Palmer Woods are a wormhole out of the angry city and into an opulent idyll. Sleepy curvilinear streets with names like “Strathcona Drive” and “Argyle Crescent” snake through the 188-acre hamlet and its sprawling, irregular lots. Across Seven Mile Road sits the venerable, members-only Detroit Golf Club, which remained all-white until 1986.

Even as Detroit groaned under the weight of crime, failing schools, and high taxes, Palmer Woods held steady. But the country’s financial straits, particularly the collapse of the real-estate bubble and the struggles of the Big Three automakers, were a direct assault on the region’s twin pillars: houses and cars. The neighborhood association considers approximately 15 out of its 292 homes to be in jeopardy. Problems that were once rare—crime, for instance—are cropping up, as Palmer Woods at last succumbs to the gravity of the city. As a result, those who were once excluded from the neighborhood’s vision of the American dream are now in the position of defending it.

I took my first tour of Palmer Woods on a chilly fall evening with Barbara and Spencer Barefield and their Saint Bernard, Devo. Barbara is Jewish and a native New Yorker, edits the Palmer Woods Post, and helps organize neighborhood events—block picnics, classical concerts, and home tours. Spencer is African American, a jazz guitarist and composer; like Karen Batchelor, he moved to Palmer Woods as a teenager, in the wake of the riots. Spencer’s mother still lives around the corner in the home he grew up in.

We walked outside, bundled in scarves and gloves, under a final blast of sunlight shooting across the cobalt sky. The streets were quiet, and I could have counted on one hand the cars that drove by. We passed a two-story house designed by Minoru Yamasaki, the architect who designed the World Trade Center. Then we stopped next door, in front of an earthy Arts and Crafts house, set at a right angle to the street, with the front entrance positioned deep into the lot. This was Clarence Darrow’s temporary home when he was summoned to the city in 1925 to defend Ossian Sweet, a black doctor who had taken up arms against white rioters who didn’t want him to move into their neighborhood. The owner was a regional bank that had foreclosed on the house after the elderly woman who lived there fell behind on her mortgage.

We walked up the driveway past a parked car to the front door, where we stopped and admired the intricate tile work on the porch. The car, Spencer explained, had been placed there by a neighbor—a scarecrow against thieves, squatters, and scrappers.

“That’s one thing about this neighborhood,” he said. “We really look out for each other.”

“We do have private security, but they’re not 24 hours,” Barbara said as we walked back to the street. “It was really bad for a while because when the bubble first burst, there were people coming in here because the price of metals has skyrocketed.”

“Copper was like the new gold,” Spencer interjected. “All these people had copper gutters. And [thieves] would come and start ripping copper off people’s houses.”

“They were pulling off copper gutters in broad daylight,” said Barbara.

“While people were in their homes,” Spencer said. “You’d hear a noise and say, ‘What is that?’ and walk outside and somebody’s pulling your gutter off. By the time the cops got there, what could they do? They’d be long gone. We’d have neighbors follow and catch the guys.”

Established in 1915, Palmer Woods was envisioned as a primeval retreat from a teeming, industrial metropolis. The developer, Charles Burton, advertised it as “a safeguard from the encroachments of commercialism,” a paradise nestled in the city’s hinterlands.

Its homes were built after the fashion of European aristocrats—châteaus with large libraries and secret passages; cottages of ashlar masonry, brick, and stucco; servants’ quarters with separate stairwells. The lords of Palmer Woods vacationed in Europe, golfed at the Detroit Golf Club, and, excepting the live-in help, excluded blacks: “Said lots shall not be sold or leased to or occupied by any person or persons other than of the Caucasian race,” read the Palmer Woods housing covenant, “but this shall not be interpreted to exclude occupancy by persons other than of the Caucasian race when such occupancy is incidental to their employment on the premises.”

When restrictive covenants were ruled unconstitutional in 1948, black families began moving in, infusing the customs of black America’s ancien régime into the ethos of old Detroit money. They pledged their children to Jack and Jill of America, joined the neighborhood association, and held potlucks and barbecues to raise money for local charities and black artists. Many had or went on to illustrious careers: Lamont Dozier was part of the popular Motown songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland. Keith Ellison became the first Muslim congressman.

One afternoon, I visited Lorna Thomas in her English Tudor, a short walk from Seven Mile Road. Thomas’s great-great-great-uncle was the first African American in the Michigan state legislature. She proudly showed me the April 2, 1959, issue of Jet, with her on the cover clutching a test tube. “Lorna Lacen,” the caption read, using her maiden name, “Detroiter, 16, has A’s in prep subjects, takes special college courses.”

Now a dermatologist, Thomas went to Wellesley with Cokie Roberts and Nora Ephron. We sat at her kitchen bar for a spread of cranberry juice, coffee, and tea cakes. Then we took a 45-minute tour of her home. Her guest bathroom had a waterfall literally tumbling over the mirror, and an original Richard Yarde watercolor of Paul Robeson as Emperor Jones. “I did an interview for Crain’sDetroit Business about five years ago,” she told me. “The reporter came in and I said, ‘I want you to print something and I want you to print it just the way I say it: I live here because I chose to be in Detroit. I am not stuck. I could be anywhere I want.’”

Upper-middle-class survivalists such as Thomas consider residency in Palmer Woods a political act. As Elliott Hall, another resident I spoke with, put it, “Every advantage I received in my life came out of the city of Detroit.” Hall’s family had originally come up from Alabama and Arkansas to live in Black Bottom, the childhood home of Joe Louis and storied epicenter of black Detroit, lost to urban renewal in the 1950s and ’60s. His family migrated westward with the years, following the retreat of white Detroiters. Now Hall stays with his son on Palmer Woods’ Lucerne Drive. “I got my grade-school and law-school education in Detroit. I sat on every nonprofit board in the city. And there are a number of other folks who feel the same way. And they’re willing to deal with crime and everything that goes along with it. It’s not like we’re saying, ‘We’ve had enough, we’re out of here.’ … We always have to believe things are going to turn around in a city that we love so much.”

This article available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/the-other-detroit/8403/
On Location Vacations

George Clooney, who has been filming in Cincinnati for the last several weeks, will continue filming Ides of March in and around Detroit through the beginning of April. Clooney, who is directing the movie, also stars in the film, along with Ryan Gosling, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright and Max Minghella.

Thanks to an insider working on the movie, we have the complete filming schedule, including locations around Detroit and Ann Arbor. Here’s a look at the schedule ( FYI: there are no shooting times are available at this point):

Monday, March 7:

Colony Club (Clooney, Gosling, Hoffman, Tomei, & others)

Cliffs Bells (Hoffman & Tomei)

Tuesday, March 8:

Cliffs Bells

Wednesday, March 9:
Cliffs Bells

Thursday, March 10:

600 Randolph (Courthouse) (Giamatti)

1253 Woodward

Friday, March 11:

1253 Woodward

Monday, March 14:

Miller Theater (Arthur Miller Theater, University of Michigan) (Gosling, Clooney, Hoffman, Wood)

Tuesday, March 15:

Power Center (University of Michigan) (Gosling, Clooney, Hoffman, Wood)

Wednesday, March 16:

Power Center (University of Michigan)

Thursday, March 17:

League Ballroom (UM) (Clooney, Gosling & others)

League Kalamazoo

Friday, March 18:

635 W 14 Mile (Gosling & Stearn)

Monday, March 21:

Christ Church

Tuesday, March 22:

393 Martell (Hoffman)

271 Lone Pine Rd (looks like both of these locations are in Bloomfield Hills)

Wednesday, March 23:

Roberts Hotel (Gosling & Wood)

Thursday, March 24:

Roberts Hotel

Friday, March 25:

Roberts Hotel (also filming at Roberts on Saturday, but this may be referring to overnight Friday)

Monday, March 28:

Roberts Hotel

Tuesday, March 29:

Roberts Hotel

Wednesday, March 30:

1263 Griswold

Thursday, March 31:

1263 Griswold

Friday, April 1:

1263 Griswold

Monday, April 4:

They are likely continuing at 1263 Griswold, which is filling in as Morris (Clooney’s character) Campaign Headquarters, but this is TBD.

Tuesday, April 5:

They are likely continuing at 1263 Griswold, which is filling in as Morris (Clooney’s character) Campaign Headquarters, but this is TBD.

Wednesday, April 6:

Gem Theater (Gosling & Clooney)

Thursday, April 7:

660 Woodward

Marilyn’s Place

Grace & Wild Studio (may be here on Friday too, still TBD)
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