metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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NEWS & VIEWS
Feedback
Readers respond to the web version of our story about Detroit’s Hygrade Deli, which is now a Black-owned business. (See the print version on the “Bites” page in this issue.)
So what??? I wish the new owners of this iconic Deli the absolute best and feel they will take up the mantle and be successful for decades to come. Congratulations!!! — Mary Helen Morneau
Not sure why they feel the need to tell us this. —Sue Foreman, Facebook 1) It’s Black History Month. 2) It’s nice to see Black restaurant ownership increasing, especially with historic brand. 3) How does it hurt you to know it’s Black-owned? —Lynn Haliburton, Facebook They often write about change in ownership of long-standing institituions. —David John Bourgeois Critical Sue Theory. —Chris McKenna
I don’t care who owns it as long as it continues to be great as it always has been they will get my business. —Dustin Malvitz, Facebook
Karen here DOESN’T SEE COLOR. Jeff Gruber. e ruber, acebook ound o
letters metrotimes.com
Vol. 42 | No. 17 | Feb. 16-22, 2022
News & Views Feedback ............................... 4 News ...................................... 6 Informed Dissent ................ 10 The Incision......................... 12 Feature Babyface Ray: An evening with the new face of Detroit rap ........................... 14 What’s Going On Weekly calendar................... 20 Music Detroit’s Monement announces initial lineup ...... 21
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metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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NEWS & VIEWS What the truck?
Ambassador Bridge reopens after blockade caused tens of millions of dollars in lost wages for Michigan autoworkers By Steve Neavling
The reopening of the Ambas-
sador Bridge following seven days of protests “is a win for Michigan’s working families,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared Monday. The bridge reopened late Sunday after police broke up the blockade that had disrupted already depleted supply chains and forced some automakers to cut shifts and shut down plants. Michigan auto workers lost an estimated $51 million in wages as a result of the protests over COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other quarantine requirements, according to the Anderson Economic Group. About 10,000 commercial vehicles hauling an estimated $325 million use the bridge daily, according to the Michigan Department of Treasury. About $50 million is from auto parts. “This is a win for Michigan’s working families who are just trying to do their jobs and for businesses who can get back to shipping their products and produce,” Whitmer said in a statement. “It’s time to get tra c and trade moving across North America’s busiest land border crossing again. I will always stand with every hardworking Michigander and do whatever it takes to ensure that our businesses can keep humming along.” Last week, Whitmer called on Canadian authorities to reopen the bridge. “My message is simple: reopen tra c on the bridge,” Whitmer said. “The blockade is having a significant impact on Michigan’s working families who are just trying to do their jobs. Our communities and automative, manufacturing, and agricultural businesses are feeling the effects. It’s hitting paychecks and production lines. That is unacceptable.” On Saturday, Canadian police began enforcing a court order to restore tra c to the bridge. Multiple arrests were made, but most protesters left after police began closing in on the blockade. On Monday, Matt Moroun, chairman of the bridge company, called on U.S. and Canadian authorities to “come up with an actionable plan that will protect and secure all border crossings in the Canada/U.S. corridor and ensure
Anti-vax protesters closed Ambassador Bridge over the weekend.
General Motor Co.’s Lansing Delta Township plant canceled the first and second shifts. Two Ford Motor Company plants in Canada shut down, and production was reduced at another. that this kind of disruption to critical infrastructure will never happen again.” “Meanwhile, we at the Detroit International Bridge Company look forward to getting back to work and ensuring the goods we all rely on are transported safely between our two nations, supporting our shared economies, for years to come,” Moroun said. During the protest, the bridge company provided meals and coffee to truck drivers “to keep them going during the unpredictable wait time,” company spokeswoman Esther Jentzen said in a statement Sunday.
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Whitmer agreed about the importance of avoiding a similar blockade bus stopped short of proposing a solution. “It’s important to ensure that this does not happen again,” Whitmer said. “I will work to protect the economic freedom and well-being of families and businesses in Michigan. We’ve made incredible progress to grow Michigan’s economy together, adding 220,000 jobs year over year. I know we can keep this momentum going, create good-paying jobs, and lower costs to help families and businesses thrive.” News about a potential blockade
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during the Super Bowl in Los Angeles on Sunday came and went without any disruptions. But following the game, the Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly and used force against unruly football fans who took to the streets in celebration. U.S. businesses, workers suffer The blockades disrupted supply chains, especially for the auto industry, which has cut shifts and even shut down plants. The shutdown of the Ambassador Bridge is especially concerning because it’s where more than one quarter of all trade between the U.S. and Canada occurs. Thousands of trucks use the bridge every day, and many are hauling automative parts and finished vehicles. Protesters also disrupted tra c at the Blue Water Bridge, which connects Sarnia to Port Huron, causing delays of more than four hours. General Motor Co.’s Lansing Delta Township plant canceled the first and second shifts. Two Ford Motor Company plants in Canada shut down, and
production was reduced at another. And Stellantis temporarily halted production at the Chrysler Pacifica minivan plant in Windsor. “These protests are not only impacting tra c — they are also impacting our auto industry, livelihoods of workers whose shifts are being shortened or cut, and the health and safety of my residents in SW Detroit who live close to the Ambassador Bridge,” state Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit, tweeted Thursday. Some Michigan authorities questioned why Canadian o cials have allowed the protests to carry on for so long, with so much at stake. “If the Ambassador Bridge was an Enbridge pipeline and the anti-vax truckers were water conservationists, (Canadian Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau would have had everyone arrested days ago and the Republicans would be cheering him on for doing so,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel tweeted Wednesday. “I have seen motorists stuck in tra c on the bridge ticketed and arrested for leaving their vehicles because they needed to use the bathroom. How on earth are anti-vaxxers exempt from laws all others must obey?” The hands-off approach to the disruptive protests are in stark contrast to how cities across the U.S. handled Black Lives Matter rallies. In Detroit, peaceful protesters in the summer of 2021 were tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets, thrown to the ground, and in some cases, punched and kicked, leading to police brutality lawsuits. “How is it that when BLM folks protested in cities last year, cops were ready lickety-split with riot gear but when a rightwing protest shuts down a major national point of entry, there’s nothing that can be done?” former journalist Gary Ridley tweeted. By contrast, some Michigan conservatives Michigan conservatives have amplified the message of the Canadian protesters on social media. Canada has some of the most stringent pandemic restrictions in the developed world, with some provincial governments imposing curfews, shuttering restaurants, bars and gyms, and banning indoor gatherings. Canada also imposed vaccination mandates for federal public workers and employees in the airline and railway industries. “The only acceptable resolution is ending all COVID mandates on both sides of the bridge,” John James, a Republican candidate for Congress, tweeted. Canadian officials threaten truck protesters with forced removal On Friday, Windsor Mayor Drew
Dilkens sought a court order to authorize him to forcibly remove protesters from the Ambassador Bridge. “The individuals on site are trespassing on municipal property and, if need be, will be removed to allow for the safe and e cient movement of goods across the border,” Dilkens said at a news conference. Also on Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency and pledged to fine and jail protesters who don’t leave the Ambassador Bridge, where a blockade has disrupted international tra c for five days and forced some Michigan automakers to shut down shifts. For those who defy the order, “there will be consequences, and they will be severe,” Ford said. “Your right to make a political statement does not outweigh the right of thousands of workers to make a living,” he said, adding, “I will convene cabinet to use legal authorities to urgently enact orders that will make crystal clear it is illegal and punishable to block and impede the movement of goods, people and services along critical infrastructure. This will include protecting international border crossings, 400-series highways, airports, ports, bridges and railways.” Ford also said protesters who defy the orders will lose their personal or commercial drivers licenses. “Make no mistake: this is a pivotal moment for our nation,” Ford said. “The eyes of the world are upon us right now, and what they’re seeing is not who we are. We must collectively draw a line. We must stand for the values that define us.” Despite what’s at stake for workers, many Michigan Republicans are showed support for the protesters. Gubernatorial candidates Kevin Rinke and Garrett Soldano have released videos in support of the blockade, and Tudor Dixon and Mike Brown have tweeted in favor of the shutdown. Former Police Chief James Craig, who is also running for governor as a Republican, said in statement Friday, “I stand with the truckers.” The Republican Governors Association was less sympathetic and managed to blame Whitmer. “Michigan families and businesses of all sizes are feeling the pinch of Gretchen Whitmer’s inaction as billions of dollars in trade between Michigan and Ontario have been held up in protest of Joe Biden’s and Justin Trudeau’s vaccine mandates,” RGA Spokesman Chris Gustafson said. “Whitmer must work with Biden and repair her relationship with Trudeau, to ease the burden on Michigan businesses, and put an end to the shutdowns that have been brought on by out of touch federal mandates.”
metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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NEWS & VIEWS Oh, the hypocrisy
James Craig, who brutalized BLM protesters as Detroit’s Police Chief, says he supports Canadian truckers By Lee DeVito
James Craig, the former chief
of the Detroit Police Department who is currently running as a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan, said he supports the Canadian anti-vaccination protesters who have paralyzed travel across the border with their blockade of trucks. “I stand with the truckers,” Craig said in a statement issued Friday. “I support all working people who are standing up for personal freedom.” It seems that if Craig is a defender of the right to protest, he is selective in his support, however. In 2020, DPD responded with a crackdown when Black Lives Matter protesters, led by local group Detroit Will Breathe, took to the streets of Detroit as part of the wave of protests across the nation against police brutality, following the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George of Floyd. Craig tried to get ahead of the situation. In a press conference, he said he supported the Minneapolis Police Department firing the four o cers involved in Floyd’s death, and even went as far as calling it a “murder.” He also issued a memo to his department reiterating its use-of-force policy, which prohibits neck restraints, and also emphasized the importance of deescalation in altercations. Under Craig’s leadership, DPD responded by issuing a curfew. When the protesters defied the curfew, DPD responded by firing tear gas and rubber bullets at them. In another incident, when BLM protesters blocked the streetcar on Woodward Avenue, DPD again responded with force. Detroit’s little QLine streetcar hardly compares to the $300 million of goods transported across the Ambassador Bridge every day. The Canadian blockade caused auto plants to shut down, and holding up fellow truckers who get paid by the delivery. The actions of a few infringed on the lives of many on both sides of the border. So much for “personal freedom.” The police violence in Detroit got so bad that reporters routinely got caught in the crosshairs, and the city had to
Retired DPD James Craig.
start issuing large, colorful badges to try to help identify members of the press. And last year, five legal observers filed a lawsuit against Craig, Mayor Mike Duggan, and the City of Detroit, alleging that their civil rights were violated by DPD, which left them physically and emotionally scarred by the show of force. Another man who was hurt by DPD during the 2020 protests filed a lawsuit alleging that the Detroit Police Department “has a demonstrable pattern and unwritten policy in place to ignore and thereby encourage unlawful and unconstitutional actions of its o cers.” It should be noted that unlike the BLM protests in other cities, Detroit’s did not see arson or looting. The violence was nearly entirely asymmetrical, carried out mostly by Craig’s police department. DPD and the protesters eventually settled into a sort of truce, with DPD escorting the protesters’ marches
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through the city. But Craig, ever a political striver, couldn’t resist the urge to make numerous appearances on Fox News, where he demonized the protesters as “Marxists” who were “financed” by “outsiders” who were trying to “undermine our government.” “It’s coordinated. It’s planned, and not to mention it’s financed,” Craig said during an episode of Fox & Friends in September 2020. “They are carrying out a mission, and it certainly is not about Breonna Taylor; it wasn’t about George Floyd.” What’s funny is that is exactly what happened with the Canadian protest. The Canadian blockade was ostensibly about a small minority who refuse the country’s vaccination mandate for international truckers (about 90% of the country’s truckers are vaccinated). But the protest is funded by donors on crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe and GiveSendGo, and when Canada tried to block GiveSendGo from dispersing
the donations, the U.S.-based company responded by tweeting “Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo.” Even former President Donald Trump has offered support to the Canadian protesters, and Trump flags have been spotted among the Canadian protesters, along with Nazi symbols. Speaking of Nazis, in 2019, Craig’s DPD gently escorted a group of NeoNazis during Detroit’s Motor City Pride festival — and looked the other way when Neo-Nazi leader Burt Colucci shoved a woman to the ground. Once regarded as a frontrunner, Craig’s campaign for governor hit a major setback right out the gate, when protesters crashed his campaign announcement event. Apparently, Trump’s team was so embarrassed that it distanced itself from Craig. It seems like Craig will say anything to win rightwing support, even if it means hypocrisy over support for protesters.
NEWS & VIEWS The Best of the Rest
Oakland County to end mask mandate for schools, yet still recommends them By Lee DeVito
Oakland County will lift
its requirement for mask-wearing in schools and daycares on Feb. 28, the county’s health department said last week — despite the fact that COVID-19 transmission remains “high.” According to a press release, the Oakland County Health Division said it “weighed several factors to determine the appropriate time to end the mask requirement in schools, including a sharp decline in new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations and increasing vaccination rates in Oakland County.” “As we see our critical measures of vaccinations, hospital admissions, and cases moving in a direction that tell us the COVID-19 impact on our community is greatly improving, the time is right to remove the mask order for daycares and educational institutions,” Health Division Medical Director Dr. Russell Faust said. “We must remain vigilant, however, while we remain in a pandemic. It is vital that we as individuals maintain the measures that are critical to limiting the spread of the virus while allowing businesses and schools to stay open, and our hospitals to operate safely.” The mask mandate will end when the Oakland County Health Division rescinds emergency order 2021-1. The health department is still recommending people wear masks in schools, however — it’s just not mandating it. “The Health Division still strongly recommends wearing a mask while in public indoor settings, including educational institutions,” the press release said. The press release also noted that both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services continue to recommend universal indoor masking by all students, staff, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status. According to the CDC, COVID-19 transmission remains “high” in Oakland County, as it does in nearly all of
County health departments are shifting to individual responsibility when it comes to masking.
“We are now at a place in the pandemic where an emergency health order should be replaced by individual action to protect ourselves, especially masking in public and getting vaccinated.” the U.S. The Health Division cited encouraging metrics in making its decision, including the county’s test positivity dropping nearly 50 percent, the sevenday case average for Feb. 8 declining 83 percent from its peak in early January, hospital admissions in Oakland County for adults dropping 72 percent since the peak on Jan. 10, and hospital admissions declining 67 percent for children since the peak on Jan. 8. About 75.8% of Oakland County residents age 5 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccines, the department said, while 79.1% of residents age 12 and older have received at least one dose, and 92.9% of residents age 65 and older have received at least one dose. “We are now at a place in the pandemic where an emergency health order should be replaced by individual action to protect ourselves, especially masking in public and getting vaccinated,” Oakland County’s Director of Health and Human Services LeighAnne Stafford said. The decision comes as unrest over COVID-19 safety measures among a vocal minority continues to grow. A weeks-long street protest over COVID-19 measures in Canada has turned
into a blockade of border crossings like Detroit’s Ambassador Bridge, disrupting the economies of both Ontario and Michigan. Last year, school board meetings became the battleground of angry parents, who hurled insults and hyperbolically compared COVID-19 health measures to Nazi Germany. Last week, Ingham County announced it will rescind its mask mandate for schools next week. Washtenaw County o cials said they would likely follow suit, while Wayne County has said it is still waiting to decide. Detroit has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the metro area.
Michigan SOS asks for investigation into third party access to voting tech
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is requesting an investigation into allegations that an unauthorized third party was given access to voting technology in Roscommon County. Benson asked the Michigan State Police and Attorney General’s O ce to review reports that her o ce received this week about “at least one unnamed third party” gaining access to vote tabulator components and technology. “Protecting the integrity and security
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of our elections, especially from those who use lies and misinformation to deceive Michigan voters, is a critical component of defending democracy in this moment,” Benson said in a statement. “Michigan law is clear about the security threats that emerge when anyone gains unauthorized access to our election machines or technology, and I will have no tolerance for those who seek to illegally tamper with our voting equipment.” The tabulation machines and data drivers were used in Roscommon County and Richfield Township. The equipment may now have to be replaced at taxpayer expense. Benson said it’s a felony to “obtain undue possession” of a voting machine and to grant access to unauthorized parties. Benson also sent a letter to all of the state’s municipalities, advising them on how to proceed if they become aware of an attempt by a third party to obtain access to voting technology. Following the 2020 election, Rudolph Giuliani and other legal advisers to Trump urged an Antrim County prosecutor to hand over the county’s voting machines to the president’s campaign, The Washington Post reported last week. In December 2020, a third party accessed the Dominion vote tabulators in Antrim County and used the data to falsely report election fraud. Although the report was widely debunked, it continues to be the source of baseless conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud spread by former President Donald Trump and his supporters. Since then, Republican lawmakers in Michigan have introduced dozens of bills to curtail voting access. —Steve Neavling
metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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NEWS & VIEWS Informed Dissent
First, do harm y e rey illman
I take one week away from the
internet, and suddenly Russia is on the verge of invading Ukraine, Donald Trump has hauled top-secret materials to Mar-a-Lago with him, Canadian truck drivers are mad about vaccines, and New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., have decided the pandemic is over (at least until the next variant starts overfilling emergency rooms). But let’s talk instead about bipartisanship, that elusive Beltway media fetish. Last week, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fl., introduced the Preventing Illicit Paraphernalia for Exchange Systems (PIPES) Act, which will “prohibit federal funding from being used to purchase illegal drug paraphernalia, such as needles or crack pipes.” Sounds reasonable, right? Well, no, not at all, actually. And people will die so they can score political points. But we’ll circle back to that. The catalyst for this misadventure in legislating was several days of Fox News outrage orgy over a story in the rightwing ashington ree eacon, which reported that the Biden administration would “provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and ‘any illicit substance.’” Rubio, always eager to hop aboard a moral panic, quickly sponsored the Cutting off Rampant Access to Crack Kits (CRACK) Act — get it? — before teaming up with Manchin, whose state has been an epicenter of the opioid crisis. The White House says the furor was based on shoddy reporting — which is true, in that the ree eacon made unsupported assumptions, which then gave the Biden administration room to say that of course it never planned to buy crack pipes. The story concerned a $30 million harm reduction grant program included in the American Rescue Plan Act, whose applicants can propose purchasing equipment and supplies such as safe sex kits, substance tests kits, infectious diseases testing kits, overdose reversal medication, syringes, and “safe smoking kits/supplies.” The guidelines specify that all proposals must be evidence-based and
Helping drug users stay alive isn’t the same as supporting their addiction. Hooray, bipartisanship!
The White House, doing what Democrats always do in the face of cynical morality plays, folded like a cheap suit. “programs that use federal funding must adhere to federal, state, and local laws, regulations, and other requirements” — which, curiously, didn’t find its way into the ree eacon story. What did, however, was the fact that some safe smoking kits include glass stems along with things like rubber mouthpieces and disinfectant wipes. While the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration hadn’t specified what could go into the kits, and the Free Beacon never asked, “crack pipes” became the outrage du jour. The White House — doing what Democrats always do in the face of cynical morality plays — folded like a cheap suit, quickly announcing that “no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits.” The Drug Policy Alliance condemned the administration’s quasi-reversal. “Backtracking on providing critical evidence-based resources that could greatly improve the health of people who consume drugs through smoking is a huge missed opportunity that will disproportionately be felt in Black and Indigenous communities, especially as these communities have experienced some of the sharpest increases in over-
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dose deaths involving fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine,” executive director Kassandra Frederique said in a statement. “Health policy must be driven by evidence, not by clickbait. We are in the midst of a serious public health crisis that claimed over 100,000 lives in the first year of the pandemic — with Black and Indigenous people being disproportionately hard hit.” In 2019, 68,710 people died of drug overdoses in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, 101,260 did. The acute problem is the proliferation of fentanyl, combined with the pandemic-related closures of treatment centers and other services. (Stimulants, including cocaine and meth, are making comebacks, too.) But underlying it is the fact that for a half-century, we’ve treated substance abuse as a moral failing that deserves punishment, an attitude that not only justified the racist drug war but led to a dangerously inadequate treatment system. The CRACK and PIPES bills — and the White House’s chickenshit response — play into that mentality to get Fox News kudos under the guise of “common sense.” That kind of sense might be common, but that doesn’t
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make it right. You don’t have to like hard drugs to know that a) people use them, and b) helping them not die isn’t the same as supporting their addiction. Smoking is safer than injection. It carries less risk of HIV and hepatitis C transmission, and, importantly, less risk of overdose. Safer smoking kits can help users transition from injection to inhalation and help keep existing smokers from harming themselves unnecessarily: Alcohol wipes let them clean their hands and pipes. Lip balm prevents cracking, which reduces the risk of infectious disease. Personal glass stems prevent them from needing to share pipes, which also contains outbreaks. What they don’t do: Give your 15-year-old daughter a gram of heroin and tell her to have a good time. From a public policy perspective, safer smoking kits — like needle-exchange programs — aren’t a close call. We know they work. We know they save lives. We know they don’t lead to additional substance abusers. And we know that, even after the White House backed down, Manchin and Rubio pressed forward with their charade, arguing, “While this is a heartbreaking issue that must be fully addressed by the federal government, using taxpayer funds to buy drug paraphernalia is not the solution.” Their preferred solution? Crickets. If you’d like to know why the drug war is a colossal, hopeless failure, look no further. et more at billman.substack.com.
metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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NEWS & VIEWS The Incision
To mask or not to mask: that is not the question By Abdul El-Sayed
As COVID cases continue to tumble, politicians of all stripes — even governors in liberal New Jersey, Delaware, and New York — are racing to declare that the pandemic is over. OK, to be fair, they’re not saying those exact words. But, in permanently ending long-term COVID precautions, they’re saying it without saying it. In New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and many more states, governors have recently announced the end of mask mandates, vaccine requirements for indoor dining, and other safety precautions. While there’s a lot of hope that this may, in fact, be the end of the pandemic, full reversals may be premature. Because, remember: We already did this before. Think back to the halcyon days of last April. Hot Vax Summer? Remember when the CDC director told us that a vaccine was the ticket to a mask-free life? Delta and omicron have since set pandemic-era records for daily cases and deaths. As I’ve written extensively in these pages, pandemics don’t end with some mass declaration or treaty we sign with the virus. Rather, we’ll slowly get back to the things we once enjoyed that were rendered too risky by the virus — indoor dining, concerts, sporting events will all become commonplace. Allowing us, only then with the benefit of hindsight, to declare a moment when the pandemic ended. Before I go further, I want to explain a peculiar paradox of this moment. Even though COVID deaths are falling precipitously, COVID mortality keeps rising. It’s led to a horrifying split screen that has triggered a particular genre of responses to those who haven’t thought deeply about the dynamics of this disease. “How can anyone who’s not a sociopath want to drop COVID restrictions while COVID deaths are rising?!” Well, deaths are a lagging indicator. That’s because people don’t get infected with omicron and then immediately drop
Liberal governors are ditching mask mandates — but you can’t predict the future.
Rather than fully repealing mask mandates, politicians should establish a clear set of threshold metrics around hospitalization rates below which COVID precautions will be lifted. dead. It takes two to five days for the first symptoms to even manifest — let alone to cause death. People who are now dying of COVID are extremely unlikely to have been infected recently. Rather, they likely were infected with COVID two to four weeks ago, at the height of the surge. Dropping COVID precautions now will have zero impact on the death rate that day. While it sounds rash to drop precautions as deaths increase, the two are functionally unrelated. Indeed, the death rate will fall, and that’s because the case rate has been falling now for weeks. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. Here’s where I’ll give politicians credit right now: We must evolve with the virus. As omicron cases tumble, the mass contagion that rendered the virus so dangerous to society is subsiding. What’s left is a massive barrier of acquired immunity and a less severe variant that has a high likelihood of suffocating most of the variants that come after it. Between that immunity barrier and our vaccines,
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the risks associated with COVID have dropped substantially. It makes sense that we adjust the facts on the ground. COVID precautions have a cost — to individuals and to society. We tolerate, even promote, the precautions only when the benefits outweigh that cost. As cases fall, the benefits fall with them. ltimately, the cost-benefit calculation on the society-wide protections we required during the height of the omicron surge is changing by the day. But here’s what they’re missing — and frankly have been missing throughout the pandemic. Much of what has made the experience of the pandemic so chaotic is the fact that the message about what we, as a society, are doing to protect ourselves has been so haphazard and unclear. No more masks! Wait, we’re wearing them again? Wait no, that’s only if you’re unvaccinated. Ope, sorry, we’re all wearing them… but only in some places? We’re quarantining for 10 days. Nope, five days. Wait, is that just if you’re
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vaccinated?… But you have to wear a mask? Vaccines are required! But wait, how many vaccines? Two, right?... You really should get three. But two is OK? It’s the turbulence that leaves us so insecure. Part of this is inevitable, we’re messaging around a changing virus into the cacophony of the internet. But part of this is avoidable — and that’s the part that politicians are now failing to avoid. By repealing mask mandates in schools and other public places without offering themselves any clear indications about the circumstances in which masks may be required again, they’re failing to learn the lesson of this pandemic: You can’t predict the future, so at least telegraph what you might do if circumstances change. Rather than fully repealing mask mandates, politicians should establish a clear set of threshold metrics around hospitalization rates below which COVID precautions will be lifted. If the frustration of COVID is that we can’t predict the future, at least give the public a sense of what might happen as the future comes into view. While I think it is time to start drawing down on COVID precautions, it’s critical that we leave room to adjust if the pandemic has other plans for us. And that means giving the public a clear set of thresholds to hang their hat (or mask!) on. Originally published Feb. 10 in The Incision. Get more at abdulelsayed. substack.com.
metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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FEATURE
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It’s 4 p.m. on a recent day in January, and
downtown Detroit’s Saint Andrew’s Hall is bustling with all the moving parts needed for the evening’s show, a one-off record release performance featuring rising Detroit rapper Babyface Ray. The security team, dressed in all black from head to toe like the New Orleans Saints, are huddled up, going over game plans for security checks, crowd control, and safety precautions. The sounds of clinks and clanks from the bartenders stocking beverages echo louder than usual in the mostly empty hall. Sound and lighting engineers are tightening brackets, plugs, and testing equipment. On the stage, a custombuilt set resembles a Detroit-style liquor store, complete with gra ti and a glowing neon sign that reads “LOTTERY.” Baroline Diaz, who manages Ray, is in the middle of it all, dressed in sweatpants and a crop-top and multitasking, passing out wristbands, telling opening acts their stage times, texting, calling, and delegating. Everything is in place — except the headliner, who’s running late for his 4:30 p.m. sound check. “Babyface Ray is four minutes away,” she yells to the room in her thick Dominican accent. Diaz is a music industry vet who’s helped navigate the careers of big-name national acts like EST Gee, DaBaby, Moneybagg Yo, and
Polo G. She’s also the vice president for Interscope records, but moonlights as the manager of Babyface Ray. “I’m really not supposed to be doing this, but Interscope knows,” she says through a laugh. She says she was drawn to Ray a year ago after hearing Moneybagg Yo and EST Gee constantly playing his music. Though she was unable to sign him to a record deal due to his current deal with Empire Records, after coming to Detroit to meet him she knew she still wanted to work with him. “When I first met him, he had 52 monthly listeners on Spotify,” she says. “Now we hit 3 million. His socials grew by 50 percent. Everything was there, but there wasn’t no structure.” Since then, Ray has performed at huge music festivals like Rolling Loud, Day N Vegas, and Lyrical Lemonade; toured with collaborator Jack Harlow; and has charted in the top 10 on Apple Music. Although Diaz has aspirations of Grammy awards and Coachella stages for Ray, she also says she wants him to value the journey and appreciate the moment. “Tonight is a big night for us headlining his city,” she says enthusiastically. “First day we sold 561 tickets. There are some cities they don’t support their artists. Tonight is going to be a powerful night. I told him he’s going to need to take
By Kahn Santori Davison metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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a moment and take it all in because this is just the beginning of something that’s going to become huge.” Ray’s latest record, FACE, o cially dropped the day after the show, on Friday, Jan. 28, and in the weeks since has already earned heaps of critical praise. Rolling Stone said Ray “already made one of the year’s best rap albums.” Complex declared, “Babyface Ray’s moment is now.” Stereogum asked, “Can Detroit cult hero Babyface Ray become a national star?”
At 5 p.m., three hours before showtime, Babyface Ray nonchalantly walks through the double doors of Saint Andrew’s Hall as if he’s a regular fan there to see a hip-hop show, dressed in paintsplattered jeans, a yellow Monclear puffer coat, and a TooFarGone chord hat. Diaz eyes him and yells, “I’m going to start calling you ‘Babyface Late!’” Ray sheds the coat, does the sound check, then runs through an abbreviated version of his set. Then he grabs a bottle of water, takes the front stairway to the balcony, and sits down. Ray admits he’s always been a bit socially awkward and stando sh, both in interviews and generally around people he doesn’t know. But as his popularity has soared, he’s adapted. “It started off as that because I never knew everyone’s intentions,” he tells Metro Times. “But now I’m just playing the game how it goes. It is what it is.” Born Marcellus Register, the 31-yearold’s musical ascension has been a slow burn for 10 straight years, but his life’s experiences have shaped his lyrics and crafted his artistry. He’s the son of a pastor with four brothers, and his parents are still happily married. The Register family lived for a brief period of time on the west side of Detroit, but mainly resided on the east side. Though Ray frequented church growing up, his father also encouraged him and his brothers to follow their own paths in life. “Pops was super spiritual,” Ray says.“Something happened to him where he became in touch with God.”. Ray dove into hip-hop in 8th grade and continued rapping through high school under the names Chaos the Kid and Richy Rich Ray, inspired by local hip-hop acts Rock Bottom, Stretch Money, and Blade Icewood. Soon, Ray found a fitting name that he would stick with. “It came from people just saying I’m not aging,” he says of his rap moniker. “My grandma used to always call me Baby Ray. I said it in a song and it kind of stuck.” Growing up, Ray’s parents shielded him from any of the hardships they faced, but all that changed when Ray’s father lost his job, his oldest brother was imprisoned, and his mother was
“When I started taking pills I got more relaxed and I found my true self, the nonchalant face. That's where the ’wavy‘ comes from.“
Babyface Ray performing in the balcony at Saint Andrew’s Hall.
diagnosed with breast cancer. “Now that I’m looking back at it, I can see it didn’t affect me, but it sculpted and molded who I am now,” he says. “I’m the youngest of four brothers, but by the time I got to high school I was the only one in the house. So I was kind of, like, in a world of my own.” He adds, “Kind of how I became stando sh.” The incarceration of his brother also led to a trigger reaction that pulled Ray into street life. “When my brother got locked up, my cousin came and grabbed me and pulled me under his wing,” he says. “That’s when I got introduced to the streets.” While in high school he met Phillip Glen-Earl Peaks, aka Detroit rapper Peezy, through a friend of a friend, and they (along with Dame, Lou, Lil P, DNice, and Snoop) formed the rap group Team Eastside in the mid-2000s. The crew took a guttural, knock-ya-teethout approach to hip-hop, with songs like “Fuck Yall Niggas” and “Work” tailor-made for Detroit clubs. “We started a whole culture of rap,” Ray says. “We initiated a lot. A lot of key players in Team Eastside are still func-
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KAHN SANTORI DAVISON
tioning and doing their thing right now. We put a lot of energy into the city.” Songs like “Eastside Nigga Fucking Westside Bitches” and “Eastside Where the Real Money At” were sparked in strip clubs, and evetually found massive street followings. While Team Eastside didn’t make many videos back then, Ray says he enjoyed the anonymity. “I was more known for my voice from those songs because we never shot a video,” he says. “I would be in a club, they would be playing my song going crazy, [and] I would be standing right there and no one would even know.” By 2013, the members of Team Eastside were pursuing their own individual musical interests. Ray knew he had the ability to stand on his own as an artist, but he was still compromising his musical aspirations with his forays into street life. “You gotta think, I was hanging with my cousin, who was a high roller, so they had money and the shit that rappers were rapping about. He kind of pulled me away from rap,” Ray says, before pivoting to a basketball analogy. “For a long time I was procrastinating, just shooting towards the wrong basket by trying to be in the streets instead of
chasing my dream.” Things intensified when Ray was shot in the foot while intervening in an violent altercation involving his brother. “They tried to walk him in the house and he didn’t let them come in,” he says. “Then they were struggling with him trying to get him in the car. I went out trying to diffuse the situation.” Ray suffered another devastating blow when his son was stillborn. “Everything was happening right around the same time,” he says. “Right when I was in between the music and the streets, when I was trying to figure myself out, I lost my son. That fucked with me for a long time. I was in a dark, dark place. That’s when my religion became shaky a little bit, because I was questioning God, like, ‘How can that happen to someone so genuine and pure?’” Ray says he self-medicated with pills and lean until he was able to regain his focus toward his life and music. “It wasn’t until somebody else in the streets put the battery in my back and told me I had a gift,” he says. “That’s when I started taking risks and shooting jumpers. I was scared of what people would think of the decisions I would make. And then when I started being creative and doing the shit that I thought in my head, everything fell into place.” Ray regained his swagger, and released the Young Wavy mixtape in 2014 and the Mia Season album in 2015. Both projects encompassed that Team Eastside aggressiveness mixed with a more melodic sound that highlighted Ray’s new relaxed flow. “They put me on pain pills after I got shot,” Ray says. “If you listen to my old music, I was more energetic. When I started taking pills I got more relaxed and I found my true self, the nonchalant face. That’s where the wavy’ comes from.” Over the next five years, Ray continued to release new music, every project better than the previous one. He says he wanted to take chances sonically to separate himself from the pack; he didn’t want to be the typical Detroit rapper with the same sound as everyone else. He put a studio in his home, and learned to engineer his own sessions. In 2020 he released his biggest hit to date, “Paperwork Party.” The song was powered by a pulsating baseline that perfectly matched Ray’s monotone vocals, and garnered millions of views and streams. The remix with Jack Harlow received millions more. “It was my birthday and I just bought a new watch,” he says. “And at that time it was a challenge going around on Instagram where niggas would come out of jail showing their paperwork. And I’m like, fuck all of that. Like is your paperwork right? Is your money right?
That’s where the idea for that song came from. My ‘paperwork party’ was talking about money.” By 2020, Ray felt he had accomplished as much as he could in Detroit and was looking to branch off into a record deal with Empire. His goals had moved past being the hottest rapper in his own city. “I had been trying to chase Empire CEO Ghazi Shami down,” he says. “I knew I was good enough. He had signed Snap Dogg, Molly Brazy, Allstar JR, and Peezy.” As communication with Empire stalled, another label stepped to the plate. “Me and Yo Gotti was actually sitting down in the MGM lobby and he was actually trying to give me the checkbook like, ‘What we doing, Face? Come on to CMG,’” Ray says. “As soon as I got up from the meeting I got a DM from Ghazi and he was like, Fly to San Francisco, I want to deal with you directly.’ And the rest is history.” The first project with Empire was last year’s Unfuckwitable, an EP Ray describes as “a year and a half of emotions of just what I was going through.” But his latest, FACE, serves as his most complete work to date. The album begins with “My Thoughts 3 / Pop’s Prayer,” a lyrical, sentimental, and meditative perspective to this new threshold of his career. The song is the most endearing and motivational cut on the album, and ends with a touching prayer from his father. “I come asking for Your choice blessings on my baby boy, Ray,” he prays. “Asking for Your guidance and Your directions for his gifts and his talents, that You might wrap him up with Your love, Your grace, and Your mercy.” Production-wise, Ray assembled his own dream team of sorts for FACE. Romano, ATL Jacob, Southside, 808
Mafia, OG Parker, and DJ Esco all make strong musical contributions, but Ray has never been the kind of artist that needed to lean on dope beats to carry himself. His calling card has always been the lyrical craftiness, wit, and transparency he’s able to convey in trap house narratives and hot boy sagas. To be blunt, Ray talks his shit as good as anyone in the rap game. “We them niggas, you know it / Dior Timbs, it’s snowin’. I catch her, you know she goin’ / Ain’t see me, you hear the motor,” he raps on “Let me Down.” On “6 Mile Show,” Ray teams up with fellow eastsider Icewear Vezzo. “It’s a mess on my neck, keep starin’ at me / Face, what it hit for?’ They keep askin’ me. Just hopped off the stage, hoes grabbin’ me / Man, the moneycounter still ain’t fast as me,” Ray raps on the hook. The album also features guest bars from big names in hip-hop like Yung Lean, G Herbo, Pusha T, Wiz Khalifa, and Detroit all-star 42 Dugg. Ray says there are more visuals planned for FACE, along with a spring tour. Even with the solo success, Ray says he will always be available for another Team Eastside album, and he’s extremely appreciative and humbled by the decade-long journey to get to this space in his career. “The time it took to get here creates character,” he says. “The ups and downs of everything I went though makes it mean so much more. My fans know that, too. They been riding with me so long that they’re just happy to see me get to this point.”
It’s almost showtime.
Despite the fact that many local shows have been canceled due to the pandemic, and despite the fact that the temperature is below 30 degrees, the line to enter Saint Andrew’s Hall is wrapped
around the corner. Security is doing the standard pat-downs, checking IDs, and informing fans that the show is sold out if they don’t have a ticket. Merch tables are set up in the lower Shelter part of the hall, and patrons are aggressively trying to position themselves in the front of the stage, while Ray’s parents and other family are seated in the middle of the balcony. “I like him because he raps about stuff he’s been through,” says one 18-year-old fan who drove from Lansing to attend the show. After a good 30 minutes of the DJ priming the crowd, Ray’s 7-year-old daughter Santana introduces the emcee as the crowd makes enough noise to shake the building. Ray begins with, “My Thoughts 2,” then segues into his track with Peezy, “36oz.” Ray doesn’t go into long monologs between songs, and rarely switches up his even-keel demeanor. He doesn’t swing his hair, do back flips, or take his shirt off. He’s simultaneously a rockstar and anti-rock star in the same body. He sticks to the music, drawing the crowd into his world. In the middle of his set he darts to the balcony to perform “Move to LA,”, “#1 Fan,” and “Allowance.” Fellow rappers Icewear Vezzo, Eastside EggRoll, GT, Peezy, Los, Nutty, and Baby Money all make make guest spperances throughout the night, and Ray closes his performance with mega-hits “Paperwork Party” and “Real Niggas Don’t Rap.” At the end of the show, Ray casually thanks his fans for coming out and tells them he’ll be available for pictures in the basement. And just like that, the lights turn on and the show is over, and the crowd heads out into the cold winter night. Still, the future of Detroit hip-hop never seemed so bright.
Wed 2/16
Happy Birthday, Craig B!
Thurs 2/17
Happy Birthday, Richard!
Fri 2/18 ISIACH / Heyyomari / LOKYE Doors@9 • $5 Cover
Sat 2/19 DJ Anytime & Friends Doors@9 • $5 Cover
Mon 2/21 FREE POOL Tues 2/22 B. Y. O. R. Bring Your Own Records You Can DJ! @ 9pm • NO COVER!
Coming Up: 2/24 Old Miami Pool Tournament 2/25 FUNK NIGHT (monthly) 2/26 SOMETHING ELEGANT Lady DJ Dance Party (monthly) 3/04 Solar Monolith / Ommnus / Knuckle Dragger (loud) 3/05 Milk Bath / Hell Dollars / Rob Zinck & The Collaborators (punk rock) 3/13 St. Patty’s Day Parade Weekly Drink Special (M-Th) Jim Beam Shot & 9oz Miller Draft $5 JELLO SHOTS $1 *A reminder to our unvaccinated guests to please wear a mask when not seated.
metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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WHAT’S GOING ON
The Detroit Zoo penguin exhibit has reopened after being closed for two years .
Select events happening in metro Detroit this week. Submit your events to metrotimes.com/calendar. Be sure to check venue websites for COVID-19 policies.
ONGOING Polk Penguin Conservation Center
The Detroit Zoo’s penguin exhibit might be one of the zoo’s most beloved exhibits, and after a little over two years, it’s finally back open. The Polk Penguin Conservation Center closed to the public in September 2019, as the zoo needed to make waterproofing repairs and other upgrades. Aside from routine maintenance and additions like more nesting areas and a second snow machine in the habitat, a portion of the floor has been replaced with glass flooring which will allow zoo visitors to see the penguins swim below their feet. New additions were not just limited to the center — the penguins have gained some new friends as well. The center now has over 5 macaroni, king, rockhopper, gentoo, and chinstrap penguins. “The chinstraps settled right in and became avid swimmers. Once the lights come on for the day, TJ, Haiku, Kringle and Turtle immediately dive into the pool,” Bonnie Van Dam, Detroit oological Society’s
Curator of Birds, said in a press release. “They also had no problem integrating with the other species. Penguins thrive within larger colonies, and they are just exceptional at mingling.” —Alex Washington See website for hours; Detroit Zoo; 8450 W. 10 Mile Rd., Royal Oak; 248-5415717; detroitzoo.org. Entry into the Polk Penguin Conservation Center is included with general admission to the zoo; tickets start at $14 for adults, $11 for children.
FRI 2/18 Rezz
Canadian DJ Rezz, née Isabelle Rezazadeh, is known for her hypnotic stage presence. (She wears goggles with LED lights, and performs against a massive video backdrop.) For her latest tour, in support of her new record Spiral, due this fall, Rezazadeh is promising “the biggest production I’ve ever had by far,” adding that the forthcoming album “will showcase an evolved version of my music while also maintaining a very hypnotic sound which originally captivated my audience.” Eprom, Of the Trees, and A Hundred Drums are also on the bill. —Lee DeVito Doors at 8 p.m.; the Masonic Temple;
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COURTESY PHOTO
500 Temple St., Detroit; 313-832-7100; themasonic.com. Tickets start at $29.
SAT 2/19 Nicolas Uncaged
Detroit’s deranged tribute to the prolific actor Nicolas Cage (“our one true god,” as event organizers describe him) is back. Like others, the folks behind the annual Nicolas ncaged event took a year off due to the pandemic, and with the virus an ongoing concern, this year’s event is going to be a little different, but the organizers are trying to still have some fun with it. Though masks are encouraged, organizers are urging a formal gala-style dress code, so get working on those Met Gala-worthy looks. (But, you know, with a Detroit spin on it. We know you don’t have money.) Organizers say they’re limiting ticket sales at the 00-person Senate Theater to allow for social distancing, and are requiring proof of vaccination at the door. Party for a good cause: Funds raised from the double feature (2002’s mind-bending postmodern comedy-drama Adaptation and 2018’s psych-horror Mandy) will go toward the Senate Theater and Midtown’s Cinema Detroit, which have been hurt by the pandemic. —Lee DeVito
Doors at 7 p.m.; Senate Theater; 6424 Michigan Ave., Detroit; 313-894-0850; senatetheater.com. Tickets are $25.
SAT 2/19 Beach House
Over the past two decades, Baltimore indie duo Beach House — vocalist and keyboardist Victoria Legrand and the guitarist Alex Scally — has earned a following for its sparse yet mesmerizing take on dream pop that has found fans in the worlds of R B and hip-hop (the Weeknd sampled “Master of None” on the track “The Party the After Party” on his 2011 debut mixtape House of Balloons, and rapper Kendrick Lamar sampled “Silver Soul” on his 2012 track “Money Trees”). For its latest record, Once Twice Melody — a double album presented in four chapters, out on Sub Pop on Friday — Beach House expands its palette, bringing in a live drummer and string ensemble to flesh out its sound. Despite the sonic tinkering, you’ll always know a Beach House song is a Beach House song, however. The band does what it does, and does it well. —Lee DeVito Doors at 8 p.m.; Royal Oak Music Theatre; 318 W. 4th St., Royal Oak; 248399-2980; royaloakmusictheatre.com. Tickets start at $40.
MUSIC Music Notes
Detroit’s Movement announces initial 2022 lineup with Jeff Mills, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, the Blessed Madonna, and more By Lee DeVito
One of the world’s longest-
running electronic music festivals is plotting a 2022 return to Detroit, with Movement organizers announcing a partial lineup. Headliners announced include techno pioneer Jeff Mills (perhaps better known as “The Wizard” from WDRQ and WJLB to Detroiters of a certain age), Richie Hawtin, and Swedish producer Adam Beyer. “Of all the places I’ve traveled to and audiences I’ve played music for, Detroit is still the city that remains the barometer of advanced creative knowledge and technique,” said Mills, whose performance will mark 30 years of his label Axis Records. “It’s special because of what the long list of native Detroit musicians that have contributed to the world of music. It’s a place that is infamous for proposing new ways and ideas as well as a unique and common viewpoint on the future of music. The city taught me to never fear what lies beyond, but embrace it as a means to advance the music art form. I look forward to Movement 2022 — returning back to the city and to the people that taught me and the World everything.” Other artists on the bill so far include acts like LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, the Blessed Madonna, Goldie and LTJ Bukem, Natasha Diggs, Anfisa Letyago, Blawan, DRAMA, Seth Troxler, Anna, Louie Vega, Claude VonStroke, DJ Minx, and Maceo Plex, among others. “Since its inception, Movement has been deeply dedicated to bringing a completely original experience to Detroit, with a focus on showcasing authentic and diverse lineups that provide an experience that is purely about the
Jeff Mills previously performed at Movement in 2014.
music and culture,” organizers Paxahau said in a statement. This year’s fest marks its first return to Hart Plaza since 2019. The pandemic caused the event to cancel in 2020, and in 2021 a scaled-down “Micro Movement” fest was held across three smaller Detroit venues — the Magic Stick’s Alley Deck, TV Lounge, and Spot Lite. The festival is set for Memorial Day Weekend, May 28-30. Tickets are on sale now at movement.us.
Eminem and MC5 nominated for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The nominees for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s 2022 class have been announced, and two Detroit acts have made the cut. Rap superstar Eminem and rock band MC5 have both been nominated for this year’s class. “This year’s ballot recognizes a diverse group of incredible artists, each who has had a profound impact on the sound of youth culture”, said John Sykes, Chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, in a press release. “Their music not only moved generations, but also influenced the sound of countless artists that followed.” For an artist to be eligible for nomination, they must have released their first commercial project at least 25
AARON JONES
years prior to the year of nomination. This is Eminem’s first year eligible for nomination. The rap god’s debut album Infinite was released in November 1996, three years before his groundbreaking Slim Shady LP catapulted him into instant superstardom. As for MC5, this is the band’s sixth time getting nominated, with the band most recently being nominated for the 2020 class. In 1969, MC5 released its debut album Kick Out the Jams, which was met with controversy from local department store Hudson’s after the retail chain refused to stock the album due to language. The dispute eventually led to MC5 being dropped from Elektra records. Still, despite that hiccup, Kick Out the Jams, has been often revered as one of the most influential rock albums of all time, even landing on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The fan vote is currently open, which allows fans to take part in the induction process. Now through April 29, fans can vote every day on vote.rockhall. com. —Alex Washington
COVID-denier Ted Nugent is bringing his ‘Detroit Muscle 2022’ tour to Michigan
Ted Nugent, who got COVID-19 last year after denying its existence, is apparently back in full health and gearing
up for a 2022 tour. The tour includes a Saturday, Aug. 13 date at the Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre. Tickets for the “Detroit Muscle tour” go on sale at 10 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 11 and start at $25.15 for the lawn. The tour is in support of the Motor City Madman’s new record, Detroit Muscle, due in April. The tour will see a power trio lineup with Nugent on guitar joined by Greg Smith on bass and Jason Hartless on drums. “The mighty Motor City is forever globally known as the epicenter of the ultimate high energy soul-music firestorm, and everybody desperately needs a suckerpunch of Detroit Muscle now more than ever,” Nugent said in a statement. “Relax, it’s good for you.” Nugent got COVID-19 last year after posting a video claiming the pandemic was “not real” and performing at an “anti-mask” grocery store in Florida. Despite admitting that COVID-19 made him feel so bad he said, “I thought I was dying,” Nugent has said he will not take his tour to venues that require vaccinations or masks. “So, hopefully the Uncle Ted shitkicker American campfire Detroit Muscle tour 20-clusterfuck-22 will finally happen after the communist Chinese Biden gang canceled it in 2020 and 20-clusterfuck-21,” Nugent said in a recent announcement. Alrighty then. —Lee DeVito
metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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FOOD Spreading the Korean taco gospel By Tom Perkins
When it comes to mixing and
matching nations’ cuisines, few are hand-in-glove quite like Korean and Mexican — the former are masters at barbecuing meats that are right at home in a corn or flour tortilla. In southeast Michigan, Kimchi Box, a new suburban fast-casual mini-chain, is one of the few restaurants trading in the mash-up. It folds generous amounts of bulgogi, gochujang-fueled pork, Korean barbecue chicken, and more into tortillas — and these are plump boys, each topped with pickled red onion, cilantro, red cabbage, green cabbage, and lettuce, the latter of which is tossed in a Korean-style vinaigrette of soy, vinegar, and red pepper. The package is finished with a mayo sauce not unlike what one would find in sushi. The best of the bunch were the bulgogi and pork, the latter of which is sweet and spicy, and it’s hard to take a bite without thinking of a Mexican al pastor. Kimchi Box marinated it in gochujang, a sweet and savory fermented red chili paste that in this case holds only a minimal spice kick. One of the overarching themes in Korean cuisine is the sweet, savory, and salty profile, with bursts of chili and garlic. The bulgogi, which literally translates into “fire meat,” is melt-in-your-mouth tender beef. It’s typically marinated in some combination of ingredients like soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame, garlic, ginger, and gochujang, and Kimchi Box also adds pear, kiwi and apple juice to the mix to enhance the sweetness. It’s fantastic. You can also get the bulgogi in one of Kimchi’s BBQ boxes, along with a huge helping of purple rice, kimchi, and Korean noodles, as well as a sausage rice cake. Another winner is the tempurabattered cod taco topped with “sassy” mayo, corn, fermented black beans, and a sour cream-based sauce. The barbecue chicken taco is also worth a look. It’s driven by bird marinated in garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and the same pear, kiwi, and apple juice component as the bulgogi to bring out the sweetness. The tofu tacos were just OK, as the textural interplay between tofu and tortillas isn’t my favorite, here or at other restaurants. But the kimchi tofu taco is the better of the two vegetarian options. No surprise, Kimchi Box also offers plenty of Korean fried chicken. The
From bottom left : Fish taco, bulgogi and spicy pork tacos, wings, moz dogs, and kimchi fries.
twice-fried shells around the juicy bird were slightly thicker than those that I’ve encountered at some other Korean fried chicken purveyors, and the version with the sassy sauce is excellent with its sweet, savory, and slightly spicy elements. The soy-garlic popcorn chicken was also solid, though we would go for the sassy on a return visit. Both come adorned with sesame seeds and scallions. Metro Detroit is filled with good fried chicken sandwiches, but Kimchi Box’s Seoul fried chicken sandwich makes it mark as a monster that’s busy with flavor and color from the sassy sauce, pickled onion, purple cabbage, green cabbage, lettuce, and white meat thighs, with plenty of crunch on a soft brioche. Kimchi Box uses chicken thighs instead of breasts, owner Min Kyu Kim says, because thighs, which stay a little juicer, are more popular in Korea. The moz dogs are mozzarella-packed
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corn dogs that are part of the global Korean corn dog bonanza, and these will transport you back to a summer night at the State Fairgrounds. They’re not too unlike a jumbo mozzarella stick, but with a crunchier shell, and a dusting of sugar, because it’s Korean and you gotta have the sweet component. Why corn dogs in Korea? It’s a trend that started in the recently-cheese obsessed nation nearly a decade ago, hit the west coast a few years back, and, thanks to Kimchi Box, is now in metro Detroit. Kim, who left his consulting career in Chicago to launch Kimchi Box, opened locations in Auburn Hills, Plymouth, Sterling Heights, and Novi last year, and has plans for two more restaurants in 2022. His family is behind Ann Arbor’s venerable Seoul Garden and Troy’s Dae Jang Keum, so he knows his way around the trade. The current locations offer a clean, fast-casual vibe and are largely carryout
TOM PERKINS
Kimchi Box 2713 University Dr., Auburn Hills (multiple locations; see website) 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Mon-Fri, 11:30 a.m.9 p.m. Sat, Sun kimchiboxUSA.com $3-$38 Handicap accessible
operations, which partly owes to the ongoing pandemic. It takes courage to open four restaurants in 2021, but Kim says he seized the opportunity to take over two closed Pei Weis and other eateries that shut during the pandemic, so he was able to get low-cost spots with infrastructure in place. He’s partly finding success because he’s one of the only fast-casual Korean games in town, though the new locations planned for 2022 will invite diners to sit down for a Korean barbecue experience.
FOOD Bites
Yum Village offers Afro-Caribbeaninspired paczki, acquires former Detroit Vegan Soul space By Lee DeVito
Polish, African, and Carib-
bean flavors collide at Yum Village in Detroit’s New Center area for Fat Tuesday on March 1. To celebrate, Yum Village chef Godwin Ihentuge is rolling out a new menu of traditional Polish paczki with Afro-Caribbean-inspired flavors. Those include Kuli Kuli (a sweet peanut cake) mixed with a dash of Suya (a spice rub with a kick used in barbecue), plantains, hibiscus, and sweet potato. Ihentuge says that while this is the first time his take on paczki is available to the public, it’s a concept he’s been tinkering with for a while. “We play in the kitchen all the time,” he says. In culinary school, he says he learned to cook through a European lens and didn’t have the opportunity to experiment with the flavors of the African diaspora. “But now I’m experimenting and doing things,” he says. “One of the first nontraditional things I did was a Jollof rice arancini ball, and then I started playing around with doing things like Jollof rice sushi rolls.” Ihentuge says the Afro-Caribbeaninspired paczki are a way of putting a Detroit spin on the Lent holiday. “In this particular case, this is all about us taking a unique twist on a timeless tradition that comes every year,” he says. “We’re all united for Paczki Day.” Ihentuge also revealed to Metro Times that Yum Village is working to acquire the former West Village Detroit Vegan Soul location, which announced its permanent closure in January. Ihentuge says he’s working on getting a liquor license for the spot, and hopes to open in May. It would be a second Yum Village location, in addition to the New Center area location. Ihentuge says the second location will
Afro-Caribbean-inspired paczki at Detroit’s Yum Village.
allow Yum Village to extend its delivery radius. The acquisition includes the nearby beer garden, which is where Yum Village got its start as a food truck. “That’s where we got our roots, in the West Village, with the food truck,” he says. “So we’ll be returning with that same energy for the summertime.” The Afro-Caribbean paczki will also be offered at the recently opened Yum Village sister restaurant in Cleveland. The Ohio spot is run by Godwin’s brother, Carasai Ihentuge. Yum Village is located at 6500 Woodward Ave., Detroit; yumvillage.com.
Detroit’s longstanding Hygrade Deli is now a Black-owned business
Detroit’s old-school Hygrade Deli lives on under new ownership. Previous owner Stuart Litt, whose parents purchased the deli in 19 2, put the business up for sale last year. The restaurant will now be owned by Detroit businessman Chuck Nolen, who also owns Cutters Bar Grill in Eastern Market and is chair of the Neighborhood Legal Services of Michigan and the Metro Detroit Black Business Alli-
COURTESY PHOTO
ance, according to a press release. Nolen has owned Cutters since 200 . “I congratulate Stuart Litt for running a great restaurant for so many years,” Nolen said in a press release. “I can’t thank him enough for entrusting me with this southwest Detroit landmark. I look forward to offering the same great food, quality service and the best corned beef in town.” Hygrade Deli, which first opened in 1955, is known for its corned beef sandwiches and made an appearance in the 2016 films Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and The Pickle Recipe. Hygrade Deli is located at 36 0 Michigan Ave., Detroit; hygradedeli.com. —Lee DeVito
Detroit bar PJ’s Lager House expands brunch hours
With all the news about Detroit-area restaurants closing due to the hardships of the pandemic, it’s good to hear that some are surviving. That includes PJ’s Lager House, the longstanding Corktown rock n’ roll bar that is also known for its vegan-centric brunch. Owner PJ Ryder says he’s expanding
the bar’s brunch hours to a.m.-11 a.m. weekdays starting on Feb. 1 . The regular menu — which includes burgers, gumbo, po’ boys, and more — switches over from 11 a.m.-11 p.m. “PJ’s philosophy of food is that if I wouldn’t serve it at home, we won’t serve it at PJ’s,” Ryder says in a statement. “Our dishes are simply good.” Ryder says he plans on pivoting PJ’s Lager House to “become more of a fulltime restaurant,” though he says it will still feature live music. Things were not looking good for PJ’s, which Ryder took over in 2010. In 2019, Ryder listed the business for sale for 2.2 million, citing dwindling interest in live music and more competition from new venues. In 2020, PJ’s was closed “for the foreseeable future” due to the ongoing COVID-19 shutdowns, which Ryder said “devastated” his business and staff. “With all the pivots that restaurant and bar owners have had to make during this time of COVID, PJ’s is very happy and grateful to have survived,” he says. PJ’s Lager House is located at 125 Michigan Ave., Detroit; pjslagerhouse.com. —Lee DeVito
metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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WEED One-Hitters
Michigan cannabis users love potent pot, according to industry report By Lee DeVito
When it comes to getting stoned, Michiganders prefer high-potency weed — even more than Californians do. That’s one of the major findings in the 2022 “State of Cannabis Report,” published last week by cannabis delivery platform Eaze. The company used data from only California and Michigan for its report, since those are the two markets where the service has launched. One might assume Californians would prefer higher-potency pot perhaps due to a higher tolerance for THC, since California is the largest cannabis market in the U.S., and the fact that its recreational cannabis industry got a head start on Michigan’s. But according to the report, the top three cities with a preference for potent pot were Ann Arbor (perhaps not a surprise considering it was ground zero for Michigan’s cannabis legalization movement, with its annual Hash Bash celebrations), followed by Grand Rapids, and Detroit. According to Elizabeth Ashford, Eaze’s vice president of communications and public affairs, the data shows that when you look at overall sales on the platform, on average, the highest sales go to higher-potency products in those markets. “We also saw that there tended to be more sales of concentrates and high-potency flower in colder months,” Ashford tells Metro Times. “So that may also have something to do with it. And I don’t want to derive any conclusions about that, because I don’t live in Michigan, but that might be part of it. Michigan is colder for more of the year than most of California, so that was one thing we posited.” We can confirm, it does get friggin’ cold here. And with the pandemic still causing many indoor events to cancel, there’s not much to do these days than sit around and get stoned. (Or at least that’s what we’ve found.) The report also found that men seem
An employee shows off a nug at Hazel Park’s dispensary Shango.
to prefer to purchase flower, while women seem to prefer edibles and prerolls. Relaxing, indica-heavy strains called wedding cake and glue were the top strains ordered. Of all age groups, Gen Z purchased concentrates with the highest average THC content, with Millennials coming in a close second, followed by Gen X. But Baby Boomers also liked potent pot, purchasing flower products with the highest average THC year-round. The report isn’t only about getting incredibly high, however. It also found that consumers, particularly Gen Z and Millennials, tend to be more socially conscious, and appeared to respond favorably to Eaze’s Social Equity Partners’ Program. Municipalities across the country have enacted or considered social equity policies to help communities harmed by the war on drugs enter the booming legalized industry. Social equity policies include helping people with nonviolent drug offenses get licenses, as well as people from Black and brown communities, which have seen higher rates of incarceration for drug offenses than white communities despite similar rates of cannabis use. Eaze highlights social equity brands in a special menu on its platform. According to Eaze’s report, there was
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an 89% increase in customers who purchased from Eaze’s Social Equity menu for the first time year-over-year from 2020 to 2021, and a 51% increase in the number of products sold from the menu. The sales were led by Gen Z and Millennials. Since municipalities in California have been slow to issue social equity licenses, Eaze included brands that would be eligible. “There’s a lot of conversation about the necessity for social equity licenses, and the purpose and value of them,” Ashford says. “But there hasn’t been a lot of information about them once you get them onto the market, or whether or not that narrative and that background matters to consumers.” The interest in being socially conscious translates to big money: social equity brands brought in $6.5 million in 2021, a 72% year-over-year increase from 2020. According to Eaze, the social equity menu has pulled in $10.58 million in sales since its 2019 launch. “The more you build it, the more consumers will come,” Ashford says. “I’m not saying it’s working in all cases and in all places, but it can work, and consumers will buy it — and not necessarily because it’s cheap, but because it has that imprimatur and that meaning.” Ashford says the findings are impor-
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tant for regulators and licensing bodies to take note. “These licenses have a material impact on the businesses that are granted them,” she says. “And this is about building wealth for people who were hurt by the war on drugs over time. So that is all good news.” Eaze used only data from California to measure the success of the Social Equity Partners’ Program, since it hasn’t launched it in Michigan yet. Ashford says the company plans to launch here later this year. In Michigan, Detroit’s recreational cannabis market has hit a setback after a federal judge declared that a proposed social equity program that would give preferential treatment for granting licenses to longtime Detroit residents was unconstitutional. Last week, Detroit City Council member James Tate released a new plan that would create two avenues for licensing, one for longtime residents and one for non-residents. “I would say that this report makes a strong argument for moving forward with that as quickly as possible,” Ashford says. She adds, “The goal of these programs is to put money in the pockets of people hurt by the war on drugs. We’ve seen that consumers will buy in, and we think that’s very important.”
CULTURE A techno-thriller for this moment By George Elkind
Steven Soderbergh treats
an exacting sense of routine quite playfully in Kimi, available to stream now on HBO Max, imbuing it with a manner that feels effacing in the most familiar, or firsthand, of ways. As the prolific director (and editor, and director of photography, as usual) of this, the first trio of Ocean’s films, Logan Lucky, and last year’s made-in-Detroit No Sudden Move, Soderbergh knows quite a bit about control. Heists and thrillers are Soderbergh’s longtime specialty: tools he weaponizes to examine the workings and vulnerabilities of institutional power structures. (The difference between the two genres, mainly, is who — the individual or the structural force — is on the attack.) He returns here with another thriller, following a young woman named Angela ( o Kravitz) employed remotely by the Amygdala Corporation, which manufactures a product called Kimi. As creators of a surveillance system la Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and other peppy digital matrons, Amygdala press a questionable but increasingly standard-issue bargain: if users consent, often unwittingly, to suspensions of their privacy, they can receive a range of services from within their homes. In combing through recordings to optimize Kimi’s responsiveness as part of her job, Angela stumbles upon some likely evidence of a crime, and seeks immediately to report it to her supervisors to prevent further harm. Angela’s agoraphobic, though, and living through the COVID-19 pandemic on top of it. She’s anxious, somewhat traumatized, grinds her teeth, and has more than a few compulsive habits. She lives cooped up in her orderly Seattle loft, where she exercises, goes to therapy, works, and occasionally hosts men — or perhaps just one man. When she does speak with other people (mostly online), conversations are inflected with firm, sometimes severe assertions of verbal and personal boundaries. Soderbergh seems to relate to this rigidity and firmity of purpose, which scans as even more justifiable now than usual; a pandemic seems as good a time as any to consider strongly who and what we allow into our lives. Angela’s employers at Amygdala Corp. cross their fingers that most don’t
Kimi Rated: R Run time: 89 minutes
Zoë Kravitz in Kimi.
HBO MAX
Kimi gets at the very nature of security as a tense field of negotiation between the public and private. read the fine print in their terms of service, pitching their army of workers as their distinguishing trait (“People: it’s our people and our level of excellence that sets us apart,” opines one slimy exec). Amygdala’s not entirely wrong about being defined by its staff, though they might be less the exception than the rule. Kimi’s vision of technology, then, is less conventionally alarmist than rightly suspicious — not so much of novel tools themselves but of the people and entities behind them. In redeploying all the biases of their makers — the softly misogynistic paternalism of their naming schemas, the more forceful, unapologetic incursions on privacy, or the false palliative gestures ladled out by middle managers — the technologies Kimi depicts are exactly as foul as the people behind them, even as its inciting incident suggests their potential for some good. The film’s setup is not original in this, nor does it pretend to be. As part of a lineage of paranoid works including Blow-Up (1966), The Conversation (19 ), and Blow Out (1981) — all trailing
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Hithcock and featuring media-based artists and technicians stumbling by chance upon probable crimes — the ironies Kimi toys with are as old as the recorded image. As a surveillance technician who’s a self-questioning cog in a broader system, Angela’s work is not so troubling on an individual level as was Gene Hackman’s similarly isolated figure from The Conversation — but that’s part of Kimi’s insight into modern living. In tracking the increasingly systematized, segmented, and broadly contracted-out systems of labor which drive an increasingly tech-centered global economy, the role individual actors play proves at once integral and infinitesimal, with questions of responsibility, which must belong somewhere, scanning as little more than a flickering mirage. As someone attuned to abuse as more than a momentary workplace headache, Angela is an exception to what her employers demand in a world of maximally alienated labor not only for assuming any form of social responsibility but in harboring any humanistic principles at all. In establishing clear boundaries, re-
fusing to make charitable assumptions, and approaching those around her with a defiant, questioning stance, Angela’s bound to be in the right for doing so more than any of us would like. But as sympathetic as Soderbergh is to this closely guarded sense of control — seeing so much of paranoia as simply observant, worldly, and fair — the choice of what to keep out of one’s life remains inseparable from that of what one lets in. By working in an exceptionally lean mode and allowing Angela the dignity of stubborn imperfections, Soderbergh — with the help of perennial composer Cliff Martinez, screenwriter David Koepp, and, of course, Kravitz — manages to avoid self-seriousness or an easy valorization of his lead. Instead, he and his collaborators provide without much fuss a way to understand. Despite following in the brusque, workmanlike footsteps of Angela in its air of businesslike concision and directness, the film remains light on its feet, working playfully with technique. With roving, often dramatically canted camerawork and honed, linear editing fueled by a varied, sometimes neoclassical score, Kimi’s a small enough production to focus on doing each thing well. In its focused tension — between the film’s brute, rapidly paced narrative movements and the interlocking forms of play within its form — Soderbergh manages better than usual to approximate his main character’s psychology, getting at his lead’s inner life. In this, it offers more than a tidy allegory about the invisible moral and bureaucratic labyrinths of modern life, looking into the far messier struggles of venturing out and opening up. In coupling these themes, it gets at the very nature of security as a tense field of negotiation between the public and private, and in bothering to gauge who and what to trust, we engage in the still-weightier task of deciding what materials to build a life from, hoping to carve out an existence worth protecting. The fact that a fleet and pleasurable little thriller like Kimi can get at all this makes it more than worth taking in.
Savage Love
CULTURE Q:
I’m a very sexual cis male in his thirties. Three years ago, I met this woman who just blew me away. She is eight years older, extremely beautiful, intelligent, and funny. I came onto her early on and she told me straight up that she was asexual. She likes kissing, cuddling, and solo masturbation, but that’s it. She says intercourse doesn’t do anything for her. To keep a relationship alive in the past, she would go through the motions, but she has no interest in doing that anymore, so I moved on. Since then, we got to know each other better and I have fallen in love with her. Last night we had dinner and I started thinking aloud how we might make a relationship work. I suggested that I could watch her masturbate, and maybe we could have an open relationship. She said it was out of the question. She admitted that when she first met me, she liked me, but now she loves me as a friend. She says there’s no chance that this could work, and we should keep things platonic. She doesn’t even want to kiss and cuddle me, as she fears I would get “worked up” and she would have to reject me. We got into an argument, and she got angry with me. I love her. I want to spend every moment with her. I sincerely believe we could make this work. How can I convince her? —Sexual Man Into Loving Ecstasy
A : You already have your answer,
SMILE, and that answer — her answer — is “no.”
Q:
I’m a horny divorced bisexual male. Can you help me find females for regular phone sex? I masturbate every night and enjoy it much more if I hear a sweet voice on the other end of the line. I live in North Carolina, and I am usually freshly showered, naked, and erect between 11 p.m. and midnight. I time my orgasms for precisely midnight. Please help and find me a female to have erotic discussions with! —Jerking About Conversations Kept Sensuous
A : Sir, this is a Wendy’s. (Full disclosure: this isn’t a Wendy’s. This is a sexadvice column, JACKS, and sex-advice columnists are not match-makers. So, you’ll have to find and/or hire a phone sex provider on your own.)
Q:
I’m not having sex with my best friend’s husband, but we’re doing something my best friend would probably find objectionable: I’m letting his husband drink my piss. The first time it just kind of happened. We’re able to rationalize what we’re doing — my best friend isn’t into piss and I’m a “safe” person to do it
By Dan Savage
ence prompted me to take a break from dating while I sort out a better strategy. I’ve been dipping my toes in the water of more national queer communities and want to attend The Dinah in the fall to connect with other womxn from outside our area. I don’t want to hold back but getting too close to my sibling’s sex life just feels gross. Any guidance? —Looking Everywhere Since Bursting Out
with in that I’m not going to ask him for more — but it does involve putting my dick in the mouth of my best friend’s husband. I was the best man at their wedding, and I feel guilty about this. I’m also married, but my husband and I have an agreement about outside games. Maybe I just need you to tell me to stop. —Gay Urinal Is Lying To Spouse
A : First, the obvious answer: Stop.
Second, the obvious follow-up question: How’d that happen, G ILTS? nless your best friend’s husband was wearing a ridiculously convincing urinal costume at a Halloween party and you were on mushrooms, it didn’t just happen. You did it. Even if he was in a convincing urinal costume and you ate all the mushrooms, you did it. You won’t be able to stop doing this if you can’t be honest about how you started.
Q:
My friend started dating a girl eight years ago in college and broke up with her a year later. They have no relationship at all now. They don’t even converse. I have been in love with the girl in question since the first day I met her. I was going to ask her out years ago but before I could she was dating my friend. I recently asked her out and we are now dating but none of our friends from back then know. I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I vibe with her like no one else. Do you think it’s right to be with her? Or am I doing wrong to my friend? —The Bad Friend
A : Your friend broke up with this
woman — the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with — seven years ago. He doesn’t own her, he doesn’t have eternal dibs, and if he can’t be happy for you, he’s not your friend. And if you’re feeling like a bad friend, maybe backing up and re-reading G ILTS’ letter will make you feel better.
Q : My partner of twenty years and I
recently agreed to open our relationship. There’s an acquaintance I’ve had a crush on since high school. I don’t know his situation — if he’s partnered, monogamous, whatever — but we’re in touch now and I have permission to approach him. But I’m nervous his answer will be no, and my fun fantasies — fantasies I’ve enjoyed about him all my adult life — will be tainted by embarrassment. The reward would be great, but the risk is huge. The possibility of a hookup with him IRL has been fueling my desire, which my partner has benefitted from, and I’d hate to lose that. What do you think? —Reliable Orgasms At Risk
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A : Get over it, LESBO. It’s a small
JOE NEWTON
A : Sexual fantasies are perfect, sexual
realities are messy. So, even if your high school crush is available and interested, ROAR, there’s no way IRL sex with him is going to live up to your fantasies. But hitting on him (risky!) and/or getting with him (could still be great!) will make some space in your erotic imagination for other fantasies — fantasies you can enjoy during solo masturbation, fantasies that will continue to fuel your desire for and/ or during sex with your husband.
Q:
During a recent Sack Lunch you spoke of a “zone of erotic autonomy” that we are all entitled to, even partnered people. I think that should be a term: ZOEA. It’s already a legal Scrabble word, as I’m sure you’re aware, and I think ZOEA would be as useful as DTMFA or GGG. Here’s an example of it being used in a sentence: Husband: “Do you think of me when you masturbate?” Wife: “Mind your own ZOEA.” —Neologism Now Needed
A : Zoea is already a word — and,
therefore, fair game in Scrabble (“a free-swimming planktonic larval form of many decapod crustaceans and especially crabs with fringed antennae and mouthparts”) — but words can have more than one meaning, and I think OEA (pronounced “zo-EE-ah”) is a nice addition to my collection of initialisms.
Q:
I’m a late-to-come-out lesbian and so is my sister. We both live in the same moderate-sized city in the Pacific Northwest and are currently both on the dating market. The trouble I’m having is that the pool of eligible women in our city is small and the chances of us dating the same person seems likely, which makes me feel icky. I even matched with my sister on a dating app! That experi-
world, the lesbian world is smaller still, and even if you restrict yourself to longdistance relationships, you’re probably gonna wind up dating someone your sister dated at some point. Hell, your chances of meeting a woman your sister dated at The Dinah are about as good as meeting a woman your sister dated on a dating app. Acknowledge the awkwardness, don’t be paralyzed by it, and block each other on dating apps.
Q:
I’m a straight 30-year-old guy. I live with my girlfriend of three years, we love and respect each other, and have very good sex. Unfortunately, sex is very satisfying for me until I have an orgasm. My orgasms start well, but they fade out toward the end, leaving me disappointed, because I consistently have better ones during masturbation. I have a plausible explanation: when I orgasm, I become very sensitive, and I cannot “spot-reduce” the stimulation very easily during intercourse. I’ve tried thrusting less, coming outside, breathing to stay relaxed, with and without condoms, etc., but the end result is always the same. I still enjoy my sex life but I’d like to be able to have my best orgasms while I’m with my girlfriend. Do you have any advice for me? —Climaxes Underwhelming My Senses
A : Stop masturbating for a bit and
see if that doesn’t improve things during partnered sex. But if that doesn’t work, C MS, you might wanna incorporate masturbation into your regular sex sessions with your girlfriend — not masturbation as foreplay, not mutual masturbation, but you-do-you-whileshe-does-her and you watch each other. Having some of your “best” orgasms when you’re with her, even if you’re not touching her, may help you get to a point where you can have those orgasms when you’re inside her. Ask: questions@savagelove.net! Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage! Podcasts, columns, books, merch, and more at www.savage.love!
metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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CULTURE ARIES: March 21 – April 19 You’re slipping into a phase when stuff that has been invisible will become visible, at least to you. You will have extra power to peer beneath the surfaces and discern the hidden agendas and study the deeper workings. Your interest in trivia and distractions will dissipate, and you’ll feel intensified yearnings to home in on core truths. Here’s your guiding principle during this time: Favor the interests of the soul over those of the ego. And for inspiration, have fun with this quote by religious scholar Huston Smith: “The Transcendent was my morning meal, we had the Eternal at lunch, and I ate a slice of the Infinite at dinner.” TAURUS: April 20 – May 20 “You cannot have fun with anything that you don’t love or admire or respect,” declared comedian Mel Brooks. I agree! The joyous release that comes through playful amusement is most likely to unfold when you’re in the presence of influences you are fond of. The good news, Taurus, is that in the coming weeks, you will have a special inclination and knack for hanging around people and influences like that.
Free Will Astrology By Rob Brezsny
Therefore, you will have an enhanced capacity for mirth and delight and pleasure. Take full advantage, please! As much as possible, gravitate toward what you love and admire and respect. GEMINI: May 21 – June 20 “The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else,” says Gemini author Vikram Seth. I bring this truth to your attention because I believe you will soon be the beneficiary of steady, strong waves of inspiration. I also predict that these waves will transport you away from minor irritations that are best left alone for now. Be alert and ever-ready to spring into action, my dear, so that as the inspirational surges flow, you will harvest the maximum rewards from their gifts. CANCER: June 21 – July 22 The advice that Reb Nachman of Breslov offered two centuries ago is just right for you now: “Never ask directions from someone who knows the way, or you will never be able to get lost.” In the coming weeks, you will attract tricky but palpable blessings from meandering around without knowing exactly where you are. It’s time for you to find out what you don’t even realize you need to know; to stumble upon quiet little wonders and marvels that will ultimately prove to be guideposts for your holy quests in the future. Yes, I understand that being in unknown territory without a reliable map isn’t usually a pleasure, but I believe it will be for you. PS: Our fellow Cancerian, author Rebecca Solnit, wrote a book entitled A Field Guide to Getting Lost. It might be helpful during your wanderings (read a summary of it here: tinyurl. com/GuideToGettingLost). LEO: July 23 – August 22 “You face your greatest opposition when you’re closest to your biggest miracle,” wrote author and filmmaker T. D. Jakes. According to my analysis of upcoming astrological omens, that’s good advice for you. I suspect that the problems you encounter will be among your best and most useful ever. With the right attitude, you will harness the challenges to generate magnificent breakthroughs. And what’s the right attitude? Proceed with the hypothesis that life is now conspiring to bring your soul exactly what your soul needs to express its ripest beauty. VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22 “Always remember this,” said actor Hattie McDaniel (1893–1952). “There are only 18 inches between a pat on the back and a kick in the rump.” Metaphorically speaking, I believe her advice will be useful for you in the
30 February 16-22, 2022 | metrotimes.com
Kong and Brooklyn. Her father was born and raised in Malaysia and her mother in Hong Kong. She has a rich array of different roots. Not surprisingly, then, she has said, “I like to think of home as a verb, something we keep recreating.” That’s an excellent meditation for you right now, Sagittarius. And it will continue to be worthy of your ruminations for another four months. What’s the next step you could take to feel comfortable and secure and at peace? JAMES NOELLERT
coming days. Lately, you’ve had to deal with too many experiences and influences akin to kicks in the rump. But now that will change. Soon there’ll be a surge of experiences and influences that resemble pats on the back. In my estimation, you have finished paying your dues and making course corrections. Now it’s time for you to receive meaningful appreciation and constructive approval. LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22 Author Gayle Forman offers a set of truths that I suspect will be useful for you in the coming weeks. They may even be inspirational and motivational. Forman writes, “Sometimes fate or life or whatever you want to call it, leaves a door a little open, and you walk through it. But sometimes it locks the door and you have to find the key, or pick the lock, or knock the damn thing down. And sometimes, it doesn’t even show you the door, and you have to build it yourself.” Are you ready for the challenge, Libra? I think you are. Do whatever you must do to go through the doorways you want and need to go through. SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21 Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash described her process. “I dream of songs,” she began. “I dream they fall down through the centuries, from my distant ancestors, and come to me. I dream of lullabies and sea shanties and keening cries and rhythms and stories and backbeats.” Scorpio, I would love for you to explore comparable approaches to getting the creative ideas you need to live your best life possible. I would love for you to draw freely from sources beyond your conscious ego — including your ancestors, the people you were in previous incarnations, gods and spirits, heroes and allies, the intelligence of animals, and the wisdom of nature. The coming months will be a favorable time to expand your access. Start boosting the signals now! SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21 Author Madeleine Thien has lived in Vancouver, Montreal, and Iowa City, and has taught at schools in Hong
CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19 The fastest animal on earth is the peregrine falcon, which can reach speeds of 200 miles per hour when it dives from a great height. The seventhfastest creature is the humble pigeon. Having been clocked at 92.5 miles per hour, the bird outpaces the cheetah, which is the fastest land animal. I propose we make the pigeon your spirit creature for the coming weeks. On the one hand, you may seem mild and modest to casual observers. On the other hand, you will in fact be sleek, quick, and agile. Like the pigeon, you will also be highly adaptable, able to thrive in a variety of situations. AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18 “Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion,” wrote Aquarian author W. Somerset Maugham. Yes! I agree! And that’s the perfect message for you to hear right now. If you choose to take advantage of the potentials that life is offering you, you will explore and experiment with the mysteries of selfdiscipline and self-command. You’ll be a trailblazer of discernment and poise. You will indulge in and enjoy the pleasures of self-regulation. PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20 In 1961, Piscean cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to orbit the Earth in a spacecraft. As his feat neared its end, Gagarin left the capsule at 20,000 feet above the ground and parachuted the rest of the way. He arrived in a turnip field where a girl and her grandmother were working. They provided him with a horse and cart so he could travel to the nearest telephone and make a call to get picked up and brought back to headquarters. I foresee a metaphorically comparable series of events transpiring in your life, Pisces. Be flexible and adaptable as you adjust to changing conditions with changing strategies. Your exceptional and illustrious activities may require the assistance of humble influences. This week’s homework: Name the three things most worthy of celebrating right now. Then celebrate them!
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4G LTE HOME INTERNET NOW AVAILABLE!
HIRING SEXY WOMEN!!!
(DVD’s, Toys, etc) Detroit area, must be 18yrs old. Cashier, stock & cleaning Benefits-Hol/Vac/Health Call (313)869-9477 or come in to apply
MODEL ASSISTANT
PART TIME MALE MODEL
Seeking a part time tall (6’ or taller) male model athletic workout partner- courier- personal assistant to work around the home and office including possible travel etc. Duties include: filing, errands, research, emails, driving, running the dog, workout at local gym 3 days a week, hanging out etc. Not seeking a certified trainer just someone that knows their way around the gym that is tall, slim , toned etc. Compensation: $15-100/hr + perks with approximately 4-20 hrs. per week, flexible schedule etc. Must have reliable transportation and pass background check. Serious applicants please contact: maxandrew690@gmail.com
SERVICES AUTOMOTIVE
CASH FOR CARS!
We buy all cars! Junk, highend, totaled – it doesn’t matter! Get free towing and same day cash! NEWER MODELS too! Call 866-5359689 (AAN CAN)
AUTOMOTIVE
DONATE YOUR CAR TO KIDS
Your donation helps fund the search for missing children. Accepting Trucks, Motorcycles & RV’s , too! Fast Free Pickup – Running or Not - 24 Hour Response - Maximum Tax Donation – Call 877-266-0681 (AAN CAN)
in as little as ONE DAY! Affordable prices - No payments for 18 months! Lifetime warranty & professional installs. Senior & Military Discounts available. Call: 1-877-6495043 (AAN CAN)
HOME REPAIR
NEVER PAY FOR COVERED HOME REPAIRS AGAIN!
Complete Care Home Warranty COVERS ALL MAJOR SYSTEMS AND APPLIANCES. 30 DAY RISK FREE. $200.00 OFF + 2 FREE Months! 1-877-6730511. Hours Mon-Thu, Sun : 9:30 am to 8:00 pm Fri : 9:30 am to 2:00 pm (all times Eastern) (AAN CAN)
HEALTH
STILL PAYING TOO MUCH FOR YOUR MEDICATION?
Save up to 90% on RX refill! Order today and receive free shipping on 1st order prescription required. Call 1-855-750-1612 (AAN CAN)
HEALTH
VIAGRA AND CIALIS USERS!
50 Pills SPECIAL $99.00 FREE Shipping! 100% guaranteed. CALL NOW! 888-531-1192 (AAN CAN)
MOVING
LONG DISTANCE MOVING
Call today for a FREE QUOTE from America’s Most Trusted Interstate Movers. Let us take the stress out of moving! Speak to a Relocation Specialist, call 855-947-2919 (AAN CAN)
PUBLISHING
BECOME A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!
We edit, print and distribute your work internationally. We do the work… You reap the Rewards! Call for a FREE Author’s Submission Kit: 844-511-1836. (AAN CAN)
Get GotW3 with lightning fast speeds plus take your service with you when you travel! As low as $109.99/ mo! 1-888-519-0171 (AAN CAN)
Hiring sexy women (& men). Highly Paid Magazine, Web, and Movie/TV work. no experience needed, all sizes accepted. 313-289-2008.
TV/CABLE/INTERNET
MALE GIGOLO FOR COUPLES AND SINGLES
CABLE PRICE INCREASE AGAIN?
Switch To DIRECTV & Save + get a $100 visa gift card! Get More Channels For Less Money. Restrictions apply. Call Now! 877-693-0625 (AAN CAN)
TV/CABLE/INTERNET
HUGHESNET SATELLITE INTERNET
Finally, no hard data limits! Call Today for speeds up to 25mbps as low as $59.99/mo! $75 gift card, terms apply. 1-844-416-7147 (AAN CAN)
TRAINING
COMPUTER & IT TRAINING PROGRAM!
ADULT ENTERTAINMENT
248-432-7201
Handsome, white, 42, bisexual, fit, healthy, short, dark curly hair, mustache, 420 friendly, expert masseur. I travel to your local home, office or hotel. Also available for events or as dinner companion. $120 cash hourly. Call or text - Jake 947-234-3289 from 10am to midnight.
TO ADVERTISE IN MT CLASSIFIEDS CALL (313) 961-4060
Train ONLINE to get the skills to become a Computer & Help Desk Professional now! Grants and Scholarships available for certain programs for qualified applicants. Call CTI for details! 1-855-554-4616 (AAN CAN)
MASSAGE
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES ONLY
(INDEPENDENT) DRAPING IS REQUIRED INTAKE FORM is given COVID -19 READY Enjoy a calm and soothing massage HEALTHY BENEFIT HEALTHY MASSAGE 734 447 7895 Early and late appointments are available must be left on Credit Card on file.
MASSAGE
RELAXING NURU MASSAGE
for the quarantine must not be sick. Must be clean and wear mask Outcalls only incalls are at your cost Hey I’m here to help. This is Candy melt in your mouth so try my massages they’re sweet as can be!!! (734) 596-1376
metrotimes.com | February 16-22, 2022
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