Nightlife : Buzz

LiveWorkDetroit! showcases Detroit as the place for Michigan's college graduates and young professionals to live and work. The group says Detroit is one of the hottest and hippest places in the country (thank you, we appreciate that) and LiveWorkDetroit! gives participants the opportunity to see it in person and to hear it directly from employers eager to hire the best and brightest.

LiveWorkDetroit will take place Oct. 21, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Max M. Fisher Music Center, 3711 Woodward Ave., in Midtown Detroit.

There is a $15 registration at www.michiganadvantage.org/LWD. Click here to check out the event flyer.

Detroit's newest bed-and-breakfast will offer guests a dose of original style along with their pillow and key.

Meghan McEwen, founder of the amazingly cool DesignTripper blog, posted a few thoughts on her latest venture, Honor + Folly, which will bring the inn concept to Corktown's Michigan Ave.

Writes McEwen, "I’ve been so inspired by all the people and places I’ve been writing about for the past year, I’ve decided to join ‘em. I don’t have photos yet ... and you’ll have to bear with me while I paint, stock, source, sand furniture, adorn walls, make beds, knit pillows and hang a shingle."

While details are limited, McEwen tells us Honor + Folly will feature cooking classes and lotsa cool furnishings from local designers. It will open to guests in mid-November.

Click here to read McEwen's post, and keep tuning into Model D for more Honor + Folly.

Readers as young as six can now enjoy the brilliant spectacle of Tyree Guyton's work -- without leaving the house.

A new picture-book biography, "Magic Trash: A Story of Tyree Guyton and His Art," was released by author J.H Shapiro and illustrator Vanessa Brantley-Newton. The story details Guyton's transformative powers on his East Side neighborhood.

Bid farewell to Guyton, who is heading to Basel, Switzerland, for a one-year arts residency, on Friday, Oct. 14 at 8 p.m. Kresge Eminent Artist honoree Marcus Belgrave will perform his unique new composition, All That Jazz: The Heidelberg Suite, with Anthony Wilson and the Detroit All-Star Jazz Orchestra. The concert was made possible through a $50,000 gift from the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation. The fete takes place at the First Congregational Church at 33 E. Forest. Tickets are $25. The concert is in partnership with the Arts League of Michigan.

Excerpt:

Guyton is headed to Basel, Switzerland in late October for a prestigious, one-year residency at the Laurenz House where he will reflect on 25 years of the Heidelberg Project through a series of manifestos. This work is a component of his 2009 honorary PhD from the College for Creative Studies. Guyton has also been invited to participate in the international 2012 Art Basel, called “the largest art show in the world.”

Purchase your tickets and find out more here.

Local music writer William E. Ketchum III says hip-hop's elusive pendulum of influence is swinging back to Motown, offering five reasons rap enthusiasts across the nation need to tune in to Detroit's musical offerings (and no, Eminem isn't one of them).

Noteworthy artist Royce da 5'9" has a new album, Big Sean is cracking Billboard lists with his Finally Famous LP, which came out on Kanye West's G.O.O.D label; while indie rock and rap fans alike found much to like about Black Milk's collaborations with Jack White. Up-and-comers FowL and Danny Brown also made the list.

Excerpt:

"It started out as an individual thing. Now, I think all of us realize it can't be an individual thing," says Royce Da 5'9". "We've all been self-contained over the years, but now we realize there's strength in numbers. It's good to be unified, as opposed to everyone on their own agenda."

Read more here.

Carleton S. Gholz, a native Detroiter who earned a Ph.D in communications at the University of Pittsburgh and now teaches at Northeastern University in Boston, is writing a book on "Post-Motown" Detroit. Some of you might remember Dr. Gholz from our August speaker series on Detroit music.

While we wait for the book, here's a tease -- an illuminating interview in the Daily Swarm with Morris Mitchell, a Detroit DJ (way back in 1971) before mixing records was the norm. "Close and Play" meant just that -- playing a record all the way through, take the record off, and slip the next song on the turntable -- all the while, maintaining a flow to keep the audience on their feet. Mitchell belongs to the small group of historically gay DJs who brought the music from places like New York and Chicago and laid a foundation for dance culture in the D.

Excerpt:

I’ve never been scared of anybody that was better than me; I think that made me popular. When I did cabarets, if I had somebody spin with me that they weren’t familiar with, and then they were really good, the crowd would really appreciate it. You follow what I’m saying? Because it was somebody new they had never seen get behind those turntables, they wore it out. They wore the crowd out.

Feel the beat here.

This year's MI Apple Gala, a benefit for Eastern Market, will offer patrons a new twist -- the chance to witness the city's first Next Urban Chef competition. It's all taking place Oct. 14 at Shed 3 in the market (click here for tickets).

Recycle Here!'s Matthew Naimi says the live cook-off will raise awareness of Detroit's "food shed," the local fresh food system extending through Ontario, southeast Michigan and northern Ohio (of which Eastern Market is the hub). Supino Pizzeria owner Dave Mancini will face-off against Phil Jones, the former executive chef at Lola's and incoming chef at Colors Detroit. The two chefs will be supported by a team of non-professional Detroiters both young and old, including several DPS students mentored as cooking assistants.

"This is as much about the chefs as it is about the youth that are involved," Naimi says. "We really are trying to show youth in the city of Detroit, especially, that there are careers in the food system -- from cooking and fine dining to producing food, processing food or growing food. It's all part of our food shed."

Here's how it works. Each team will receive an ingredient box of produce, meats, grains and spices (all from food shed producers). They'll have an hour to produce a unique meal, judged on the merits of innovation, creativity, taste and presentation.

The Next Urban Chef contest is just the beginning of a series, Naimi says. He says Mancini and Jones' community work made them natural choices for the first head-to-head challenge. "Dave has helped a lot of the small food groups get started with his kitchen, and by being a very giving person," he says. "And Phil Jones did a lot of work with the Food Policy Council. And his work with the Colors kitchen lends itself to working with youth and others."

Bite into more here.

Techno enthusiasts might associate the Red Bull Music Academy with offbeat genre collaborations and up-and-coming producers, but the World Tour stop in Detroit last week was anything but. Motor City Frequencies was a tribute to Detroit's founding fathers of electronic music, the second wave of DJs who followed in their tracks, and a chance to spotlight the city's next class of musicians advancing the craft. The week-long event, hosted at Flat 151 and TV Bar, mixed heavies like Juan Atkins, Theo Parrish and Underground Resistance's Mike Banks with hip hop producer Nick Speed (50 Cent, Tupac Shakur).

Excerpt:

Speed told the assembled crowd how much he loves the 'gumbo of music styles' Detroit offers and his send-off was a high-energy tribute to all the original music the city has spawned. With one of his own beats blasting through the speakers, Speed stood on the couch and began freestyling for the audience.

The beat goes on.

Most every city newspaper has taken a crack at the "Detroit travelogue" this year -- a Lonely Planet-esque tour though the city, combining the D's often mercurial history with present rebuilding efforts. In Detroit, writes the Irish Times, we're successfully re-inventing 200 years of history into a tour for every traveler -- be it the Motown music-seeker, the Underground Railroad tracer or the merry Prohibition buster. Rather than dwell on ancient memories, IT also lauds Detroit's thriving downtown as a cosmopolitan attraction all its own.

Excerpt:

Take a trip up to the restaurant on the roof of the Detroit Marriott hotel, officially the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the western hemisphere, and have a drink. It’s pretty jaw-dropping, on a par with my favourite, the rooftop restaurant in the San Francisco Hilton. Back on the streets – as they say in the cop shows – head to Midtown and the Detroit Institute of Arts, which, despite its prosaic name, houses one of the finest art collections in the US. Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry cycle of 27 fresco panels – gifted by another Ford, this time Edsel – is considered the best work of his career.

Keep traveling here.

It's quite the contradiction that Detroit, a city of more than 700,000 residents, is often photographed as if it were totally empty. That's what inspired Nancy Barr to curate Detroit Revealed: Photographs, 2000-2010, which opens Oct. 16 at the DIA. Enough of the abandoned buildings -- Detroit Revealed draws on a mix of home-based and out-of-town photogs to document life in the city; workers in the Ford Rouge Plant, children and immigrant gardens.

Excerpt:

Great photography is not only about good technique; it's also about access to people and places that are unique to a particular community. I would welcome more work that takes into consideration the diversity of our city, its people and the culture, by photographers from all types of backgrounds. Their perspectives would (and will) enrich Detroit's photographic legacy and identity.

Slide show and more available here.

If you don't yet know Danny Brown, now you know ...

While this local hip-hop artist doesn't yet have the name recognition of a Big Sean or Eminem, Brown's latest mixtape, XXX, available for free on Fool's Gold Records, is winning Brown some serious hype. No less that SPIN Magazine lauds his "manic performance" chops and "sheer presence" in a recent essay, calling Brown one of the most interesting rappers laying down tracks in the industry today.

Excerpt:

Though XXX ends with the slightly triumphant "30," which celebrates Brown's come-up, it also imagines the rapper soon dead of an overdose; and it comes right after "Scrap Or Die," which should rank up there with the Throne's "New Day" as a recent rap song to be handed over to any old fart who's still skeptical of hip-hop's ability to be poignant and poetic. The song's about a family so down on their luck, due to an awful mix of poverty, addiction, and our shitty economy, that they start breaking into the many abandoned homes described in "Fields," stealing metal, copper wire, anything to sell to local junkyards.

Get more Danny here.

Shimmer on the River, the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy's largest fundraising celebration of the year, will celebrate the waterfront promenade's continued development with an elegant dinner and dancing event along the Detroit River.

The fundraiser, which takes place on Thursday, Sept. 8 from 6 to 10 p.m. at the GM Plaza, will honor U.S. Senator Carl Levin for his continued support of the Detroit Riverfront. Guests will enjoy a strolling dinner of Michigan-made products and local favorites, and jazz artists the Les Williams band and One World Island will grace the stage.

"This is an evening for every Detroit Riverfront supporter to come together and not only celebrate what's been accomplished, but to also play a role in its continued transformation and growth," says Detroit Riverfront Conservancy CEO Faye Nelson.

A range of ticket levels, including Young Professional and VIP prices, are available. Visit detroitriverfront.org to purchase tickets and learn more.

The fifth Detroit Restaurant Week will return from Friday, Sept. 23 to Sunday, Oct. 2, for the fall edition of the city's popular dining promotion, which offers restaurant-goers a prix fixe three-course meal for only $28. 

Quite simply, Detroit is a city of extremes, and its music reflects that. Detroit's importance in the global electronic music scenes is often referred to in the past tense. With the recent emergence of Kyle Hall and other young Detroit producers, however, it's clear that a spark remains. When we visited, we found a number of artists with their eyes (and ears) firmly set towards the future.

Community members have worked hard to jazz up the green space at Roosevelt Park in Corktown, and there's something to be said for partying in the shadow of the Michigan Central Station. The new weekly CityBuild parties feature Slip & Slide, dodgeball, food, drinks and tons of great Detroit bands in the lineup.

Model D swung by the first CityBuild happening in Roosevelt Park and had ourselves a blast. See you there every Sunday in August, from 2 to 8 p.m.

Peep the flyer here.

"Young, Broke & Beautiful" -- there's no way a TV show aiming for that demographic could pass up a night in our fair city. This intrepid series from the Independent Film Channel spotlights indie culture and creators across the nation. Their hour-long travelogue on the D makes friends with plenty of our favorite people and places, from the Imagination Station and DJ Kyle Hall to late-night parties and Coneys (natch).

Excerpt:

Stuart will pull the Scion into the most beautiful, broken down parking lot in the world. There's no doubt that all these YBB's will know where the dopest, most off the chain, unsanctioned warehouse party is happening, and Stuart will find himself closing down the night, partying with his people.

IFC will rerun the Detroit episode all week, beginning Tuesday at 6 p.m. Find out more about the channel's tour Detroit here.