Daily Detroit

In Detroit, we live surrounded by legends. The musical history of our city is deep, and it's in multiple genres. Today's guest is helping people keep dancing to this amazing music.

Dan Austin is the voice behind the indispensable Historic Detroit, a well-connected man about town and a music fanatic who appears regularly on Ann Delisi's "Essential Music" show on WDET-FM.

Today, he dropped by the Detroit Shipping Company studio of Podcast Detroit to talk all about his passion project.

The Motor City Soul Club celebrates its fifth anniversary of shaking tail feathers around the city this Saturday, April 13 at the Marble Bar in Detroit. Dan tells us about the Motor City Soul Club's origins, how his love of the genre sprouted despite an upbringing defined by the likes of REO Speedwagon and Journey, and how he finds records to spin in 2019.

If you're a music lover — and particularly of rare soul from the '60s and '70s — listen in. And if you're not, maybe it's time you checked it out.

The car is synonymous with Detroit. It is, after all, the Motor City. You might even be listening to this in your car.

But what if there was a different way forward than a vehicle for every man, woman and even sometimes, child?

What if instead of a half hour at the gym then a half hour in your car, you could bike or walk and get to where you're going? Or, like here in Michigan, get around without paying the highest car insurance in the nation?

It seems like crazy talk, I know. But it's a growing movement in car-dominated America, and here in Metro Detroit. Both the city and some suburbs are making improvements aimed at making more walkable and bikeable neighborhoods.

Our guest today is Doug Gordon. He's a co-host of The War On Cars podcast and a long time advocate of city life that actually experiences the city you live in instead of whizzing past it at 70 miles an hour.

This update edition of the Daily Detroit podcast for April 9, 2019 includes…

• The city of Detroit's Office of the Inspector General is opening an investigation of the Mayor and city officials after a Freep report that says a charity got preference. The city and Wayne State University strongly push back on the newspaper's report. The city calls it "completely false."
• Two people have pled guilty (when we recorded this, they were charged) as part of a Federal investigation into the Detroit Demolition program. The feds say they took bribes. [DetNews] [ClickOnDetroit]
• Self-driving cars have been overhyped and a lot longer off, says Ford's CEO [Bloomberg]
• There's a new report looking at if Flying cars are good for the environment
• A newly updated map shows Detroit's bike lane expansion and more [Detroit Greenways]
• Parson's Chicken and Fish will head to Frame Friday and Saturday for special dinners with Executive Chef Hunter Moore. There will be frozen Negroni Slushes [Daily Detroit]

Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Monday, April 8, 2019. The weekend is over, that girl is totally not gonna call you, and your dreams are crushed.

On today's show, Consumers Energy has issued a report into why its Macomb County natural gas storage and compression facility caught fire on Jan. 30, prompting the utility to issue an emergency request asking people to dial back their thermostats as the mercury plunged below zero.

In other news, a man whom paramedics believed was suffering from a drug overdose ended up becoming combative and stole the ambulance. He was apprehended a short time later by police.

Also, Shield's has opened its new Midtown location serving Detroit-style pizza. And the Detroit Shipping Company is getting a new Nepalese dumpling food stall called Momo Cha.

Finally, the city of Detroit is hiring for 200 seasonal positions with its Parks and Recreation division. You can attend job fairs at the following times and locations, but you're supposed to apply online first.

Thanks for listening to Daily Detroit. Tell a friend about us, leave us a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, and support us by becoming a Patreon member.

People's preferences are changing. There very well may be a day in the not too distant future where a majority of people do not own their own cars. Younger generations seem to be more into the shared economy as opposed to having a love for the personally owned motor vehicle.

And sometimes, even if they do love cars, they don't have the financial resources that the previous generation did.

To that end, you probably knew that Detroit is major center of the development of the automobile. But we're now transitioning to developing more than just the traditional vehicle — to creating technology and solutions that helps people get around. That's mobility.

Today's episode talks about that mobility industry in Metro Detroit. Not just Detroit, the Motor City… but Detroit, the Mobility City.

There are numerous startups and the big players – including Ford and GM – that are serious about it and there's a lot of money being spent.

After all, that new Ford campus that's happening in Corktown? That's about developing this kind of technology right here in Detroit.

That conversation, led by Sven Gustafson – is with Glenn Stevens. He's the Executive Director of MICHauto. That's an initiative of the Detroit Regional Chamber.

And even though he's the head of a group called MICHauto, you might be surprised that his answers to the challenges and opportunities Metro Detroit has is not just to add more cars to the road.

Mobility and transit issues are also very real where we live. We touch on the challenges everyday people have around those issues in a city with areas with different needs and the way forward for a region that will never have something like a subway.

Thanks for listening! If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe free in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

On today's episode, hear firsthand what it's like to bite into a coney pasty.

That's a pasty, the traditional U.P. pastry, filled with a Detroit-style coney that's meant to dip into yellow mustard. They're from Ackroyd's Scottish Bakery in Redford Township and are available for the month of April.

In other news, Amtrak wants to restore passenger rail service between Detroit and Toronto in 2020. That hasn't been available since the pre-Amtrak late '60s. [Curbed]

Elsewhere, late-night Detroit TV legend The Ghoul has died. During the 1970s and '80s, Ron Sweed played the crazed host of eccentric late-night programming, inserting random sound bytes into bad horror movies and blowing things up with M-80s. The Ghoul represents an era and genre of local programming that mostly no longer exists.

Also:

• Union Joints, the hospitality group that operates restaurants like Vinsetta Garage and Clarkston Union, plans to open its newest eatery inside the expanded Little Caesars headquarters in Detroit.
• Motor City Casino wants to add more parking, but in this case it's probably not worth the outrage it's receiving in some quarters of the interwebs.
• And the city of Sterling Heights has released renderings for a new Culver's and LA Fitness Signature Club, which people out that way really seem to care a lot about. If you wanna see them, they're here.

The Freep Film Festival starts next week with a gala screening April 10 for "Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem Magazine" at the Fillmore Detroit. On today's episode, we feature three great interviews to preview some of what's on offer during the festivities, which run through April 14:

• JJ Kramer, co-producer of "Boy Howdy!" JJ is the son of Barry Kramer, the founder and publisher of Creem Magazine, which launched in Detroit's Cass Corridor in 1969 and billed itself as "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine."
• Steve Byrne, the executive director of the Freep Film Festival and the arts and entertainment editor by day for the Detroit Free Press.
• And finally, Jennifer Washington, maker of the documentary "God Said Give 'Em Drum Machines: The Story of Detroit Techno," which explores that genre's roots in the 1980s.

You can read about all this year's films and find all the showtimes at freepfilmfestival.com.

Support Daily Detroit by telling your friends about us, subscribing and leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, or supporting our work for as little as $1 a month by becoming a Patreon member. Thanks for listening!

It's April, and that means baseball season has arrived to help chase the final remnants of winter out of Detroit.

The Tigers play their first home game of the season on Thursday when they host the Kansas City Royals, with first pitch scheduled for 1:10 p.m.

First on the podcast we checked in with Chris Brown, host of the podcast Locked on Tigers and a writer for Tigs Town, for his rundown of the Tigers' 2019 roster and their prospects for the season.

Opening Day is practically a holiday in Detroit, of course, so in today's episode, we talk to our Man About Town, Devon O'Reilly, to get his picks for where to go and what to eat around town before and after the action on the field.

Some of the ones you'll want to check out include:

Nancy Whiskey

The Detroit Shipping Company

The Skip

The Brakeman

Queens Bar (no TVs, but good drinks at a reasonable price)

Mootz (for grab and go slices with drinks)

Slices (for grab and go slices without drinks)

Don't forget, be safe! If you've indulged a bit too much, you can grab a Lyft ride home for half the price using the code WALLSIDE2019.

Hope you enjoy our episode, have fun on Opening Day and please don't trash our city while you're out celebrating.

Thanks for listening to Daily Detroit. You can do us a solid, and help us keep the lights on, in three ways:

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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has asked the state's insurance regulator to audit the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association after it said on Wednesday it would raise its annual fee by 14.6 percent, or $28, to $220 for every insured vehicle in Michigan.

The fees go toward covering catastrophic medical claims from auto accidents, but the MCCA has never been particularly transparent about how it operates, its finances or how it sets its fees.

So says our guest on today's episode, Bobby Raitt, a principal at Michigan Auto Law in Farmington Hills who has worked with lawmakers in Lansing on auto-insurance reform since 2005. "It's important, it's meaningful and hopefully it's a good start" toward fixing Michigan's broken auto insurance system, he said.

Michigan has the nation's highest auto insurance rates, and nowhere is insurance more expensive than in Detroit. The announcement of the fee increase follows a study from the University of Michigan that found auto insurance is well above what is considered affordable in 97 percent of the state's zip codes. While the federal government considers auto insurance affordable at 2 percent of an average income, Michigan's no-fault insurance eats up 36 percent of drivers' income in some zip codes in Detroit.

"Michiganders deserve to know why they are being forced to shell out hundreds of dollars in additional fees for car insurance, which is why I'm ordering an audit to provide drivers with the transparency they deserve," Whitmer said in a statement.

Thanks for listening to Daily Detroit. Find us and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and consider supporting us by becoming a member on Patreon.

If you've ever event spent any time outdoors within a mile's radius of it — say, in Midtown or Eastern Market — then you've no doubt smelled the sickly sweet odor of the Detroit trash incinerator. Well, no more.

Detroit Renewable Energy, the umbrella organization that owns and operates it, says it is shutting the incinerator down 33 years after it first fired up because of finances and complaints from the community. Operations will cease this week, but it'll take up to 90 days to fully power the trash-to-energy facility down. Mayor Mike Duggan says he's committed to making sure the site never again serves as a waste incinerator.

What's next for that property, which is owned by the city, isn't yet clear. One novel idea comes from our friend Frank Nemecek over at the Warrendale Blog: Make every strip club in the city move there, like an amusement park of T&A.

Moving on:

• The measles outbreak is now 22, which is an incredible thing to write in the year 2019, when we're also developing driverless automobiles
• Lisa Ludwinski of Sister Pie (we interviewed her here) and Zingermans Roadhouse are finalists for prestigious James Beard Awards
• People are losing their minds over a Chick Fil A popup downtown
• Developer Woodborn Partners plans a $16 million mixed-use development on Bagley in Mexicantown
• Marshall Mathers sent out the following all-caps tweet about the new American Alliance of Football
• Backers of a bid to refurbish Hamtramck Stadium, the former home of the Negro League's Detroit Stars, hit their $50,000 crowdfunding goal and will celebrate Saturday at Baker Street Car Bar
• A tall ship is coming to Detroit this September, and you can get tickets for a ride
• The 6,000 square-foot space that formerly housed Gayle's Chocolates in Royal Oak will get a ginormous coffee shop, with a second-floor kiddie play space
• We run down a bunch of the changes and improvements to the Avenue of Fashion on Livernois
• And Stacey Hotwaxx Hale and John Collins are spinning at Motor City Wine this Saturday, starting at 9 p.m. Listen to our interview with Hale here.

Thanks for listening. Find Daily Detroit, subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and consider supporting us on Patreon to assure we keep new episodes coming.