[EID Feature] Schramm's Mead: Mead from the Guy Who Wrote the Book on It

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

Starting today, Schramm's Mead in Ferndale is now open for business! After months of planning, Ken Schramm, owner and internationally-respected mead maker, is finally opening his much-anticipated meadery and tasting room in downtown Ferndale. (Read the EID mead primer here.)

The tasting room has six meads on tap - four signature and two rotating - as well as a selection of "mead cocktails," along with a small menu of sweet and savory small plates made to pair with their meads. (Cheese plate, anyone? Anyone besides me?) The tasting room can accommodate 28 inside and another 20 on the spacious patio overlooking 9 Mile when the weather is gracious enough to permit it. On the walls are works by local artists that are available for purchase; Schramm charges less commission than galleries and hopes to be able to get a lot of quality artwork in. As Schramm was looking for a location somewhere along the Woodward Corridor he looked at many buildings and spoke to many city council members and planning officials. He found Ferndale to be the most enthusiastic and supportive of what he wanted to do. Now, between Schramm's Meadery, from one of the most respected mead makers in the world, and B. Nektar, possibly the highest-producing meadery in the country right now, Ferndale might as well be called Meaddale. 

All meads will be available for purchase in the tasting as well as select stores - they are self-distributing for now until their production requires something more substantial. Schramm has a goal of producing 300 gallons per month, or somewhere north of 130 cases (by comparison, neighboring Ferndale meadery B. Nektar has been steadily producing over 2,000 cases per month, so Schramm's is a tiny operation by comparison). 

I had the chance to sit down with Schramm last month to discuss his new meadery and his history with the burgeoning craft mead industry - something he has been instrumental in growing. "Okay, I have a bit of a reputation," he said bashfully to me as I attempted to make him take credit for his work. Schramm is an exceedingly kind and humble person, and more than one industry friend has referred to him as a genius - a label I have absolutely no doubt he deserves after hearing him rattle off the numerical designations of yeast strains he has used, the ethical conundrum of organic versus local, and the importance of having "fidelity to your product." Quality in, quality out, he says - which means while he will be using Michigan fruit and honey in his products, he is also very mindful of seasonality and will use what he needs to from where he needs to as the items are in season and available. 

The following is an excerpt from this conversation that appears in this month's issue of Hour Detroit, now on stands. 

*****

Just as craft brewing started in the basements of home brewers before it broke into the mainstream, so too did mead – and the home brewer and home meadmaker were often one and the same.

That's how Ken Schramm started in 1987. His brother bought him a home brewing kit one year for Christmas, which came with a copy of Charlie Pappazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, long held as the definitive guide on the subject. In the back there was an appendix on mead.

"In it he spoke in superlatives, [like] there's really nothing better [than mead] in the whole wide world," Schramm says. "So I decided to give it a shot."

At the time craft brewing wasn't even yet in its infancy; it was still a zygote. Mead had even less prominence. Schramm started making meads and contacted fellow Michigander Bill Pfeiffer, one of the first five national beer judges in the country who was also meadmaker of the year. Pfieffer directed Schramm to the Ann Arbor Brewers Guild, where he met Dr. Dan McConnell, a PhD in microbiology research from the University of Michigan. "We both had the mead bug at the time, and I suggested we start a mead-only competition. Then people would send us their meads from all over and we could learn which ones were best and how they made them." And so, in partnership with a third friend Mike O'Brien, the Mazer Cup was born, America's first and largest mead-only competition. (The event is now held annually in March in Boulder, Colorado.)

Schramm and his mead buddies continued to build their reputations with experimental meads, and were guest speakers at the American Homebrewers Association national conference in Denver in 1994. "At that point our reputations were sealed," Schramm says. "People knew we were serious. We were asked to write articles. Eventually I got asked to write a book." McConnell was busy with a research grant from Harvard so Schramm took the lead on the mead-making manual.

The Compleat Meadmaker was released in 2003. It is still considered the current book of reference for meadmaking, and Schramm plans on a second edition soon. That's right: Ken Schramm is, quite literally, the man who wrote the book on mead.

Now he is opening his own meadery in downtown Ferndale, which he has wanted to do, he says, "Since before I wrote the book." Now in his 50s, he decided that if he was ever going to do it, now is the time. "I really wanted to open the meadery when mead was starting to gain currency and was not so obscure, when it was beginning to be part of the craft alcohol movement in the United States. I had to do something to support that first."

Want to see more? Check out the Flickr set here.

[NEWS BITES] Eastern Market After Dark is tonight and features 48 venues plus previews of new restaurants

If you've been on the scene for awhile, it should come as no surprise to you to hear that Eastern Market can be just as lively at night as it is during the day. (And sometimes much more so, if the day we're talking about is any other one but Saturday.) This has meant different things over the years. Now it means dozens of art and design studios, galleries, restaurants, and various other kinds of creative spaces.

The third-annual Detroit Design Festival is now in full swing and tonight is one of the DDF's signature events, Eastern Market After Dark.

EMAD started with last year's DDF after Nina Marcus-Kurlonko, Project Manager for the Red Bull House of Art, was driving through the market district at night. "I saw a bunch of lights on that you don't normally see on; people were all in their studios working," she says. "People have this association with Eastern Market and the food. I thought, there has to be a way for people to see this culture here. People are always creating and building things in the neighborhood."

Eastern Market is home to dozens of designers and artists who have studio spaces in the market district and also call it their home. There are also galleries like the Red Bull House of Art, the more recently-opened Inner State Gallery (home of 1xRUN), the gallery-café-performance space and soon to be museum Trinosophes, the hacker/makerspace OmniCorp, Division Street Boutique and Aptemal Clothing (of "Detroit Hustles Harder" fame), not one but two vintage letterpress studios, Signal-Return and Salt + Cedar, the hard to define but necessary to explore Detroit Mercantile Co., and so many other independently-owned businesses that blend artspace and design studio with retail commerce. (And food. There's always food.)

Nina sent out an email to some folks, who sent an email out to more folks, and by the time the first Eastern Market After Dark was held last year during the 2012 Detroit Design Festival, she had 25 places signed up to open up their spaces for behind-the-scenes tours and artist walkthroughs to the 2,000 people who showed up.

This year there's 48.

In addition to walking through all the studios and artists' workshops the public might not otherwise have access to, there is also a ton of programming to go along with Eastern Market After Dark. An artist will be making an installation piece at Inner State Gallery from their 1xRUN paper scraps. Detroit Collision Works' First Container will have storytelling boxes at several venues. OmniCorp's makers will be showing off their skills. (This might involve some sort of fire; one never knows.) Odu, the 14-piece Afrobeat orchestra led by composer, musician and artist Adeboye Adegbenro and consisting of some of Detroit's finest musicians including Baba Akunda, Jennie Knaggs, and Joel Peterson, will be playing at Trinosophes at 9 p.m. for $5. Aptemal will have screenprinting demos at the Division Street Boutique. Detroit artist and musician Ron Zakrin, whose studio space is in Eastern Market, will play a show at the Red Bull House of Art.

And, as for the food: the American Institute of Architects Detroit chapter is hosting an awards celebration in Shed 3 from 7:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. From 7-9 p.m., ticket-holders will have food from Detroit restaurants including Rubbed and cocktails from Bailout Productions. (Tickets are only $35 and are available at the door, and yes, they accept credit.) Salt + Cedar is releasing a new Detroit-themed poster and also serving "Bunny Chow," the savory street food of Cape Town. Eastern Market is also launching their third Thursday night market in Shed 4, which includes a temporary installation project, a "chandelier" made from found objects from all over the city. Third Thursday night markets will have more of an artisan and craft focus, though given the nature of tonight's event, this one will also have food. Need more food? Preview two new restaurants that aren't even open yet: Frontera and Guns + Butter (GASP, you mean Guns + Butter is opening a permanent space in Eastern Market? Yes Marge, they are), plus others like Trinosophes, Cutter's, Roma Café, Supino Pizzeria, and more.

For the full list of venues and events, check the events page here. And here's more info on the AIA celebration too. There will also be plenty of music, which kind of goes without saying. "Everyone in this neighborhood has this really fun energy," Nina says. If you've never experienced the energy of Eastern Market after dark for yourself, tonight's the night to go.

Twitter/Instagram/Facebook the shit out of this event with these hashtags: #EMafterdark #DDF2013

[Model D] New murals in Eastern Market celebrate changemaking and all things Weird

Photo by Sal Rodriguez, photo313.com

Eastern Market has a new welcome mat: behold one of the new murals on Gratiot entering the market, courtesy of German and Austrian artist collective "The Weird," recently in town for their group exhibition at Inner State Gallery. After spending some time absorbing the history and the "characters" of the Market, the Weird created this mural, which offers their interpretation of the people and places they saw. (And, yes, it's kind of weird.)

The Weird's murals (they did a few) are the latest in an ongoing public art effort spearheaded by the guys behind Inner State (formerly 323 East in Royal Oak) and 1xRUN. "We've been engaged in public arts projects for many years," says Jesse Cory, who founded 323 and 1xRUN along with partners Dan Armand and Ryan Brogan. "It has always been in our blood and something we thought was important."

Read more.

[EID Preview] Stella Good Coffee and Good Design

All photos from Stella Good Coffee.

It could easily be said that the best-designed public spaces in Detroit right now are the new breed of coffeehouses that keep popping up. From the citrus-soaked modernism of Urban Bean Co. that looks like it could have been plucked straight out of the pages of Dwell (in fact, and this surely is no coincidence, issues of Dwell are displayed on a magazine rack – "displayed" really being the best word to describe it), to the west coast aesthetic of Astro Coffee (which looks like pretty much every uber-trendy coffeehouse in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and L.A. but with a distinctly Detroit flair) and the modern rustic design of Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Co. in Midtown, coffee houses are no longer the shabby chic student flopping grounds of the '90s but the aesthetically-appealing refuge of the design-obsessed MacBook set. As the coffee has gone from thoughtless drip to compulsively mindful pour-over, so too have the spaces been made over. Stella Good Coffee inside the Fisher Building is the latest example.

Stella Good Coffee, previously known as Stella International Café, closed last fall and is reopening today after going through a redesign that could easily qualify for a segment on Extreme Makeover: Coffeehouse Edition. Kevin Borsay and Shawn Santo, founders and owners of Pure Detroit, the Rowland Café, and both Stella Cafés (there is another location inside the Guardian Building), oversaw all of the work themselves, along with James Willer of Reclaim Detroit, which works with a number of local Detroit nonprofits to deconstruct old, abandoned homes and repurpose the materials for new projects – both a sort of philosophical and literal honoring of Detroit's past while looking forward to the future. (Willer also did some work at Great Lakes.)

This café has been open since 2007, at a time when Detroit's coffee scene was a bit … well, sad. ("Underserved" is a nicer way of saying it.) Certainly long before Detroit became the new Seattle. But in the last several years the coffee culture has been ramped up significantly, and to stay in the game, Stella had to step it up. Borsay explains that the old Stella "didn't have the look and feel we wanted," and that a redesign was always part of the plan. Finally, the time was right.

After a complete gut down to the bare walls and floor, the new Stella is about as completely different as it could possibly be while still retaining the same name (and even that is only partial). Gorgeous century-old wood comprises the completely rebuilt counter, tables and ledges. The floor is the original floor from 1928, buried under layers of concrete. "I saw a picture of that historic floor and wondered if it was still under there," says Borsay. He chopped through all the layers on top of it and "sure enough, it was there." Part of the renovation work included grinding down to the original floor and polishing it up, but the manual labor was worth it: "Albert Kahn had a hand in this floor."

Through Reclaim Detroit, Willer helped Borsay and Santo source materials and, since he is also an architect, worked with them on the new design and the construction. "Without him we couldn't have done it." The wood came from 2644 Cadillac Boulevard on Detroit's east side. The house was disassembled brick by brick and, instead of throwing it in a landfill, remilled it and sold it to Stella.

Willer explains that the wood from these historic old Detroit homes came from native Michigan forests. Michigan now only has about 5% of its original native forests left, which is all protected land. The only place you can get this original native lumber is from these old houses. Additionally, at the time these homes were built – the early 1900s – they used mostly old growth timber that was already 50+ years old. So the wood you see inside the new Stella Good Coffee is at least 150 years old. This Douglas fir is a completely different material than what you could buy commercially, almost an exotic species that is available for a relatively low cost locally (through businesses like Reclaim Detroit, who had to establish their own mill and train people to work it because no other mills could work with these old materials).

Borsay says, "This is a good balance of maintaining the look of the building while also bringing a more modern look. This is beyond just an amenity to the building and a place to get coffee, but about a larger mission: creating vibrant, active Place 3 locations in the city." "Place 3" refers to the places where people socialize, with Place 1 being home, Place 2 being work, and Place 3 being everything else. "For us it's these really cool café environments where people meet and socialize. The more you have in the city, the more vibrant it becomes. That's our mission: to create these sorts of environments to make the city more vibrant. Rowland Café was our first foray into that."

The historic wood and floor are complemented by design elements that include custom-fabricated lampshades from Detroit Wallpaper Company featuring designs by local artists that will rotate regularly. "Instead of having art on the walls, we will have this shades done by different local artists." The happy yellow cloud design currently on display was done by local painter and musician Davin Brainard, an artist whose most recognizable work is probably the "Cloud Bridge" overpass in SW Detroit (though you've undoubtedly also seen his concert posters). The neon "Drink Good Coffee" sign on the back tile wall was fabricated by Spectrum Neon Sign Company, a Detroit business that has been around for over 30 years. "We're trying to use as many Detroit companies as we can," Borsay says.

And that includes the items that they'll serve. They'll have a selection of soups from Russell Street Deli, baked good from Avalon Breads and Traffic Jam, plus a selection of high-quality juices and yogurts in the cooler. This year, to celebrate their seventh year, they are introducing a celebratory espresso called Stella Sonic, as well as some new craft micro lot, micro-roasted coffees which will rotate seasonally.

The new space also has more seating inside (with lots of additional seating in the Fisher lobby) and also offers free WiFi. But a new look also means a whole new identity: Stella International Café, so named because when they first opened they served all illy coffee from Italy and Panini sandwiches and had more of an "international" flavor, is now Stella Good Coffee. Over the years they have migrated more towards local producers and now serve their own coffees (roasted by Detroit's century-old Cadillac Coffee Company, with some additional micro blends from Populace Coffee in Bay City). They want this new iteration to be less grab-and-go and more about the coffee itself, reflected in the new name – and so they will serve only pour-over coffee made to order, certainly a much slower process but one much more in keeping with their own philosophies of slow food and slow design (which they joked about being the process by which the new design happened, only to find out it is an actual thing).

"In my architecture background, everything has to be about speed and is pre-planned," Willer says. "Compared to this where it was more an exploration of both our personalities and engaging local artists in the community. It was a slow evolution of the design." Borsay adds, "It took us awhile because we were building it all ourselves … [but with slow design] the quality at the end is actually better. It was almost like clay art; we were molding it as we [went] along."

Another new "slow" product they are excited to offer is their loose-leaf teas sourced directly from China.

But a new name also means a new logo, and this is something the math nerds, not just the design nerds, will enjoy: the new logo incorporates the Moravian star, also known as the Great Stellated (get it?) Rhombicuboctahedron (a complicated geometric form that is meant to represent a three-dimensional image and thus is asymmetrical when drawn flat).

The Stella location inside the Guardian Building will also undergo a similar renovation and rebranding in the coming months, though they won't be closing it as they did the Fisher Building location.

Stella Good Café is celebrating a soft opening starting today, with a grand opening coming later this spring when their lobby chairs arrive.

[Model D] Trinosophes cafe, gallery and performing arts space celebrates grand opening this Saturday

Trinosophes, a new art gallery and performance space in Eastern Market, has been hosting monthly events for the past few months, but they are now ready for their full-time debut with a grand opening set for this Saturday, March 9.

Musician and event producer Joel Peterson and MOCAD Deputy Director Rebecca Mazzei have partnered on this project, which includes an integrated café, gallery and performance space. Peterson had previously been booking shows through the Bohemian National Home, and it had been his intent to find a new space since 2008.

Read more.

[EID Preview] KouZina

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

Of all the buzzy words in the buzz-centric realm of foodiedom, “street food” is probably the buzziest. We’ve adopted the trend quite readily here in metro Detroit over the past couple of years, and now we have a pretty sizable collection of food trucks (the literal sense of the phrase "street food") and restaurants with street food-style menus (the brick-and-mortar interpretation of the trend). And what this has ultimately meant is tacos. Lots and lots of tacos. Tacos are far as they eye can see and the mouth can eat. El Guapo, Jacques’ Tacos, Taco Mama, Imperial (and let’s not forget the entirety of Southwest Detroit, where the early adopters and Yelp Elites first started charting new territories in search of the most “authentic” street foods) … oh yes, we have tacos.

What we don’t have is Greek food. Not real Greek food, anyway. As Greektown itself has slowly transitioned into something less than “Greek” – the old family businesses have moved or closed or sold, leaving barely a handful of “Greek” restaurants left, and even that is a source of quibbling as the chefs of these “Greek” places tend not to be Greek themselves – Greek families have spread out across greater metro Detroit. While some might bemoan the fact that the culture is no longer condensed to one colorful city street, the culture has been wholly assimilated into the surrounding suburbs – and honestly, that’s one of the things that makes metro Detroit so great: the fact that ethnic cultures are so fully incorporated that they no longer draw notice. If we didn’t have a Greek coney island and a Middle Eastern shawarma shop on every street corner, metro Detroit would be a very different place. A place bereft of cultural diversity. (...a place like Chicago.) And that’s actually pretty awesome.

But Greek coney islands have been through their own share of Americanization and the food they serve isn’t what any Greek would call “authentic.” Now there is KouZina.

KouZina opens Monday in Royal Oak, in the tiny little building that was home to the Zumba Mexican Grille for so many years. Partners Bobby Laskaris and George Xenos have repainted the walls, opened up the front by adding garage doors that will open to the patio during the warm months, and otherwise spruced the place up a bit with cool colors and stainless steel accents. (Please note: photos were taken mid-September while the building was still under construction.) The result is a modern, stripped down, somewhat industrial chic space that will serve stripped down street food.

“A lot of the Greeks complain that there’s nowhere to eat,” Bobby says. “These coney islands butchered the Greek cuisine!” Bobby is a long-time restaurateur from a family of chefs and restaurateurs. His father Panagiotis (Pete) studied at a culinary school in Athens and worked in high-end hotels and restaurants all over Greece before coming to Detroit in 1968. He worked at Hella’s (RIP), Grecian Gardens (RIP), and the Bouzouki Lounge (back when it was a Greek supper club, not a strip club … RIP). Pete is part of the Old Guard of Greektown, but would ultimately find success in opening restaurants in the suburbs (where Greek families were happy to not have to drive to Greektown to get real Greek food). He opened Athenium Cuisine in Southfield then Olympian Café in Allen Park. He then launched a concessions business in 1984, working at ethnic festivals at Hart Plaza and growing from there.

Bobby, now 40, started as a busboy in Greektown at age 15 (a job his dad made him get). It was in the family’s concessions business that Bobby really took off. He took over the business and made it bigger, catering events at stadiums and convention centers (including the Superbowl, the All-Star Game and the World Series that were all held in Detroit over the last decade). In the meantime, dad sold his other restaurants and retired.

Bobby never had any intention of opening a restaurant. “Growing up I saw my father working the hours and the days he worked and I was always afraid to get involved in a business like that,” he says. “I decided about a year ago to open a small store with Greek fast food but on an authentic level; no one’s doing that here.”

So now Bobby is opening his own restaurant, and he’s dragging his father out of retirement. “He’s been retired 10 years; he’s 73 years old and coming out of retirement for us!”

“I’m not working with your dad in the morning,” says Yianni (John), a college-age employee and cousin of Bobby’s. He turns to me to explain: “I’ll come in and say, ‘Hi Uncle, how’s it going?’ No ‘hello,’ no ‘how are you,’ just, ‘Why are you smoking? Don’t be like that dumbass over there.’” (Gesturing to Bobby.)

We all laugh. Bobby says, “He’s great in the kitchen though!”

There’s a jovial familial vibe here that will really be a defining element of this restaurant, the same sort of friendly family vibe that the old Greek restaurants of Greektown once had. Bobby plans on maintaining that at KouZina. “It used to be in the old days all the Greek restaurants had Greek waiters, Greek owners, Greek cooks. Sabas at Pegasus is the only Greek chef left. Greek culture permeated the suburbs, which is why Greektown is not so Greek anymore. The Greeks started downriver and spread out. The parents started restaurant businesses and the kids got educated, but the kids who got the education but grew up in the industry are going back to the restaurants. We’re going to hire a few young college-age Greek kids. ”

For the concessions business, everything is made fresh on the spot. Bobby wanted to translate that to KouZina – a small menu of fresh, simple items made from scratch. Pete will be in 4-5 days a week making everything in house. “It will be kind of cool seeing him in chef coats again doing what he loves!” Bobby says.

The menu will be very simple: gyros made with lamb and beef, chicken breast, and pork tenderloin, marinated for a couple of days in olive oil and hand-stacked every morning. The sandwiches will be served the traditional way with tomato and house-made double-strained Greek yogurt made daily, served on your choice of five different house-made pitas (in flavors like garlic herb, cracked wheat, and feta and tomato).

Pete will also be making fresh spinach pies and weekly specials that might include other traditional Greek dishes like Moussaka and grape leaves. They’ll also serve their homemade yogurt with honey and walnuts and fresh fruit like it is served in Greece for a lighter dish. Their Greek dressing will also be made in-house and their fries hand-cut. All in all there will be about five different items to choose from, and a combo order including a sandwich, fries and soda will cost you about $8-9 out the door.

The whole kitchen operation is open to the dining area. “The cool thing is you’ll walk in and see the whole process of everything being made in front of you,” Bobby explains. There will also be artwork from local artists hanging on the walls and available to purchase. Bobby is himself an art conservative as President of Atlas Bronze Restoration (aka Hamtramck’s Venus Bronze Works), which has restored bronze sculptures in Cranbrook, on Belle Isle and all over Detroit and the Midwest. “We want to be a little more progressive than other Greek restaurants around here,” he says. “There will be no Zeus painted on the wall!”

Later Bobby also hopes to get into product manufacturing (Pete’s second retirement will still be a long way off), but first things first: KouZina opens this Monday. And like all the good street food joints, they’ll be open until 4 a.m. on weekends.

Hours: Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 a.m.; Sunday noon to 9 p.m.

Want to see more? View the Flickr set here.

[EID Feature] Frita Batidos: Street Food Meets Street Art

(All photos by Nicole Rupersburg)

When Eve Aronoff first emailed me to let me know about the vintage Coca-Cola cooler featuring work by Detroit street artist SinTex that she introduced into her dining room at Frita Batidos in Ann Arbor, I thought it sounded like a cute story or a fun factoid. It also recalled some work done by Antotnio “Shades” Agee last summer at Ann Arbor’s Grizzly Peak Brewing Company, a huge mural on the side of their building unveiled at a fundraiser to benefit the Ann Arbor Art Center.

Then just this past May vitaminwater introduced VitaminWater Uncapped LIVE at 1500 Woodward. When they took over the space from Vain Nightclub they completely redesigned the interior, bringing in well-known, renowned urban artists like Shades, SinTex, Tony Roko, Mike Han and Cedric Tai. The space-defining art became the highlight of this temporary venue – which, much like street art in its original form, was designed to be fleeting. The uniqueness of the space and the utilization of street art in this more “corporate” setting (it may be a nightclub but VitaminWater is owned by the Coca-Cola Corporation) became a hot topic of conversation.

Thistle Coffeehouse: Coffee Culture and Community in Midtown

Nicole Rupersburg

I first heard about Thistle Coffeehouse from Pastor Brenda Jarvis (of Riverside Community Church) and her son Kevin at a large group dinner at the Whitney in October 2009. What they told me sounded too good to be true: a third-wave coffeehouse offering free WiFi, free printing, late-night hours, student art showcases, in DETROIT. I immediately went home and wrote my then-editor at Model D, telling her how exciting it is and how we just have to cover it. This was early on in my business coverage days and I wasn't quite yet aware of the general journalism rules of thumb, which include not covering a business that has no lease, no equipment and no business license, just an enthusiastic idea and some business cards. She let me down easy, saying, "It sounds like heaven. If it ever opens."

Sometimes the truth hurts. Truth is, a lot of people have a lot of ideas. Making them a reality is something different entirely.

A year and a half later, I get a Facebook message from Kevin: "Thistle Coffeehouse now open!"

I'll be damned.

Er. Maybe I should re-phrase that...

Metromode: Drag Queen Bingo (Or How Metro Detroit Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Five 15)

"Royal Oak is chock full of cutesy boutiques filled with cute 'n clever gift items. But where in Royal Oak can you find zebra-print wine purses; cookbooks with titles like Any Bitch Can Party!; copies of Vogue (the Parisian, Australian, Italian AND Indian editions) and $25 manties (that's man-panties to you)?

'Five 15 Media Mojo and More is the answer, which is celebrating its four-year anniversary on May 15.

'It's not that the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered) community is under-served … well, no, actually it's exactly that. For a so-called 'subculture' which is known to have a huge presence in suburban cities like Royal Oak and Ferndale, there is a surprising lack of businesses for and by the bi and queer. Save for a smattering of clubs and bookstores (between the two cities you can still count them all on one hand), there is a notable absence of distinctly 'gay' businesses – not just gay-friendly, and not just gay-owned, but recognizably and unequivocally GAY..."

Read the rest of the article here.