Contributing Writer
Jamie is a Contributing Writer at Strait Journal. Covers Detroit's galleries, museums, public art, and design-forward institutions.
Writes from inside the room. More likely to describe what a space looks and feels like than to summarize an artist statement. Notices the chairs.
Walks the same Cass Corridor route every morning. Knows the names of half the dogs along it. Drinks black coffee, no exceptions, refuses to acknowledge the existence of cold brew. Owns one cat, name confidential.
Also files on food and music when the story asks for it. Contributing since 2024.
Castalia served its last drinks on December 31, 2025, eight years after Kevin Peterson and Jane Larson opened it in the lower level of an 1890s Victorian on Second Avenue.
Saksey's opened on Friday, November 14, 2025, with eight tables and 55 seats in the basement of Gilly's Clubhouse at 1550 Woodward. The entrance is in Parker's Alley.
Paxahau booked Autechre at the Russell Industrial Center on October 21, 2025.
Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation opened at the DIA on Sunday and runs through April 5, 2026.
Murals in the Market spent two years in Islandview after 1XRUN moved its headquarters there. For the 10th anniversary edition, the festival came back to Eastern Market.
On September 9, 2025, the World's 50 Best announced Ladder 4 Wine Bar as the inaugural recipient of the Resy One To Watch Award for North America.
BLKOUT Walls Mural Festival returned for its third edition from September 4 to 14, 2025, with 10 new large-scale murals painted across Detroit.
Detroit Month of Design ran the entire month of September. The 15th edition of the festival lined up about 95 events featuring more than 1,000 designers and creatives across the city.
Tamela Todd opened Sip-N-Read on a Wednesday afternoon in late August.
City Modern, the eight-acre, 450-residence neighborhood Bedrock built in Brush Park, was officially declared complete on July 24, 2025.
The 8th annual Detroit Festival of Books ran from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, July 20, 2025 Eventbrite, in Sheds 4, 5, and 6 at Eastern Market BridgeDetroit.
NOWNESS released Kids Like Us on July 5, 2025. The 35mm short runs nine minutes and was executive produced by Richie Hawtin.
Emma Spadafore left corporate after six years to open the kind of store that probably sounds like a joke at a bachelorette dinner. Bookstore. With cats.
Cybotron played Glastonbury on June 27, 2025, inside the Block9 IICON structure.
Planet E released the soundtrack to Desire: The Carl Craig Story in summer 2025. The compilation tracks the documentary's chronology.
Movement Music Festival ran May 24 through 26, 2025, at Hart Plaza, marking the 25th anniversary of Detroit's flagship electronic music festival. Memorial Day weekend.
Desire: The Carl Craig Story had its Detroit premiere at Newlab at Michigan Central Station on May 22, 2025. The room was full.
The only sign is a red neon \"COCKTAILS\" hung in the second-floor window of 1454 Gratiot. You miss it if you don't know to look up.
Donya Craddock, who runs Dock Bookshop in Fort Worth, called Janet Webster Jones the queen from a stage at Winter Institute 2025. The room agreed.
TIME named Little Village one of the World's Greatest Places of 2025.
The building at Forest and Second has been a corner bar for as long as the neighborhood has had memory of itself.
The AC Hotel Detroit at the Bonstelle started taking guests in early January 2025, the first AC Hotel in southeast Michigan.
Amy Peterson found her first piece of jewelry-making material under the Gratiot bridge in 2013.
The corner of Joseph Campau and Caniff has had several lives. The 1920s building started as a bank, with stately limestone and ornamental tile that the present tenants kept intact.
The Belt opened ten years ago this month. Library Street Collective and Bedrock unveiled the alley on November 13, 2014, with food trucks and live music and a mural in progress.
The Perennial Corktown apartment building at 1611 Michigan Avenue opened in late 2023 with two retail tenants on the ground floor.
The Michigan Central x Newlab Creative Residency launches its inaugural cohort this fall. Six artists. $30,000 each.
Paradise Valley got its name back in 2015.
Erika Linenfelser's house is at 257 Leicester Court, in the North End.
On Saturday, the former Good Shepherd Catholic Church reopened as a 16,000-square-foot arts campus run by Library Street Collective. The building has not held mass since 2016.
The first thing you notice on the south facade of LANTERN is the holes. There are 1,353 of them, drilled through the concrete masonry of the south wall and filled with cylindrical glass blocks.
Tiff Massey opened her solo show at the DIA tonight. Four galleries in the contemporary wing. The most ambitious installation by a Detroit artist the museum has ever staged.
The final steel beam was set on Hudson's Tower on April 10, 2024, fixing the building at 681 feet and forty-nine stories.
The Grand Army of the Republic Building has been waiting on a tenant since the pandemic.
Most new bars in Detroit pick a moment to announce themselves. The Aladdin Sane skipped the moment.