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Reported features on the people making Detroit what it is.
A Davis Aerospace student flies solo, the first in 11 years, as the school heads back to City Airport
A Davis Aerospace Technical High School senior became the first student to complete a solo flight since 2015, just as the Detroit district moves the aviation school back to Coleman A. Young International Airport for fall 2026.
A 1,000-mile ride across Michigan ends in Detroit, with economic abuse as its subject
Cyclist and writer Laura Killingbeck is riding across both peninsulas to document economic abuse, ending in Detroit on July 20 in partnership with Michigan's orsa credit union.
An Air Force veteran is building a youth hub on Detroit's east side
Damon Williams came home to East English Village to launch Outside the Box, a youth hub linking Detroit teenagers to city resources and neighborhood partners, and introduced it with a community basketball game.
From tire piles to beautification contracts: how Audra Carson built Izzie Global
Detroit's onetime Tire Lady traded three decades as a corporate analyst for a cleanup mission, and her company Izzie Global now keeps lots, parks, and corridors clear across the city.
JerJuan Howard opens the Howard Family Bookstore at Puritan and Lesure
JerJuan Howard turned a long-vacant building at 13803 Puritan into a bookstore, cafe, and community space on Detroit's west side.
Danny Brown brings 15 years of catalog to Movement's 20th
Danny Brown headlines Movement's Saturday bill at Hart Plaza, arriving on a recent EDM pivot and a new dance single that has become a Detroit spring anthem.
Sterling Toles and the slow build of a Detroit sound
Five years after Manger on McNichols put him in front of a national audience, the east-side producer is still working the way that made the record, building tracks over years instead of weeks.
DJ Holographic and the next wave of Detroit DJs
Ariel Corley has spent more than a decade building DJ Holographic into a Detroit-rooted, genre-fluid touring act, and the bookings show why her name keeps coming up first.
DJ Minx and the long build of Women on Wax
Jennifer Witcher started the Women on Wax collective in 1996 and turned it into a record label in 2001, and three decades on she remains one of Detroit house's most established touring DJs.
Carl Craig, a documentary, and the long arc of Planet E
A feature documentary on the Detroit techno producer reaches the city in May, more than three decades into a career built on his own label and the Detroit Love showcase.
Kyle Hall: the Detroit producer who never left the city
Kyle Hall started Wild Oats as a teenager in 2008 and has kept the label, the studio, and his whole career rooted on Detroit's west side ever since.
Kerri Chandler's recurring Detroit work
Dropped: the article's core premise (a 2025 Movement booking and a near-annual Detroit residency pattern) is not supported by any primary source and is contradicted by the published 2025 lineup.
Theo Parrish and Sound Signature: 28 years of Detroit deep house
Theo Parrish founded Sound Signature in Detroit in 1997 and has run it for nearly three decades on slow vinyl releases, a tight catalog, and total creative independence.
DJ Stingray, the Detroit electro DJ who kept Drexciya's tempo
Sherard Ingram became DJ Stingray as Drexciya's touring DJ, and he has carried the fast, masked electro set out of Detroit and across the world ever since.
Omar-S: Detroit's most prolific solo techno project
Alex Smith has run FXHE Records out of Detroit since 2003, producing, pressing, and releasing a deep catalog of raw techno and house almost entirely on his own terms.
Stacey Pullen and the second wave that stayed on the road
Three decades into a touring career, the Detroit producer is best understood as the connective layer that kept the city's techno moving between its founders and its festival-headliner generation.
Robert Hood and the minimal Detroit techno tradition
The Detroit producer left Underground Resistance in 1994, founded M-Plant, and put out Minimal Nation, the record that gave a subgenre its name.
Moodymann: the Detroit producer who keeps the underground underground
Kenny Dixon Jr. has built a thirty-year house catalog on his own terms in Detroit, releasing as Moodymann through the labels he controls and a vinyl-first habit he has never given up.
Jeff Mills, the Detroit master who plans his sets to the second
From his Wizard radio years to Axis Records and an orchestral second act, the Detroit techno DJ has built a four-decade catalog on his own terms.
Mike Huckaby's Detroit house legacy is still in rotation
Four years after the Detroit deep house producer and teacher died, his records on Deep Transportation and S Y N T H still circulate and the producers he trained still cite him.
Stacey Hotwaxx Hale: the Detroit DJ they call the Godmother of House
Detroit DJ Stacey Hale, known across the city as the Godmother of House, played the Movement Stage at this year's festival and keeps teaching the next wave of women behind the decks.
How Paxahau programs Movement, Detroit's festival institution
Paxahau has produced Movement since 2006, building the Memorial Day weekend lineup over a long planning cycle, and the 2025 edition leans hard into Detroit programming.
Hart Plaza, Detroit's electronic music ground zero
The 14-acre Noguchi-shaped plaza on the Detroit River has hosted the city's largest free festivals since the 1970s, and Memorial Day techno since 2000.
TV Lounge, Marble Bar and Spot Lite anchor Movement weekend's offsite calendar
Three Detroit rooms hold the bulk of the official afterparty schedule for Movement weekend, the late-night counterpart to the festival at Hart Plaza.
Hart Plaza in May: how the festival fits the riverfront
Movement returns to Hart Plaza over Memorial Day weekend, and Isamu Noguchi's concrete riverfront was built for exactly this kind of crowd.
Paxahau at 20: the company that kept Detroit's festival alive
The 2026 Movement Music Festival is Paxahau's twentieth at the helm, two decades after the Detroit company stepped in to rescue a festival that had run through three producers and lost money for years.
Old Miami: the Cass Corridor veterans bar that became an after-hours room
Old Miami has been a veterans bar on Cass Avenue since 1980, and its long back patio has spent years as one of Detroit dance music's late-night landing spots.
Somewhere in Detroit opens its doors, putting the city's techno vinyl within reach
The record shop inside the Submerge building on East Grand Boulevard, long known for running by appointment, now lets the public walk in on Saturday afternoons.
Lincoln Factory, the Marble Bar team's warehouse room inside Dreamtroit
Detroit's Marble Bar crew opened a warehouse-scale room inside the $30 million Dreamtroit complex, and its first months filled fast with the kind of long-set techno nights smaller clubs cannot hold.
Spot Lite, the east side room where Detroit dance music had a home
Roula David and Jesse Cory built Spot Lite on Beaufait Street as a bar, gallery, record shop, and music room under one roof.
Marble Bar marks 10 years of house and techno on Holden Street
The New Center club opened in 2015 in the old Detroit Eagle building, and a decade in it still books house and techno as its year round format.
TV Lounge keeps Detroit techno running year round on Grand River
The Grand River Avenue club bills itself as Detroit's longest running nightclub, anchored by resident DJ Mister Joshooa and the annual House of EFUNK weekender.
Metroplex Records is the founding document of Detroit techno
Juan Atkins started Metroplex in 1985 out of his mother's house, and the catalog he built there set the template the whole genre followed.
Planet E Communications: Carl Craig's Detroit institution
Carl Craig founded Planet E Communications in 1991 and has kept it running on his own terms ever since, an unbroken Detroit techno label built around independence rather than scale.
Submerge: Underground Resistance's headquarters and Detroit's techno archive
On East Grand Boulevard, the building that distributes Underground Resistance's records also holds Exhibit 3000, billed as the world's first techno museum.
The record stores that hold up Detroit's vinyl economy
Detroit lost most of its independent record shops decades ago, but a small specialist network still serves local collectors and the techno pilgrims who fly in for it.
The Music Institute: the Broadway room that gave Detroit techno its first home
For roughly 18 months on Broadway, an alcohol-free after-hours room gave Detroit techno its first dedicated dance floor before the bills caught up with it.
Carole Harris comes back to where she started
MOCAD's first full survey of fiber artist Carole Harris opens on the museum's reopening day, nearly half a century after Charles McGee gave her a first solo show at his Black artist-run Gallery 7.
Wayne State friends open Rahha, a Yemeni coffee and brunch spot, inside the Hannan Center
A group of childhood friends and Wayne State alumni opened Rahha Yemeni Coffee and Brunch at 4750 Woodward, building a halal menu and student pricing around the Midtown crowd they grew up near.
Sip-N-Read, Detroit's book and wine bar, opens in Corktown
Tamela Todd's bookstore and Michigan wine bar opened on Michigan Avenue after years of grant rounds and buildout, with five Detroit employees and a literary events program.
Sip-N-Read opens in Corktown with an all-Michigan wine list
Detroit author Tamela Todd opened her book bar at 1620 Michigan Ave., pairing a Michigan-only wine list with a curated shelf of titles and a $65,000 Motor City Match grant behind it.
Walter Pat's Bakery Cafe won Hatch Detroit. Now Lauren Ellis builds the storefront.
Lauren Ellis and her viennoiserie concept, Walter Pat's Bakery Cafe, took the $100,000 grand prize in the 2025 Comerica Hatch Detroit Contest and a TechTown support package to open in Detroit's District 5.
Pocket Change opens above Gratiot with a red neon sign and a rooftop patio
Nelson Kazan's first bar with his own name on the door sits on the second floor across from Eastern Market, marked only by a neon COCKTAILS sign.
At 88, Janet Webster Jones is bookselling royalty
Publishers Weekly named Detroit's Source Booksellers its 2025 Bookstore of the Year, the top honor in the trade, capping a second career that Janet Webster Jones started at a church bazaar in 1989.
A West Village building becomes two Latin restaurants at once
Robert Encarnación turned a long-vacant West Village building into a Latin American restaurant and a coffee shop under one roof, backed by a $65,000 Motor City Match grant.
La Fonda Street and Encarnación open as a coffee-and-cantina pair in West Village
A Dominican-born owner turned a vacant West Village corner into a Latin American restaurant and a coffee shop under one roof, marking Motor City Match's 181st brick-and-mortar opening.
Roar Brewing opens on Selden as Detroit's first Black-owned brewery
Air Force veteran Evan Fay reopened the former Nain Rouge Brewery space at 666 Selden as Roar Brewing, which the company says is the first Black-owned brewery in the city.
TIME Puts Detroit's Little Village on Its 2025 World's Greatest Places List
TIME's 2025 World's Greatest Places list named Little Village, the East Village arts campus built by Library Street Collective, as the only Michigan entry.
Minnie's Detroit opens on Trumbull with late-night brunch and live music
A new Black-owned bar and restaurant from veteran Detroit nightlife operator Yvonne Byrd opened at 5221 Trumbull in Woodbridge with a grand opening on January 25, a Minnie Plates menu, and a weekend kitchen that runs to 3 a.m.
Rebel Nell Sets Up Shop in Eastern Market
The Detroit jewelry maker, which turns fallen graffiti into wearable art and trains women facing barriers to work, has moved its headquarters into Eastern Market.
Encarnacion and La Fonda Street bring Latin American food and coffee to West Village
A dual restaurant and coffee shop at 8016 Kercheval, backed by a $65,000 Motor City Match grant, became the program's 181st business to open.
Book Suey runs as a co-op, inside Hamtramck's old bank
On the corner of Joseph Campau and Caniff, a rotating group of member-owners runs Book Suey, a cooperatively owned bookstore in a building that opened in the 1920s as the Merchants and Mechanics Bank.
Detroit gets its first Filipino bakery in New Center
JP Makes and Bakes, a years-long pop-up turned storefront on Woodward, opens as the city's only Filipino bakery with help from a Motor City Match grant.
Rosette Market brings a neighborhood grocery to Corktown's Perennial building
The Kitab Cafe team opened a market and cafe on the ground floor of the Perennial Corktown apartments, a grocery the developer had planned for the building from the start.
Sepia Coffee Project opens its first North End cafe
Martell Mason's Highland Park roasting company moved into the former Gathering Coffee Co. space on East Grand Boulevard, its first sit-down cafe after three years of wholesale and a global run through the coffee trade.
Michigan Central's new residency pays Detroit artists $30,000 to make things
The Michigan Central x Newlab Creative Residency launches its inaugural cohort this fall: six artists, $30,000 each, six months inside Corktown's innovation campus.
Paramita Sound is the only Michigan bar on USA TODAY's first Bars of the Year list
USA TODAY's inaugural Bars of the Year list named just one Michigan spot, the Black-owned wine bar and record shop Paramita Sound on Broadway downtown.
Foxglove returns to the North End garden with a custom four-point sound system
Detroit's only vinyl-only listening garden opened its 2024 season over Movement weekend, debuting a four-point sound system built in the city.
G.L.A.M. Body Scrubs takes the $100,000 Hatch Detroit prize
Tiffany Cartwright's Detroit skincare company won the 12th Comerica Hatch Detroit Contest and will use the grant to open a Rosedale Park storefront.
Father Dukes plays Movement 2025
Detroit DJ Father Dukes, who came up through Seraphine Collective's Beatmatch Brunch, took a slot at Movement over Memorial Day weekend.
HiTech had the year
Recommend drop: the original is an unqualified victory-lap profile, but its July 11 Majestic show was canceled after a member was publicly accused of sexual assault, so the celebratory framing is no longer accurate or safe to republish.
Mister Joshooa took a Detroit club career to Panorama Bar
Detroit's Mister Joshooa, the music director who built TV Lounge into one of the city's longest-running clubs, made his Panorama Bar debut on a Berghain Klubnacht.
