Sven Gustafson - Daily Detroit (Page 7)

Is Shinola's $695 'Cass Hobo' Handbag A Sign Of The Times In Detroit?

Shinola likes to tout itself as a made-in-Detroit success story, with the words “Built in Detroit” engraved on its watches and the city’s name featuring prominently on its bikes and other products. And hey, we give the brand credit for launching here, of all places, with the goal of bringing back good-paying manufacturing jobs to a place that has suffered a massive loss of them, and trying to make Detroit synonymous with quality and fine craftsmanship. That’s why we were disappointed to...

Ford Invests $500 Million In Rivian, Plans To Build A New Electric Vehicle

Fast on the heels of the reported collapse in talks with GM, electric vehicle startup Rivian announced Wednesday it has won a $500 million minority equity investment from crosstown giant Ford. In exchange, Ford says it will use Rivian’s flexible skateboard vehicle platform to develop a brand-new electric vehicle of its own. The deal adds to a $700 million investment by Amazon, announced in February. And it comes after a report suggested that talks between Rivian and GM over a similar inv...

81 New Townhomes Coming To Lafayette Park Plus 6 Things To Know

Farmington Hills-based homebuilder Hunter Pasteur Homes says it plans to build 81 new housing units in Lafayette Park on five acres near St. Aubin and East Lafayette Street, right beside the Dequindre Cut. Called Pullman Parc, the units will be a mix of townhomes, park homes and corner flats, and they’ll range from 620 to 3,500 square feet and run between $250,000 and $750,000. Hunter Pasteur has worked on the City Modern development currently under construction in Brush Park...

Detroit's Palmer Park Is Drawing Controversial Interest From Developers Plus 3 Things To Know Around Town

On your Daily Detroit for Monday, April 22, we dig into a proposal to develop part of Palmer Park as “Palmer Square,” a mixed-use development featuring luxury condominium towers, “experiential retail” and futuristic architecture. We recently aired an episode looking into the city’s nascent Detroit Exploration and Nature Center, which is being run out of the former golf course headquarters. The closed golf course figures to be ground zero for a lot of redevelopment proposals, but...

Tim Robinson Of 'Detroiters' Has A New Show Plus 4 Things To Know

Tim Robinson, one half of the duo behind the recently canceled Comedy Central series “Detroiters,” has a new Netflix show coming out. “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” debuts April 23 — that’s a week from Tuesday — and will feature Sam Richardson, Robinson’s sidekick in the sadly discontinued sketch comedy series, plus SNL vets Cecily Strong, Vanessa Bayer and Will Forte. The trailer, which you can watch below, looks bananas. Also on today’s show: * Part of the...

Tasting Axle Brewing Company’s ‘Secret Meeting,’ A Barrel-Aged Baltic Porter

The good folks over at Axle Brewing Co. let me have a sample of their new brew, “Secret Meeting.” It’s a Baltic porter aged for several months in Detroit City Distillery rye oak barrels, the fifth release in the brewery’s Livernois Barrel Project. Baltic porters are known for their high alcohol content, and this one certainly delivers, at 13% ABV. So right off the bat, the alcohol tingles your nose, along with the deep and funky roasty notes of chocolate, marshmallow and van...

Northern Soul Lives On At The Motor City Soul Club With Dan Austin

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...

Patient Steals Ambulance In Detroit Plus 5 Things To Know

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...

Sterling Heights

We Try Coney Pasties Plus 5 Things To Know Around Detroit

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]...

Freep Film Festival Preview With The Story Of Creem Magazine Plus A Detroit Techno Documentary

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 “Ameri...

Your Guide To The Detroit Tigers' 2019 Opening Day, Both On And Off The Field

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 prac...

Auditing Secretive Fund 'A Good Starting Point' To Fixing Michigan's Broken Auto Insurance System, Expert Says

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 Ra...

Come Dance On The Grave Of Detroit's Trash Incinerator Plus 10 Things To Know Around Detroit

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...

Riverfront Property In Detroit To Become A Big Parking Lot Under DTE Land Swap

Welcome to your Tuesday edition of Daily Detroit, where we deliver two pieces of big news: 1. Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson says he has stage four pancreatic cancer and won’t seek an eighth term in 2020. 2. DTE Energy says it expects to sign a deal with the city to swap a decommissioned power plant on the east riverfront so it can be used to store Jeeps built at a new factory being pursued by parent Fiat Chrysler. [Freep] Why is this sad, you ask? This is th...

Sterling Heights

Hotel-A-Palooza Comes To Detroit Plus 3 Things To Know

At least three boutique hotels are coming to Detroit, bringing a dose of luxury to still-gritty parts of the city. The Mid will take shape next to the old hammer-and-nail building on Woodward, while the West Elm Hotel will incorporate the old Bonstelle Theater several blocks south. And downtown, there plans for a new 154-room hotel at 600 West Lafayette, plus the old Park Hotel downtown just sold to a hospitality company, suggesting yet more hotel rooms could be possible. Most of...

A Look Inside The Beautiful Brakeman Beer Hall

The last piece of the new Shinola Hotel will open its doors Monday when the Brakeman starts pouring beers inside its new digs on the corner of John R and Farmer in downtown Detroit. It’s part of a new wedge-shaped building that took over a former surface parking lot, and it’s an airy, light-filled space, thanks to several garage-door windows that will be able to roll up when the weather warms up. On this episode of the Daily Detroit podcast, spirits advisor Nuri Goca...

Coyotes In Detroit And 5 Other Things To Know

A den of coyotes has taken up residence near downtown Detroit — specifically, in that weird no-man’s-land site of the old Brewster housing projects where I-75, I-375 and the spur to Gratiot Avenue converge. The Michigan DNR says not to worry. But if you live nearby in, say, Brush Park, you might want to keep a much closer eye on your pets. Also: Yes, we inaccurately datelined yesterday’s episode as a Monday. It brought to mind this classic scene from “Groundhog Day.” I...

Detroit Has A Winery Plus 8 Things To Know Around Detroit

Welcome to Tuesday, March 19 — and the final day of winter, YAY! On the show today, we run down the news that not only does Detroit have a homegrown winery, but Detroit Vineyards aims to open a tasting room in the Stroh’s Ice Cream building on Gratiot near Eastern Market this spring. Will wonders never cease? Elsewhere, Beaumont Health is proposing to open a $140 million, 117-bed hospital in Oxford, filing a certificate of need application with the state. That makes Beau...