The billionaire became inmate No. 12-981.
Matty Moroun is a Detroit businessman and the owner of Centra Inc, the holding company which controls the
Ambassador Bridge -
a the only privately managed U.S. / Canada Border crossing, and the #1 busiest North American border crossing.
He was sent to jail early yesterday for defying a judge's ruling that he comply with a court order compelling him to complete his company's portion of
The Gateway project, a joint construction project he agreed to in 2008 designed to ease border traffic. Instead of working on the ramps to ease congestion, his crews built built a roadway that took traffic past the company's lucrative duty-free store and fuel pumps, and that kept thousands of trucks bound for expressways lined up on surface streets in the area.
[more inside]
posted by bricksNmortar
on Jan 13, 2012 -
147 comments
Ye olde rock and roll time machine, part two: recently found
photos of a Stooges performance at a suburban Detroit high school from 1970.
posted by NoMich
on Dec 15, 2011 -
19 comments
The sign-holders are a minority among the [Detroit's] vagrants and homeless. They're the handful with enough drive and dedication to spend hours standing in one place, making a sales pitch. They could probably succeed at a real job somewhere with such determination. But who's going to hire a depressed guy with three teeth, a felony record and a drinking problem?
So sign-holding becomes their career. And it's a demanding one. They have to be sellers of something that's not a product, isn't a service, and has little benefit for the customer other than perhaps inner satisfaction. They have to sell their misery. And though almost none of them have actual jobs, make no mistake — this is hard work. Here are the stories they tell.
posted by mudpuppie
on Oct 10, 2011 -
19 comments
WDET- Detroit Public Radio: "Detroit and Berlin are iconic cities; symbols of cultural and economic domination, as well as of collapse, and (potential) rebirth. Detroit and Berlin have ideological similarities that go far beyond industrial power. As beacons of culture, Detroit and Berlin have both been on the cutting edge of arts activities. Berlin is a crossroads of European film, art, music and food; Detroit is a center of African-American culture, with global credibility in jazz, techno, and emerging cultural expressions."
Audio Preview. [more inside]
posted by HLD
on Oct 10, 2011 -
13 comments
Is this the answer? We've had our share of photo montages of Detroit... What to do with those empty houses? Mitch might have a viable idea here.
posted by tomswift
on Aug 25, 2011 -
51 comments
DetroitTechno.org presents a documentary (
1 2 3) about the history and politics of techno with a focus on the
Detroit Electronic Music Festival, now called
Movement, from its inception in 2000 until the most recent one in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by gman
on May 15, 2011 -
26 comments
Yes, there are grocery stores in Detroit. The myth of a city without supermarkets is hard to kill, even faced with the evidence above. Ultimately, that myth perseveres because the mainstream media and its audience is steeped in a suburban mentality where the only grocery stores that really seem to count are those large, big-box chain stores that are the only option in so many communities these days, largely because they have put locally-owned and independent stores like the ones you find in Detroit out of business. [more inside]
posted by enn
on Jan 26, 2011 -
61 comments
If you like meaty filthy 60s-70s rock by sometimes severely ripped blokes &b.b.b.babes — like I know I do — then bite on these two crispy mix streams and the extensive opinionated textual japery and idolatry from Brit musician, musicologist,
Julian Cope that accompanies them. This man writes
books on music. Why is he giving it away?
[more inside]
posted by Twang
on Jan 6, 2011 -
21 comments
DJ Assault (born Craig De Sean Adams, aka
Craig Diamonds "The Street Narrator") is a Detroit-based music producer, who was part of a movement to bring
ghetto-tech, aka booty house,
from the urban streets of Detroit to the suburban club circuit. With his
Jefferson Ave. label, he's bringing it directly to you, via the internet,
for free.
Four albums,
22 EPs,
11 DJ mixes, and
three bonus collections of rap and "accelerated funk", all streaming and downloadable. [Warning: most music is NSFW or those sensitive to repetitive, crude lyrics]
posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 13, 2010 -
25 comments
Midwest label
Suburban Sprawl puts out a CD of X-Mas music every winter. They've collected the last eight years of them
here. Highlights include The High Strung, The Hard Lessons, and the common lament, "Santa Just Crashed Into My House and He's Drunk as Fuck."
posted by klangklangston
on Dec 1, 2010 -
16 comments
Dirtbombs' drummer Ben Blackwell has created a
map of Detroit of labels offering "vinyl releases throughout all eras". He also has a
blog and participated in the SXSW panel "How to Make Money With Vinyl" (
mp3) as an employee of Third Man Records.
posted by dobbs
on Nov 19, 2010 -
6 comments
Detroit's Greatest Hits (That Should Have Been) Here we've compiled our very own Top 40 list of Detroit songs or albums that were overlooked or undervalued — which naturally includes, to a lesser extent, the overlooked or undervalued artists who created them. These are songs that not only give up the goose bumps, or teach us something that we didn't already know, but records that hook us and make us want to share them.
posted by louche mustachio
on Nov 12, 2010 -
29 comments
"The boy insisted for months that he wanted to be a robot for Halloween. His sister was a robot when she was his age. We looked at various robot images on the computer and he was most intrigued by Robocop. After I showed him the trailer, there was no convincing him otherwise. He was going to
be Robocop."
posted by Katemonkey
on Oct 29, 2010 -
59 comments
Aaron-Carl Ragland, known simply as "Aaron-Carl" to most, was a songwriter, remixer, producer, radio show host, record label founder and all-around character. The news of Ragland's death was first posted on his friend and fellow
Detroit musician Piranha Head's Facebook page in a status update, saying simply:
Just lost one of his best friends, Aaron-Carl, and my arms are far too short to box with GOD. One of the best Human beings in the WORLD is gone. I have no words. Music is Silence.
Aaron-Carl himself posted
this video just five days ago on his blog discussing his diagnosis and upcoming surgery after
canceling his upcoming European tour.
Factmag reports that Aaron-Carl is believed to have died shortly after or during essential lymph node surgery; it appears that he died overnight after beginning his first chemotherapy session.
[more inside]
posted by Unicorn on the cob
on Sep 30, 2010 -
15 comments
Abandoned Detroit Public Schools "People tend to have a visceral reaction to the sight of books piled ten feet high and left to rot in a windowless warehouse or strewn about a classroom floor. They seem to have more sympathy for books than for the children who’ll never have the chance to use them. Half of Detroiters cannot even read. Unemployment is above 20 percent and our streets are filled with hopeless people. When I see schools left like this, I know exactly what waits for many of these kids. I see it every day on the streets."
[more inside]
posted by mippy
on Jun 6, 2010 -
75 comments
Due to population decline, Detroit
plans on bulldozing roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city into semi-rural farmland. It is a worst case scenario in America, but pales to the problem of Eastern Germany, where demographic collapse in some towns is so severe,
urban-
wolves and
neo-Nazis are the new order of the day. The mayor of one town says: "You can't go into the forest without a knife anymore."
[more inside]
posted by stbalbach
on Mar 19, 2010 -
114 comments
Ice House Detroit is an architectural installation and social change project wherein photographer Gregory Holm and architect Matthew Radune have spent weeks spraying water on an empty Detroit home.
[more inside]
posted by nevercalm
on Feb 2, 2010 -
8 comments
There isn't a single decent candidate running for office, the homeless guy struck by a car was more fortunate than the auto workers and if you want a grilled raccoon they sure have a deal for you: it's
Detroit 2009, The Movie, the chronicle of a rough year from The Detroit News.
posted by krautland
on Jan 1, 2010 -
40 comments
Edmunds released data this month on the results of the Cash for Clunkers stimulus.
Freakonomics blog commented. Now the Detroit News has offered a state-by-state analysis of how funds were used. Which state was most likely to trade an American car for another American car?
You guessed it...
posted by jefficator
on Nov 18, 2009 -
37 comments
Detroit is one of the most visually interesting cities in the world, however it is also one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented.
Detroit Book of Love is a group of photographs illustrating what contemporary Detroit artists have been doing in regards to developing an understanding and appreciation for this complex and diverse city; from street portraits of the survivors, to the landscapes of wild new growth, to the industrial leftovers. As a group they show Detroit as it is, not what it should be or what it once was.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Aug 7, 2009 -
27 comments
