Dabs and Myla in front of their work on Caniff near Lumpkin.

The Detroit Beautification Project continues in Hamtramck, with new murals seemingly going up every week. Last weekend, we were fortunate enough to meet artists Dabs and Myla, hard at work on the western wall of Composite Lodge on Caniff near Lumpkin, thanks to a heads-up from DBP co-organizer Matt Eaton. Their work was cartoonish and eye-catching, a big cartoon spray paint can holding a roller and wearing royal robes. They said nobody seemed to disapprove, though one motorist rode by advising, “No caskets!”

Sever's work, photographed last week.

The remark about the casket is doubtless a reference to a high-profile piece by Sever, which we interpreted as a commentary on the nature of the art project, with a high-profile sponsorship and city approval. Other residents interpreted it as Hamtramck’s councilmembers carrying Hamtramck to the grave. (How they could do that when it’s clearly labeled “street art” is beyond our ken.)

Again, this was city-approved work done by high-profile, internationally recognized street artists. How do you know it’s street art? Street art is legal. The work of street artists is signed. Throughout Hamtramck, street artists received permission to do the work from the property owners. And their work is professional and visually stimulating. See, graffiti is used by gang members and “taggers” use to mark their territory, sort of like some animals urinate on a wall to mark their territory, to show, “I’m here,” or “This place is mine.” And graffiti is ugly and drives down property values. Very different from street art — although, as our coverage last week showed, some local philistines seem unable to make the distinction.

And so, we are grateful to some local who gave us an excellent example of the difference between street art and graffiti.

Side by side: Graffiti vs. street art.

According to local sources, the building at Goodson Street and Joseph Campau was defaced at night after the bars closed sometime this weekend. The message, “This is my city,” though perhaps intended to be a reply to Sever’s work, is a classic example of graffiti.

Textbook graffiti mars a publicly owned building.

How do we know this is graffiti and not street art? First of all, this is illegal. It is unsigned. The person who tagged this wall did it under cover of night, unlike the street artists who work cheerfully by day; you can bet your boots the tagger didn’t receive permission to do this. It’s ugly. It will certainly affect the property values of the building. And, finally, unlike the imaginative street art we’ve seen, this graffiti is obviously used by a local to mark territory.

We don’t approve of illegal graffiti, but we couldn’t help but take this opportunity to show the differences between the two, which are especially conspicuous when you see them side-by-side. We can only hope that the vandal is caught and forced to pay for sandblasting off this tag.

POSTSCRIPT: It has come to our attention that the original graffiti on the wall on Goodson Street read a bit differently. It read, “This is not my city.” We presume that somebody selectively sandblasted the word “not” from it. We gotta say, it’s a clever retort that simultaneously removes blight. Kudos to whoever scrubbed off at least a little graffiti.

Janice Fialka

Her entire family — husband Richard Feldman, son Micah, and daughter Emma — has worked to create more just treatment for disabled people, work informed, in part, by Micah’s intellectual disability. Micah, 27, meanwhile, is a leader on disability issues in his own right. In 2009 the family received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Family Voices, a national organization that promotes family-centered care for children with special healthcare needs or disabilities.

Fialka approaches the subject with humor, poetic vision and a powerful sense of inclusion. She will be discussing the issues involed and signing copies of her book Partnering for Children with Disabilities, A Dance that Matters on Saturday, May 19, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at the Source Book Store (4201 Cass in Detroit). Call 313-832-1155 for more information.

Welcome signs: Work by Revok and Flying Fortress in Hamtramck.

It all started with an innovative plan to bring more art to metro Detroit. A joint project of the Seventh Letter street art crew, with help from 1XRun (a division of Royal Oak’s 323East gallery), Contra Projects (headed up by Tom Thewes, the guy who directed CPOP Gallery in Detroit for 10 years) and spray paint company Montana Cans, it’s informally called the Detroit Beautification Project. For the last few weeks, it has been a resounding success, with street artists coming in from across the world to decorate blank or defaced walls.

Traditionally, metro Detroit hasn’t been a hotspot for contemporary murals — whether you call it graffiti or street art. But the area’s preponderance of blank walls and concrete make the city a street artist’s dream. In fact, a Seventh Letter street artist known as Revok, who has all but been chased out of Los Angeles for his work there, has found a receptive greeting in Detroit. He now works out of a space in Eastern Market, and has been making friends all over town, and was recently quoted in L.A. Weekly as saying, “This place is fucking awesome.”

The arrival of Revok, and all the national attention given internationally acclaimed street artist Banksy’s work around town last year, all mean rising enthusiasm for street art in our fair city.

WORLD-CLASS WORK

The project saw more than a dozen pieces go up in and around Detroit, from Eastern Market to Joseph Campau at McNichols, from Hamtramck’s Roosevelt Field to Phil Cooley’s Ponyride space in Corktown. The artists who painted them came from all over the world.

The murals in Hamtramck were done with the cooperation of individual building owners and the city’s department of community development, with Contra Project’s Thewes taking a lead role in that city within a city. Many of the works there are what Thewes calls effective “gateway pieces,” especially a piece — by the artists “Reyes” — that sprawls all over the western wall of PAVA Post 113 at 2238 Holbrook, greeting motorists arriving from I-75. Thewes says that street art can make an area cooler, raise property values, serve as a focal point for attracting businesses, even helping property values go up. And what a great location for this sort of thing: right down the street from the iconic Kowalski sausage sign, near the bustling Café 1923, and up the street from a bunch of new community gardens going in.

Welcome to the jumble: Reyes' work on a wall along Holbrook near Lumpkin.

Three more “gateway pieces” welcome motorists coming into Hamtramck from Hamtramck Drive and the south side. Most notable is a piece on a half-wall just south of the railroad viaduct by Revok and German artist Flying Fortress that says “Welcome to Hamtramck,” with a carefree, palms-up cartoon guy smiling at onlookers.

Cartoon smile: Work by Revok and Flying Fortress in Hamtramck.

Another standout piece is just up the street at Joseph Campau and Dan. It’s by a street artist named Askew, from New Zealand, someone Thewes says is “maybe one of the people pushing the medium the most. In his work, every piece is really different. And this one [in Hamtramck] is based on America, with red, white and blue and black, and stars and stripes all sort of bubbling up. It’s just gorgeous.”

New glory: Askew's work on Joseph Campau near Dan Street.

Up a few more blocks, at Joseph Campau and Goodson, is a very funny and provocative two-story piece by the street artist Sever. Called “The Death of Street Art,” it portrays cartoonish pallbearers  — which street art cognoscenti will recognize as well-known street artists — carrying a casket labeled “Street Art.” Perhaps a bit of caustic commentary, given the high-profile sponsorship and above-board, city-approved nature of the work, it’s an important piece of work that street artists everywhere will be interested in.

Carried away?: This work by Sever spawned a petition to take it down.

For those entering Hamtramck from the north, they’ll be met with a piece by Tristan Eaton on a half-wall above a dentist’s office at 11451 Joseph Campau. Other than a fading Western Auto sign, the wall had been blank for years, except for some rather uncreative graffiti tags on it. Now the wall has a drawing of a fanciful, owl-like creature with flames shooting out of it. It’s a departure for Eaton; according to Thewes, Eaton usually favors illustrations of beautiful women with flowing hair.

On Joseph Campau, the work of Tristan Eaton now hides old graffiti.

Oh, and there was one more unplanned artwork, a piece by TrustoCorp affixed over an old Snethcamp auto dealership sign affixed to the dentist’s shop wall. Thewes says, “The company had gone out of business, so they didn’t think it was going to be a problem.” It read, “Everything will get better, and featured a cartoon devil bearing the TrustoCorp logo. TrustoCorp usually affixes fake but funny signs to public poles, so a billboard-sized artwork was extremely unusual, an unexpected boon to the project.

Unexpected deviltry: TrustoCorp's addition to the project. (Photo courtesy Inside the Rock Poster Frame Blog)

SHOWDOWN AT CITY HALL

It seems that even before the paint was dry, some of Hamtramck’s less artistically inclined residents were crying foul. By Tuesday, May 8, it became known that a petition calling for the removal of “The Death of Street Art” was being circulated. That same day, a video went up on the Inside the Rock Poster Frame Blog showing a local resident, who claimed to work cleaning up the lot at Joseph Campau and Casmere, saying he was going to whitewash the TrustoCorp billboard. He makes insulting remarks at the camera operators, who claim that after they turned off the camera he “started yelling all sorts of horrible names at the people just trying to take pictures and supposedly had his bat wielding wife call the police.”

Whitewashing art: The TrustoCorp mural after somebody whitewashed it. (Photo courtesy Inside the Rock Poster Frame Blog)

After trying to peel the work off the billboard, the man began whitewashing the work, at least until he ran out of paint. The art, defaced with whitewash, was gone the next day, with a brand new sign for Al Deeby Dodge in its place.

Finally, something to make our local philistines feel comfortable!

One local resident we spoke with, an artist who has lived in Hamtramck for more than 20 years, said under condition of anonymity, “Nothing has ever made me feel so ashamed of living in Hamtramck.”

Within hours, Hamtramck residents and business owners who supported the project got to work circulating a petition in favor of preserving “The Death of Street Art,” dropping in at Maria’s Comida to sign the document and show their support.

And so the two forces, one allied with the murals, one opposed, dashed off to a Hamtramck City Council meeting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.

There were not just one, but two hot-button issues being discussed at the meeting: the murals and an ordinance affecting Hamtramck’s owners of ice cream trucks. An overflow crowd spilled out into the hallway, and the room was at capacity when all rose for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Hamtramck’s City Council wasn’t entirely approving at first. Councilmembers, even those who appreciated the work, objected to not being informed first, the murals being painted on public property and the possible loss of value for those buildings.

Most of these complaints were addressed in a presentation from Jason Friedmann, Hamtramck’s director of community and economic development. He explained that the city’s master plan, slated to be adopted this week, included public art and street art as ways to deal with illegal graffiti. The idea is an interesting one. Instead of erasing graffiti every time a gang member or tagger bombs a wall, why not try something new? Friedmann’s point, that gangs and illegal graffiti artists respect the leaders of the street art world, suggested that supporting legitimate graffiti projects would discourage the illegal graffiti. And Friedmann pointed to the “Welcome to Hamtramck” mural, already up for a few weeks and free of illegal tags, as evidence that the strategy works.

It came as news to some on the council that the proposal had been submitted, reviewed and approved, with sensible provisions for the removal or replacement of any public art if necessary.

Friedmann noted that the petition in favor of removing Sever’s art had 47 signatures, and that three of those signers had addresses outside Hamtramck. He also noted that the petition against removing Sever’s art had more than 100 signatures.

At this point, a long-haired man with headwear that had fire streaking down the sides, who had been squatting by the door, cried out, “How many were from out of town?” before being silenced.

Fired up: This guy shouted a question before being quieted down.

It was also heartening to hear Friedmann say, when asked why sketches were not available for review by the council or the community, that he wasn’t sure that “art by committee” is art, or will even ever get done. Such artists as Revok, Sever and Askew deserve to be able to determine their own work, and had already agreed not to do anything intentionally offensive.

What’s more, in a city that seems to face the brink of bankruptcy every few months, it was calming news that the program used no city funds, as it was sponsored by the paint company.

Comments from the public were, for the most part, favorable, and those commenters were polite, articulate and nonconfrontational. Those who objected to the art were pretty much the opposite. One man said, “I thought the mural was of six city councilmembers carrying Hamtramck to its grave.” Council was not amused. He said it again. Then he made fun of their thoughtful expressions and left the podium.

Another man admitted to collecting the signatures petitioning the city to remove the Sever’s art. He admitted that the photo accompanying the petition was of the artwork in progress. (We wonder if the casket had been labeled “Street Art” yet — an important point that was left unclear.)

One speaker, who remained neutral on the street art issue, just said Hamtramck needed more controversial art, because she’d never seen a meeting so full before.

Perhaps the best comment of all came from Hamtramck resident Hillary Cherry, who addressed those concerned about the art negatively affecting the value of the buildings. She pointed out that one local art gallery had gone so far as to remove, intact, a Banksy from the Packard Plant last year, and that it was possible that Sever’s art might be worth more than the building it adorned!

Also in attendance was Contra Project’s Thewes himself, speaking in support of the work, and allaying the body’s concerns in person.

A HAPPY ENDING

It seemed that the forces of creativity had won over the objections of the philistines. And, obviously, if there’s a next phase of this project, it won’t have the same surprise factor, and things should go more smoothly for the artists, the council and the residents of Hamtramck.

Thewes is still thrilled about the project, despite the trouble with a few ungracious parties. “Art is good for cities,” he says. “It’s hard to change a school system, for instance. It’s hard to attract a huge corporation to bring in more jobs. But it’s not so hard to get cool artists to do cool artwork that gets people’s attention.”

One other thing bothered us: What happened to the unapproved TrustoCorp billboard that the locals defaced? The good news was that TrustoCorp asked Thewes to remove it and secure it somewhere safe from the whitewash rollers of Casmere Street. “Yeah,” Thewes says, “they asked us if we could save it so it wouldn’t be wrecked.”

Thinking of Hillary Cherry’s comment, we asked how much would it fetch in a gallery setting if you were to restore and sell the billboard. In an Antiques Roadshow moment, Thewes postulated a bit, saying, “Well, it was meant to be a one-year or two-year project, but they’ve extended their activities and are now having exhibitions and continuing to work. That would mean that prices are going up. I’d say between $10,000 and $20,000.”

Oh, really? Who are the vandals now?

Photo: Zia deda

Part of our story-finding gig down here at MT HQ is to explore all roads, low and high, of Detroit culture. Sometimes we find glory and sometimes shits and giggles. When it comes to porn, there’s lots of it in the old Motor City, and not just what’s wired into your homes.  It’s also produced here, most of it kept on the low. But what’s sorta funny is this Men’s Health list of 100 of the country’s most porn cities, which ranks Orlando, Fl. at numero uno. It also lists not one, but two North Carolina towns in the top 10, which is worth a chuckle or two considering the high percentage of bible-thumpin’, anti-porn yahoos who’ve hailed from said Republican stronghold throughout the years. On the other hand, Detroit’s limply represented at No. 86, between two insignificant and faceless burgs, Des Moines, IA and Fort Wayne, IN. How boring.

The magazine used the following criteria to tabulate its list of the 100 smuttiest cities:

The number of DVDs purchased, rented, or streamed (AdultDVDEmpire.com); adult entertainment stores per city (StorErotica.net); rate of porn searches (Google Insights); and, for fans of soft-core, percentage of Cinemax-subscribing households (SimplyMap). Not only were Orlando folks the randiest residents, but Florida was also the most salacious state.

Detail of art at the Ponyride space shows an MSK tag.

Normally, we object to any statement that declares Detroit to be a “blank canvas” ready to have new designs imposed on it. Generally, those who make such statements are prone to ignore the very real people, the centuries of heritage, the wealth of architecture that exist here in abundance.

But when it comes to muralists wanting to decorate our city, well, we must admit, we have a lot of blank, unadorned walls ready to be beautified. In that sense, yes, Detroit has a lot of blank canvas for muralists to go to work on.

And, whatever you call it, murals, “street art” or plain ol’ graffiti, we are drawing people from all over.

Take a recent piece in LA Weekly. The street artist known as Revok, who has all but been chased out of Los Angeles for his work there, has found a receptive greeting in Detroit. The artist, who has reportedly moved into a space in Eastern Market, has been making friends all over town, delighted to have a famous artist adorn our buildings.

As quoted in the piece, Revok sounds pumped about Detroit: “I couldn’t afford to make the kind of work I wanted to make in L.A., and I needed to go somewhere cheap where I could get away from being haunted by the police force. … Detroit is wide open. There’s tons of space. … So I flew out here in February — it was freezing. I got off the plane and started driving around, sliding all over the ice in the streets and fell in love with it instantly. This place is fucking awesome.”

That enthusiasm shows through in the variety and quantity of work he has done. In fact, this Sunday, we just missed a piece Revok allegedly did on the north wall of Phil Cooley’s new Corktown space, Ponyride.

A new mural graces the north face of Phil Cooley's Ponyride space.

And when artists like Revok talk, other artists listen. In fact, his decision to vote with his feet and move here almost guarantees a fresh wave of artists moving in.

And this sort of work gets strong reactions. Take the beautification project spearheaded in Hamtramck, which invited and sanctioned artists from all over to treat walls across town as a canvas for beautification. We’ve seen a mural sprout up on Holbrook, just east of Lumpkin, over a wall that had been whitewashed a year ago. The black-and-white abstract work provides an interesting bit of visual energy just down the street from the iconic Kowalski Sausage sign. Another mural along a half-wall south of the railroad viaduct on Joseph Campau simply welcomes people to Hamtramck. That’s hard to object to.

Or is it? One piece, about the death of street art, featured a coffin, which some locals said was morbid.

Another one of the pieces, done by TrustoCorp, had at least a few Hamtramck residents in a tizzy. The sign simply said “Things Will Get Better,” and featured a smiling cartoon devil.

Not long after the work was completed, this video was shot (by the good people at the Inside the Rock Poster Frame Blog) of a few people (we weren’t quite clear if they were taking it upon themselves to remove the mural or were working on a property owner’s behalf) getting ready to whitewash it, remove it or otherwise deface it. The would-be whitewasher even insults the cameraperson in this encounter, and another local yokel brandishes a stick, perhaps as a threat.

No doubt, tonight’s meeting at Hamtramck City Council (7 p.m. Tuesday, May 7) will be closely watched. One observer noted that it will “go super-viral in street art circles.” And we hope that saner voices prevail that don’t object to art just because it’s provocative or difficult to understand. Like any city, Hamtramck has its prigs and philistines. And they could pose an obstacle to the cultural forces trying to lay out a welcome mat to international artists who’d like to work here.

To those who object, we’d say, isn’t public art also intended to start a dialogue? Even if it makes us a little uncomfortable, it seems downright anti-intellectual to condemn art because it raises ideas we’d rather not think about or discuss openly. Isn’t that the job of art?

And if not, whose is it?

A “Critical Eye” piece in Details recently offered a handful of breezy, drive-by puff pieces on some of our local movers and shakers. Entitled “The Rust Belt Revival: What’s Happening in Detroit, Michigan,” the brief piece has some photos and profiles of some of the usual suspects, including Mitch Cope, Jerry Paffendorf, Phil Cooley, Nathan Faustyn and more. No doubt it was an attempt to show the world all the interesting things happening in Detroit.

Except Details’ “Critical Eye” apparently doesn’t see anything black.

That’s right, a piece about the comeback of Detroit, a city that is overwhelmingly African-American, doesn’t feature so much as one black person. Even the people in the background of the photos are white.

And in Detroit, all white ain’t alright.

In fact, the oversight is so glaring that the piece is rated “Zero Stars” and capped with overwhelmingly negative commentary from readers.

One reader named Samanthabkln posted, “According to the US Census Bureau, this is Detroit’s demographic breakdown as of 2010: White persons, 10.6 percent … Black persons, 82.7 percent … Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin, 6.8 percent … So why is it that you are only interested in covering 10.6% of Detroit’s population? What about the people of color that represent 89.5% of the city — and who are doing a lot to contribute to the growth and revival of the city?”

Another problem is that whoever wrote this doesn’t know the history of Detroit — an era we should probably call BC (Before Corktown). You might also know it as the “blank slate” school of reporting on Detroit. In other words, before these new local institutions cropped up, Detroit was an empty wasteland without much of its own culture. For example, of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the article happily burbles this nonsense:

THE MUSEUM THAT CHANGED A CITY: When it opened in 2006 in a former car showroom, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit signaled a radical approach to urban development: With its deliberately raw interiors and an exterior swathed in graffiti, MOCAD acknowledged, rather than obscured, the Motor City’s rough history.

First of all, what the fuck is so radical about repurposing a space? Isn’t that what happened in, um, Soho and Tribeca? (As to how the museum “signaled” this, we don’t understand. The museum doesn’t have a signaling system, to the best of our knowledge.) As one poster pointed out: “Hey, sometimes a museum is just a museum and it doesn’t ‘change a city.’ Get over yourself.”

This nonsense continues:

It has since helped foster the growth of one of the country’s most thriving arts communities …

Is that so? I think even the people at MOCAD would be surprised to hear of their work fostering the growth of Detroit’s art community. After all, the space was set up mostly as a much-needed landing pad for international contemporary artists to show their work to Detroit, with local artists only given occasional attention, to help keep the museum’s mission pure.

Let’s be clear: We love MOCAD. We have friends who work there. We love Phil Cooley. We share drinks with Nathan Faustyn and Brandon Walley. We are amused by Jerry Paffendorf. Mitch Cope is a great guy. And we love this city.

But if we see one more drive-by piece like this, the next reporter who comes to town is getting a Detroit-style ass-kicking.

Allen's Still Standing

In the current issue of TV Guide, voters in the magazine’s “Fan Favorites” poll overwhelmingly hailed Allen, arguably Michigan’s favorite adopted son, as their “Favorite Comeback” for his current ABC series Last Man Standing (8 p.m. Tuesdays, Channel 7 in Detroit, abc.com, @LastManABC).

“It’s an absolute pleasure to break everybody’s belief that you can’t go back to TV,” Allen tells the magazine, noting that many of the crew members behind the scenes at Last Man Standing are the same people who worked with him for eight seasons on Home Improvement, one of the top-rated series of the 1990s.

In Last Man Standing, Allen plays Mike Baxter, marketing director for a major outdoor sporting goods chain who struggles to balance his bigger-than-life, man’s-man image at work with being the husband of a career woman (Nancy Travis) and father of three headstrong daughters at home. “ABC put us on a night where they had nothing and left us on an island,” Allen notes in the TV Guide issue, “to somehow compete with the [NCIS] juggernaut.

“But we’re getting really good ratings,” he adds. “So somebody is TiVo-ing something!”

“I didn’t even know my ticket was going to get punched, to be honest with you,” says Gardell, who will showcase a standup comedy act sharpened by decades of live experience at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 12, at Sound Board in the Motor City Casino Hotel. (Doors open at 7; you must be 21 or older with a valid ID to attend.)

“I’d been doing standup for 22 years, with different little [acting] parts here and there, and for the last couple of years before Mike & Molly I just hadn’t booked anything on television,” he relates, while running errands for his wife on a precious LA day free of TV tapings. “I found myself on the road 35 weeks a year, away from my wife and my 8-year-old boy. It was wearing on us, so I was actually going to go back to Pittsburgh.

“I said to a buddy, ‘I’m going to ride out one more pilot season here in Los Angeles.’ And Mike & Molly was my last audition of the last pilot season I was going to be here. It was literally a Hail Mary in the fourth quarter.”

And he is finally on a winning team. After snatching bit roles in films like Bad Santa and You, Me and Dupree, Gardell has landed in comedic clover at 42 as the overweight, unfortunately named cop Mike Biggs, with a Top 20 series regularly watched by 13 million people a week. While he’s drawing favorable comparisons to a young Jackie Gleason, Mike & Molly has proved an even greater launching pad for his co-star, Melissa McCarthy, who won an Emmy Award for the show and emerged as the breakout performer in the smash movie Bridesmaids.

Such explosive success could spark jealousy on the set between veteran comics, except that…

“She’s been nothing but gracious about it,” Gardell says. “If anything, it’s brought us a little closer. Our whole cast is very close that way. I think we all feel that if we do great work and treat each other with respect, then this thing can be a pleasure for everybody, including our fans, for as long as possible.”

In his standup act, Gardell says Detroit audiences will see “a little more of Billy and a little less of Mike,” which sounds hard to believe for a man who attacks the scales at well over 300 pounds.

“I think the two cross over very nicely,” he explains. “I come from a blue collar town, and most of my sarcasm was learned at the corner bars, so any towns where they take pride in their work, and work ethic and common sense, like Detroit, I tend to do well. I do very well from St. Louis east. When you get into the higher altitudes, they’re not so sure about me.”

While Mike’s ongoing battle against his waistline mirrors Billy’s real life struggles, Gardell says the producers of Mike & Molly have been uncommonly supportive about his weight.

“They’ve been very cool about it. They said they were just looking for the guy who could do it right, and apparently I was that guy. They said, ‘As far as your health goes, we’ll hire you a trainer if you want, but we just want you to be healthy. If you lose a little weight we’ll write it into the show, and if you gain a little weight we’ll write it into the show. We want it to be a very organic experience.’”

Gardell says he didn’t long for a hit TV series just to bolster his standup career, as some comedians do, but admits, “Standup’s my first love, and the blessing of having a hit show is enjoying those big crowds. That’s something every comic dreams of.”

He adds, “I’m very blessed that my success came at this time in my life, I’ll tell you. Because there’s definitely a level of gratitude, having been in the [Hollywood] system for so long and then finally getting a break. It really gives you goosebumps, because you know how special it is.”

Tickets, $40 and $35, are available at all Ticketmaster locations, Ticketmaster.com and the Motor City Casino Hotel box office. To charge by phone, call (800) 745-3000.

Apparently, this drove one of our readers bananas. He called in and lambasted us about grammar for almost two minutes. Point taken. A nuclear reactor goes on line. (Then it’s an online reactor.)

The thing is, we believe we were using the adjectival form when we said, “Online?” (Online buying? Online Sanders?) And, frankly, just as Web site has become website, just as e-mail is quickly becoming email, we expect these computer related terms to keep rapidly changing as time goes on. (Did our caller blow a gasket at America Online back in the day?)

All we can conclude are two things. First, people really do care about grammar, even today. Second, parochial school may play a part in later adult conniptions.

Guerrilla grammarian gripes

Ann Arbor's mobile food court is open for business again

Around dinnertime on April 3, only two of the Mark’s Carts food vendors were still toughing it out. But Nick Wilkinson, the owner of A2 Pizza Pi, said that at least a handful of food trucks had braved that day’s storm and the weekend cold to feed hungry customers in the open space just west of Ann Arbor’s Main Street. Of course, all the food carts were in attendance on opening day the previous Friday.

Benches help diners stay dry in unpredictable Michigan weather.

Once a parking lot on West Washington Street between First and Ashley, Mark’s Carts has become an open-air market of sorts, under the direction of Mark Hodesh — who also founded Ann Arbor favorite Fleetwood Diner 40 years ago. The court’s eight eateries on wheels cook up casual bites from around the world. On March 30, the Mark’s Carts evening reopening celebration coincided with FoolMoon, the prelude to the city’s puppet parade FestiFools, and sported a fire pit and live music nearby.

A2 Pizza Pi offers handmade, artisanal pizza pies.

Wilkinson’s A2 Pizza Pi is one of three new carts that have parked their wheels here this year — Cheese Dream and the Beet Box have also joined the ranks. Wilkinson built his rolling pizzeria with the help of friends, and cooks his thin-crust pizzas next to his cart, in a freestanding wood-burning oven (also a natural heat lamp on chillier spring days). One of his specialties is the “Chard (but not burned)” pizza, speckled with local Swiss chard.

Food made fresh is all part of the draw.

Next door, Swaroop Bhojani serves up Indian street food from Hut-K Chaats. Bhojani modifies recipes that are traditionally a fried calorie-fest by using healthy ingredients — including dried fruit as a sweetener, and a beet juice with ginger that’s sure to befuddle the taste buds. He’s coined his creations “nutrilicious,” and has plenty of vegan and gluten-free options to up the ante.

Pure Ann Arbor, down to vegetarian fare and biodegradable plates.

Though Mark’s Carts is already up and running, warmer weather will bring more regularity to the schedule. Returning carts from last year include the Lunch Room (specializing in vegan food), Debajo del Sol (Spanish), San Street (Asian) and Darcy’s Cart (local ingredients). Though the carts aren’t necessarily all open at the same time, frequent status updates are posted on the Mark’s Carts Facebook page and the various carts’ Twitter accounts.

Mark’s Carts is at 211 W. Washington St., Ann Arbor; markscartsannarbor.com.