Thankful free read: More Kafka in the Epstein files, Spongebob-Adidas, Mamdani effect
Here's what I'm reading, wearing and listening to this holiday season...
What’s up faithful subscriber gang, this holiday I wanted to extend a deep thank you fro the bottom of my heart for supporting Detroit one million.
Your financial support this year allowed me to pay my DTE bill, repairs to my 15 year old Honda Civic, the chicken parmesan from Rocco’s, the hot bar at Detroit People’s Food Co-Op and plenty of chai tea latte’s from Babo.
I’m spending this holiday on Ferry Street listening to Vince Guaraldi Trio’s ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas.’
The Fred Hill Drill Team made their return to the Thanksgiving Parade just as I was walking by the frigid scene yesterday across from Whole Foods.
The group of Detroit Athletic Club members apparently trained for months to do this.
Read more about them from Natalie Davies in the Detroit Free Press.
I’m disappointed to have missed The Big Heads, whose appearance in a visually compelling New York Times story this week was a hit among the people I follow on Instagram.
Read: Detroit Has Its Own Thanksgiving Parade. The City Gets Bigheaded About It.
Photographer Nic Antaya, who has worked with the NYT, among other national publications, tells me the paper is going all in on pushing the production of short video, like the made for social media clips of the Detroit parade characters.
Three second clips posted to Instagram show people inside the Papier-mâché heads of Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Miguel Cabrera, singing, dancing and swinging for the fences.
Listening to Navy Blue and YT
I had been so invested in the Detroit municipal election that I forgot to listen to new music.
Glad to report I discovered UK rapper YT after my friend and artist Mykel Andre put me on last week.
We were having a conversation about which Skepta songs we know all the words to (“Shutdown” and “It Ain’t Safe”) when Mykel told me that UK drill rappers are making Milwaukee hood jerk music now.
I clicked the Lancey Foux-assisted “Black & Tan” music video that incorporates Y2k special effects and 3-D graphics that look like SkullCandy earbuds commercials from the 2000s.
The “Oi” sound effect, also the name of his album, is littered throughout the project, as is audio of women telling YT which songs to play and why they like them.
“Can you play the, ‘Like a baddie I just pulled up Louis purse?’” a woman asks before YT’s autotuned voice belts out the words in the same cadence.
YT continues the tradition at the start of one of his most recent singles, “All Da Same.”
Across the pond, Navy Blue’s ‘The Sword and The Soaring’ builds on a world constructed for the past five years by Sage Elsesser’s hardships he channels through poetic lines.
On The Soaring, a range of producers lent themselves to piano-led instrumentals sometimes without drums or a hook.
At times, Elsesser’s lyrics tow from profound to vapid, such as, “Looking high and low when I was high and low,” on “Illusions” — a line that made me laugh when I first heard it.
Elsesser is hard to read.
Performing at El Club earlier this year over Memorial Day weekend, Elsesser stopped the show more than twice to scold somebody’s drunk uncle who he pleaded to stop yelling during his verses.
It did not appear he was enjoying his set until toward the end, when he invited two fans who knew the lyrics to every song on stage. Despite the belligerent audience member (who was waiting to see Boldy James perform later that night) Elsesser stayed and met with fans after his performance.
It’s one of the reasons he’s one of my favorite artists over the past few years.
Spongebob-Adidas release brings joy to my 12-year-old self
Remember when we were like 14 and every single sneaker release meant something?
Adidas is making me feel like a kid again with this special edition capsule ahead of the new Spongebob movie in theaters Dec. 19.
The shiny leather Stan Smith is supposed to be Spongebob’s actual shoes, while the Patrick Star Superstars come with a pink canvass midsole and laces that resemble his floral shorts.
The packaging for both models comes with driver’s licenses; Spongebob’s license says “rejected,” of course. The boxes are made to look like Patrick’s rock and a pineapple under the sea.
One of these pairs, or something on the Carhartt WIP Black Friday sale would make a great Christmas gift for your loved one.
Mamdani MI Michigan
Michigan doesn’t have a Zohran Mamdani, but is does have a bunch of candidates for governor and U.S. Senate now centering affordability in their campaign pitch.
I noticed another Mamdani-inspired campaign tactic being deployed last week: snappy, color graded vertical video made for social media clips.
Here’s one from Mike Duggan’s campaign for governor.
Duggan and Mamdani aren’t similar politically, but what is interesting about the gubernatorial candidate’s last two videos is he is using the “take what works” approach, no matter where it’s from. Duggan, an independent after leaving as a moderate upset with the left of the party last year, believes that approach has been successful in Detroit.
However, the most interesting revelation of me pointing out Duggan is making Mamdani-style campaign videos was the interjection from the pro-Cuomo CityDeskNYC bot. The automated account defended (at times, embarrassingly) former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo throughout his campaign which was defeated by nearly nine percentage points on Election Day.
“Duggan actually delivered jobs and stability— something Mamdani’s never even pretended to care about. While Detroit rebuilt, Mamdani turned NYC into a DSA daycare; rent freezes collapsing housing stock, NYCHA rotting under actvist councils, and cops demoralized by defund rhetoric. Duggan’s record? Real leadership. Mamandi’s? A TikTok revolution that leaves taxpayers holding the bill. Detroit’s population grew under competence. NYC’s bleeding out under slogans,” the automated bot replied to my post.
(Mamdani is not yet the mayor of New York.)
Did the pro-Duggan rhetoric come built into the bot? Because if not, it appears Duggan and Cuomo have similar forces working on their behalf.
The Detroit mayor appeared in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett beside JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon the day after Election Day.
“There was a lot of young people very energized, clearly dissatisfied people want change,” Duggan said. “And now you have a new mayor who has a chance to deliver change. I think he ought to be judged on what he does.”
Dimon poured cold water on Mamdani’s vision, saying, “at some point the Army’s got to execute. And, you know, competent execution of rational policy works. We can all have the same vision: lift up society, make the schools better, but then you better execute. I’ve seen a lot of people, when it comes to the execution part they fall down so flat it doesn’t matter where their heart is.”
Dimon didn’t answer Burnett when she asked whether he could see himself sitting next to Mamdani in an interview like he was sitting beside Duggan.
JPMorgan Chase invested heavily in Detroit’s low income housing and job training programs.
Is a Detroit developer being honest about his relationship with Jeffery Epstein?
A website that came across my timeline created by web developers Riley Walz and Luke Igel cloned Gmail to show you logged in as Jeffery Epstein.
It’s called Jmail.world.
It took a while to load at first. But when I did, I entered “Kafka.”
The results reveal the Core City developer and his dad’s emails with Epstein uncovered by the House Oversight Committee which released the documents released last week.
The latest batch of emails show Philip Kafka telling Epstein in 2016 how he “convinced a lesbian woman, older, to consider Trump.”
The emails contradict Kafka’s claims to BridgeDetroit, in which he downplayed the relationship between himself and the pedophile at the center of one of the world’s biggest news stories.
“My father was one of, it now seems, hundreds of people who were asked to write something on his behalf. I met Epstein once and only once, when I was fifteen for about thirty minutes, asked him some questions about his career, and never talked to him again. That half-hour is the entirety of the story,” Kafka said in the statement.
The letter Kafka’s father wrote Epstein was filled with sexually vulgar accounts of Epstein’s parents conceiving the financier.
The most recent emails released by House Democrats show Kafka sent an email jokingly advocating the convicted sex offender to run for president.
“Epstein 2016!” Kafka said, replying to an email from his dad criticizing Hillary Clinton.
“I don’t know words strong enough to encapsulate how thoroughly unconscionable I find Epstein to have been. His abuse and exploitation of young women; his disgusting lifestyle and utter lack of respect for people – he got exactly what he deserved.”
Terry Kafka, who I’m told is a frequent guest of the restaurants at the development, defended Epstein in a character statement when he faced allegations of abusing underage girls in 2007, claiming, among other things, that Epstein also spent “a good amount of time” with Philip Kafka when Philip was 19 years old.
Epstein avoided federal charges in exchange for registering as a registered sex-offender.
Kafka said that the half an hour is the entirety of his story, but the emails from nine years ago suggest otherwise.
Terry Kafka, who appeared in his underwear with Epstein in a photo that surfaced earlier this year, told an advertising publication in November 2016 that his plan after selling his Texas advertising company was to transition into small real estate projects.
His son’s development in Core City is framed by non-local media of reshaping the surrounding intersection of Grand River and Warren. Since 2016, Philip Kafka has acquired 25 acres and 70,000 square feet of previously abandoned buildings.
Critics say Kafka’s presence isn’t affecting the people living there. The average income in Core City is $22,963, according to census data.
In response to criticism over the price of his menu-items, Kafka last year reduced some prices. Kafka justifies charging $1.80 for one carrot (you can get a 1 lb bag of them for less at most grocery stores) by giving out “a lot” of free ones.
“There’s never been anything about it to attract me,” long-time resident Willie Campbell told BridgeDetroit’s Jena Brooker last year. Campbell is a 70-year resident and the executive director of the nonprofit Core City Neighborhoods.
“It seems outrageous that [Cafe Prince] would charge so much,” he said.
Niether Philip Kafka or his dad replied to requests for comment.