Last night was my first full night out on the town here in Detroit so I met up with Tara at Sarah and Mark’s place and we all made our way out to Royal Oak, MI for a sumptuous dinner at Little Tree. Because we all were ravenously hungry, we ordered a bit too much sushi for the table … and, strangely enough, that didn’t stop us from eating pretty much all of it. After we had fully supped on the delish treats at Little Tree, we made our way over to Fifth Avenue to celebrate with our friend Reggie for his birthday. In celebration, Reggie Smith and the After Party played a 3 set show upstairs at Fifth Avenue and had the place rockin’ out. Here are a few pics from last night’s fun:

You know, there may have been a whole lotta bad shoes in that place last night but everyone was having a blast. It was really nice hanging out with Sarah, Tara and Mark last night … it felt like the good ol’ days. Our night hit a bit of a snag when we returned to my parent’s Navigator and found the battery completely dead. Someone, who shall remain nameless, left the headlights on and killed the battery. So because Mark accidentally killed the car, we adeptly figured out (with his friend Joe) how to get it up and running again. There were cables and sparks and a bit of cursing but they got the job done in pretty good time.

This afternoon, I’m off to hang out with Tracey and Zakiya … not sure what we’re doing but maybe some shopping? Maybe a movie? The sky’s the limit ;) It’ll be great to see them both … it’s been far too long.

Pink reader Natalie gave me the head’s up that the Washington Post published a great little write-up on Detroit, MI in yesterday’s Travel section of their newspaper. Rather than following the herd that seems to love bashing Detroit Rock City (many times without even bothering to pay the city a visit), the Washington Post instead writes up a charming little review of the town I love so, painting a picture of the city that is so dead-on that I can’t wait to share it with all y’all:

I saw it first by night. A metropolis unveiled in viewfinder snapshots through the smudged windows of an elevated train. Gothic towers crowded close, proud detail etched on gray stone. A beaming stadium full of red-capped baseball fans, its front side left open as if to console the devoted others it couldn’t quite hold. A neon neighborhood of revelers, trying their luck with the cards and with each other. A river that bounced fractured glints of the city back toward the heavens. It was beguilingly authentic — gritty and romantic — and it was decided: I would side with Mary. Mary, the smiling lady of the hotel lobby, not Alexandro, the cab driver who brought me to her. “Is this your first time in Detroit?” Mary inquired. “You’re going to love it! It’s just like Paris.” Minutes earlier Alexandro laughed incredulously when I told him what I’d come here to find. “Happiness?” he scoffed. “I can’t really see it. Everybody’s just so miserable.” Which is what Forbes magazine said, too; the Most Miserable City in America, it claimed in a report earlier this year. “Imagine living in a city with the country’s highest rate for violent crime and the second-highest unemployment rate,” the article proposes, by way of introduction. But after riding the looping downtown train — slickly named the People Mover — and stepping into the Greektown section of the city, where I was met by saxophones singing from opposite corners and a scene that looked like the quaint, Hollywood version of a 1940s gambling town, it was over … I could be happy here. I already was.

You simply must read the rest of Ellen McCarthy’s 5-page piece on Detroit … she talks at length about the places she visited and the people she met while in Detroit. She really does Detroit very proud, which is a nice change of pace. It gets very frustrating when people continue to bash the city I love so much. Of course there are problems in Detroit but there are problems everywhere. Detroit is my home and I love it. And I love Ms. McCarthy for writing such a lovely piece on my city :)

I should also note that Pink reader Natalie also sends along the Washington Post piece on Hamburg, Germany — her home town — which is featured in the same Travel section of yesterday’s paper (she sent in both because she was born in Hamburg and her son was born in Detroit). After reading that piece, I’m reading to get my buns to Germany for a great vacay as well ;)

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The Detroit Red Wings returned home to Detroit Rock City as heroes today as the city turned out in huge numbers to welcome the boys back to town. Here are a few photos from the Red Wings Stanley Cup Championship Parade which took place in Downtown Detroit earlier today:

They cheered. They chanted. They sounded air horns. If they could have, they would have hoisted the Red Wings upon their shoulders and carried them down Woodward Avenue themselves. This was love, hockey style, as hundreds of thousands of fans jammed downtown Detroit Friday to pay homage to their crooked-smile heroes. They lined Woodward, seven deep at some spots, and mounted trees and utility poles to watch a victory parade for the Wings’ winning of the Stanley Cup. “It’s nice to feel all the spirit and optimism,” said Steve Aller, who ventured here from Jackson. Residents took off from school and work to watch the parade and a rally at Hart Plaza on a sun-splashed afternoon where temperatures reached the 90s. The relentless heat did little to quell the enthusiasm of the raucous throng decked in the team colors of red and white. Because the Wings had clinched the championship in Pittsburgh, this was their first chance to parade it in front of fans. Homecoming was never so sweet. “I’m here to support the Red Wings,” said Kyle Walsh of Sterling Heights. “This is our team and this is how we do it in Detroit.” Traveling vendors sold everything from pins to pennants, programs to player cards. But many fans brought their own props. They came with Wing flags, aluminum foil Stanley Cups, even Lindstrom on a stick. To clarify, it was a life-sized photo of team captain Nick Lidstrom mounted on a pole. Signs were everywhere. “Skipping school to see the Cup: Priceless.” “Be happy Hudler penalties forgiven,” a reference to mistakes by center Jiri Hudler. Another poster thanked the Wings in six languages, English, French, Swedish, Finnish, Russian and Czechoslovakian, one for each nationality represented by the worldly team. “I wouldn’t think of missing this,” said sign-owner Carol Atchison, 54, an elementary school worker from Southgate. With so much love in the air, it was only natural that marriage proposals would follow. Team heart throbs Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk were running neck-to-neck in marital requests contained on posters. One teenage girl even wrote it on her octopus-balloon hat: “Datsuk Marry Me,” she wrote, misspelling his name. Sorry, ladies. Datsyuk is marriage and Zetterberg has a girlfriend, a Swedish pop star, no less. There was even a real marriage proposal as Andy Jones dropped to a knee in front of the Fox Theater and offered a diamond ring to a stunned Jennifer Carlson. Carlson said yes and, as they say in sports stories, the crowd went wild. “I just can’t believe it,” said Carlson, 37, of Saginaw. “Until now he never said a word about marriage. Jones, 42, said the parade was a perfect time because he and his betrothed are big Wing fans. Thousands more watched a post-parade rally at Hart Plaza, where players thanked them for their support. “We just really, really want to thank people for coming down,” Red Wing center Kris Draper said … The parade began with the Detroit Color Guard and a high school band at Hockeytown Cafe on Woodward Avenue. The color guard was followed by the Zamboni ice-cleaning machine float and the Martin Luther King Jr. High School marching band. Almost two hours before the parade, Kim Moss of Troy pulled a little red wagon full of goods away from her parked car on West Lafayette Boulevard. “This isn’t my first parade, you know,” Moss said proudly. “I’ve got this down to a science.” “Actually, I went light today because of the weather. I’ve got sandwiches, three different kinds. I’ve got the water. I’ve got the Gatorade, the umbrellas, the horns, the cookies, the cards, the seats and the cowbells.” “Usually, we bring a Stanley Cup replica and uniforms and things like that,” said her husband, Mike Moss. “But we went light because of the heat.” Off the couple went down Lafayette pulling their little wagon. Tim Evans said he and his family traveled here from London, England, to celebrate the Wings’ win. He said he and his family were hanging out near a tree at Woodward and Congress, before the parade festivities started. At 10 a.m., two buses carrying the Detroit Red Wings and their families pulled up outside the Hockeytown Cafe. The crowd was very raucous, especially when some of the players, including Mikael Samuelsson, got off the bus. In the background, the crowd chanted, “Let’s go Red Wings! Let’s go Red Wings!” The last person off the first bus carried the Stanley Cup, eliciting a huge cheer from the crowd. The first person off the second bus was hockey legend Gordie Howe, which prompted a chant from the crowd of “Gordie! Gordie!”

Woot! This sounds like it was an amazingly fun affair … I really wish I could’ve been there to take in the celebration in person but I am sending all of my love out to Detroit today. I understand that the massive crowd booed Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick when he took the stage (he is currently facing criminal charges of perjury stemming from testimony he gave during a whistle-blowers trial and is not well liked by anyone in the city right now) which is a bit of shame since it should be a happy occasion but Detroiters tell it like it is and I respect them for it. Again, much, much congrats goes out to the Detroit Red Wings for bringing home the Stanley Cup to Detroit, MI, aka Hockey Town, where it belongs. Big ups, Detroit!!!

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Last night I posted my congrats to the Detroit Red Wings on winning the 2008 Stanley Cup Championship and today I’d like to post photos from the Stanley Cup Trophy presentation ceremony. Here are a few pics of the boys in Red celebrating their victory on the ice seconds after they won the championship and a few pics from the Stanley Cup presentation ceremony:

The Detroit Red Wings, stunned to have lost Game 5 at home in triple overtime, played a perfect road game Wednesday night at Mellon Arena, defeating the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-2, in Game 6 of the 2008 Stanley Cup Final to go wire-to-wire as the best team in the National Hockey League this season. “It’s never easy,” Wings goalie Chris Osgood said. “Toughest trophy in sports to win; it lives for that name every year, that nickname. It was difficult, again. Pittsburgh is a great young team … gave us all we could handle. Probably one of the most difficult series I’ve played in a while. They have a talented team. They held on right to the end again. They kept pushing us still.” Henrik Zetterberg was named the winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the Most Valuable Player of the postseason and defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom became the first European captain to lift the Stanley Cup aloft. “It felt great being the first guy to touch the Cup on our team,” the classy Lidstrom said. “Otherwise it felt the same as winning the previous ones, where you’re so happy with the end result. You start training camp with a goal, and that is to win the Stanley Cup. You talk about it throughout the season and the way you have to play to be able to be successful in the playoffs,” Lidstrom said. “And we had a good regular season, and we were able to carry that into the playoffs, too, and so that’s something I’m more proud the way the team played in the playoffs, too. It was a tough loss last year against Anaheim in the conference finals, but most of the guys were on that team last year. And this time around, I thought the team really responded well to some of the adversity we faced throughout the run.” The Wings won the Presidents’ Trophy for the best record in the regular season and proved to be the best team in the postseason as well, utilizing the smart, selfless brand of puck-possession hockey that has become the trademark of coach Mike Babcock. “I probably haven’t come to grips with that,” Babcock said when asked his emotions after winning his first Stanley Cup. “But to be able to share this journey with the guys and to be able to share it with the city of Detroit, and obviously my family, that’s very emotional. And I’m sure I’m going to have some emotional moments in the next week just thinking about it. But to have your name on the Stanley Cup, pretty special. The interesting thing is when you’re playing in the Stanley Cup Final like this and it’s a closeout game, the emotion on your bench is so much more than you’ve had to deal with,” he said. “Getting guys on and off the ice is more difficult, and yet we have a real committed group. Nicklas Lidstrom, in my opinion, is a phenomenal leader and captain with his poise and his skill. And then the support group in (Chris) Chelios and (Kris) Draper. And (Pavel) Datsyuk and (Henrik) Zetterberg, for their leadership. You know, we have a very special team, and we’re thrilled to be in this situation, obviously.” The Wings last won the Cup in 2002, and prior to that in 1997 and ‘98.

Again, much love and respect goes out to the Pittsburgh Penguins for giving us an amazingly thrilling NHL Finals … they proved that they are a team to be reckoned with and really made the Wings work for their victory. All my love goes out to my Detroit boys for bringing the Stanley Cup back home to Hockey Town. I can’t wait to get back to Detroit Rock City to celebrate with my peeps. Put your hands up for Detroit, y’all … our lovely city deserves much props today!

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WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT! The Detroit Red Wings have *just* defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals to win this year’s NHL Championship!!!!

Hockeytown is home to the Stanley Cup — again. Using a little Motown magic on the road, the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup for the fourth time in 11 seasons Wednesday night with a 3-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 6 of the finals. The celebration came two nights later than expected. The Penguins forced the series back to Pennsylvania by tying Game 5 with 34.3 seconds left in regulation and winning it shortly before 1 a.m. in Detroit on Petr Sykora’s power-play goal in triple overtime. Undeterred, the Red Wings hit the road and wrapped up their fourth straight series on the road in these playoffs. Detroit is third in NHL history with 11 Stanley Cup titles, trailing fellow Original Six clubs Montreal and Toronto.

Much congrats go to the Penguins for a hard fought finals but ALL MY LURVE goes to my Detroit Red Wings!!! HOLLLLA!!!

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