Brent Shirey & Erin Lenau - Daybed // Valentiger Frontman Show
Watch this.
Possibly my favorite performance from the Valentiger Frontman Show.
Making of the Camera Costume (by Tyler Card)
This costume won first prize at the Halloween party, but there was a guy dressed up like a ghost that was really cool, too.
Hey, Grand Rapids, this is coming up.
Grand Rapidians, you should come to this show tomorrow night.
Whoa, I get to be in a band now.
Valentiger - Oh, To Know!
Shot at Brewery Vivant, Grand Rapids, MI.
Valentiger performing at Festival of the Arts.
With special guest.
It’s beautiful outside.
So naturally, I’ve been awake in my room doing nothing for three hours.
I want to clean my room or clean my car, but I haven’t had any coffee yet.
I’d like to see Alexis at West Michigan Pride Fest this evening, and then do karaoke.
This has been a post reminiscent of LiveJournal, circa 2004.
I need to exercise. My love handles are becoming a muffin top.
You and me, buddy. Tonight.
Fourteen hours in a car with Dan Fisher later…
…we’re back.
What happens next?
Who’s with me? I need a girl that looks as fit and ready as she.
I love Grand Rapids as much as the next guy…
…but being around Detroit just evokes so many more emotions for me. This is a city with a culture. Residents that live there in spite of it. It’s easy to be hip and trendy and drink your microbrews in Grand Rapids. It’s nice living in a city that has a growing economy and multi-millionaire donors like the DeVos and Van Andels and Secchias. That’s all nice. But Detroit is struggling. Detroit is carving its own path. Young people are moving there not because it’s easy and cool, but because it’s hard. You have to create. You have to innovate. You have to be a little rougher around your edges and be willing to go through a little more to make things work. The city is alive and well, but you’d never know it until you look for it.
Maybe this is a late night ramble, but I always find the people and the “scene,” for lack of a better word, more real in Detroit. No one is putting up a front. No one is living a pseudo lifestyle based on the image of poverty. There are community gardens not because it’s the “in” thing to do, but because there’s so much abandoned property that it’s the sensible thing to do. There are neighborhood coalitions forming not because it’s good for your spare time, but because if neighborhoods don’t band together one block at a time, crime will just seep right back in.
Social movements are happening out of necessity, not out of luxury. I find that to be the biggest difference between Detroit and Grand Rapids.
At least that’s how it seems.
As much as I love living in Grand Rapids, I wouldn’t put it past me to up and leave and move to Detroit. Seriously.
Pure Michigan - Grand Rapids, “The Good Life”
Pure Michigan - Grand Rapids.
