- Hey, One Detroit, I'm Christy McDonald, and here's what's coming up this week on Arts and Culture.

The Motor City Brew Tours are back.

Will Glover talks a little bit of Detroit beer history with author and tour director, Steven Johnson.

Plus, Detroit designs the world, the impact of Minoru Yamasaki on Detroit's signature buildings.

And Detroit filmmaker, Ken Legend Williams, on his movie, Asbury Park.

It's all ahead this week on One Detroit.

- [Presenter] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, MASCO Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

MASCO, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Presenter] Support for this program provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- [Presenter] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit dtefoundation.com to learn more.

- [Presenter] Business leaders for Michigan, dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income, and a healthy economy.

Also brought to you by: The Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - Hi there, and welcome to One Detroit Arts and Culture.

I'm Christy McDonald.

Thanks so much for joining me.

This show is all about our local connection to arts, theater, cultural organizations, and concerts during the pandemic.

We're bringing you performances, stories about your favorite places and people, and historical perspective.

Detroit's unique culture is something to be celebrated and we do it each week right here on Detroit Public Television.

Coming up on this week show, we'll explore the design legacy of Minoru Yamasaki right here in Detroit and his influence around the world.

Then the new movie, Asbury Park, that's out now by Detroit filmmaker, Ken Legend Williams.

He tells Stephen Henderson how it explores mental illness and police brutality, and it was all filmed right here.

But we are starting off tonight with beer.

See, I knew I got your attention.

As more people are getting vaccinated and feel safer interacting, the Motor City Brew Tours are back on.

Will Glover talked with Steven Johnson, tour operator and author on why Detroit's beer history is such a draw.

- [Steven] Eventually they relocated themselves back over here in the eastern market and formed the name, Detroit Brewing Company.

- [Will] How did the brew tours start?

It seems like an idea that anyone who's ever had a beer anywhere would come up with, but nobody ever actually does it.

So tell me how you got here.

- Well, typically that's like everybody's story.

I've been to conferences on people who run businesses like this, and if we got around a table, nine out of 10 would say, I was drinking one night with friends and I said, Let's take people to breweries.

That was somewhat similar for me.

When my wife and I traveled, we'd like to go to breweries and we like to ride bicycles and explore the local area that way.

So we sat on that idea for a couple of years, and then I was at a beer festival in 2007, and a work associate and I were drinking at the beer festival, probably a little intoxicated at the time, and I just threw the idea out in the air to him, and he was like, Wow, let's do that and start it up.

- What are the tours that you're offering and how is this working amidst, you know, the pandemic right now?

- Yeah, great question.

We do guided, so public and private guided bus, bike, walk, and boat tours.

So a mix of all kinds of things.

We also do some charity bike rides that raise money for non-profits.

So how we adjusted due to COVID, one, we've been closed since March of last year.

We have chose not to run a tour and we are starting up in May this year, and we're not doing bus, and then we're also not doing some of the formats that we occasionally do on a boat.

And we're doing walking tours that are all outside, so we're not taking you into breweries.

You'll learn about beer history and other things on the walking tours.

And then you'll get what we're calling an adult goodie bag, and what that is is it's the adult version of, you know, getting your little to go gift that maybe you'd give a kid at the end of a party, but it's for adults.

So it'd have Motor City Brew Tour swag in it.

So what we're doing is, it's a coaster, it's a pint class.

It actually has a can of beer from a local Detroit brewery in it.

And then in some cases it might have a voucher to go get a drink on your own at the brewery.

So in lieu of us bringing a big group in there, we found this would be a good way, a safe way for now for folks to do that.

We're doing that the same way with the bicycle tour.

So walking tours and bicycle tours all outside in small groups, that's our adjustment that we've made for COVID.

- What is your favorite beer?

- Yeah, yeah, I definitely get asked that a lot.

I get asked favorite beer and favorite brewery.

You know, I am in flow with the seasons, so as we get into spring, summer, I typically like lighter more citrus-forward type of beers.

This time of year, as we get into say fall, winter, then you transition into a bit more maltier and hardier, maybe a little bit of a spice to it of your Oktoberfest and your winter warmers and things like that, and porters and stouts.

And I kind of changed with the seasons.

You know, but I drink a wide range of things.

When you run a business like this, you're around everything.

I always say I'm kind of a spoiled brat, meaning I get exposed to so many great products and we're really lucky in the case of the downtown and Metro Detroit, we have such a diversity of locally made alcohol products.

I like to say Michigan has always had a great culture around locally made products because we have a lot of agriculture in our state that has come down to, we had a great home-brew culture that started in like the late eighties, early nineties.

As that matured, that brought more of those folks that were making products in their basements and in their garages to the forefront of, Hey, I could open a brewery or make hard cider or mead, and I could sell that.

And as the public has become more aware of all these options, they've shifted what they consume, and now they search it out.

- Where can people go to book themselves a beer tour, and where can they go if they want to hear the beer tour guy?

- Yes, if they go to motorcitybrewers.com or Facebook or Instagram or any online profile that has our name next to it, it will link it back to our website.

Right on the homepage of the website, you can learn about all the public tours or the private tours if you're interested in .

You can get the link and subscribe to the podcast.

And you can also buy the book if that interests you or you could just hear the book live by coming on one of our great walking tours that we're going to do on Detroit beer history in the Eastern market area.

- You can find out more about the tours.

Just head to our website at onedetroitpbs.org.

But when we're talking Detroit beer history, why stop there?

Let's have our documentary, Detroit Remember When: Made in the Motor City give us some more beer love.

(lively music) - When you go out with your friends, do you ever drink beer?

(stammering) Be honest with me.

Do you drink beer?

- Of course, I drink beer, Pop.

I'm 29 years old.

- - [Narrator] If you're of a certain age and you lived in Detroit, you know about America's only fire-brewed beer.

- Pop, Pop, listen to me, I drink Stroh's.

Honest - Son, your mother and I, we only want what's best for you.

- Hey, Caesar, what's with this fire-brewing business?

- I don't know, man.

Wait a minute.

Hey Sam!

- [Sam] Huh?

- Fire brew, what is it?

- Hey, Nick, you drink Stroh's!

Fire brew, what is it?

- What?

- I'm not doing this because Stroh's is America's only fire-brewed beer.

All I know from fire brewing-- - Their beer was not made in electric kettles.

It had a flame underneath it, man, and that made it special.

- And I'm not doing it because-- - - [Narrator] According to Stroh's, fire-brewing mellowed the beer, made it smoother.

- I'm doing it because I love the taste.

And besides, I'm getting a lot of Ben to admit it.

- [Narrator] It dates all the way back to 1909 when Julia Stroh was touring breweries in Germany.

- [Man] So we tasted and tested and compared.

- The styles of beer that he liked particularly turned out to be fire-brewed.

They were brewed in kettles heated with a direct flame.

- [Narrator] The Stroh family had already been making beer in Detroit for half a century when the fire brewing process started.

- So my great-great-grandfather arrived here with $200 in 1849.

Well, that was enough to get started.

- [Narrator] Bernard Stroh came with a wave of Germans to the Midwest, political refugees of the German revolution of 1848.

- Bernard started the business in 1850, just east of Downtown Detroit off Gratiot Avenue.

By the 1860s, he built a great big new brewery and he was the largest brewer in Michigan by then.

- [Narrator] When Prohibition hit Michigan in 1917, Stroh's actually survived by making other things.

- Yeah, we made soda pop, ginger ale.

We had our own line of orange soda, cola, all sorts of things, and then ice cream.

- [Narrator] Stroh's made a malt extract, supposedly, for cooking and as a nutritional supplement, but, well, we all know it was really for people who wanted to make their own illegal brew in the basement.

Few brewers actually survived Prohibition, the Depression, and then the war after that, but the post-war boom was really pretty good to those who did.

- [John] Pfeiffer got very big, Goebel got very big, Altes got very big.

- [Narrator] By the late 1950s, the big brand in Detroit was Goebel, JOH-BEHL to some.

- And that was the spoof on it, the Pabst Blue Ribbon, or PBRs, and that was called JOH-BEHL.

- Goebel.

I've heard of JC PEHN-EY, but not JOH-BEHL.

- It's football once again with Goebel 22.

- [Narrator] How's this?

Van Patrick was at the mic for Goebel when the Detroit Lions won their last NFL championship back in 1957.

(presenter speaking faintly) Back then, Van Patrick was also the voice of the Detroit Tigers.

- And one of his famous expressions, "Well, here's the pitch.

"It's a long one.

"Oh, it's fouled by a Goebel beer case."

- [Narrator] When Stroh's became the official beer of the Tigers, Van Patrick was suddenly out, replaced by an announcer from Baltimore, some guy named Ernie Harwell.

The great brewery strike of 1958 hurt the Detroit beer business so badly, it really never recovered.

Beer from St. Louis and Milwaukee suddenly moved right in.

- Pabst became the biggest selling brand in Michigan as a consequence of that strike.

In order for us to grow, we had to expand outside Michigan.

- [Narrator] Goebel went bankrupt, now acquired by Stroh's, Pfeiffer moved out of state whilst Stroh's hired New York ad man, Bill Bernbach.

Bernbach had created the iconic Volkswagen Beetle campaign, Think Small.

But in the late 60s, Stroh's was thinking big.

- Stroh's brings you this eight-pack to remind you how fast our beer disappears.

- [Narrator] The advertising worked.

- Jack, what about some of that Stroh's beer you been talking about?

- [Narrator] Stroh's quickly became a national brand, buying other beers and breweries along the way.

- Pick it up, mate.

We don't want the blokes to know we've been here.

- [Narrator] But the costs, they were just too high.

The Stroh's brewery on Gratiot shut down in 1985.

The first era of Detroit-made beer had come to a close.

♪ From one beer lover to another, Stroh's ♪ - When it comes to art and culture in Detroit, design is at the top of the list.

Around the city and into the suburbs, you can find the landmarks from Albert Kahn, to Eliel Saarinen, to Minoru Yamasaki.

Yamasaki designed the World Trade Center and also left his mark here in Detroit.

Here's a closer look from our Detroit television documentary Detroit Designs the World.

- We remember Yamasaki today as the designer of the World Trade Center in New York, the Twin Towers that unfortunately were lost on 9/11.

Beyond that he was a leader in what we call mid-century modernism, which took the basic efficiency of modernism, glass and steel and clean lines and kind of infused it with some warmth and beauty that we associate more with something like the arts and crafts movement.

Yama, what we say, softened and humanized modernism in some really important ways.

- So many modernist had struggled for so long before the fifties to try to create and convince people of a modern architecture that didn't rely on the past, that was of the 20th century and didn't need to use arches and other elements from history.

- [Presenter] We will succeed in creating the first modern, technological, humane, prosperous civilization.

- Inspired by his travels, he was incorporating truer elements of Italian Renaissance architecture and French Gothic architecture.

He was using Islamic arches and he was using the notion of the screened window from Islamic architecture.

He used a lot of elements from Japanese architecture.

So he didn't limit himself to the Western history like some modernist tried to.

He really was a pioneer global architect.

The problem was that in the mid-fifties, modernism was still very strong and still very influenced towards rejecting that historical past.

- At the end of World War II, the Detroit firm, Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, was looking for a new chief designer and heard about this young Minoru Yamasaki in New York and hired him to come to Detroit.

And I think like a lot of people who come from far away from Detroit, he probably thought he would be here for a couple of years and move on.

Instead, he spent the rest of his life here.

Well, Yamasaki started out with Smith-Hinchman doing the first modernist building in Detroit, the Federal Reserve building in downtown Detroit.

It was highly praised and much imitated.

- [Woman] As early as 1948, he was really pushing the envelope for these sleek lines and large glass windows, and the annex is a beautiful example of that.

People walk by every day and don't even really notice that that is one of the most famous architects in the world.

- [John] He got his reputation fairly quickly here.

He did schools everywhere.

But then he became Wayne State University's almost in-house architect.

He did their McGregor Conference Center on the campus, which is one of his very best buildings, and by that time his reputation was growing and he started doing buildings around America and around the world.

- [Dale] McGregor is really, I think, in the architectural world, considered to be his masterpiece.

It's one of the first buildings he designed after his world tour.

And it goes farther, I think, than any other work that he did in terms of incorporating disparate elements and disparate influences from around the world.

(gentle music) For instance, it has elements of a Greek temple to it.

It has elements of a Gothic cathedral.

It has a little bit of those Islamic screens that I mentioned.

Pools outside the building.

It's a very Japanese sort of atmosphere.

And he kind of brings all these different ideas together.

And in the other work that he does after this, he never seems to reach out to as many different kinds of influences as he did at McGregor.

Plus McGregor, I think, is just well done in terms of the details and the proportions and the relationship between the inside and the outside - In the the fifties, Yama began to work on a project for the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company, which needed a new headquarters, and he created what is now known as One Woodward, a skyscraper.

- It was his first skyscraper.

People don't realize this, but it wasn't even completed at the time that he was hired to do the World Trade Center, which was going to be the world's tallest buildings, and here he had just a couple of tall building designs under his belt.

But one of the things that's evident even in that building, his first skyscraper, is that he's looking for a different way to do it.

The typical way of designing skyscrapers back then and constructing them was use a steel frame and you build it up as many stories as you need and then you cover it with some sort of skin, which at that point was a lot of glass and maybe a little bit of metal.

And he felt like that was becoming too kind of commercial and packaged, and he wanted to find a different kind of expression.

One thing that Yamasaki was always trying to do in his public buildings is to bring the public in, to have them feel comfortable, to have the buildings be beautiful.

I think one of the other criticisms that struck me as I researched his work was the number of times that he used the word, beauty, in the fifties and sixties when other architects weren't.

- When I think about what Yamasaki gave to architecture besides a lot of great buildings that are still there and will be there like McGregor, at the same time, the notion that any important public building needs to have some outdoor space for users, of plaza, landscaping, green ways, bike paths, a sculpture garden, anything like that, that is so part of our architectural and planning DNA now that you can't conceive of an important building that would ignore that stuff.

And you don't necessarily think that that's what Yamasaki gave us, but in fact, it is what he gave us.

- This February, a new movie was released in local theaters and streaming called Asbury Park, which is a real street here in Detroit.

The movie was created by local filmmaker, Ken Legend Williams, and it tells the story of four Detroit kids growing up into adulthood, exploring challenges of mental illness and police brutality.

Stephen Henderson talked with Williams on America Black Journal.

- Let me ask you a question, what's the first thought that goes through your mind when the police rolls up on you?

(police sirens chirping) - What you want, huh?

- Hope I don't get a ticket.

- I hope that I make it home alive.

- Quite frankly, I was in fear for my life.

The suspect was noncompliant with our orders and was just obstructing our investigation.

- [Man] So sick people go to funerals.

- The Civil Rights Act only resulted because of a nation of African-Americans coming together and taking a stand.

- [Man] You people think it's okay to break the law.

- Those of us who are from Detroit or live in the area know that Asbury park is a street on the West Side, is now the title of your film, but it's also where you're from.

Is that right?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- I grew up on Asbury Park street right off Seven Mile.

- So talk about the inspiration for this film, the street that you grew up on, the experiences that you had there.

- The biggest theme behind this film is survival.

You know, like I said, each of the kids, they have their own different things that they're going through and dealing with.

And I thought it would be interesting to see this from a kid's perspective.

You know, there are so many things that are going on in the world right now with police brutality, mental health awareness, you know, just a lot of different things.

And as adults, we have a hard time wrapping our heads around it and dealing with it.

So to be able to see this from a kid's perspective, I think, is necessary, you know, because I'm a parent, and I know, you know, as I watched the news and see the things that are going on, I know how I'm trying to deal with it, gravitate to it.

And I think just as a community, we just have to do a better job of you know, actually checking to see what's going on with our kids, to see how they're dealing with it, to see what they think about it.

Because I think, if we did that, I think we'll really be blown away by some of the responses that we get.

Because they're not stupid.

They see what's going on.

- Talk about the differences between what maybe you experienced as a kid growing up in that area and what your characters in the movie experience.

Is there a big difference or-- - To be honest, it's a direct reflection of what I experienced as a kid.

I grew up in a single parent home.

My father left when I was six years old.

And when that happened, I was no longer able to be a six year old.

I had to start, you know, the running joke is, when I was six, I was actually 16, because the level of responsibility, you know, shifted, and I was no longer able to be a carefree kid, to just sit back and say, Hey, you know, everything is okay.

There were certain things that I did to try to protect the house.

You know, I was the kid who I'll pull out the toolbox when something needed to get fixed.

You know, I'm doing that now.

I'm checking the windows at night and looking out to make sure, you know, that my mom is protected and things like that.

So I took on a much older persona than I actually was due to my circumstances.

And the reality is that's not uncommon.

The drug-dealing and the shooting, like, yeah, that happens, but I feel like this portion of it is often missed.

Everybody is often, you know, trying to be tough and things like this, but what's often missing those films is the vulnerability.

I think one of my biggest motivations behind this film is my youngest son.

I looked at him one day and I laughed, and I was like, Man, you're really a 10 year old.

Because when I was 10, I had responsibilities, I had, you know what I mean?

It was just a totally different animal.

And to see him just be carefree...

I wasn't able to be carefree as a kid.

- So I wonder what message you think people who aren't from Detroit and who may not know anything about Asbury Park, the street, might take away from this, might take away from this.

I'm always curious about how we project to everybody else from the city.

- Asbury Park isn't even necessarily a Detroit story.

It actually takes place in the fictitious world of the inner city, you know, because while it is relevant in Detroit, it's also relevant in Baltimore and St. Louis, and you know, just all over the country.

But I think oftentimes, when you're going through things, because you're dealing with it in realtime, you don't stop and think, Hey, somebody is dealing with it over here, or someone's dealing with it over there.

So for me, you know, like I said, it's much bigger.

And honestly, my goal and my hope is that people that are not from that environment will take a look and start asking questions because I feel like that's how you evoke change.

- Here, it's just a fight to breathe.

- And that is going to do it for One Detroit Arts and Culture.

Thanks so much for joining me.

For all of our arts and culture stories and the stories that we're working on, just head to our website at onedetroitpbs.org I will see you next week.

Take care.

- [Presenter] You can find more at onedetroitpbs.org, or subscribe to our social media channels and sign up for our One Detroit newsletter.

- [Presenter] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, MASCO corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

MASCO, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Presenter] Support for this program provided by: The Cynthia and Edsel Ford fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- [Presenter] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit dtefoundation.com to learn more - [Presenter] Business Leaders for Michigan.

Dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income, and a healthy economy.

Also brought to you by: The Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, and viewers like you.

(gentle music)