Fluff and Other Stuff | Reasons to Love The D

As if we need to list more reasons to love our city … but why not? Here are a few places, faces, items and events that make Detroiters all happy and tingly inside.

Public Bike Share System

We’re writing this tidbit now, probably before the system actually launches in 2016, because we are just so crazy in love with the idea of Detroit having its very own public bike share system. Last we heard, there’ll be about 350 bikes involved, 35 stations throughout the greater downtown area and membership options could range from annual and monthly packages to day passes. The D has already got the Monday night Slow Rolls (Michigan’s biggest weekly bike ride, in case you didn’t know), the ever-popular bike-like efforts of Tour de Troit and a network of cycling lanes 170 miles long and growing. More ways to motor through the Motor City on two wheels.

Detroit Marshmallow Co.

Love the fluff. Using fluff as a medium to discover Detroit’s food scene. How can you not have total appreciation for a company with mission statements such as these? Wipe your memory of marshmallows of your youth. Detroit Marshmallow Co. doesn’t do processed or punched-out of the Stay Puft variety. Making marshmallows is a craft — an artistic endeavor — and when you taste one of the little pillows of deliciousness, you’ll understand what we mean. Adult palates rejoice and try the Earl Grey Whiskey Sour or the DBBQ — it’s sweet, spicy and coated with barbecue potato chips. Kids, don’t fret. They’ve got vanilla bean and Detroit Rock City (think Faygo Rock & Rye).

Galapagos Art Space

New York is cool. Full of awesome art-filled institutions. Come on, it’s got the Guggenheim, for goodness’ sake, where great works from Gauguin, Picasso, Pollock and Warhol hang in perfect harmony. No disrespect, but so what? That’s what the famed art incubator Galapagos Art Space said when it decided to ditch its longtime home in Brooklyn for new digs in Detroit. Plans are for the sprawling spaces purchased in Corktown and Highland Park to open up in phases, with the first hopefully happening sometime in 2016. What’s not to love when you’ve got New York art influencers saying stuff like this: “Cities like Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chapel Hill, Austin, Nashville and Philadelphia — all great cities in their own right — are not the national mixing chamber that New York City has been. We think Detroit can be that place.”

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