Everything You Should Totally Do in Detroit This Spring

Well, winter sucked, as always. Now that we're faced with the beginning of March again, we can work toward putting the last five-ish months behind us, and look to all the fun outdoors things we'll be doing shortly, like spending most weekends at the Royal Oak Farmers Market drinking with our bros, or dusting off our dancing shoes for all the springtime dance festivals. Here's the full list of things you should totally do in these slightly warmer Detroit months. Spoiler alert: Kraftwerk is playing here in May (!!!!!).

Flint Institute of Arts from the outside
Flickr/Erin

Learn something about metal

Decorative to Dangerous is an exhibit about the history of metalwork at the Flint Institute of Arts, which is actually pretty cool and something positive happening around Flint these days.

Put the FUN in fundraising at one of Detroit's best neighborhood dive bars

You don't have to be a cyclist to enjoy drinking (though most cyclists do seem to enjoy drinking). Stop by Abick's in Southwest Detroit for a beer during Tour de Troit, Detroit's OG group-biking event. 

Enjoy this show, dead or alive

ROBOCOP! The Musical is a live-action musical parody of the dystopian cyberpunk classic, RoboCop, which has become as much the name of a 1987 movie as a term synonymous with a decaying Detroit, and has in recent years been reclaimed by Detroiters looking to dismantle the negative Detroit narrative. This city, man.
Italian producer BOTTIN spinning at Lokal in Istanbul
BOTTIN

Discover how Italians do it better with the <em>other</em> Tour Detroit

Tour Detroit -- the Detroit-based techno event production company that specializes in unknown and esoteric talent, not the annual bike ride -- brings in Venice-based (Italy, not LA) producer, DJ, and sound designer Bottin for a night of Italian space disco at Marble Bar.

Go all-out Irish

Get to the St. Paddy's parties almost two weeks in advance, starting with the Irish Taste Fest at the Royal Oak Farmers Market, featuring Irish food, Irish whiskey, Irish beer, Irish cider, Irish music... you get the drift.
Gatsby Lawn Party at Detroit's Palmer Park
Detroit Gatsby Party&nbsp;

Celebrate the seemingly fundamental misunderstanding of what <em>The Great Gatsby</em> was actually about by paying a lot of money to get dressed up and drink

The Detroit Gatsby Lawn Party will hold its Winter Gala at the Charles T. Fisher Residence in the historic Boston-Edison neighborhood full of fancy mansions. 1920s black-tie apparel is required, and your $80-100 ticket gets you a strolling supper, open bar, and Jazz Age entertainment, breaking the hearts of high school English teachers everywhere who worked so hard to impress upon their students that the takeaway from The Great Gatsby is not actually a glorification of decadence, until Baz Luhrmann came along and fucked it all up.

Get hip to Detroit's robust dance scene

Head to ArtLab J's Eastern Market headquarters for the dance-focused nonprofit's inaugural VIP Champagne reception and kickoff party for the 2016 Detroit Dance City Festival.

Get even hipper to black women who rock

The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History presents BLACK WOMEN ROCK!, a movement spearheaded by Detroit poet and performance artist jessica Care moore that highlights the music, stories, and legacy of black women who create on their own terms. This event sells out every year.
Brewer at b. nektar meadery
B. Nektar Meadery

#IWantToBelieve that #DragonsAreReal

B. Nektar Meadery is celebrating the release of its #DragonsAreReal mead -- a cherry chipotle mead with cacao nibs, aged in New Holland Brewing's Dragon's Milk barrels -- with a party fit for a giant, fantastical, fire-breathing lizard, including food from the Hero or Villain Van.

Perform your civic duty and vote for the best new bourbon

Detroit City Distillery is releasing a new bourbon called Butcher's Cut, and they need YOU (cue Uncle Sam propaganda poster) to help them pick it! For this final weekend of the Butcher's Cut bourbon tasting, guests pay $40 for four 1oz single-barrel samples of the new bourbon (each aged in a different way) and a tour of the distillery with barrel sampling. You'll then choose the "finest cut," and, through the miracle of democracy, the barrel with the most votes becomes THE Butcher's Cut bourbon. Your city distillery needs you!

Start ramping up for Movement over Memorial Day weekend with a Detroit legend

Kevin Saunderson, one of the Belleville Three (credited with the creation of Detroit techno), will get you all warmed up for Movement by making you sweat all night at TV Lounge.
St. Patrick's Parade participants in Detroit
Flickr/Wigwam Jones

Watch random people wave handwritten signs on flatbed "floats" and drink a lot of green beer while also wearing green

The annual Corktown parade ushers in the season of cranky residents wringing their hands over all of those terrible, terrible suburbanites coming into the city to have fun and spend money (how DARE they). Wear some green, drink some beers, have some fun; it's not that serious.

Channel your inner Jack White, shout "Get behind me, Satan" as you drive the devil out of Detroit

The Marche du Nain Rouge is Detroit's annual springtime march to drive out the devil who has plagued our fair city for centuries -- check out our outsider's guide here. As luck would have it, ever since the Marche was renewed in 2010, the city has been getting better and better each year. Coincidence? If it ain't broke, keep dressing up in costumes the Sunday after the spring equinox to drink beer in the streets of Midtown. The starting point is conveniently right in front of Third Man Records, because everything is connected. So your costume can be a devilish Jack White in (dis)honor of Detroit's most charismatic hell-raiser. 
Member of the Ragbirds performing
Flickr/Sean Munson

Get down with gypsy Americana Latin roots indie folk pop music from the distant land of Ann Arbor

The internationally known, five-piece, female-led, genre-bending, world music/indie-pop fusion outfit The Ragbirds are celebrating the release of their fifth studio album at The Magic Bag in Ferndale, with the support of another popular Ann Arbor-based "progressive string-swing" group, The Appleseed Collective.

Call out of&nbsp;work to take part in Detroit's biggest annual celebration

The Corktown Parade is just the start; the Detroit Tigers' home opener is the real-deal local holiday, when the streets are filled with orange and navy blue and the city celebrates the honorary start of springtime in the D. You don't need tickets to the game (against the Yankees) to get in on the festivities, which basically just involve a lot of drinking. Any excuse is a good one.
Visitors of Sip Savor Stomp receiving glasses of wine
Sip Savor Stomp

Sip, Savor, Stomp

Take more than 300 wines from 90 wineries, add cheese and chocolate and other wine-friendly foods, plus music to Stomp because they're working a theme here, and you've got Sip, Savor, Stomp.

Gather your bros to drink a bunch of beers, many of which don't suck

The annual Spring Bro Fest -- aka Spring Beer Festival -- at the Royal Oak Farmers Market is sure to be a beer-y, bro-y good time, as always.

Check out KRAFTWERK 3D (OMFG)

Once upon a time (in the '70s), some weirdo Germans started wearing matching outfits and took to making music on electronic synthesizers, and so began all techno and EDM as we know it. More than 40 years and three incarnations later, Movement has continuously paid homage to the originators and earliest innovators of techno (in an only-in-Detroit kind of way), but this is the first time the legendary Kraftwerk is appearing at Hart Plaza over Memorial Day weekend, and they're bringing their acclaimed 3D "experience" with them. You do NOT want to miss this. Like, that phrase gets thrown around a lot, but this is serious. Seriously. Don't miss this.