Contributors: November 2015

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Scott Atkinson

Scott Atkinson spent the summer of 2015 sitting in on classes at the House of Truth wrestling school in Center Line. “I’d heard there was a school that taught people how to be professional wrestlers and thought, I just have to see this for myself,” Atkinson says. “I went looking for a school and was introduced to an entire world I never knew existed.” In addition to his work for Hour Detroit, Atkinson was for several years an award-winning features writer for The Flint Journal. He is now a freelance writer and teaches writing and journalism at the University of Michigan-Flint.

EE Berger

This month’s story on dinner party entertaining was a dream shoot for EE Berger. Not only was the loft an incredible location, but all of the participants were the masterminds behind some of her favorite food, desserts, and floral projects in the city. Shooting a bunch of inspiring people in some beautiful fall light, chatting about upcoming projects, and snacking on some of the best food the city has to offer was not a bad gig, she says. Meanwhile she felt that the collaboration and effort in this dinner was a perfect example of what is happening all over the city: creative individuals supporting each other at their own goals and endeavors — but still finding time for a delicious cocktail.

Mickey Lyons

Mickey Lyons made the switch from Victorian literature professor to Prohibition historian when she realized that her primary research would include tending bar. Since returning to Detroit in 2013, she’s written for various publications — including Hour Detroit — about Detroit history and food and drink culture. Her current project is a book on Detroit’s speakeasy history. “Bars have been, for so long, the center of cultural and political society,” she says. “They’re where deals are done and dreams are made. Sometimes where dreams die, too.” This month, she writes about her self-imposed challenge to tend bar at each Detroit watering hole established before 1933, the official end of Prohibition.

Josh Scott

“Wasn’t everyone into wrestling at some point in their life, or had a brother or cousin who was?” asks Josh Scott. Maybe not, but he admits that there was a time in his life when he “couldn’t get enough Hulk Hogan, Brutus the Barber Beefcake, The Bushwhackers, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and the list goes on.” So Scott was more than happy to take a glimpse into the world of pro wrestling and find out how some might get their start. Scott, who has been contributing to Hour Detroit since the beginning of his career, also works for clients such as Road & Track, Popular Mechanics, and Panasonic.