Life + Culture

Chain of Trust

Ted Conrad's Fireboard turns weekend cooking into a precision system backyard grillers everywhere rely on Article by Marshall Zweig | Photography by Amy Gillespie Somewhere between the hardware store and the soccer field your kid is playing on, a brisket is sitting in a smoker. It cost a hundred dollars, and it's been on since early morning. The cook has no idea how it's doing. That specific, domestic, slightly anxious problem is what FireBoard was designed to solve. Ted Conrad spent...

Finance + Legal Services

Standing Between You And The Machine

The system says innocent until proven guilty. David Rudoi never lets it forget that Article by Marshall Zweig | Photography by Amy Gillespie Most days, when the work's finally done, David Rudoi puts on his headphones, steps out onto the streets of downtown Royal Oak, and walks home. It's just him, the city, and whatever hip-hop he needs that evening to decompress. It sounds simple enough. Until you understand what he's been carrying all day. David is a criminal defense attorney. In fifteen...

Finance + Legal Services

What's Life About?

Merchant services maverick Todd McKay's business philosophy is three words: relationships, relationships, relationships Article by Marshall Zweig | Photography by Amy Gillespie Todd McKay grew up in Warren, in a modest house, with a single mother who worked seven days a week to make it happen for her family. He always had a plan to make something of himself. At 22, that plan looked like moving to Santa Barbara and becoming an actor. It didn't go that way. But what happened instead turned out...

Home + Design

Paradise, Basement Level

Meet the local craftsman fashioning handmade tiki art collectors can't get enough of Article by Marshall Zweig | Photography by Amy Gillespie Somewhere in Eastern Market, there was a tiki Don Peterka was never meant to own. He spotted it at an antique store maybe ten years ago. It was cement, not carved wood, weathered to a green-gray patina from decades of shade and rain.  He loved it immediately—but someone had already bought it. So Don went home and scoured the internet, chasing expired...