Every single Metro Times cover story of 2017

It seems safe to say that nobody expected Donald Trump to win the 2016 presidential election — not even Trump himself. Yet here we are. The pooch has been screwed. We have our president. There's only one way out of this. If you thought the campaign season was long, just wait for the next few years. Here's our step-by-step guide on how to get through them.

Now, Michigan's autonomous laws are the broadest in the nation. If Detroit hasn't been the leader in driverless technology, we could now be poised to become it. But is the Motor City ready to give up the steering wheel?

Once again, Metro Times brings you our roundup of the 15 best new bands in the metropolitan area. Rock out to the new sounds of young Detroit.

Chilean-born Camilo Jose Vergara is the country's premier photographic chronicler of the American inner city. He started out in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, carefully re-photographing urban landscapes from the same position, creating a visual record of poor neighborhoods as buildings fell victim to disinvestment, arson, and demolition. Vergara, who has been visiting Detroit every year since 1991, released a new book, Detroit Is No Dry Bones — a long, fond look at the city Vergara finds, in its intact opulence and even in its decay, rich with beautiful imagery.

The hijacker from Detroit left St. Louis with a fortune — but it all slipped from his grasp somewhere over Indiana. This is the story of the final flight of Martin McNally.

Today, Dita Von Teese is probably the world's premier burlesque performer, a modern-day beauty icon in the vein of the archetypal Old Hollywood femme fatale. But long before she was Dita Von Teese from Los Angeles, she was shy, blonde Heather Sweet from a farming town in Michigan. Here's how she made her Midwest makeover.

In August 2015, Susanne Hilberry passed away at age 72 from complications associated with a brain tumor. In February, the Susanne Hilberry Gallery closed its doors, ending a four-decade run presenting both leading artists of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as emerging unknowns. Here's a look back at a rare woman with agency and self-determination, who built the world around her.

For Muslim women, few aspects of the religion generate as much controversy and intrigue as the hijab, the headscarf worn by many Muslim women in observance of their faith. Yet by the thousands, Muslim women challenge stereotypes surrounding the hijab daily. They are doctors, businesswomen, and stay-at-home moms. They are writers, labor activists, and professionals. They're as varied and complex as their non-Muslim counterparts. And they live here peacefully, proudly serving their metro Detroit communities.

The process of hydraulic fracturing has set off a bonanza of pipeline-building, as energy giants look for ways to profitably exploit a rapidly changing North American market for hydrocarbons. But as critics see it, this pipeline-building spree is an under-regulated, speculative bonanza in which residents end up having to pay a high price for a system of questionable value when it's all built. This is behind the fight against the Nexus pipeline.

We have a problem in this country. We tell our young people that they're never — ever — supposed to drink anything but water or Sunny D until they're 21, and then we set them loose into a society rich with "drinking holidays" all over the country, from Fargo to Fort Lauderdale, where you're encouraged to gather with thousands of other inebriated people and "have a good time." That's just a recipe for disaster. So here are some of the best pieces of advice we could come up with for that newly minted 21-year-old about to have his first drink in a public setting (wink-wink).

It seems that for all the buzz in recent years about Detroit's dining scene, the city is suffering from a good server drought. But with the help of restaurants like Rose's — plus, fine dining establishments like Chartreuse, Selden Standard, and Mabel Gray — the narrative of Detroit's service industry is changing. Detroit is slowly beginning to amass a rank of hospitality virtuosos.

The word "trouble" doesn't really capture what is at stake, both environmentally and economically, if the invasive Asian carp succeed in what has so far seemed like their inevitable push to colonize the Great Lakes, the biggest home they could ever hope to find, and one that still sustains a multibillion-dollar commercial and recreational fishery. Here's how the Great Lakes could get overtaken with Asian carp — and how they could be saved.

Brunch is big business, an increasingly important part of the dining scene, a meal restaurants depend on. As for the economics of it, they prove themselves. The business of brunch is just booming. Here's a selection of local brunch offerings.

With the 2017 Detroit Tigers season upon us it is time to take in all the majesty that is Detroit Tigers baseball. Detroit Sports Nation editors Alex Muller and Don Drysdale give their thoughts on what the new season will hold for Tigers fans.

Under a package of reform bills passed last year in Lansing, newly legalized dispensaries will be supplied exclusively by marijuana produced at state-licensed commercial grows. But the costs associated with running a large-scale commercial grow are enormous. Such costs and the inability to sell to dispensaries will likely render many of the state's 40,000-plus caregivers incapable of entering the medical marijuana industry in its new iteration.

On April 25, Flint's residents will mark a grim anniversary. That's when, in an ill-fated attempt to save a few million dollars, state officials decided to draw the city's drinking water from the highly corrosive Flint River while the new Karegnondi pipeline connecting Genesee County to Lake Huron was being built. The world now knows what happened after that. But a closer look at public records shows how racism and political power grabbing combined to produce tragic consequences.

Nothing in the Motor City comes easy. It's winter, seemingly, for half the year. People here are skeptical of hype, and rightfully so. Detroiters can be a tough crowd, and you have to be Detroit-tough to survive and thrive here. It's no minor feat to be Detroit-approved. Once again, we wanted to find out who is leading the pack. So we've quizzed readers in our annual Best of Detroit poll.

On her second full-length, Telephone, Jessica Hernandez says she finally took control of her work fully and got to make the album that she's always wanted to make — a bilingual double album in English and Spanish.

The night 18-year-old Bernard Howard was hauled into Detroit police headquarters he was unequivocal: He knew nothing. So he was released. Three days later, when officers brought him downtown again, they'd changed their tune. He was being held overnight for murder. That was July 1994. At the time, Howard was a young man with a family to take care of and a prospective job at a General Motors plant in the works. But instead of working on a car production line he has been imprisoned ever since, fighting a murder conviction that he maintains was manufactured by Detroit police and an enterprising jailhouse informant.