Movement 2025: A Spiritual Reckoning in Four On the Floor…read more
I would've written this sooner, but my weekend itinerary was stacked: pedicure, wax, hair trim, stomach pump, and three hours in a sensory deprivation tank in Sterling Heights, where I may or may not have briefly died. That reminds me of the previous NDE I had toward the tail-end of May...my annual tradition of face-planting somewhere festive.
Memorial Day weekend in Detroit is sacred. It's the only time of year when it's socially acceptable to fall face-first off a deck and a stage in the same 48 hours, provided you're wearing sunglasses, sunscreen, and a plausible expression of joy.
I don't attend Movement. I haunt it. I materialize at Hart Plaza like a low-frequency apparition in a kimono and hot pants. I never have a wristband, yet I am everywhere: main stage, the VIP section, behind the frozen lemonade truck, briefly in the Detroit River (don't ask).
This year's lineup was decent, I guess. Could've been better. I say that every year, and yet every year I end up on my knees in front of a subwoofer in the rave cave like I'm worshipping the bass as a wrathful deity. At one point, a man in a mesh tank top tried to sell me "artisanal molly" in a prescription bottle labeled Wellbutrin. I declined. Not because I don't party, but because I'd just inhaled some truly heroic rails off a stranger's god-tier cleavage and was waiting to see what happened (again, don't ask).
Festival highlights included:
- Being called "Ma'am" by a child in a bucket hat before he handed me a blunt.
- Interrupting a set to demand the DJ play "Prince Ali" (1992 OG version, of course) and somehow succeeding, despite a crowd that clearly wasn't ready for Agrabah basslines.
- Hearing "Deep Inside" and feeling every bad decision I've ever made vibrating in my spine and cervix.
- Watching a man in full leather assless chaps negotiate a porta-potty truce with Grandma Techno (she easily bested him after she mowed him down with her Rascal).
My Movement prep list for 2025:
- Industrial-strength saline mist and tissues for when you get hit with a pesky Colombian cold
- Emergency slutty outfit (weather inappropriate, crotchless, fierce)
- Vintage Adderall (orange ovals for life, baybeeeeee)
- Laminated list of local bail bondsmen
- 1 tube of Vicks for the "traditional" reasons
- Bra with enough secret hiding places to make the Underground Railroad blush
By Monday night, I was 78% wild animal, 22% polite enough to order food without frightening the staff. My phone had a shattered screen, 4% battery, and 87 unanswered texts, most of them asking either "Are you still alive?" or "Who the fuck is Judith Merkintosh?"
To answer the former: barely, but beautifully. To answer the latter: I'm a public service announcement with great tits and a world-class vagina. Just ask anyone at Regulars' Night. Yes... anyone.
Five stars. See you next year. Or sooner, if you check the dumpster behind The Lex... or catch me doing the Friday morning Walk of Shame down Trumbull, still holding a frozen lemonade I didn't pay for.