Things to Do in Dearborn Heights

Since May 2008, Wheelhouse Detroit has been offering its customers a healthy and highly efficient new way to see Motown, with guided bike tours traversing the terrains and trails of Detroit. More than 80 bicycle tours are scheduled for the upcoming months, with new tours regularly added. On the Belle Isle tour on Saturday, May 21, pedaling explorers will cruise around Detroit's famed architectural archipelago, surveying sights such as the aquarium and Livingstone Memorial Lighthouse. Guides will discuss the history behind the area's famous statues, such as Alpheus Starkey Williams, who served as a Union general in the Civil War before tragically being turned to stone.

The Bogey Golf Tour grants golfers a chance to take to the links and compete against fellow amateurs in tournaments scheduled at some of the finest courses in the London, Windsor, Detroit, and Kitchener/Waterloo areas. At each event, scratch golfers compete in the Birdie division, 0–15 handicaps square off in the Par division, and 16+ handicappers trade pinpoint approaches and sequined divot tools in the Bogey division. The top five finishers in each division receive prize money—which can be paid out in gift certificates or cash—and the Tour also holds prize competitions for longest drive, closest to the pin, and 3-iron jousting. The Tour publishes the results from each tournament in local newspapers, and players can chart the peaks and valleys of their careers on the Tour Members list, which compiles all of their tournament results. Along with providing an outlet for amateur golfers to exercise their long-suppressed competitive side, the Tour and its sponsors have raised $74,000 for various area charities since 2003.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s gifted tunesmiths squeeze euphonious notes through their woodwind, brass, string, and percussion instruments, building upon a 125-year history of symphonic sounds in the Motor City. The orchestra's performance of Franck's Symphony in D Minor pollinates the air with soaring French classics, swaying back and forth to the baton semaphoring of guest conductor Hélène Bouchez and the piano mastery of 17-year old prodigy Conrad Tao. A pair of Debussy compositions inaugurates the evening with ear-swooning melodies that bounce of the antique theater's ornate, golden structure, which was built in 1919. During the evening’s main and final piece, Franck's Symphony in D Minor, Chinese-American Conrad Tao showcases his full repertoire, which has earned him ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer award for eight consecutive years, just two notches shy of earning him a free carrying case for a grand piano.

The year was 1975, and Wayne State University's David Mackenzie House was facing imminent destruction to make way for a new sewer line. Two university students rallied their peers to halt the demolition, simultaneously planting the seed that bloomed, like a flower bulb planted in radioactive dirt, into Preservation Detroit. Over the past three decades, the architectural preservation organization has become a leading advocate for the protection and rehabilitation of Detroit's historic abodes, skyscrapers, and culturally rich sites. Preservation Detroit's staff, composed primarily of volunteers, continues to nurture their community's passion for historical treasures through lectures, seasonal newsletters, and tours.

From May to September, tour guides usher pedestrians through the bustling streets of Detroit, weaving narrative tapestries about the century-old cultural center and, on the Auto Heritage tour, Henry Ford's flagship factory, birthplace of the Model T and the concept that assembly lines are useful for more than just completing the Sunday crossword. During a special yearly boat tour, guides unravel the Detroit River's seedy past as a conduit for Prohibition-era bootlegging while passengers dig into dinner.

Sifu Owen Matson trains students on the ving tsun kung fu techniques taught to him by a line of Moy Tung sifu and grandmasters. Matson's classes cultivate students' balance of body and mind through the practice of two forms: siu nim tao, a basic stance emphasizing hand techniques, and chum kiu, a shifting stance that bolsters stability in motion by focusing on footwork and encouraging students to pick fights with mailbox posts.

A well-weathered teacher, Matson began his training in 1999 under the expert tutelage of Robert "Moy Yat Tung" Squatrito, who helped him master the swift movements and powerful strikes of the kung fu discipline. After becoming a member of the Moy Tung's MY4 and ICC inner training circles, Sifu Owen traveled to Detroit to open his ving tsun studio.

Fueled by the passion of winemaker and obsessive-compulsive grape-stomper Lisa Berry, Vintner's Cellar offers several wines fermented in Royal Oak. During your tasting, you'll get to sample five different wines from a diverse range of red, white, fruit, and specialty libations. You'll also get to snack on cheese, crackers, grapes, and crackery grapecheese creations while soaking in the lively décor of intermingling dark and vivid tones like a sponge tuxedo. The wine tasting is good for two people, so buddy up or carefully wheel a frenemy's bed to the cellar before he or she wakes up.