The poet William Carlos Williams once wrote, "In summer, the song sings itself." This week, Metromode hums along with a list of outside Metro Detroit places and events you must experience this summer.

We're taking a break next week. Partly for business and partly for pleasure. It's Memorial Day weekend, so if you're like us you'll be honoring those who've served our country while manning the backyard barbecue. We're also indulging in a little site maintenance, tweaking our content and changing some features. Look for a spruced up version of Metromode when we return on Thursday, June 10th.

Youngstown is like Detroit's Mini Me. The small, Ohio, former steel-belt city has seen disinvestment, a quickly shrinking population, vacancy and blight. Youngstown's leadership, however, has engaged the community and created a definitive plan to turn the city around. They are thinking big by acting small.

Metro Detroit's young gun restaurateurs are thriving in an otherwise tough economy. Balancing style, location, and affordability, they've created popular eateries that cater to hip and enthusiastic crowds.

What's in a name? When it comes to Metro Detroit microbrews a whole heckuva lot. From Bam Biere to Ghettoblaster, Luciernaga to Final Absolution, Melinda Clynes gets the skinny on where the names and wonderful beer labels come from for some of our favorite local libations.

Think of them as a five-headed hydra of creativity and marketing savvy. Dearborn's Team Detroit melded the best and brightest from WPP's top agencies into a single ad shop bent on world domination. Or, at the very least, attracting lots of happy clients. Michelle Martinez gets under their hood and checks out how this engine of ideas operates.

The Michigan Film Incentives have brought a giant mutated insect to Pontiac. And they seem to be bringing a whole lot of economic activity to the region. Sucker is just the latest homegrown effort to capitalize on the state's growing movie industry, and help plug our creative brain drain.

"Creative Class" researcher and professor Kevin Stolarick will speak at Model D's Speaker Series on May 12 at the Book Cadillac. The topic will be how higher education institutions play a role in transforming cities. It is free to attend, but you must register in advance.

With warm weather comes bugs, and with bugs come bats. Maligned and misunderstood, these furry flying creatures have found friends and supporters at the Organization for Bat Conservation, the only program of its kind in the country. Open your mind and enter Cranbrook's Bat Zone...

"It's in our DNA to do amazing things," says Harvey Ovshinsky. Metromode's Jon Zemke sits down with the veteran video producer and screenwriter to talk about Michigan's Film Incentives and their potential impact on the state's investment opportunities, job growth, and brain drain.