A Sunday Morning in Idlewild

I’m sitting outside at Black Eden Brews listening to the sounds of Sunday morning brunch.

Where to get minnows.

What time of morning is best to walk.

How much things have changed.

Yet when you put it all together, the technology and the sensibilities may have changed. The need for meaningful relationships and meaningful places to gather has not.

Enter Idlewild from stage left.

A friend, Carlton, told me about this place five years ago. I think about the space on Detroit’s east side with the heated igloos in the winter. That place felt magical. So it should come as no surprise that the same people would set their sights on this historic corner of Michigan.

The birds are chirping. It’s nothing but blue skies and a perfect 75-degree day that only Michigan can provide in the summer. If you’re from here, you know exactly what I mean.

No breeze.

Just nothing.

It feels like perfection.

A group of two women and a man walk past. We exchange pleasantries. As I walk inside, I’m unsure whether to turn left or right. A voice calls out, “Sit anywhere and scan the QR code.”

I think about introducing myself and talking about BLAC.

I decide it’s unnecessary.

The best stories come from the lack of performance.

I want to discover this place the way it was meant to be discovered.

I order the Frenchy French Toast and sausage for $10. Of course, I have to order the grits too. Somehow, I manage to order them both plain and with cheddar. They arrive plain, disappear back into the kitchen, and return with cheddar.

Worth the wait.

Stone ground, I believe.

The coffee is self-serve and appropriately black. Not brown. Midnight black. No cream. No sugar.

Delicious.

Inside, the walls are covered with art for sale. Photography. Paintings. Pieces that make you slow down. I wonder if the owner created some of them.

I drift.

This is supposed to be about discovering Idlewild.

Or maybe that’s exactly what I’m doing.

After breakfast, the woman who first greeted me asks if I need anything.

We start talking.

She’s the owner of Black Eden.

She’s also an artist.

I ask her about the name.

She smiles.

Black Eden, she tells me, has long been another name for Idlewild.

The owners of the nearby hotel invited her to open the coffee shop. Her parents met in Idlewild, and growing up they came here nearly every weekend. After years living in New York, she remembers returning, standing on the dock, and feeling the weight of everything she’d been carrying disappear. Sometimes, she said, she’d just cry.

Only then do I tell her I’m working on a story for BLAC.

She asks me to email it when it’s finished.

We talk about Idlewild. About preserving places like Black Eden. About the importance of creating spaces where history isn’t simply remembered but continues to live.

Before I leave, I buy a piece of art from one of the artists whose work hangs on the café walls. The payment goes directly to the artist.

I came for breakfast.

I left with art.

More importantly, I left with a different understanding of why places like this matter.

When you’ve spent your life trying to figure out who you are—and whether you have a place in Black spaces—it feels good to be here.

To listen.

To learn.

I thought I was writing about a coffee shop.

Instead, I found the beginning of a much bigger story.

There are picnic tables beyond the seating area.

I think I’ll stay a little longer.