WDET’s CuriosiD series answers your questions about everything Detroit. Subscribe to CuriosiD on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of CuriosiD, listener Martha Rotter asks the question:

“What happened to Chamberlain Bakery and their sour rye bread recipe?”

The short answer

A nostalgic walk through Chamberlain Street

On Detroit’s Chamberlain Street, people would wake up to the aroma of freshly baked sour rye bread from the Chamberlain Bakery.  

It was opened by Lithuanian baker Stanley Vasilauskis (who also went by Wasilauskis) in 1924. He brought the recipe with him when he moved from Chicago, where his family owned the Wasilauskis Home Bakery. 

Livonia resident Martha Rotter remembers eating the bread with her German husband’s family during gatherings.  

“Every time we got together, whether it was a potluck or just a regular family dinner, there was Chamberlain Bakery bread there… And they all agreed it was the best bread,” she says. 

John Micallef, the CEO of Oakland Macomb OBGYN, grew up in Southwest Detroit near the Chamberlain Bakery. He worked on a paper route in the 1980s, close to the bakery.  

“I remember stopping there on the way, doing the route, grabbing a snack. Sometimes in the morning, they would give you a cookie or something. We were really young back in the day,” he reminisces.

Micallef says the bakery was a gathering space where people knew you on a first-name basis.  

“It was just a great neighborhood type of bakery, the kind you don’t really see too much anymore, but the smell was always wonderful. People were friendly. They knew you by your name.” 

The bakery was sold again in 2002 to Alexander & Hornung, a sausage-processing company. Then-president Bernie Polen says the bakery was on its last leg and he purchased it to keep it alive.

At the time, they baked about 800 loaves of bread daily and distributed them to stores in metro Detroit. Polen says he closed the bakery around 2008 or 2009 because it wasn’t financially viable.

A second act for Chamberlain Bakery bread

David Alkevicius also grew up in Southwest Detroit on the sour rye bread from Chamberlain Bakery. He says many times he was the designated person in the family to grab loaves of bread for special occasions.  

When he learned the bakery had closed down, he decided he needed to learn how to make the bread.

“Honestly to begin with, it was more selfish because I wanted it and I didn’t know anywhere to get it,” he laughs. 

He began reaching out to people who formerly worked at the bakery to learn the recipe and make the sour rye bread.

It turns out the sour rye bread has a large fan following, in part due to how it was baked in a brick oven heated up to over 425 degrees. The coal burning oven stayed on practically all the time, until it was changed to a gas oven after Polen acquired the bakery. He says the oven would be turned off once a year to cool down and to allow a mason to patch the brick.

Alkevicius says the rye bread has a unique formula.

“Most rye breads that you buy from the store are 15% (rye). The sour rye from Chamberlain Bakery, they had a half and half, which was 50-50, and then their actual sour rye was 75%, and so it’s a heavy, dense bread, but still very soft,” he explained.

It took him about five years to perfect the recipe. He also made a few adjustments. 

“You’d mix the hot, boiling water with the rye flour, and once it cooled, you added it to the mother dough. And I think it just changed the whole, you know, the whole composition of the bread, because I tried making it the traditional way, where people just mix flour and water, and it never came out right,” he said.

Alkevicius says it’s hard to find a similar bread in stores.

He began selling his bread at the Wilson Barn farmer’s markets for two years. Then he opened Alkevicius Breads in 2016, a bakery in Livonia located on Five Mile and Farmington Road that operated through 2018. He hopes he can bake the breads again someday.

Although it’s been nearly two decades since the Chamberlain Bakery has shut down, many people still talk about it on Facebook and Reddit threads.

It holds a special place in people’s memories, with many hoping they can get another bite of the one-of-a-kind sour rye bread.

Lithuanians in Michigan

Algis Kaunelis is the cohost of the Lithuanian Melodies Radio Program on WMZK 690 AM. 

Kaunelis grew up in Southwest Detroit on 25th and Vernor Street. His parents moved to Detroit during World War II. He says sour rye bread is popular among Lithuanians in the area.

“My parents ended up at a displaced persons camp in Germany, like a lot of other Lithuanians, and then eventually had a godmother in Detroit. And so, they settled in the Detroit area, which a lot of other Lithuanians did, because there were good automotive jobs that they could get and start earning a living right away.”

He too grew up eating bread from Chamberlain Bakery, which his family purchased from a local Lithuanian store that carried the bread.

Years later, he and his wife Patt volunteered their time to deliver about 25 loaves to All Saints Church on Fort Street on Saturday afternoons. The bread was donated by the baker until it shut down.

Today, Kaunelis says there are about 30,000 Lithuanians living in metro Detroit.

About the listener

Livonia resident Martha Rotter remembers having Chamberlain Bakery bread with her German husband’s family during gatherings. She says it went well with different pairings. She hopes the bakery opens up again someday, or that someone sells the bread once again.

We want to hear from you!

Have a question about Southeast Michigan’s history or culture? Send it our way at wdet.org/curious or fill out the form below. You ask, we answer.

In the last episode of CuriosiD, WDET’s Russ McNamara took a look at the history and emergence of the Detroit-specific phrase – “What Up Doe”

That led him to Detroit music producer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Filthy Rockwell. He owns the trademark for ‘WHATUPDOE!’.

Rockwell explained why he felt compelled to start his own brand, but not before sharing his own theory about how ‘What Up Doe?’ got popularized.

Rockwell’s theory

Rockwell says he reached out to an unofficial uncle for background—George Clinton. Clinton was no stranger to Detroit, working first as a songwriter at Motown Records and then recording legendary albums here at United Sound Systems.

“I was talking to [Clinton], and I asked him one day…when was the first time he heard ‘What up doe?’ And he said the first time he heard what up though was in the early 70s, and he said he heard it from Amp Fiddler,” Rockwell said.

Fiddler was a legendary Detroit keyboardist who worked with J Dilla, Prince, and Moodyman.

Starting in the mid-1980s, Fiddler toured with Clinton for about a decade.

Fiddler grew up on Detroit’s east side and graduated from Osborne High School. He was an in-demand and working musician up until his untimely death in 2023.

The “What up doe” brand

About that trademark…

“I own the letters W-H-A-T-U-P-D-O-E,” Rockwell said. “If you spell ‘What Up Doe’ like that in any way, put that on anything I own it.”

He says the whole process started out more than a decade ago.

“I didn’t just trademark ‘What Up Doe,’ I turned it into a brand,” Rockwell said. “When I started selling t-shirts and hats and nobody wanted to sell a ‘What Up Doe’ t-shirt or a hat when I started, nobody.”

Rockwell releases some of the gear through his Filthy Americans brand.

He started out selling the clothing at The Jungle Room in Birmingham and Burn Rubber in Royal Oak and Detroit.

Rockwell had a skate shop and event space near West Grand Boulevard and The Lodge, before parking issues and high rent made it difficult to stay open.

Still the popularity of ‘What Up Doe’ endured with a partnership with the Detroit Pistons.

“We just put out the ‘What Up Doe’ hat at the end of last season before the playoffs, and it just went, went really, really crazy,” Rockwell said. “We gonna do more, drop new designs and show more Detroit pride.”

Though he says the meaning behind all of this is much more than merchandising.

“It wasn’t about just throwing something on a t shirt or a hat. It’s not about that. ‘What Up Doe’ means so much more,” Rockwell said. “It’s about ‘What Up Doe’ with love from Detroit.”

In this episode of CuriosiD, we answer the question:

“What is the origin of ‘What up doe’?”

The short answer

‘What up doe?’ was a condensed greeting between drug dealers — dope boys — that operated in Detroit in the late-1970s and 80s. Doe = dough = cash.

The dark origins of ‘What up doe’

Professor and Poet Aurora Harris grew up in Detroit, bounced around the city including a couple semesters at Detroit Pershing High School, home of the Doughboys.

“We had the drug culture with the heroin, with Pony down gang, Young Boys Incorporated, the Errol Flynns,” Harris said. “And then in the 80s, we had the Chambers Brothers, you know, doing the heavy cocaine stuff.”

Detroit music producer Waajeed says that’s how he remembers it growing up in the 80s on the city’s east side.

“Unless you had a certain status, you couldn’t walk in the street. You had to walk on the sidewalk. Only the dope boys could walk in the street,” Waajeed said.

Each crew had their own identity.

“I remember those guys…they wore a specific type of hat. They wore, like Max Julian jackets, leather, really, really nice jackets with fur and around the collar and Stan Smith Adidas,” Waajeed said.

“Those were the guys that would say, ‘What up doe?’ in my neighborhood.”

In the 80’s “What up Doe” was a form of sonar – a call and response way of navigating the neighborhood.

“So you could check someone with ‘What up, doe’,” Waajeed said. “You could say ‘What up doe’ as a greeting, as a way of saying, ‘hello,’ ‘Aloha,’ whatever, but it was also a way of…making sure that a person is aware that you’re aware of them.”

For Harris, ‘What up doe’ meant talking to the dope boys — not to score drugs, but to find her niece who had a substance use disorder.

Harris wrote a poem to discuss her experience — a pain that was shared by many Detroiters over the past five decades.

“Good morning, my brother, yo, I’m not a cop, not Po Po. How you doing today? Can you talk for a minute? I’ll make it real quick, because you clock in sunlight, cars and corners. I’m looking for my kid, my sister, brother, auntie, uncle, Mama, daddy, nephew, my niece.”

A salutation. A greeting. A cry for help.

“None of y’all should be out here. I gotta find my baby,  / Yo if I see her, what you got for me? / You got that cross on the chain, wearing Jesus on your chest? I’ll, I’ll pray for you daily. That’s all I got left.”

But meanings can change over time.

“What up doe was born out of love and pain from the 70s to the 90s, to be born again as Detroit’s unique and coded greeting for strangers, families and friends.”

From the underground to Detroit catchphrase

For Detroit Comedian Tiffany Barber — T-Barb on stage — that greeting has always been a part of her life. 

“I was in the womb saying ‘What up doe,’ Barber said. “I was in my mama third trimester, and I was in there, and I said, ‘What up doe’. And she got gas when I said it”

Rap-group Afrocentric Wicked Old-school Lyricists AKA A.W.O.L. is said to have been the first Detroit act to put ‘What up doe’ in a single, but the recording has been tough to track down.

Others have been easier to find.

• The Big Dog’s ‘What Up Dow’

• Dice’s “Whut Up Doe”

• Danny Brown’s “What up Doe”

• And most famously Tone Tone’s “Whaddup Doe”

Then Eminem’s cinematic classic 8 Mile gave ‘What up doe’ a worldwide platform.

Waajeed says that’s alright.

“In the same way that Detroiters are wearing the Tigers’ hat and know absolutely nothing about baseball, it’s the same way that some people are saying ‘What up doe’ and just have no real cultural reference and understanding towards what it is and who it’s for,” Waajeed said.

“And either way is okay.”

Barber says she’s not about to gatekeep — in most circumstances.

“We’re cool with everybody. One thing about Detroit is we’re some of the coolest people that you’ll ever meet. We’re always the friendly ones. We’re always the inviting ones,” Barber said.

“So we invite you to say ‘What up doe’, but you can’t capitalize off of ‘What up doe’ if you not from Detroit.”

“Leave our ‘What up doe’ alone when it comes to the paper, that’s our money, but we welcome you to embody the culture,” Barber said.

There have been attempts to turn ‘What up doe’ – and its many visual iterations – into paper. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied at least two attempts to trademark the phrase.

Detroit music producer and philanthropist Filthy Rockwell has a Whatupdoe clothing and goods line.

Poet Aurora Harris says ‘What up doe’ belongs to everyone now.

“I feel like at this point the term is like Motown Records,” Harris said. “It was born in in Detroit, and it’s gone global. There’s nothing we could do about it. Be happy about it.”

Still, is all this just a little problematic given the phrase’s roots in drug culture?

“Detroiters are adaptable. We’re resilient, and we could take anything that’s a tragedy or anything that’s a trauma and turn it into something good.”

About the listener

Peter Bloye was born in Detroit and raised in Dearborn Heights.

For him, the origins of the question came when he was working for the City of Detroit a few years ago.

“I heard a lot of different things that people would say I was unfamiliar with. And  I would ask my crewmates, like, ‘hey, what does this mean exactly?’ And you know, we had a good relationship, and they would explain it. But this phrase, I got different answers. So I really like, ‘Okay, well, none of those really work for me.’ So I just was still curious.”

Bloye no longer works for the city. He’s a full-time caretaker for his mother in Allen Park.

Did he ever feel comfortable using the phrase?

“No, I did not, ”Bloye said. “It seemed like an exclusively Detroit thing,”

We want to hear from you! 

Have a question about southeast Michigan’s history or culture? Send it our way at wdet.org/curiosid, or fill out the form below. You ask, we answer.

Want more stories like this? Sign up for WDET’s weekly newsletter and never miss a curiosity uncovered.

WDET’s CuriosiD series answers your questions about everything Detroit. Subscribe to CuriosiD on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of CuriosiD, we answer the question:

“Where in Detroit is the community known as Dogleg?”

The short answer

Dogleg refers to the southernmost part of the city of Detroit. It is referred to by residents as such because the outline of the area resembles the hind of a dog’s leg. But Dogleg is not its official name.

What is the official name?

That depends. Dogleg consists of two neighborhoods: Oakwood Heights and Boynton. This part of Detroit is the only section of the city that resides south of the Rouge River. The only connections to the rest of the city are bridges on Fort Street, Jefferson Avenue, and Interstate 75.

Some refer to it as the real Southwest Detroit. It’s also makes up the entirety of the zip code 48217, which has gained the moniker “the most polluted zip code in Michigan.”

Michigan’s most polluted zip code

Dogleg is surrounded by 42 major and minor polluting sources releasing toxic chemicals into the air day after day. One of the biggest offenders is the Marathon Oil Refinery.

The area also collects pollutants from industry in neighboring cities like Ecorse, River Rouge and South Dearborn, including the EES Coke Battery Plant and U.S. Steel plant on Zug Island, various scrap yard and metal crushing facilities, wastewater treatment plants, asphalt plants, power stations, and much more.

Clear the Air Michigan is a nonprofit organization focused on environmental justice in the area. They hosted the “Toxic Tour,” an expedition through Southwest Detroit, Ecorse and River Rouge of the various industries polluting the air within a three-mile radius of the area.

Theresa Landrum is a community activist and life-long resident of Dogleg.

She recalls growing up with foul odors in the air and thinking that was normal.

“I grew up with the norm of the air being dusty, and coughing or sneezing, because something has irritated me,” Landrum said.

Landrum now leads the Toxic Tours, informing people of the conditions in the area. She says the community had not met the National Air Quality Standards for more than 16 years. 

Quoting environmental lawyer Nick Leonard, she said: “‘If you have a kid that’s 14 years old, your child has never breathed clean air if you live in Detroit.’ So that’s [an] impactful statement.”

Landrum says quality of the air is so bad, that children are being born with health conditions such as asthma and residents of the area are developing rare diseases as a result of the pollution.

Samra’a Luqman is another activist with Clear the Air Michigan and a resident of South End Dearborn. She says 48217 has abnormal rates of cancer, asthma and kidney disease.

“There are people that I’ve known here in the south end who have died of nasal cancer. The number of people I know are five. I personally know that have died of nasal cancer. Nasal cancer is one of the rarest cancers in the world. There are only 2000 people that are diagnosed with it annually in the U.S.,” Luqman said.

Residents living in Dogleg continue to fight against new pollution sources and new industries in the area — from the potential sale and re-opening of a neighboring steel company to increased semi-truck traffic expected to come from the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge.

The Toxic Tours and other activism have led to one huge step forward for the residents – an air monitoring station behind the New Mount Hermon Baptist Church by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

But with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under attack by the Trump administration, the future of these monitoring stations is unclear.

About the listener

Keith Mason first moved to the Dogleg area as a child in the 1950s. He purchased and moved back into his family home after his mother died in 2020. Mason volunteers at WDET for the Detroit Radio Information Service (DRIS) is southeast Michigan’s Radio Reading/Audio Information Service for people with disabilities.

We want to hear from you! 

Have a question about southeast Michigan’s history or culture? Send it our way at wdet.org/curiosid, or fill out the form below. You ask, we answer.

Want more stories like this? Sign up for WDET’s weekly newsletter and never miss a curiosity uncovered.