Portland

Owner, Ian Williams, offers sneaker-themed coffee + 👟 detail shop ☕️.

🎧 The NW first & only Hip-Hop winery created by Bertony Faustin.

Delicious, authentic west African cuisine cooked by a native west African girl.

They serve authentic Jamaican Cuisine in the heart of Portland. And yes, they cater events!

A contemporary soul food restaurant that provides career development opportunities and is non-profit.

Based in Portland, this pop-up vegan supper club is curated by two Black queer artists, Chef Salimatu Amabebe and artist, Annika Hansteen-Izora. It was founded on the premise to rail and dance against the erasure of Blackness in the food and art worlds.

A mellow Ethiopian spot offering yummy traditional food.

A unique cultural experience where you can come learn how to cook African food or order some for dinner!

Fresh and delicious Haitian and Caribbean meals.

Everything to make you salivate: baby back ribs, brisket, chicken, cajun links, etc…

Private Chef/Caterer providing delicious food all throughout the PDX & Gresham area.

The BEST green juices and smoothies. Literally, the best.

Cannabis dispensary in the heart of Madison South neighbourhood.

Black co-owned florist. Flowers & weddings without rules.

Keeping it sweet and simple. Good coffee, good food.

Owner Anthony Brown and big smile brings unique food is unique in his bright blue cart with Southern and Mexican inspired fusion of just plain ol” deliciousness.

Home of custom cakes & elaborate cupcakes, cookies... you name it.

BuzzFeed Tasty's Top 50 wings in the USA!

Southern-style cuisine fused with their Oregon roots.

A fun and tasty twist on your average healthy snacks. Perfect snacks for kids.

A soul food cart serving heart-warming dishes.

This publishing company all started with a book written by co-founder and CEO, Jelani Memory. As a black father with a blended family, racism was an inevitable topic of conversation. The increasingly popularity of this book developed into creating more books about complex topics such as feminism, cancer, gratitude, belonging and much more.

Their work and activism includes direct community education workshops, supporting the outreach of their continued advocacy as first respondents, and helping community members contribute through direct engagement and legislative value. They are focused on shifting cultural and systemic discrimination.

An amazing initiative which tracks the progress of the federal, state and local legislation which addresses police violence.

Founded by Cameron Whitten, a local Portlander, who has more than five years of experience in non-profit leadership and donation accountability. Cameron has served as the Executive Director of local nonprofits such as Know Your City, Brown Hope, and Q Center.

Black-Owned Businesses in Portland

Sam Riddle

Detroit

Detroit is the birthplace of Techno and still hosts one of the most prestigious electronic music festivals in the world, contextually giving the city a rich history with record stores and DJ culture. Paramita is an unique record store that is also a wine bar and a steward in the Detroit beat scene.



Detroit is a potential gold-mine for the cannabis industry and will see an influx of jobs and industry in the city once marijuana is fully recreational. One disproportionate measure of the cannabis industry is that only 4.3% of the business is controlled by black owned companies. Furthermore, despite roughly equal usage rates, blacks in America are 3.73 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana. Viola is a black-owned business and my favourite medicinal dispensary in the city, owned by former NBA star Al Harrington.

Cliff Bells is a Detroit institution and my favourite brunch in the city. Pre-Covid you could drop in here on a weekend morning or afternoon to hear live jazz with a scene that feels like a time machine or out of a Fred Astaire movie, as the NY Times described it.

With iconic shoe collaborations (see: New Balance) and a pivotal place in the street wear scene, especially in the Midwest - Burn Rubber shaped culture through its employees and friends that include Big Sean, Jay John Henry, Cliff Skighwalker and more hometown heroes.

Sweet Water is across the street from my favourite concert venue in Detroit, St. Andrews Hall. It was a ritual to visit Sweet Water before and after concerts to grab a meal. I haven’t eaten meat regularly in almost three years, but I still dream about their Buffalo Wings.

A library-esq used book store that boasts over an over 1-million book inventory across their two locations in Detroit and nearby suburb Ferndale. My father used to take me here as a kid and I would try my hardest to get lost in the maze-like-store so I could read until my heart was content.

Detroit has gotten a lot of attention for ‘ruin porn’; the trend of photographing delapitated buildings as if that was what represents the city. The Heidelberg Project flips that trend on it’s head a bit; as a city block-long outdoor community art exhibit that transforms discarded items into exhibits, sculptures and statements.

Coney Islands are kinda to Detroit as Waffle House is to Atlanta. There are so many great ones across all of Michigan including Lou’s in Detroit, Abe’s in Ypsilanti, and Sparty’s in East Lansing (where I went to college at Michigan State.) For this guide and looking at Downtown Detroit - the debate is American Coney Island vs Lafayette Coney Island, which sit next door from one-another. If you ask me its Lafayette all day.

Detroit with Artist Manager, Sam Riddle

Ryan Hawaii

Amsterdam

Great English style pub, good food and you can smoke inside in the restaurant which is a rarity in Amsterdam.

"Amsterdam’s best coffeeshop, great weed, many varieties, excellent service & central location. Just don’t expect to sit inside, it gets super busy"

Very cool store, run by SMIB, Bonne Suits & TNO, 3 of the best brands in Amsterdam, youth run, with a real community feel - you will probably run into one of Amsterdams hottest musicians in here.

"Some of the best Thai food I ever had. Quite a small place but has a real authentic feel"

"Great music venue, seen many a sick show here"

"Great flea market in Amsterdam-Noord, get the (free) ferry over to this spot on the weekend for a day of bargain shopping"

"Amazing Suriname restaurant, probably the best in the city. Suriname food is a cross between Caribbean & Chinese food, delicious!"

"Really cool gallery set in a large mansion. Saw a really great Banksy & Dali exhibition here over many levels of the house"

Amsterdam with Ryan Hawaii

Los Angeles 

That’s a spot I've been eating at since I was like 17.

This is a Jamaican spot, I started eating here like 2012, they just opened up a new location in Inglewood. I order curry chicken, cabbage, jerk chicken and rice with the hot sauce.

The poppin weed spots in Cali is Cookies, you gotta go to a Cookies store. Berner the homie, he’s the founder of Cookies. So that's the number one weed spot in California.

That's the spot where the basketball players, rappers, celebrities, the models and shit go, you can't just be a regular person trying to get up in there. You can't be on yo phone, you can't take no pictures and you can't record. So you can go there and enjoy yourself, and you don't have to worry about people walking up to you asking for pictures and all this weird shit.

It's multiple locations if you into fashion and I'm not going to give up the spots neither! But H Lorenzo sell certain brands.

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