TV Lounge

Proof that Detroit techno isn’t a museum piece: it’s a Tuesday night at TV Lounge. Tucked into the Cass Corridor on Grand River, it’s the city’s longest-running and most iconic dance club — a “classy dive bar with an exceptional sound system,” and the best party patio in town.

The room runs on techno, house, and ghettotech — that hyper-fast, gleefully filthy Detroit booty sound pioneered by DJ Assault and DJ Godfather, which one local called “the indigenous music of Detroit.” On Movement weekend, TV Lounge becomes ground zero for the marathon afterparties; the rest of the year it’s where local legends and touring headliners trade off until close. If the rest of this trail is about how techno was born, this is where you go to feel it still breathing.