STRAIGHT-UP SERIES : Adriel Thornton | MoGo Detroit & Event Producer

In our Straight-Up Series, small business owners and entrepreneurs in Detroit and Cleveland share their stories. Learn how the pandemic has specifically impacted them and some positive changes that stemmed from it.

“Being forced into a break has had some transformative effects on me.”

I was born here on the west side of Detroit and have lived here since I was 18 years old. Detroit has always been alive, but it’s healing after being sick for a little while. It has always lent itself to the power of creativity because you have to deal with what’s not there.

MoGo is Metro Detroit’s bike-share system. It’s designed for short-term bike rentals but we look at ourselves as a transportation service more than a recreational thing. I joined the team four years ago As the Director of Marketing and Community Outreach. The pandemic, interestingly enough, for MoGo was actually kind of a boon. Member ridership went down because those are mostly people going to stores and work, but we had an enormous uptick in casual riders. One of the things recommended was to go out and get exercise. So, people did it. And they did it a lot.

On the flip side, as a producer of events, I haven’t produced an event since February of 2020. So, it’s been a really strange year and three months. The interesting thing about 

that is I never would have taken a break like this. I’ve never taken a break like this before. And once we got into it, I realized it was much needed. When you’re producing, you’re constantly producing, even if you don’t have an event that night. I didn’t realize how much of that was consuming my life, my existence.

Being forced into a break has had some transformative effects on me. The itch I have to produce has not gone away, but it made me less interested in doing something for the sake of doing something. So now, everything I do, I want to be extremely special. To do it when I feel it and make it signature and special.

 It’s also been a time to reflect on what’s important and what’s BS. America to me means the promise of a utopia. They call it a melting pot because it was an opportunity for all these people from all these different places to come together and not fear being themselves and being able to participate in the American Dream. To me, that’s what America is. And it’s exciting to me that an African American man, the  Master Blender and Co-founder of American Liquor Co., is an example of that.