what is Detroit like?

There are parts of Detroit that are admittedly very bad, but otoh I think Detroit's reputation has been exaggerated by white suburbanites who are too afraid to ever set foot in Detroit in the first place.

I pointed this out on another thread, but detroit proper is 85% black. So there may well be some racism in peoples' reactions to it. Or is it merely the uncomfortability of being in the minority for those who are not used to it?

But aside from this question, Detroit like many other rust belt cities has suffered economicall and has been many times (but is not now) the 'murder capital' (should become a 'forbidden word') of the US.

off the top of my head I can't think of a single major civic institution in Detroit. am i just being forgetful/ignorant? does this have anything to do with the early C19 fire there?

A few spots of interest in Detroit does not make up for it being depressing and ugly. It's no Chicago, but it aint even Cleveland either...

Also, isn't Vernors a Detroit product?

STROH'S

The second time I went a couple of months ago I really dug it. My bro and I drove all around the city proper at like 3 in the morning and ate a late night breakfast at a "coney" place with some thugs in D12 gear and the short order cooks behind bullet-proof glass. It was fun.

Detroit has its moments, but it also has massive blight in parts, massive poverty in others, and massive sprawl over all. There's an effort to re-invigorate the very center of downtown with gated condos and the new baseball/football stadiums, but the required infrastructure usually needed for sustainable longterm development on the neighborhood level aint' there. it's more to cater to the suburbanites who come in for the games and to the Fox Theater, but don't live there and pay taxes.

still, detroit has cheap housing, which is why a few of my friends moved there.

detroit metro airport opened a new terminal a coupla years ago, which has improved some things.

xp yup, Vernor's and Faygo are both detroit-area products.

http://www.metrotimes.com/sb/78734/CS_RiotCrowd.jpg
http://www.metrotimes.com/sb/78734/CS_RiotMobCar.jpg

They are VERY similar (as is every flight to the suburbs midwest/southern metropolis) but I think more business is transacted in downtown St Louis than Detroit (which as far as I can tell people only venture into to see the Tigers play.) Plus St Louis has really TRIED to rejuvenate the downtown/riverfront area, whereas (and correct me if I'm wrong) Detroit seems like it's almost just given up.

I plug this site every chance I get: http://www.builtstlouis.net/

This is the understatement of the century unfortunately. But I was impressed when I lived in St Louis when I talked to people that the plight of downtown St Louis really bothered them and that they wanted to invest more in building it up (although obv a good portion of them just wanted it to be safer when they saw Rams and Cardinals' games haha.)

haha before yesterday's Rams game they shot off a cannon and the fans outside my window scattered like pigeons, I think they thought the homeless had acquired bazookas!

x-post

That's classic.

i went to detroit, once. i got lost driving without a map, which was scary, but i found my way back. then i went to this aftershow party where a friend of mine and her friend got chatted up by some men who were a bit sleazy. and the manhole covers have steam coming out of it. but it wasn't that scary.

However, I did get to stop in nearby Dearborn and meet up with Leon The Fratboy and Wendy from Stormy records... Leon treated me to falafel! (I still even remember that kinda trashy waitress at the mediterranean place next to Stormy, haha). But everyone in Michigan was extremely nice wherever I stopped, when I had to pump gas, or what not. I guess people aren't afraid of blue haired nerds in greater Detroit.

I love living in NY and don't see myself ever moving back to Detroit, but I really do miss it. For me, it was as much having a great, tight-knit group of friends and acquaintances I would see all the time.

Detroit itself is beautiful in the falling down, gutted city sort of way. It still has the second most number of pre-WWII buildings in the US. It's cheap as hell, which means it's easy to be in a band or do something creative.

It has terrible problems though. Like a lot of cities, the citizens will bitch endlessly but if someone from outside slags it apart they'll defend it to the end.

The comparison to STL is interesting... I lived there till I was 13. The biggest differences are that the urban renewal in STL started in the 80s, while DET is still getting going (although I've heard that STL has been quite stalled). The other difference is that Detroit is incredibly more segregated. First thing I noticed my first day of public high school in the suburbs was there were no black kids. University City by comparison was almost a model of racial harmony.

Back to Detroit... I was never really afraid there. You just have to know where you are, where you're going, etc. And, American Coney is WAY better than Lafayette.

i was skeptical about the casinos going in downdown. i figured that there's such a high level of poverty in the city that anything that takes people's money can't be a good thing. but, on the surface at least, the arguments about them being a real boost for infrastructure seem to be true. i've seen more police around than ever before, which can't be a bad thing if it's about encouraging people to come downtown. there's safe, lit, covered parking. there's always something open downtown, anytime.

we went to dinner at a newish place called 'small plates,' kind of tapas-style, but all sorts of food. really good food, completely full restaurant, and right downtown (across from the opera house, i guess?). while we were driving there, i noticed the hard rock cafe (!?) and the new ice rink in the park...where there were loads of people out skating and watching, at like 10 at night on a weeknight. tons of limos in front of the fox theatre, and a general sense of activity that i haven't seen there ever.

my uneducated feeling is that detroit is on the mend. it's nothing like chicago or new york, but it's a place that seems to have a good music and art scene (and the art institute is one of the biggest collections in north america, for whoever was looking for culture), with lots of friendly people. the 'loft living' experience that's inaccessable in places like NY for people with 'normal' jobs like me, is actually attainable, which means there's a core group of young professionals and artists that live in a fairly condensed space. new restaurants, shops and creative industries spring up every time i'm back.

i'd seriously suggest anyone in the midwest (especially if they're already in michiagn) check detroit out. it's a city of hidden gems, so it would probably be useful to have a tourguide, but it's worth it.

plus, if you go out to troy you can laugh at freeway exit 69, 'big beaver road'.

Oh, OTM about loft living. Before I moved away I was staying in this loft near old Tiger Stadium that was literally 10,000 square feet or something insane like that for only $1000/mo total. In NYC it would have cost $2mil.

vicious circle: no downtown because of no public transport.

What other American city of that size has a worse public transit "system"?

But it is pretty much a shell of a city.

Other than that, the people are all very nice. I lived in a suburb growing up, but my dad delivered the Detroit News/Free Press so he worked down town and I was always there. I'd visit for concerts or just to hang out. It's beautifully desolate and I'll always visit.

agreed...no contest

I just wish the bars were open later; Chicago has spoiled me.

Also one thing no one has mentioned: Detroit actually has TWO smaller cities that are completely contained within in, Hamtramck and Highland Park. What's going on with Highland Park these days anyway? Last I remember it was in bad, bad shape.

What other American city of that size has three major automobile companies exerting great influence over such things?

I worked in downtown Detroit for a little over a year; I usually took the Ford Freeway (I-94) to the Chrysler Freeway (I-75) into downtown every day. I wish I could have taken a train, but that goes against the business plan of the major industries in town.

Detroit isn't that scary, just desolate in a lot of ways. A very interesting place. Checkout the Fabulous Ruins Of Detoit if you're interested in the old, lost, abandonde buildings.

The best thing was when a couple I met from Israel were asking me if Detroit was scary. Israel.

what would you do to try to turn things around?

Detroit doesn't feel scary to me; it just feels empty.

same thing, to me.

to turn it around they should just bulldoze it and start over.

usually i'd ignore keythisms, but this begs a question - what does the location afford? there are bends in other rivers in other cities to the south.

what factor does the border play? could loosening it in same fashion benefit detroit the way doing the same in Texas might benefit the Mexican border towns (not the best analogy, perhaps)? are there other projects like this?

I went back there for the first time in five years this past May, and in some ways it felt like it was better, nicer, shinier. But then you do something like walk over the freeway bridge to get to Eastern Market on a Saturday morning, which is vibrant and full of people, and see the tons of garbage just strewn all over the place and it just depresses you. Would more people there fund more city services that would get this kind of eyesore cleaned up? How do you get more people around who care if the place is full of garbage all over?

I never lived there, and in some ways I really regret that - if I had it to do over, I'd have lived there and not wasted my life commuting from Ann Arbor and would have just gone west on the weekends to see my girlfriend. I think I would seen much more the city, the parts that made the locals so supportive of it. But alas.

And Highland Park is still pretty sketchy, based on my experience in May. If you consider big groups of dudes standing in front of boarded up storefronts drinking bottles of liquor at 11am on a Saturday sketchy. I know I do.

http://www.detroitradioflashbacks.net/

brilliant website for anybody who lived in Detroit during the 70's/80's.

I am an Obama volunteer coordinator here originally from San Francisco, and this city is easily the most racially toxic I have experienced. Regardless of whether Coleman Young or racist suburbs are primarily responsible for the situation, the city is half empty, filled with magnificent examples of early 20th century architecture, a lot of which now stands empty and hollow like giant connect four boards.

Attitudes seem like the biggest barrier to some kind of reunification between the city and the suburbs, but economic factors are driving whites back downtown, such that what was abandon maybe ten years ago is now full of loft style redevelopments, capping the city's black population at it's current 80+%.

I wonder if annexation wouldn't be possible, by the city of the suburbs, such that the tax base gets more spread out and public services more accountable to all Metro Detroiters. I know American cities used to do this in the 19th century, but suburban secession seems like it's been more the trend in the 20th. People here just lack the daily interaction type of experiences with other races to make that kinda thing politically possible.

The City Where the Sirens Never Sleep (just as heads up, it's a Weekly Standard article but still worth the read)

Before arriving, I conducted an exhaustive survey, reading everything I could about Detroit, including and especially the journalistic labor of the diligent if shell-shocked scribes of the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press. How bad is Detroit? Let's review:

Its recently resigned mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, he of the Kangol hats and five-button suits, now wears jailhouse orange as he's currently serving a four-month sentence as part of a plea agreement for perjuring himself regarding an extramarital affair with his chief of staff, which yielded soupy love-daddy text messages that would make Barry White yak in his grave. Those in Detroit who are neither recipients of sweetheart contracts nor Kilpatrick family members on the city payroll at inflated salaries think he got off easy. Because what led to the perjury was concealing an $8.4 million payout from city coffers to settle a whistleblower suit brought by cops who'd been fired for investigating, among other things, the murder of a stripper named Strawberry who, prior to her death, was allegedly beat up by Kilpatrick's wife when she caught her entertaining her husband.

In a city often known as the nation's murder capital, with over 10,000 unsolved murders dating back to 1960, the police are in shambles through cutbacks and corruption trials. (They have a profitable sideline, though, as one of the nation's largest gun dealers, having sold 14 tons of used weapons out-of-state.) Their response times are legendarily slow. Their crime lab is so inept that it has been closed. One Detroit man found police
so unresponsive when trying to turn himself in for murder that he hopped a bus to Toledo and confessed there instead.

Detroit schools haven't ordered new textbooks in 19 years. Students have reported having to bring their own toilet paper. Teachers have reported bringing hammers to class for protection. Declining enrollment has forced 67 school closures since 2005 (more than a quarter of the city's schools). The graduation rate is 24.9 percent, the lowest of any large school district in the country. Not for nothing did one frustrated activist start pelting school board members with grapes during a meeting. She probably should've reached for something heavier.

An internal audit, which was 14 months late, estimates next year's city deficit to be as high as $200 million (helped along by $335,000 embezzled from the Department of Health and Wellness Promotion). With a dwindling tax base--even the city's three once-profitable casinos are seeing a downturn in revenues (the Greektown Casino is in bankruptcy)--the city has kicked around every money-making scheme from selling off ownership rights to the tunnel it shares with neighboring Windsor, Canada, to a fast food tax. It's perhaps unsurprising that Detroit now has the most speed traps in the nation.

It also has one of the highest property tax rates in Michigan, yet has over 60,000 vacant dwellings (a guesstimate--nobody keeps official count), meaning real estate values are in the toilet. Over the summer, the Detroit News sent a headline around the world, about a Detroit house that was for sale for $1. But it's not even that uncommon. As of this writing, there are at least five $1 homes for sale in Detroit.

The city council has been such a joke that one former member demanded 17 pounds of sausages as part of her $150,000 bribe. Its prognosis for respectability hasn't grown stronger with Monica Conyers, wife of congressman John Conyers, taking the helm. She has managed to get in a barroom brawl, threatened to shoot a mayoral staffer as well as have him beaten up, and twice called a burly and bald fellow council member "Shrek" during a public hearing. But with all the problems facing the city, the council still found time to pass a nonbinding resolution supporting the impeachment of George W. Bush.

How bad is Detroit? It once gave the keys to the city to Saddam Hussein.

Over the last several years, it has ranked as the most murderous city, the poorest city, the most segregated city, as the city with the highest auto-insurance rates, with the bleakest outlook for workers in their 20s and 30s, and as the place with the most heart attacks, slowest income growth, and fewest sunny days. It is a city without a single national grocery store chain. It has been deemed the most stressful metropolitan area in America. Likewise, it has ranked last in numerous studies: in new employment growth, in environmental indicators, in the rate of immunization of 2-year-olds, and, among big cities, in the number of high school or college graduates.

Men's Fitness magazine christened Detroit America's fattest city, while Men's Health called it America's sexual disease capital. Should the editors of these two metrosexual magazines be concerned for their safety after slagging the citizens of a city which has won the "most dangerous" title for five of the last ten years? Probably not: 47 percent of Detroit adults are functionally illiterate.

On the upside, Detroit ranks as the nation's foremost consumer of Slurpees and of baked beans on Labor Day. And as if all of this isn't humiliating enough, the Detroit Lions are 0-14.

they say that like those are bad things!

honestly, what would these hacks write about if they didn't have Detroit to kick around?

GO WINGS

^^^

all of this Detroit-bashing reminds me of the guy in Driller Killer who started killing homeless dudes because he was afraid he would end up like them...

Per capita, Detroit is like 10th on the murder list now.

The abandoned buildings thing tho is one of the most striking things about Detroit. SOOOOO many of 'em.

I used to live in Mexicantown...not just abandoned buildings but empty lots where there used to be buildings, many of which burned during the riots and were just never rebuilt.

Can't speak for the rest of Detroit, but I liked Mexicantown; seemed to be growing, one of the livelier neighborhoods. Also the DFT!

I haven't been to Detroit in years, but I always felt a little envious of them. Great location, great public art and buildings. It should have been a design mecca.

<a href="http://detroit1701.org/";> Check out this site!!</a>

detroit 1701

Sorry for the screw-up.

Once the nation's fourth-largest city, with a 1950 population of 1.85 million, only 770,000 remain, with an estimated 1,000 residents leaving every month. When the homicide rate dropped 14 percent last year, mayoral candidate Stanley Christmas said, "I don't mean to be sarcastic, but there just isn't anyone left to kill."

City/suburbs/sticks race-relations update:

Each year, there is a "classic car" "Dream Cruise" that travels up and down Woodward and happens to stop outside the Detroit border. (Let's celebrate the Motor City by avoiding it, right?) It takes place on one day but has developed into a week-long event. This destroys business for venues like the Magic Bag (located just north of Detroit, in Ferndale). The Magic Bag holds a contest for funniest anti-Dream Cruise marquee statement. This year's winner was "WOODWARD DREAM CRUISE: AVOIDING THE ACTUAL MOTOR CITY SINCE 1995." The Magic Bag posted a shot of the marquee on their Facebook page. The Detroit Free Press shared the photo on THEIR Facebook page. Here are some highlights from the Free Press page's comments. Each line was contributed by a different person.

"It's unfortunate that the Dream Cruise avoids the city."

"That's because Detroit is just really unappealing to most people."

"Yes, but addressing that issue would require actually taking responsibility instead of just complaining."

"The 8 mile force field is a difficult thing to penetrate, though, given the mass tendency to oversimplify the reason for the decline of the city."

"Its called racism, Oakland County is known for it."

"there is always one dumb ass that has to inject racism. Grow up idiot. People that put so much pride, time, and money into restoring these cars will not take them to Detroit where they might get vandalized. They even moved the state fair out of the crime city. I would never take my car there. You think I would bring my car down there to have it spray painted."

"to connect this marquee with issues in Detroit is a massive pathetic stretch. To make a contest out of it is just hater capitalism - ie hipster douchbaggery"

"It's called The Dream Cruise, not the slum cruise."

"why risk your life in Detroit?"

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2015/07/charges_dismissed_against_svsu.html#incart_river_mobile

Wallace said he was on a late-night store run to pick up medicine for his girlfriend who was sick. The officer said in a police report that Wallace did not stop for 1.5 miles before pulling into a Sam's Club parking lot on Tittabawassee in Kochville Township.

Wallace explained to the officer that because he lives in Detroit and it is common for fake police officers to pull over motorists and rob them, he was taught to pull into a well-lit and safe area if police attempted to pull him over.

jesus is that true

yikes.