I was just perusing Reddit, and happened across an interesting conversation about Detroit. The original post, which was entitled, “Just drove through Detroit and mistakenly got off the highway to get gas. How does a city like this exist in the western world?,” wasn’t terribly insightful, but I’m enjoying the bizarre comments that the subject spawned, like this one, by someone calling himself Bikkstah:
I’m in the National Guard and our armory is right down on 8 mile. When we drill in the winter, we are usually hanging out at the armory and get cut loose around noon for lunch. A few months ago, one of the guys in my platoon misses the after-lunch accountability formation. We call him and shit, thinking he went AWOL and went home or something.
Turns out he went to the gas station next to the armory to get a pop, was mugged at gunpoint by 3 dudes when he was getting back into his car. They beat the hell out of him, took his phone and cash, then zip-tied him in the backseat. They drove around for hours, using his phone, taking cash off his card at ATMs, and then left him in his car in the middle of nowhere. He was in uniform too. Those people just don’t give a fuck.
We had to beg for cash from the state to put up a giant security fence around the armory because people would come towards the armory while we were there like a zombie apocalypse, begging for cash and breaking into people’s cars in broad daylight.
Does anyone out there happen to have historic data on Detroit tourism? I’d love to see it charted out over time.
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Is the commenter talking about the Michigan Light Guard Armory? Did he happen to mention they were wearing probably wearing Rugby uniforms?
There is a safe gas station in Detroit, just south of 94 before lodge, it’s completely enclosed in razor wire with a giant plexiglass enclosed lazy susan you drive into and the clerk spins you around to drive in and fill up.
The Detroit public library is listed third behind the RenCen and DiamondJacks river tours on the tourism site. My vacation is less than six months away and I still haven’t been able to find a deal on Expedia to check out “White Flight: Blockbusting, Urban decay, Desegregation busing in the United States, Gentrification, Ethnic succession theory, Planned shrinkage, Residential segregation.”
I first came to Detroit 15 years ago with a Robocop Tour, and I never left.
I feel bad for saying it, but Detroit’s a mess. It’s rotten from top to bottom. Every day we’re reading about corruption and unsolved violent crimes. Sure, there are some good things to like about the city, but 90% of it needs to go away. While there are things that I don’t like about the idea of transitioning a big chunk of it to urban farming, I haven’t heard any other ideas for how to consolidate the city so that city services are easier to deliver, property values, increase, and a critical mass of good things starts to take shape. These stories, like this one about a soldier being robbed in broad daylight, break my heart.
My father was an over the road truck driver for 20 plus years. He has been to about every bad city in the US inclusing Gary, Camden, Newark, etc. He always said nothing is even close to Detroit.
“Sure, there are some good things to like about the city, but 90% of it needs to go away.”
You realize that people live in Detroit, right Kevin?
I’m so bad I vacation in Detroit.
I couldn’t help myself.
It’s funny though, my friend Geof and I went to the D on Sunday. We had a fantastic lunch at Traffic Jam & Snug and drove out Grand River to get a real life look at Destruction Porn. Driving Grand River is both glorious and depressing. It is like a tour of the downfall of Michigan, starting in Detroit and flowing into the first ring of suburbs, now abandoned too. Then suddenly everything is new, beautiful and built in neat strips instead of blocks and neighborhoods, and you start to wonder how long things can go on like this and how you can….. but I digress.
While we were enjoying our food (and amazing Bloody Mary’s) watching people pour in as the nearby Museums closed, we talked about a Detroit Vacation. It went like this: Get a stupid cheap, brand new luxury room at Book Cadillac or a casino on line. Your itinerary includes: dinning at a few of the like 80 amazing restaurants in the city, from beloved dives to 5 star award winning gourmet, there are plenty of both. A live sporting event from one of three Professional teams downtown. A symphony, opera, musical, play, or live concert. Night clubs with DJ’s and/or live music. Casino Gambling. World Class museums. Almost weekly music and cultural festivals in the summer. All at dirt cheap prices.
We were really excited about the whole idea. And then we thought about how someone would react if you said, “yea, I’m taking a long weekend and going to Detroit.”
I don’t know, maybe I don’t have a health fear of The D. I’ve always found that if you don’t go looking for trouble, act smart, and take about the same precautions you would in visiting any large city, you’re pretty ok. But then, I live in Ypsilanti, and plenty of people have thought I’m crazy to love it here.
If you stop for a red light in Detroit armies of children emerge from the sewers and descend on motorists to siphon gas and harvest organs for food.
Gawd, I am tired of defending Detroit to every fucktard who has had a bad experience/heard about terrible crime/seen a burned out hulk along the freeway/who only reads crime stories about Detroit. Yep, you’re right. The city is absolute trash. Radioactive really. Kevin Paul’s assessment is actually putting it nicely about all of us evil people in this modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. Might as well burn the rest down for the insurance money and pour salt into the ground so nothing good will ever happen in this evil place again. While you’re at it, could you do us one last favor and shoot me, my wife, our dog, my little brother, my friends, my co-workers and the rest of us worthless pieces of shit in the head and put all of us who are trapped in this insufferable hell out of our misery.
Thank you,
The Damned
I love Detroit as much as the next guy, and I think there’s tons of opportunity there, but to argue that there aren’t enormous problems makes one look delusional. The population is falling precipitously, the unemployment rates are staggering, entire blocks are vacant and burned out, the elected officials are a joke, and I could go on an on. That isn’t to say that there aren’t wonderful things happening. There are. And the people who choose to live there, and contribute toward making the city a better place, are saints. That doesn’t, however, mean that there isn’t a lot that needs to be fixed.
As much as I want to dissent and be all “oh no he didn’t!” about that original comment, I have to admit that Detroit is only an iota better than people say it is. While there is lots of fun & happiness to be had there, it is still a clusterfucking mess & stories like this are way more common than they reasonably should be.
A friend of my dad’s was followed for a few miles in maybe 1998 after hitting an ATM in Detroit, then at the stop light the men following him ran up to his car, held him & his hugely pregnant wife up at gunpoint, took their money & then shot him in the head & left him there to bleed to death in the middle of the road. The Bikkstah guy is right. They just don’t give a fuck.
I don’t think this is isolated to Detroit, as these stories happen everywhere, but when you factor in the desperation of all the jobless, homeless people who live in the D, the severe lack of police & the lack of leadership to either spin the whole story or clean it up, you can see how this whole crime/safety thing spiraled out of control & put a really bad mark on the city that will be there for a long time.
Forbes says it’s the country’s most dangerous city.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/23/most-dangerous-cities-lifestyle-real-estate-dangerous-american-cities.html
Chaely,
People who take their personal anecdotes from 12 years ago and theorize about an entire city and the people in it put a bad mark on themselves. Stop generalizing about shit. Clearly you have prejudices you could be busy examining.
Yes, crime happens, everywhere. To me, you’re the “they” who don’t give a fuck—about making any damn sense.
I like Detroit and find all of the disparagement offensive to all the great people who live there every day and do their best to make it their home under conditions that most of us would quickly run away from.
Face it, you guys live in Ypsi, a place that many people routinely malign (including myself, especially when I’m at lunch with Mark), yet you try to make it a good place to live and feel pride in your city.
Fuck the haters. Detroit rules.
There’s a neighborhood within blocks of the White House that is worse than anything I’ve ever seen in Detroit. Yes, every city has its problems.
You all should move to the townships – the air is cleaner, the sky is bluer, and life is better where the population is less dense. Less government, lower taxes, and significantly less crime in the cornfields.
Everytime I go to Detroit, I have a great time…but to pretend it isn’t a dangerous shithole on the verge of collapse is just plain dumb. Are we visiting the same city? I’ve had times when the light fantastic was tripped, and we danced on the ceiling, without a care in the world, raising our glasses with joy… but I’ve also had plenty of times when I thought, “Lord, just get me the fuck out of here!” Don’t get so defensive about your own litle slice of metropolis. It needs a lot of work.
EOS’s line is one I hear parroted all the time. “Why don’t they just move?”
Truth is, 1) It’s not that easy, especially when you have no work. Taxes may be cheaper, etc in the country, but in the end living in the country is no bargain due to other expenses not to mention the fact that there is even less work. I would wager that living in the country is actually more expensive than living in the city when you roll is all in. I watched my expenses get cut in half when I moved to Ann Arbor.
2) Not everyone wants to move. Many people stay in Detroit because that’s where their friends and family are. Believe it or not, there are human beings there who maintain social relationships they find to be important to them.
Talk bad about Detroit all you want, but don’t forget the people who live there. You and I may go there, have a good time and enjoy it, but there are people who live there 24/7 and do their best to make it work for them. You can’t pretend there aren’t a million problems and challenges, but you can’t forget that none of us have to deal with it. Someone else does.
When Detroit is good it’s real good, but when it’s bad it’s real bad. Same can be said about Ypsilanti.
As for the township (or any suburb) never good, never bad, just boring.
Speaking of Detroit, Doug Fieger has died.
I see nobody here or at Reddit has bothered to check this story out.
And so nobody finds it strange that none of this appeared in any news reports?
I don’t believe for a fucking second that what Bikkstah said happened to the guardsman is true. Either he is lying or, more likely, he was lied to. Sounds to me like some stupid lazy fuck felt he needed to come up with an excuse for not showing up for his duty. Then he decided to make up a bullshit racist story to cover his worthless ass.
I follow the crime news in Detroit pretty closely, and I never saw anything regarding this supposed kidnapping of a national guardsman. Had it happened, it would have been a serious fucking crime. Kidnapping, especially of on-duty federal military personnel is no small matter.
Some dipshit guardsman might have told his superiors this crock of shit story, but he didn’t report it to the Detroit Police or the FBI, which would have been in order.
As I’ve said so many times before, you people make me sick.
I’m happy when things go well in Detroit, and I try to write about them here when I can. Sometimes, though, when I read something like this, I feel like sharing it. It’s not that I enjoy slamming Detroit. I’m just fascinated by how the City is perceived around the country. The truth is, life for all of us in SE Michigan is going to be fucked until Detroit is functional. We need a real, thriving urban center if we’re ever going to bring this state back. So, with that said, how do we make it better? Do we claim there’s not a problem, or do we face it head on? And I’m not sure if this story is true, Robert. What I don know is that a guy I know was murdered in Detroit last year, and his killers still haven’t been identified. And, from what I understand, odds are they never will. (I haven’t confirmed it, but I’ve heard that 7 out of 10 homicides committed in Detroit are never solved.) That to me doesn’t speak well for the City.
Oh, to be sure, the D is totally FUBAR. But ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. I lived there untill the money ran out a few years ago. I loved it. I’d still be there, if there had been work. I guess that’s part of the problem, huh?
Mark hit the nail on the head. We will never fix Michigan untill we fix Detroit. Step one is getting over irrational fears and going down there there and spending money. Or do like EOS says and enjoy the country living and keep diluting the tax base untill Michigan goes bankrupt, and then complain about how the people living in the cities caused it all.
Robert…following all the crime news in Detroit everyday…now I see why you are always so angry. Here is some good news. Take a break from your vigilance for a few minutes.
http://goodnewsdaily.com/show_story.php?ID=9635
mmmm…sweet potatos…..
I agree with all your sentiments, Mark. But it doesn’t help to be posting flat out lies about it. You’re no better than EOS when you do that shit.
If you are going to be helping spread lies with Mr. Bikkstah, you might as well do the same with postal worker Amy Fox’s BS story. See here: http://technorati.com/lifestyle/article/postal-employee-concocts-armed-robbery-story/
Detroit is a city of nine hundred thousand! It’s not some piece of shit podunk hamlet like those in which most of your readers reside.
Like any large city, Detroit has serious problems. But apparently these real problems still aren’t serious enough for assholes like Bikkstah. No, pricks like him have to make up fake horror stories. I guess it’s somehow too much trouble to inform yourselves on actual happenings.
I’ll give you pricks horror stories if you are so deeply interested. The thing is, I’ll give you true ones – not poorly fabricated fairy tales concocted in the feeble imaginations of wusses from Owosso who think 8 Mile looks scary.
I love Detroit, and loved the time I worked there and the people I worked with, and I believe the story…there’s a lot going on in the city that is never fully recorded all the time, and most of those are hard stories to tell.
My only 8 miles story was eating a coney island with some friends, we got up to pay the bill and the cashier was shaking from head to toe. The guy in front of us had pointed a gun and robbed her while we weren’t paying attention, talking amongst ourselves…
There’s a tremendous amount of crime in the city and that is the bane of it’s existence.
I totally agree, when we get serious about making Detroit shine and be a great place again,then Michigan will do well also.
Now that the good citizens of Michigan can easily obtain CCW permits, maybe we will see a drop in crime in the next few years…or a least some dropping criminals….BANG!
Free Tigh Croff
Rose, the ‘kidnapped guardsman’ story is NOT TRUE! Such an incident would be a very serious (and federal) offense. The media coverage of it would have been considerable and memorable. It would have brought in the FBI and would have brought a shitstorm down on the individuals who perpetrated it. The fact that people don’t understand this really troubles me. It is hard for me to fathom that so many people are this incredibly lacking in the capacity for critical thought and uninformed regarding basic realities. You don’t need to be Sherlock Ho9lmes to see the huge holes in this story.
Your wanting to or not wanting to believe a story has no baring. The details don’t wash. That is what matters.
Robert has never proven a single thing I said was wrong. He just whines a lot and smears those with ideological differences in the manner similar to that taught by Saul Alinsky.
Everyone here knows you make shit up, EOS. You’re not fooling anybody.
Okay, relying on media coverage to decide a reality of whether a story is true or not has no relevance to proving the story..What, are you waiting for the Detroit Police to show up and investigate?…
Regardless, crime is a serious, it is underreported problem that blights the city, keeps people out, and makes it miserable for the people who live there…
check it out…
http://www.detroitblog.org
Just because you are ignorant of the facts does not necessitate that anyone made up any shit. You are merely unaware of the truth.
EOS, of which facts am I ignorant? I don’t remember one instance where you pointed out my being incorrect on any facts.
I remember you spreading lies about the numbers who attended the 9/12 event. Remember that? How many did you say were there?
I wasn’t there. I referenced what several news services had reported and you told us what Nate said a single fireman had estimated. So what? That’s your proof?
How about when you are ready to persecute someone for a hate crime where there’s absolutely no evidence to even lead to a suspect. You “know” the motivation even when no one knows the perp.
God exists, the Bible is true, and eternity is forever. Your belief, or lack thereof, in no way effects these realities.
EOS, you are even lying now. Several news services did not report what you are saying. You can’t even be honest now. It’s incredible. You are also lying about what I said. You are such a maniac. It’s really shocking that you can’t even talk now in an honest way about what was said then.
All that asside, if you have reached adulthood EOS and you still cannot tell the difference visually between a crowd of over 1 million and a crowd of less than 100,000 you are a complete imbicile.
And what the fuck is that second paragraph you just wrote even referring to? Who is ready to persecute anyone for a hate crime? What are you even referring to?
The last bit of what you say I’ll just have to ignore. I have no idea what motivated you to include it.
Robert, don’t you know no one ever wins an E-War.
I suppose I’m with kjc and Andy – Detroit has problems, sure, but it’s hardly the Hellmouth some like to paint it. It’s still America’s 11th largest city by population, and contains almost 10% of Michigan’s residents, and it may not be the Paris of the Midwest that it was in the ’40s, but it’s still a place where there’s a lot to see and do and where we’ll happily spend a weekend for anniversaries or the like. (Last time, we were walking back to our hotel in Midtown at about 1:30 in the morning, and not even one of us was killed…)
Haven’t come up with historical tourism data yet. But, out of curiosity, I just went looking for crime rates, and found that the FBI’s 2008 stats place Detroit at 4th in violent crime rates, right after Memphis. From the discussion, I’d expect it to take up slots 1-4 all by itself…
These comments are super interesting. A few thoughts:
First of all the National Guard story: I’m not saying this didn’t or couldn’t happen. My brother has been carjacked twice, crime is out of fucking control in some areas of Detroit. But remember the story about the business traveler who went to the strip club and then was robbed on the way to his car and hit in the head and died? That got a ton of media play. I find it hard to believe something along 8 Mile (across the street from Oakland County) involving the National Guard would have zero media coverage.
Secondly, Detroit is gigantic. Some areas, seriously, you venture into at your own risk. Detroit needs about a thousand more cops. But some areas are fantastic and safe as the good parts of Chicago or Manhattan. You can’t paint the crime picture in a 140 square mile city with such a broad brush and maintain any credibility.
Up near the top Kevin Paul says “every day we’re reading about corruption and violent crimes.” Well he hit the nail on the head – those are the only stories that get play. And frankly, the only stories anyone outside of Detroit really wants to read.
Yeah Detroit’s a mess, we all know it. But there are a lot of people here in the city, a lot of people who care and work to keep the city, their neighborhood, their block a decent place to live. It’s not all blight and it isn’t all hopeless, but sometimes you can’t really figure that out until you’re here.
Oh and urban farming is not the panacea people think it is. It will take 100 commercial farms the size of the proposed Hantz Farm to fill up the available space in Detroit as it downsizes. It’s a great community development tool, but not an economic solution.
Urban farming would have to be micro farming, not a bad idea, but the idea that you could plow out/down houses, basements, sewer lines, roads, etc and then till the land easily or not expensively is a nonstarter. I think just not doing all the work of removing previous neighborhoods, and just farm it and work from the top layer may seem appealing and the best you could do is have some cattle or other livestock, I guess…But the big machinery that people use to farm needs lots of space, and are very expensive, and the nobody is going to run a combine and have it run into an old fire hydrant or leftover porch stairs and ruin an expensive machine like that.
Yes, there are very nice neighborhoods in Detroit, but they are consolidating and getting smaller, the services the city provides are also getting smaller, look at DPS for example. There are wonderful people committed to the city, but they alone can’t make it the place it was or could be…
Seriously? Those are exactly the people who can make it what it will be. Better leadership is important, and a vision is important too. There’s no need to write off Detroit just because the nice neighborhoods alone won’t sav the city.
Detroit should never look back at becoming what it was. People here wax nostalgic about it but how many of them live in the density that those old Detroit neighborhoods had? That’s a lost way of life for SE Michigan.
It’s actually the not-nice neighborhoods that will be getting smaller and consolidating, and resources will be put into the stable and salvageable neighborhoods as downsizing ensues. The services will get smaller because the need will be smaller. DPS is getting smaller because it was bloated and oversized.
Great piece in last week’s Metro Times, by the way, about a neighborhood fighting to maintain. It covers the good and the bad and shows how complicated things really are in the city right now.
Detroit needs committed people in the city, but it needs more than that. Having Mr. Bobb show up and go for real change, having Mayor Bing be real about things is a start, but the city needs very strong federal and state help, it needs to have those who left want to come back and spend money and time in the city again.
I disagree, I think Detroit will have urban density again, and that is a good thing. Maybe it won’t look quite what it used to, maybe even it’ll be broken up into boroughs or rurn into different cities altogether, but good, neighborhood stores, neighborhood hospitals, neighborhood police, good neighborhood schools are essential to making it a positive living experience.
Right, Rose. That’s exactly what downsizing (or right-sizing) is all about.
It’s too nice a setting, by the river, next to Canada, between the Great Lakes, and with good highways to be a small set of towns, I think pretty significant density when I think reurbanization, kind of what it used to be…
Someone once said what made Detroit unique was that you could live in a city and own a house.
Ultimately, what’ll save Detroit is to restructure politically to improve accountability.
When the council people represent a specific ward, instead the whole city, is when Detroit can really implement strong changes.
I think the ward system will help, but I think it is only a minor (but important) step.
No density like Detroit saw before in our lifetimes, though. Possibly smaller, densely populated areas but lots of space where single-family residences used to be.
Here’s a good read about this:
http://www.modeldmedia.com/features/brumfield12610.aspx
Are you idiots really arguing about how fucked up Detroit is? It is a shit hole, face it. Stop living in denial and do something about the city you love so much!
really, ytown? because I kind of thought that’s what most of the commenters here were saying, ie: shut up and do something about it…
i forgot i said i wouldn’t blog when i’ve been drinking…
The city of Rome fell to crap, and it’s still kicking. I wonder how many people sat around thinking, “when is somebody going to tear down that god-awful ruined coliseum?”
Ytown thinks you can judge the whole by the parts, so since parts of Detroit are shit holes, Detroit is a shit hole … then since Detroit is part of America, according to ytown, America is a shit hole.
Thanks y for making things simple enough for morons to understand even if means only morons can understand your shit, hole.
BA, that was very well put.
Actually, they did tear down most of the Coliseum. It was hauled away brick by brick by the local residents and used for their homes after Rome fell into mostly chaos. Certainly Rome is still kicking, but it went through hundreds of years of degradation before it rebuilt. Not exactly reassuring.
And ytown, “Stop living in denial and do something about the city you love so much!” Uh, talking about the good parts – hell, talking about it at all – IS doing something about it. Promotion and perception are a good start. Chat it up and folks might just get curious.
I wish people everywhere were too afraid to buy gas. The world would be a better place.
I know this is old but really. Why are you people defending Detroit? It’s a shithole. Just because you so happen to live in the super small section that happens to be somewhat safe doesn’t mean shit. Detroit is one of the most dangerous cities in America, in case you didn’t know. I’m sure you do know, but you chose to ignore it just to defend your precious city for whatever fucking reason. I live in Knoxville, and there have been shootings almost every day now. The gangs are out of control, and homeless people are everywhere. I know that is hardly nothing compared to Detroit. but I am not afraid to say that my hometown is turning into shit. Just admit it! Damn,