Detroit At A Glance

Elijah and I have been wanting to go to Detroit for a couple of years now. We both became interested in the city around the same time, but separately. When we finally compared notes we came to realize that we were equally curious about what a city that had so completely represented capitalist industry would look like in a decline. We also were interested in the various reports of artists, environmentalists and young entrepreneurs who were doing various experimental and interesting things as a result of the supposedly derelict city. We really wanted to see for ourselves what the whole thing was about. So since we have been touring the country, we took this opportunity to stop in Detroit and look around. Detroit had the added advantage that our babysitter had just moved there to go to college and so we were able to not only check out an interesting part of the United States, but get a date out of it also.

When we first drove into Detroit I was struck by how much it reminded me of industrial parts of LA. The wide roads and the older factories felt familiar. The only difference being that these wide roads had much less traffic. I was reminded that this was a car town. The wide lanes and multi-lane streets emphasized the importance of the car to the culture of the town.

The next day we picked up our babysitter Melissa at her dorm and got her and the kids comfortably installed in the hotel with television, and bathing suits for the pool, and then jumped in the car and headed into the city.

We drove down Michigan Avenue into town, towards the skyscrapers in the distance. The buildings all around us seemed pretty run down. Many were boarded up, and as we looked to both sides there were neighborhoods with a lot of run down or gutted houses. It was hard to know how to contextualize what we were seeing.

This building is completely boarded up.

There are certainly neighborhoods in any big city where there are a lot of run down buildings. This could easily be a part of LA or the Bronx where things weren't going so well. There wasn't a clear indication yet how these ruined buildings fit into the larger picture of Detroit.

Just before we entered the downtown area we drove into a part of town that seemed cleaner. The buildings all had new windows and there was obvious activity. The occasional young hip couple could be seen on the sidewalks. A sign read "Corktown, Detroit's Oldest Neighborhood." Corktown was clearly doing OK.

We later learned that this was one of the hubs of new growth. The young hipster community was resuscitating Corktown. Hours later we were directed to a great cafe called Astro in this same neighborhood, where we grabbed some nice strong espresso and some good sandwiches. The guys working the counter there were incredibly sincere and nice. There was a feeling of really trying hard to build the business. On either side of Astro is a hip bar, and a very popular and recommended restaurant that even Melissa had heard of, though she had only been in town three weeks. Corktown is clearly hoping by Detroit standards.

After driving through Corktown we drove downtown. It was surprisingly shiny in the very center of downtown, though there were many very large buildings all around the city that were clearly empty and gutted, downtown seemed relatively prosperous. Still even as we drove around the heart of the city whole buildings stood empty, and there was very little traffic anywhere. We drove out the other direction and were again greeted with the same neighborhoods filled with derelict houses. As if every fourth house was still inhabitable but the rest were dead. We drove into one of the neighborhoods to get a closer look. It wasn't obvious at first what we were seeing. If you squint your eyes, all you see is a rather beautiful old neighborhood with large brick houses and big comfortable porches set back from the street. But on second glance you realize that the houses are mostly boarded up, or burned out.

Completely boarded up if you look closely.

The houses run, occupied, boarded up, gutted out, boarded up no windows, occupied.

Even these large beautiful buildings were mostly boarded up.

Attic windows are missing and entire third floors are gutted and open to the elements. In between these ruined houses are houses that are clearly still inhabited, families or old men sitting out on their porches enjoying the beautiful day. People walking down the street coming back from some errand or other. And then more ruins. I've never seen anything like it. It became clear as we drove that this is not just one neighborhood in one section of this vast city. All the neighborhoods look like this. It is block after block and acre after acre of empty or half empty neighborhoods of what were once lovely houses. What is so incredible was the calm still feeling of a half empty city. If we needed to we could change over four lanes in the middle of downtown without really having to worry about getting stuck.

This church is for sale, best offer.

This entire block of commercial buildings is boarded.

This boarded up building is being advertised as a historic building.

Then right in the middle of all of this collapse we ran across the Eastern Market. It was Saturday and the market was hoping. The energy coming off the place was immense. The air hummed with activity, there was drumming and the sound of people bustling. There were cars everywhere. The Market covers what seems like fifteen city blocks. It has structure after structure of open air, covered, spaces with all sorts of goods being sold, from vegetables to house plants to arts and crafts. There are no grocery stores within the city, so this place has become the grocery store, and banners on the lamp posts show that the market is being supported by Whole Foods. The businesses that exist all around the periphery of the Eastern Market are clearly thriving, bakeries, little cafes, the occasional restaurant. There was no place to park so we couldn't stop, we just drove through slowly and out the other side. It was the strangest feeling, to have driven through this almost empty city and then suddenly come across the buzzing intensity of this market so clearly supporting the needs of everybody regardless of race or class. It was like the old fashioned market faires from the feudal age.

We had heard about a small contemporary arts museum and we decided to go look for it. It's called the Museum of Contemporary Arts Detroit. It's located on Woodward Avenue which is one of the streets in the city that seems to be gentrifying. Also on that street is a large portion of the Wayne State University where our babysitter is currently going to school. She told us that she walks down Woodward all the way into Downtown and has a lot of fun going to the various hip cafes and shops that run along that road. The MOCAD was having a couple of different small shows. One of them was a collaborative installation done by several of the local Detroit art collectives. It reiterated to me the strange connection I felt to Detroit, having come from LA. Detroit and LA are both car towns.

They both have deep relationships to the automobile. But it was in this little gallery that I realized the difference. Where the car for LA is a highly developed fetish relationship, the car for Detroit is a livelihood. Detroit exists because the car exists. Our's (Los Angeles') is a relationship of devote worship and serious usage, but for Detroit it is a genesis myth.

Another exhibit in the MOCAD was a series of works by Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts, an old Black Panther Party artist. His pieces were an eclectic mix of expressionism, jazz, African Diaspora Religious references, and militant politics. The over all effect was a sort of collage of emotional space that made me think of the connection between Detroit's current reality and the reality we had earlier witnessed in New Orleans. Here were two cities steeped in African American culture, in music culture, and both were in some way in a state of trauma. Both cities were loosing a certain amount of identity as they bled out their populations, but while one seemed to be hiding, New Orleans, waiting to figure out how to show itself again, the other seemed to be in a strange dance that threatened its original personality in favor of young white gentrification, Detroit, as if it was about to be transformed into a wholly different city but in the same location. It was only in this gallery, faced with some of the cultural conversation of the old Detroit that I was able to begin to appreciate what might be lost with a transformation that was too young, and too white and perhaps too technology and hipster focused. These thoughts were supported by a conversation with the young white gallery worker behind the desk that we talked to after looking at the art. He told us that he felt like he was a part of the problem of what was happening to Detroit. He wanted to make a difference but in the process of doing that they were coming in and fixing up and pricing out the locals, bringing in an almost foreign culture, establishing something new that wasn't necessarily wanted.

As we left the museum and drove back towards downtown we could see on the side of a skyscraper a huge poster that read "Outsource to Detroit."

I thought about how my friend Marisa had described Atlanta as a city for On-shoring. Allowing companies to get very cheep labor while still remaining in the United States. She talked about how Atlanta seemed to have reinvented itself ten years ago and as a result really didn't have a specific cultural identity, other than corporate and new. I thought about New Orleans fifteen years ago, remembering the feeling of deeply entrenched culture, the sense that this city had always and would always be what it was, that it truly knew itself. Then I thought about the last time I was in Paris and it felt no longer like my beloved Paris, but like the Disneyland version of Paris. A cleaned up, tourist friendly "Paris Experience." Is that what global corporate development creates in place of culture, a mediated experience representing a past authenticity? Will all major cities either die or become these sort of post authentic spaces where you can go and view displays of what once was a real community? See the French Quarter as it used to be, and buy a tee shirt. Wander the once culturally rich streets of Manhattan, now a cleaned up commercial version with segmented advertising. Participate in the ritual of attending a blues club in Memphis "as if you were there in the hay day of the blues." It suddenly seemed like I could feel the very soul of Detroit being battled over. As if there was a tug of war between the forces of authenticity and the forces of commercial capital happening at this very moment. I wonder how long it will take to know who wins?

On our way back through Corktown, after going to Astro Coffee, we decided to take a closer look at a beautiful old many storied building seemingly gutted out two blocks from the main Corktown strip. It turned out to be Michigan Central Station, an incredibly beautiful old building.

From a distance you can see the sky shining through the glassless windows.

It has been completely stripped down and made ready for rehabilitation. There are signs everywhere that they have been fighting to save the building and that new construction will begin soon. There were even two women standing outside the fenced off area watering newly planted rose bushes.

The building is in an interesting limbo that I think is symbolic of all of Detroit. The old facade is incredibly rich with history and beautiful details. The empty gutted shell with it's glassless windows allows the sky to show through the building from one side to the other, painting a strange image of a post apocalyptic ruin. Yet the strivings of the community banners and the clear beginnings of construction make one wonder what will remain of the actual beauty of the building when it is restored? What will they turn it into? Will it return to its former use as a station, or will it become a mall? Will it house artists and forward thinking environmentalists or will it become the corporate headquarters for some new mega corporation? What does "saving" a building, or a community, or a city really mean?