@iowahawkblog That city wouldn't voom if you put four million Volts through it. It's passed on. It is an ex-city.I'll not be snatching any pebbles from Iowahawk's hand anytime soon...
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) July 24, 2013
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Wednesday, July 24, 2013
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22 comments:
:golfclap:
BGM
Contemplate the sound of one hand clapping, grasshopper.
I, for one, cannot hold a candle to David Burge. He is one witty dude.
Should we be calling the ex-city "Mos Detroit?"
I've seen pictures. Mossy Detroit is entirely appropriate
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Stay safe
It's not dead, it's just restin'.....
Dead Detroit lies dreaming.
Ea Ea!
I love dead parrot jokes.
This isnt Chicago, its Ipswitch.
Hah! And yes, it is an ex-city. Not that it was a "real" city even at its peak, though it did have a lot of money once. My father taught engineering at Wayne State University in the late 1950's and his stories about walking up a vibrant Woodward Avenue from near campus all the way to 8-mile, post-midnight, are hard to reconcile with the creepily deserted city of today.
Two months ago I did the drive down Woodward from the Detroit Zoo (near Birmingham and Royal Oak, MI) to the river and it was like something out of a post-apocalyptic zombie movie: empty shells of buildings (huge, imposing brick ones designed for centuries, but falling apart mere decades later due to lack of maintenance), boarded up houses and shops, and a few scant people standing around the street corners. Yet there are neighborhoods of beautiful mansions, mostly well-kempt, but one block away there is the roofless, burned-out husk of another house, the remaining charred walls slowly collapsing because no one can be bothered to even level the wreckage, much less haul it away.
Weirdly enough, Detroit now feels safer than it did when I was a kid in the 70's (Dad would occasionally pile us all into the car to drive that 41.8 miles from Ann Arbor to downtown Detroit to eat at his favorite Chinese restaurant from his Wayne State days.) That's probably because Detroit is now so eerily empty. Hamtramck on the other hand feels a HELL of a lot more dangerous. When I was a kid Pole-town was still actually full of Polish people (and great pastries at Oaza Bakery). Over the years it changed, and now I don't know who if anyone lives there. But the boarded up windows and trash-filled lots are a dramatic change from the busy storefronts and little but tidy front yards of private homes I remember as a kid. The Oaza quietly closed years ago.
Many neighboring municipalities are doing fine, however. Last Friday night we were in Royal Oak (MI) and the streets were full of generally well-behaved, prosperous looking people patronizing the restaurants, bars and the big chain bookstore while buskers plied their musical trade.
On the next monthly visit to Michigan I'm going to try and visit the Detroit Institute of Art, which I haven't set foot in for over 30 years. The DIA has an amazing collection, and unusually, it is city-owned rather than private or foundation-owned. I don't know what will happen with the bankruptcy thing, but it is unlikely to be good.
"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy"
Um, that would be D.C. not Detroit.
Looks like the art collection will be sold off as will most of the cities liquid assets. Things like water treatment plants and electrical sub-stations will also be sold, and most people living in Detroit post-bankruptcy will see their utility costs go up. Makes you wonder why anyone stays? They should chop out the few remaining parts that are going well and incorporate a new town. New Detroit. Let the old one take a dirt nap.
sobriant74:
New Detroit will die just as fast if the voters who killed it remain in place.
I suggest gentrification from the outside inwards, and nothing but complete resistance to government section 8 housing schemes.
Rising home prices will drive out the free shit army, a first step towards recovery.
"Free Shit Army". Awesome.
So that's what FSA means. I've been seeing it in a lot of blogs lately and it just wouldn't click.
Rich
The last time I was in Detroit, all I could think of was a really bad, yet to be made, RoboCop sequel.
Ia! Ia! Detroit ftaghn!
"Detroitus".
The word suggests itself...
Antibubba
Monty Python's humorous depiction of a bureaucratic state run amok is a good start, but I think of Detroit as more of a Lovecraftian nameless horror:
"The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh…was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults."
—H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu (1928)
I was riffing on Les's "Mos Detroit", but Scott's correct regarding the District of Criminals
I have no idea how Oakland keeps from collapsing into a Detroit-hole.
The pictures I've seen of Detroit remind me disturbingly of the setting of the Fallout video games: a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
All they need are guys in power armor and some mutant critters and they'd be good to go.
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