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The different Detroits.

Much talk, here­abouts, about this story from the Weekly Stan­dard, by Matt Labash. The cover fea­tures a photo of the Michi­gan Cen­tral Depot, the most infa­mous aban­doned build­ing in Detroit. Guess what the story’s about? If you answered, “the decline and fall of what was once North America’s great indus­trial city,” pat your­self on the back. You’re on your way to earn­ing a full schol­ar­ship to jour­nal­ism school.

It’s long, and if you don’t want to read it, here are the Cliff’s Notes: Labash sets off to spend a week in our fair city. Pack­ing for the trip, he meets unnamed peo­ple who give him him pithy quotes:

Before I’d left, I’d asked an acquain­tance if he was from Detroit. “Indeed I am,” he said, “Give me all your f – ing money.”

Ha ha. He arrives and hooks up with Char­lie LeDuff, a Detroit News reporter with a rather mani­a­cally cul­ti­vated image as an eccen­tric rene­gade. (Of which I will speak no more, as con­flicts of inter­est exist in the house­hold.) The first part of the arti­cle is a full-on kneepads job on LeDuff, who muses that he was put in his cur­rent posi­tion by God. Then Char­lie tells him to grab his coat, and they’re off to cover Charlie’s beat, which he describes as “the hole” — “forgotten peo­ple in for­got­ten places.” Labash recounts some of Charlie’s great­est report­ing hits — the Dr. Kevorkian pro­file, the repo-man pro­file, the exhuming-the-dead piece — before slid­ing into the stock parachuted-in, out-of-town-journalist’s tour of the usual sus­pects and venues. Adolph Mongo, L. Brooks Pat­ter­son, Martha Reeves. They meet the lat­ter at the Hitsville USA Motown museum; now there’s a place you don’t read about very often, eh? And they drop in on a fire­house that recently lost a beloved brother to a col­laps­ing roof while fight­ing an arsonist’s fire in an aban­doned house, surely the worst pos­si­ble cir­cum­stances for such a death to occur. The Detroit fire department’s prob­lems are a true shame upon the city, and Labash doesn’t fail to fully note it.

It’s a good piece, well-written and very read­able, but it’s only a bet­ter ver­sion of dozens that came before it, and the fact it appeared in a con­ser­v­a­tive pol­icy review, at this par­tic­u­lar point in time, sug­gests a strat­egy under­neath it all. Rod Dreher, faith­ful doggy that he is, catches the scent immediately:

I won­dered over the hol­i­day why it is that it’s cor­rect to believe that New Orleans should be saved, even though it has many of the same endemic and seem­ingly unsolv­able prob­lems as Detroit, and faces one Detroit doesn’t: the like­li­hood (say some sci­en­tists) that it will all sink between now and 2100. Any­way, why is it cor­rect to believe that it’s our moral duty as Amer­i­cans to “save” New Orleans, what­ever that means, but Detroit — well, it can keep going to hell, because what can any­body do with a city so far gone?

In the com­ments he answers his own question:

Peo­ple who wish to save New Orleans gen­er­ally argue that N.O. is so impor­tant cul­tur­ally and oth­er­wise to Amer­ica that we can’t let it waste away. More prag­matic voices argue … that the city is in a nearly impos­si­ble posi­tion geo­graph­i­cally, and that had Kat­rina not hap­pened, it was still an eco­nomic sink­hole, with high rates of crime, illit­er­acy, wel­fare depen­dency, cor­rup­tion and all the same demons that haunt Detroit. But there’s noth­ing roman­tic at all about Detroit.

In other words: Because I like New Orleans, and I don’t like Detroit. Do I need to men­tion where Dreher hails from? Yes, Louisiana. But of course that has noth­ing to do with why New Orleans should be helped, and Detroit writ­ten off. It’s all about cul­ture and romance.

But you see what he’s done? He’s con­flated Detroit, the city that’s been in a death spi­ral since the late ‘60s, with Detroit, short­hand for the domes­tic auto­mo­tive indus­try. When any fool could tell him they are two very dif­fer­ent things. Unfor­tu­nately, any fool doesn’t write for the Weekly Stan­dard, or any of the other pub­li­ca­tions who have sent less tal­ented writ­ers to essen­tially draw the same wrong con­clu­sion. For those of you who may be new­com­ers here: The prob­lems of Detroit-the-city are related to the auto indus­try, but not in the obvi­ous way. The city is full of mon­u­ments to auto­mo­tive wealth and largesse and his­tory, but the truth is, out­side of the GM cor­po­rate offices down­town, most of what we think of as Detroit-the-car-business is located out­side of Detroit-the-city. Maybe all of it, at least in terms of major plants and pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties. The GM Tech Cen­ter is in War­ren. Chrysler’s in Auburn Hills, Ford in Dear­born. The plants are all over the place (and around the coun­try). There are aban­doned fac­to­ries in the city, but they’ve been so for decades. If you want to cover what’s hap­pen­ing to south­east Michi­gan as a result of the auto industry’s prob­lems, you need to go to the sub­urbs — Wayne, Wixom, Dear­born, Auburn Hills, Grosse Pointe, Livonia…all of them, really.

But here’s some­thing else: No one in Detroit-the-city is ask­ing for over-and-above sal­va­tion from the likes of Dreher. Like every other city in the coun­try, it angles for hand­outs from Uncle Sam, but the idea that there’s a push on for the city to be “saved” is absurd. Its prob­lems are many and com­pli­cated, not all self-inflicted but cer­tainly self-propagating. How­ever, it has been so for 40 years and will likely be so for another 40. After four years of liv­ing just out­side its east­ern bor­der, I can tell you I don’t really under­stand the place and prob­a­bly never will, but I have come to like it very much and even love it, as ugly and blighted as it is. It is a city with a heart that con­tin­ues to beat in a ter­ri­bly dis­eased body, and you have to respect any place that just flat refuses to die.

Dreher claims to have read and enjoyed all of Labash’s piece, but he doesn’t men­tion this part, which quotes Adolph Mongo, gen­er­ally described as a “polit­i­cal con­sul­tant,” but as with many Detroi­ters, that’s not all of the story. He doesn’t pussy­foot around:

When white politi­cians want to get elected around here, explains Mongo, “They don’t say ‘n — -r’ any­more, they say ‘Detroit.’” And so, while the Big Three have been run­ning away from Detroit for years, they “got a rude awak­en­ing when they went to D.C.” Mongo holds that when con­gress­men asso­ciate automak­ers with Detroit, what they’re intend­ing to asso­ciate them with are all the inept black peo­ple who come from there. Or as he puts it, when they say “ ‘Detroit,’ they really said, ‘they the new n —  – s.’ Wel­come to the club.”

Yup.

Finally, because Dreher iden­ti­fies him­self as a Chris­t­ian and writes for a reli­gious blog, I’d ask him this: Since when did romance and cul­ture become the cri­te­ria for deter­min­ing who should be helped? Both Detroit and New Orleans are full of peo­ple, or as Dreher’s reli­gion would describe them, souls. Are Louisiana souls more wor­thy of help than Michigan’s? I guess so. And finally finally, if he’s going to put NOLA cul­ture up against Detroit’s, I hope he brought his lunch, because Detroit is going to eat it. I sus­pect he’s one of those guys who puts on his Meters CDs a few times a year and says all that bon temps roulez shit to his kids, while up here in Gritty City we’re incu­bat­ing the next Smokey Robin­son, Mar­vin Gaye, Eminem, White Stripes, Don Was or the-list-goes-on. Here’s a video taste of one show last sum­mer. (Admit­tedly, an extra­or­di­nary one. Don Was is like a mag­net of cool. I still can’t believe I missed it.)

So. Rant over. But it put me in such a mood! So let’s close out with a brief bit of blog­gage, once again from Roger Ebert — a col­lec­tion of his best zingers through the years, nearly all of them from pans:

I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more enter­tain­ing than The Brown Bunny. — Response to Vin­cent Gallo’s hex to give me colon cancer

This film obtained a PG-13 rat­ing, depress­ing evi­dence of how com­fort­able with vul­gar­ity Amer­i­can teenagers are pre­sumed to be. Appar­ently you can drink shit just as long as you don’t say it. — “Austin Pow­ers II”

At first I thought it was pre­sump­tu­ous to select your own best lines — isn’t that the reader’s job? — but I soon found myself laugh­ing so hard I couldn’t read them aloud to Alan. So I guess I trust his judgment.

Oops, one more: The best sin­gle story about Car­o­line Kennedy’s ambi­tions, and oh my, it’s satire:

Car­o­line Kennedy would like to be con­sid­ered Time magazine’s Per­son of the Year for 2009 and has let the magazine’s edi­tor know of her inter­est in the honor, aides to Ms. Kennedy con­firmed today.

Off to shop for my hol­i­day din­ner. Among about a mil­lion other chores. Huzzah.

Posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 7:43 am
in Current events, Detroit life, Media.

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26 responses to
“The different Detroits.”

  1. Kevin said on December 23rd, 2008 at 8:50 am

    Hi from New Orleans.

    Again with the com­par­isons (him, not you, Nancy). Again with the mus­ings, which always some­how come back to the term “cor­rect” (which is short­hand for “polit­i­cally cor­rect,” which is short­hand for a num­ber of other things).

    But don’t fool your­self — Dreher isn’t argu­ing for sav­ing Louisiana (by which he means New Orleans) any more than he’s argu­ing for sav­ing Detroit (by which, as you point out, he seems to mis­take three large indus­tries for one city). He might pre­fer the music and the food, but those are just trappings.

    New Orleans doesn’t want to be “saved,” nor does it need it. Its prob­lems are legion and many self-made (crime, cor­rupt pol­i­tics, fail­ing schools), but its imme­di­ate prob­lem isn’t any of those things, or sub­si­dence; it’s the fail­ure of the fed­eral lev­ees. The house where I live was just fine dur­ing the hur­ri­cane; it was only 24 hours later, when the shoddy con­struc­tion by the Army Corps of Engi­neers failed and it filled with eight feet of water.

    But play­ing peo­ple in trou­ble off against each other is a fool’s game, and an old one, and it still works. (Did you know them dadgum auto work­ers all made $70 an hour? That’s why the auto indus­try failed!) As you point out, we’re called to help one another, and see­ing who we help, and with how much alacrity, is instruc­tive to see who we are as a people.

    Help­ing a finan­cial insti­tu­tion or a brain-dead woman can keep Con­gress work­ing all week­end. Com­ing up with a solu­tion to keep auto work­ers doing their jobs, or rebuild­ing pub­lic safety struc­tures like lev­ees — those take time, and care. Much eas­ier to attempt to pit them against each other.

    Bonus ques­tion: In the wake of the Iowa floods of last year, can you find a sin­gle Dreher type who mused over the wis­dom or the pro­pri­ety of “rebuild­ing Iowa”? And if not, why not?

  2. coozledad said on December 23rd, 2008 at 9:17 am

    Kevin: The Right is look­ing at a rapidly shrink­ing uni­verse of mid­dle class white folks it can empathize with, let alone every­body else. They helped vote the Repub­li­cans out, and by God, with the last ounce of power the ones remain­ing in office can muster, they’ll grab their detractor’s wal­lets and kick them down­stairs. It’s dirty work, but it’s God’s work.
    After 2000, Bush and Cheney green­lighted Ken Lay’s pil­lage of California’s energy mar­kets. The right then sent its foot­sol­diers out to bray about libruls and envi­ron­men­tal­ists being the cause of the prob­lem. There are still idiots who are con­tent­edly swill­ing this shit, while ‘dead’ Ken Lay and his wife are in Dubai screw­ing pubes­cent Arab boys.
    Cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance doesn’t even begin to describe it. I hear they had goobers “hunt­ing” blacks for sport in the sub­urbs of New Orleans after Kat­rina, and the exor­cist gov­er­nor is giv­ing them safe har­bor. Is this true, or merely believable?

  3. nancy said on December 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 am

    “Dead” Ken Lay in Dubai? I hadn’t heard that one. Funny.

    Kevin’s right, of course. I only wish more con­ser­v­a­tives could see through the pro­pa­ganda. When the Weekly Stan­dard sends in its very own Hunter S. Thomp­son, reach for your revolver.

  4. Gasman said on December 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 am

    Nancy,
    “Con­ser­v­a­tives see through the pro­pa­ganda?” Now that’s funny. If you take away the pro­pa­ganda from con­ser­vatism, all you have is a soul­less empty shell. As for Detroit incu­bat­ing nascent musi­cal tal­ent, please, please, PLEASE spare us the next Ted Nugent; one is enough.

  5. nancy said on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:02 am

    We blame Texas for Ted these days. In fact, I think it’s time to start call­ing him the Craw­ford Crazy and let Motor City Mad­man go into the vault for another hun­dred years or so.

  6. Gasman said on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:08 am

    Nancy,
    As one who did time in Texas, I will heartily endorse blam­ing almost any­thing on that state. They cer­tainly did us all a huge favor by loan­ing us their offi­cial state Shit­head for eight years. When W was trot­ted out as the spoke­sturd for the Texas Rangers back in the early 90’s, I pre­dicted that they were groom­ing him for Prez. I sure wish that I’d been wrong.

  7. brian stouder said on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:12 am

    Aretha Franklin will rep­re­sent Detroit quite well at the inau­gu­ra­tion, and (I pre­dict) will quickly pro­duce smiles on the faces of those who frown upon the invo­ca­tion of the Broke-Back Moun­tain preacher (or who­ever he is)

    Not for noth­ing, but the atten­u­a­tion of Detroit’s own legit­i­mate print media can­not help but leave holes in the ram­parts, for bar­bar­ians like these righty-ideologues to exploit. (I get spam from Human Events all the damned time, and their tone is essen­tially Funny Farm mate­r­ial. I take con­so­la­tion from the belief that only will­fully close-minded peo­ple actu­ally read that crap, so as to bol­ster their invin­ci­ble ignorance…and pre­sume­ably Weekly Stan­dard is along those same lines)

  8. Jolene said on December 23rd, 2008 at 11:44 am

    Some days, I can hardly bear to hear about these prob­lems. They are so com­plex, with so many inter­re­lated vari­ables, that it’s hard to imag­ine how they can be addressed, let alone resolved. Even if we had the best will in the world and all the needed resources and tal­ents, and we don’t.

  9. moe99 said on December 23rd, 2008 at 11:45 am

    I was up til 3 wrap­ping and dog walk­ing, so I got nut­thin’ today. Good piece Nancy. Can I share it (the Detroit part) with friends?

  10. alex said on December 23rd, 2008 at 11:46 am

    Imag­ine. We could be this­close to blam­ing Illi­nois for Ted.

    That’s right. The Illi­nois GOP thought it needed a “rock star” to run against Obama for the Sen­ate and tried unsuc­cess­fully to woo the Nuge.

    He wasn’t nuts enough to take them up on it. So they got Alan Keyes instead.

  11. LA Mary said on December 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    Dog Groom­ing.

    http://​laweekly​.blogs​.com/​j​o​s​h​u​a​h​_​b​e​a​r​m​a​n​/​2​0​0​8​/​1​2​/​g​e​t​-​r​e​a​d​y​-​f​o​r​-​a​n​-​a​u​d​i​o​v​i​s​u​a​l​-​a​s​s​a​u​l​t​-​o​n​-​y​o​u​r​-​m​i​n​d​-​a​n​d​-​y​o​u​r​-​p​o​o​d​l​e​-.html

  12. brian stouder said on December 23rd, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    I think the train trip into DC is superb, and the Lin­coln bible (gra­ciously made avail­able by the Library of Con­gress) is sublime

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​2​8​3​66102/

  13. Danny said on December 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm

    Okay, a lit­tle field report for those of you trapped in colder climes.

    This place is par­adise. We have not really explored much yet, but the water (77 F!!!) right out­side our rental in the pic­ture I posted the other day con­tains all sorts of won­der­ful sea life. Here are a few of the locals I met yes­ter­day while snorkeling:

    Threadfin But­ter­fly

    Pen­nant Butterfly

    Nee­dle Fish

    I also saw a whole host of very brightly col­ored sea anenome which had looks that said, “Do NOT touch Me!!!” At one shal­low spot, I scared some­thing that spewed ink and it gave me pause think­ing of Steve Irwin. I retreated to deeper, less claustrophobia-inducing areas where my chest would not be exposed only one foot from the coral.

    We’re start­ing to accu­mu­late some per­sonal pics on our mem­ory sticks. I’ll try to post a few with our Cheshire Cat grins for your gen­eral bemusement.

    Aloha.

    P.S. Names of Places Here: You can’t swing a dead cat with­out hit­ting a vowel. I think I am stay­ing off of Lower Hock-a-Loogie road or some­thing. Still, some­where in my sub­con­scious, my brain is busily try­ing to puz­zle out how I might be able to live here indefinitely.

  14. Catherine said on December 23rd, 2008 at 7:17 pm

    What Jolene said, and what moe said.

    The poo­dles are freak­ing hilar­i­ous, but I’m a lit­tle afraid for our poo­dle mix.

    Back to bak­ing spritz cook­ies. Bak­ing = ther­apy plus it makes other peo­ple happy too.

  15. Danny said on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:21 pm

    Hey, Nancy, do I have a com­ment in pur­ga­tory for links? It was from this morning.

    Nance here: Yes, and it has been freed. Too many links within, and it went to spam.

  16. del said on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    Ted Nugent is guilty of crimes against human­ity: his music anthology.

  17. Gasman said on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 pm

    Danny,
    The fish pic­tures are beau­ti­ful. I remem­ber from decades ago how fish will come right up to your mask while snor­kel­ing or scuba div­ing. How­ever, as we freeze our butts off and dig our way out from feet of snow, we are silently curs­ing you. I think that I dated a Sea Anemone in high school; she kept telling me, “Do NOT touch Me!!!”

    As to the idea of liv­ing in par­adise, I had the same fan­tasies 15 years ago about liv­ing in Santa Fe, and here we are. Hawaii is pretty appeal­ing and there’s more Spam than you can shake a stick at. What more could you want?

  18. Danny said on December 23rd, 2008 at 11:57 pm

    Ah, here is some Yule­tide spirit Aloha-style with Sandy the Sand­man. I think he is Frosty’s cousin. I met him at the beach today.

    Hilar­i­ous, Gas­man. Yeah, some­times I won­der if my wife is one of these sea creatures.

    Aloha and Mele Kalikimaka!

  19. nancy said on December 24th, 2008 at 12:15 am

    The Secret Ser­vice is keep­ing you far from the Oba­mas, right?

  20. Dexter said on December 24th, 2008 at 12:33 am

    Colum­bus ain’t Florida (beau­ti­ful weather there the next few days) but it’s gotta be bet­ter than this icy-snow –rain combo that has peo­ple hun­kered down in their homes until some­thing melts…I fell on ice in a park­ing lot a few hours ago but got back up, OK…and just went back to my car and went back home. We’ll be on the road to C’bus in 9 hours…off to bed and up at 7 , chip­ping ice, and head­ing for 49 degree ice-free Colum­bus. Merry Christ­mas to all.

  21. CrazyCatLady said on December 24th, 2008 at 12:41 am

    I was born, raised and have lived within Detroit City Lim­its my whole life. I was born and raised in Bright­moor area, edu­cated in DPS schools and raised our daugh­ter here. There are sev­eral “Detroits”, really. The White Detroit, the Black Detroit and the Motor City Detroit. It’s sim­ply the way things always were. The three parts almost never mix and min­gle. It’s seg­re­gated not by law but by habit. Dur­ing Kilpatrick’s lies and cover-ups, his sup­port­ers were almost entirely black, and his ene­mies were, accord­ing to Hiz­zoner, sim­ply racist haters. And once again the race card was played and from the bot­tom of the deck. I guess at this point I just say “It is what it is” and just go forward.

  22. basset said on December 24th, 2008 at 2:22 am

    well, Detroit can’t be all bad, they have this lit­tle booger here:

    http://​freep​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​8​1​2​2​3​/​N​E​W​S​0​3​/​8​1​223049

    when you get done look­ing at him, go to the bot­tom of the page and check out the “best burg­ers.” might even be rea­son enough to leave the air­port next time I’m in Detroit.

  23. whitebeard said on December 24th, 2008 at 7:40 am

    I have vis­ited Detroit and its sub­urbs since I was a young whipper-snapper in The Soo and over the years as I wrote about cars in Mon­treal and Hart­ford from the 1970s onwards and was very much made aware of the three Detroits.
    At the auto show, I was given a safe and secure route to test drive some new mod­els and promptly became lost because I am direc­tion­ally and geo­graph­i­cally chal­lenged.
    I stopped sev­eral times and asked for direc­tions and was treated cour­te­ously and with laugh­ter every time as I explained my predica­ment (being a bearded, long-haired, bear in excess of 250 pounds might have encour­aged friend­li­ness in the day­time).
    I peeked in what remained of the win­dows at Michi­gan Cen­tral Sta­tion as a long­time rail­road fan, rode the peo­ple mover as a tran­sit fan, but stayed at a motel near the tun­nel entrance in Wind­sor that time because it was far cheaper (and I am a Cana­dian, after all).
    Yes, Detroit has its prob­lems. but what the Weekly Stan­dard chap wrote could describe any older North­ern city where fac­tory shells remain if you delib­er­ately look for them, where poverty exists if you hunt for it, where polit­i­cal malfeasence runs ram­pant.
    But in the end, I wouldn’t turn down an invi­ta­tion to visit Detroit again.

  24. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 24th, 2008 at 8:38 am

    Wow. I’m halfway through what seems like an end­less series of pre-Christmas con­fer­ences with so-called adults who have to be reminded, con­vinced, and/or cajoled into recall­ing that they love their child more than they hate each other (so far, we’re 3 out of 4, but we won’t know if those three stick until after Jan. 5). I feel as cranky as Nancy after read­ing a hit job on Detroit — there’s no love like con­vert lovin’ … or would this be migrant love?

    As for the Detroit smacky-face, there’s noth­ing going on in the D that isn’t true from the Soo to Louisville, from even the new and improved Pitts­burgh to the flats of Kansas City, KS. Vacant brick build­ings from 1906 with a huge addi­tion dated 1922, and three rail spurs spiked with grass and shrub div­ing into the base­ment; bro­ken toothed grim smil­ing streetscapes as you look down close packed neigh­bor­hood avenues that saw the Span­ish Flu and V-E day cel­e­bra­tions and Christ­mases when every lot had a house and every home had a tree; scle­rotic civic admin­is­tra­tions where cor­rup­tion is a dirty word but graft and done-deals before the bids are opened don’t even war­rant a news story that you can’t prove any­how because no one talks because everyone’s dirty.

    It’s a regional story, but it’s a big region. Detroit may be the cap­i­tal in some ways, but it’s nei­ther cause nor exem­plar except for the lazy, trite writer.

    The double-weird in the Labash piece: first, is this a LeDuff pro­file mas­querad­ing as a Detroit piece? Did his edi­tors send him for the lat­ter and he’s snuck in the for­mer? Been there, done that, some­times got away with it. But the line “Char­lie was as much per­former as reporter” just shouldn’t be able to sound like a good thing, should it? If i say of a pas­tor “she was as much per­former as pas­tor,” or even a lawyer being “as much per­former as pas­tor,” it would clearly be a bad thing. You have to edge over to “John Irv­ing is as much per­former as nov­el­ist” to sound approv­ing, and not all writ­ers would agree (on per­form­ers or Irving).

    LeDuff sounds like a hard man to share an office with, even if the office is an entire floor of a build­ing. That kind of cul­ti­vated pin­wheel­ing arro­gant self-spectacle per­sona has a ten­dency to step on col­leagues even when you’re not directly in their way — and there’s already enough cleat-wearers who don’t ease up when they think your back­side is on their career path as it is.

    I’m hop­ing i get my “Peace on earth, good will y’all” mojo back by the 7 pm ser­vice, but much depends on the 3 pm fam­ily ‘tude. Mine will be cheer­ily relent­less in any case, but i’d like to be unaf­fect­edly cheery when my son does his read­ing from Isaiah.

    Every­body be good to each other, OK? I need much coffee.

  25. grapeshot said on December 24th, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    I went to col­lege in Michigan’s UP in the late 70’s and early 80’s and had a lot of friends there who came from Detroit. They told sto­ries of life grow­ing up there (drag rac­ing on Gra­tiot or shop­ping at the Hud­sons down­town), but they all acknowl­edged that the city was chang­ing for the worse. It wasn’t until years later, when I viewed the images on a web­site that for­merly was called Detroit Mon Amour that I could see the faded beauty of Detroit.

    But the story is hardly any dif­fer­ent than that of Buf­falo, NY, or Erie, PA, or South Bend, IN, or scores of other smaller cities in the rust belt. I hate see­ing them all decay slowly, as much as I hated see­ing N.O. wiped out in one fell swoop.

    I once read a quote from War­ren Buf­fet, where he said that there are some in our soci­ety that wants us to become a nation of share crop­pers. I don’t remem­ber the exact quote, but it sure seems to me to be true that this is exactly what is going on.

  26. Ricardo said on December 26th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    There are some folks that say that Gen­eral Motors and Ford Motors are mis­named. Engi­neers know that motors are elec­tric and engines are fossil-fueled. Now is the time for cor­rec­tion! Gen­eral Trans­porta­tion, they should be respon­si­ble for restor­ing the mass trans­porta­tion in the US in exchange for us bail­ing them out.

    Just take a look on Google Earth and look at South­west Detroit from the Rouge River to Lin­coln Park to Wyan­dotte and on. You will see a vis­i­ble line where Elec­tric St and Elec­tric Ave still exist as a right-of-way. They join in Tren­ton all the way to Toledo. I’m not sure, but I think they joined to MI Cen­tral, which I remem­ber in bet­ter days. There are sim­i­lar areas of LA and Orange County (Long Beach comes to mind) where you can find old Red Car right-of-ways.

    The big three owes us to put their engi­neer­ing to work to restore what they ruined. Mass trans­porta­tion that serves the entire nation effi­ciently and timely. Bul­let trains for long dis­tance. Town cars, liv­ery, and farm/rural vehi­cles on a mass scale.

    I’m also still wait­ing for the fly­ing cars. Can’t wait to have an acci­dent at 1000′.

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