First day of college. A tour of campus, then a tour of the three-block radius separating us from the wilds of inner-city Detroit. Instructor tells students NOT to leave three-block “safety zone”—and if we DO, always “look people in the eye.” Don’t look like a “victim.” Walk tall and confident, and if someone demands money or a wallet, just give it to ’em.
I had no idea every other city wasn’t like this one. I had never seen a city before. I loved it—tall buildings, libraries, black people, freedom. On April 1, Mom calls to check in on me. My dorm roommate has a new Macintosh II, and we play gunshot sound effects as I tell her that my car has been stolen. It works too well. Then: “April Fool’s!!!” Mom doesn’t laugh. Next morning, my Plymouth Horizon is still where I left it, but every tire except one is flat and the passenger-side window is busted. The replacement window costs $200. Weirdly, nothing is stolen.
I get lost driving in Southwest Detroit, trying to find food. Factories, abandoned houses, dirt roads. Finally see a Farmer Jack, and while exiting the freeway, a big-ass hooptie—a great big green Lincoln Continental—hits the back of my Horizon so hard I fly into a 180-degree spin and lose my back bumper. I get out and ask the guy if I can get his insurance number. He pulls a 9 mm from his crotch and asks me why I hit him. I say sorry, get back in my car, and wait for him to drive away. Then I get out and throw my bumper in the trunk. When I finally pull into Farmer Jack, it’s closed. A guy with a shopping cart rolls up and asks me if I “want some rocks.” I say no. Farmer Jack—the biggest grocery-store chain in downtown Detroit in the 1990s—from that day forward becomes Farmer Crack.
Being a ‘billy from Up North, growing up as a little kid on a farm in Northern Michigan, I’d never seen a prostitute. One sunny summer day, while riding my ten-speed through the Cass Corridor trying to find something called “falafel”, I ride past a bunch of hookers. “Whatchoo doin’ cracka-biiiiiiiiiitch?” asks a funny and awesome curvy lady wearing nothing but a silk camisole and high heels, laughing. Getting catcalled, getting things thrown at you by the Cass Avenue hookers, becomes an official sport that summer. We keep a tally sheet on the fridge. Being called “bitch” gets 5 points. “Cracker” gets you 10.
I’m going to school for graphic art—”commercial” art. When a group of way cooler FINE ART students asks me to participate in a gallery show, I’m honored. The show has the loose theme of “time.” We’re each given only the motor of a clock and asked to build the rest. There is an abandoned two-story house over on Willis Street that I’ve always wanted to go in. The doors and windows are long gone, and grass and flowers are growing on the windowsills. My boyfriend and I go in to scavenge for clock materials. Being inside a house that’s still partially furnished and still has an old framed painting hanging over the fireplace is beyond creepy. Even in broad daylight, you can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching you. I go straight for a downstairs bedroom and find an old box spring. I pull at it and get a hunk of rotted wood covered in a perfect mess of rusty springs. My clock is gonna rock. Boyfriend wants to go upstairs. “No,” I say. “Let’s just go—I got what I need.” He calls me a wuss. We go home. The next day on the local news, we see the house with the windowsill flowers. They found a long-dead body in the upstairs bedroom. A woman. They think she was a prostitute. We don’t ride our bikes down Cass so much after that.
Can’t get any homework done in the dorm. Mom comes with a truck full of apartment stuff, and I tell her to follow me to my new place. I drive her all over the worst neighborhoods I know, then pull into the driveway of a boarded-up three-story house covered with graffiti. “Kill Whitey” is spray-painted on the front of it. I get out of the car just to see the terror on her face. Then: “Just kidding!” She yells back: “You BITCH!”
Move into a gorgeous brick brownstone called Phillips Manor—hardwood floors, fireplace, four bedrooms. My two roommates and I pay $110 apiece. The three of us are sitting and watching the huge Star Trek–looking TV I scored for $15 at the thrift store. All the remote controls are sitting in plain view on the coffee table. We’re watching VH1. The channel changes itself to The New Dance Show—the local, low-budget version of Soul Train. This is the first of many times that the TV switches itself to another station. The radio randomly switches itself, too. And always to a black TV show or song. Seems to be a friendly ghost. Most definitely an African-American ghost. The only other thing living in that house, aside from the three of us, is my roommate’s spooky black Persian cat. Always hiding somewhere. Can never pet it. Once, we can’t find it for almost a week. My roommate leaves to make a “Lost Cat” flyer at Kinko’s, thinking it somehow got outside. Boyfriend is sitting in the living room, and I’m at one end of the long hallway near the bathroom. The cat comes stumbling out of one of the bedrooms and just sits in the middle of the hallway, not moving, staring intently at me. I say, all sweet, “Kiiiii-teee, there you are!” The cat just stares. Then its mouth opens slightly and a very deep man’s voice says, “Hello.” With that, the cat walks back into the bedroom. Boyfriend says, “Who just said ‘Hello’?” Not making this up. I scream and lock myself in the bathroom. For hours.
Detroit’s freeways were built for TRAFFIC. Except there are no people left, just embankments, grass, cement. Pretty easy to turn around, because every exit has an overpass. I’m driving 89 miles an hour, late for class. Teacher says if I’m late again—expelled. WHAM! My hood flies up and hits the windshield. I’m going so fast and can’t see anything. Then the wind catches and it slams back down, but now the latch is broken, so it flies up again. HOLY FUCK. It slams down again and I start pulling to the right. WHAM! Hits the windshield again. Oh my fucking God, why is this happening? The next time it flies up, it doesn’t hit the windshield—it just flies right off the car. I watch it in the rearview mirror go end over end, airborne. I pull off at an exit, thinking my hood just caused a HUGE accident. Maybe killed someone? I travel south, then back north, looking for carnage. NOTHING. I go farther and do the loop again. And again. Nothing. Where the hell is the hood to my car? Somebody steal it? That fast? Never ever find it, and drive around the D with my engine exposed for over a week.
Some kids at school ask if we wanna go to a party. Sure! Okay, they tell us to go to Zoots Coffee to get directions. We go to Zoots. Barista looks us up and down, then tells us to go to Alvin’s and ask the bartender for the directions. Weird, but all right. After Alvin’s, we get sent to Cass Cafe, and someone at Cass Cafe says to go to Showtime Clothing, then finally someone there tells us the party is at the long-closed Packard Plant—a huge auto factory built in 1903, now a maze of 40-plus abandoned buildings on 35 acres. We go. Holy shitballs, it’s scary at night. A couple kids are outside directing people. We follow a tunnel made of black garbage bags that empties out into this gigantic open room. There are crazy lights everywhere, some guy named Plastikman is DJing, and over a thousand people are dancing, partying, screwing each other in the dark corners. Some guy asks me if I want some “E.” I say, “What’s that?” He says, “Oh, child, is this your first rave?”
One day, my friend calls. She lives in the same apartment building, but on the fifth floor. “Come quick! Come up here!” We go to the window and look down at the street. There’s a view of the Majestic Cafe parking lot, Detroit Medical Center, more brick apartments, and Woodward Avenue, the main drag. Three men in brightly colored ski masks are pouring gasoline all over our landlord Judith’s Buick Riviera. One of the men throws a book of matches on it, and then they walk away. We clap and laugh and LAUGH as Judith’s boyfriend tries to put the fire out with buckets then a garden hose. We didn’t like Judith very much. Apparently, the drug dealers down the street didn’t like her either. Especially after she called the cops on them. Another time at that window, we watch a drunk guy with a cinder block smash out the windshields of five cars in a row. The cops actually show up that time.
One night, I get kinda shitty on OE. We thought it’d be fun to drink Olde English 800 malt liquor from the “party store,” just like everyone else did in the D. All fun until I have to drive home. I mean, walking was ALWAYS out of the question, unless you wanted to maybe die, and cabs were rarely around. It’d be good to take all the side streets, I think to myself, kinda creep my way home. “Creeping” was all I’d done anyway since I lost my driver’s license. If you lose your license, and you’re a 22-year-old girl living in downtown Detroit, you have no choice but to keep driving. I’d been driving very carefully for almost a year, with no trouble. When the cops pull me over, my neck immediately breaks out in hives. This is it—I’m going to jail, oh sweet Mary mother of God, I’m going to jail. Two football-player-sized black policemen come up to my car. Instead of asking for my license, they ask if I know I’m driving the wrong way down a one-way street. I try to explain. Oh fuck. My speech is slurry. “What’s that?” policeman one says, pointing to the red gas can in the back of my car. “I ran outta gas two days ago,” I say. “Don’t you know it’s Devil’s Night?” says policeman two. (Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween, is the Detroit phenomenon where residents set fire to empty buildings. One year, over 800 houses burned to the ground in less than 72 hours.) “You know, you can go to jail for even having that in your possession.” “I wasn’t gonna burn anything, I swear to God, please believe me,” I say. “Okay, okay,” one says, “but I gotta take that can.” “What are you doing down here anyway, blondie? This is a bad neighborhood,” says the other. “Where are you trying to go?” “Home. I live on Willis Street.” “Okay, then, follow us. We’ll give you an escort. You really shouldn’t be here.”
Walking home from the Detroit Institute of Arts—my first museum, with so many real Van Gogh paintings that I get overwhelmed and physically nauseated—I see the infamous, majestic “yellow dogs” running down the street. Unlike Mexico, which has a sunshine-y warm climate and loads of feral dogs, Detroit’s wild dogs are so furry and dirty they almost look like they have dreads, or like smallish grizzly bears—maybe once domesticated, maybe once someone’s pet, now alien creatures worthy of scientific study. You can tell the lead dog—he is always leading the pack—used to be a yellow Lab. The rest are a mix of breeds, but for some reason, everyone calls them “the yellow dogs.” They are always silently running somewhere—never barking. The rumor is that you have good luck for a week if they cross your path.
I’m working at the college and at the Majestic Cafe on Woodward Avenue. I lied my way into a waitress job there: When they asked if they could call my former employer, I gave them my mom’s number and told her to answer the phone for a few days as “Torsch’s Bar and Grill.” She did. And it worked. The Nub Man is a homeless, toothless, one-armed vet who spare-changes in front of the Majestic. I see him almost every day. He used to scare me a little, but I try to give him change or bills when I can. One night, after a super-long, hard shift, someone steals my apron with all my money in it. I’m livid. So tired and angry. I start to walk home. The Nub comes running after me. “No, you know what?” I say. “I DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING MONEY! Someone stole it, and now I can’t fucking eat! I don’t have any food!” Then I start crying. “Oh it’s okay,” he says, and hands me five bucks. “You’re gonna eat. Just take it.” I pay him $10 back the next day, and after that, the Nub and I are friends. One sunny day, we even play Frisbee in the parking lot. Last time I ever see him: He comes running up to me for his typical high five—he’d hold up what was left of his arm and say, “Give the nub some love!”—then says, “Girl, whatchoo think?!” I say, “‘Bout what?” “What’s different?” he says with a huge, cheesy grin. “You got teeth!” “Ah, haaaa! I did! They tried to give me an arm, too, but I didn’t want no fake arm.”
One day, I’m in so much pain I can’t walk. Feels like a knife in my girly parts. I’m crawling on our dirty hardwood floors in Hamtramck, the little Polish hood north of downtown. Since I live with a sculptor, there’s clay dust on everything. The Midol my boyfriend brings me doesn’t work, so he throws me in his Ford Festiva—the tiniest car in the world—and takes me to Henry Ford. “What’s wrong with you, girl?” the ER nurse asks. I’m pouring sweat. I’m dying. I feel like I’m going to start hallucinating. They roll me into the maternity ward. A group of gigantic and gorgeous super-pregnant black women surround me. I’m in the fetal position, weeping. Only white person for miles. (My stepdad would have died before coming in here. “I don’t even like driving past Detroit,” he used to say. In the five years I lived there, he never visited once.) One of the women pets my head. I can’t stop crying. “This is a blood gas,” a nurse says, plunging a needle into an artery in my wrist. It basically feels like she’s cutting my hand off. Next thing, someone’s saying, “It didn’t work, gotta do it again.” And then I’m alone in the room. And then, suddenly, all the pain just stops. Instant gone. I can hear them coming back for my second blood gas. No more “blood gases.” No way. SORRY. I find my street clothes, carefully pull the IV line out of the vein in my other arm, and walk out of the hospital. According to the $2,000 bill I get later, I passed a kidney stone.
One night, my friend calls. “Come up here!” “Is someone torching Judith’s new car?!” “No, just come up, CLOWNS!” We go to the window and look down. “I think they’re called ‘Juggalos’—some band called ICP is playing at the Magic Stick across the street.” We start throwing paper airplanes at them. Then various other crap, including some potatoes we have on the kitchen counter. This angers the clowns. They start yelling at the building. Then throwing bottles of Faygo at the building, except they don’t know which apartment the potatoes are coming from. Judith goes outside to see what’s going on. We clap and laugh and laugh some more.
The best part of living in Detroit is the ruins. The whole place is one giant urban-ruins park. Though it’s sad and broken and abandoned, there is art everywhere. It’s beautiful. From the graffiti and street art to all the overgrown empty places, where nature is slowly but surely reclaiming its place. When school ends, it’s time to leave and find a job. The last summer we’re living there, we break into 50-plus buildings. Not to destroy things, but to pay our respects to all those grand old dinosaurs. We spend so many nights sitting on top of the old train station, Michigan Central Station. We climb 18 stories—it takes almost 45 minutes—with food and beer and blankets on our backs, and then just sit on the roof and watch the sunset over our pretty city. I think I miss that place the most, out of everything. I spend my last day thinking I should go over to the train station one last time to say good-bye to her. Gonna miss this Detroit. I’ve been robbed, mugged on the light rail (thanks, People Mover, I mean People Mugger, I mean MUGGER MOVER), and almost carjacked once, but I’m still really gonna miss it. I step outside my apartment and take a huge breath. Suddenly, a big gust of wind picks up a plastic Farmer Crack grocery bag filled with nasty trash—some old Kleenex, some cigarette butts. The bag hits me in the face. Nope. No train station today. Gotta go. 
holy shit, these are great stories. Did you run into Viggo Mortenson and his kid out there?
I used to live in Detroit, off Willis street back in the 1990’s. I always tell people that the “D” is a different place than any other place i’ve seen in America.
My clearest childhood memory is looking out the front window of my house to a car across the street with a cynder block precisely in the middle of the windsheild. Oh, Detroit.
I agree, these stories are great; by great I mean depressing but real.
You a tough-ass cracker.
I enjoyed this article a great deal. It makes me nostalgic Detroit and its savage beauty.
It’s pathetic that all you got from Detroit was some played out stories about your interactions with inner-city black folk. Obviously you’re not a native to the GM-Rust Belt i.e. Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw. Only Pacific Northwesterners would admire your “bravery” for living among, what you repeatedly seemed tempted to say, crazy n**gers and “big black policemen.” Your story highlights how diversity in Seattle is illusory and how it lacks the urban legacy so many other great cities possess.
Kudo’s for also being the first author failing to touch on Detroit’s integral past and present role in American music; Neglecting to indulge in it during your stay, save one warehouse party; And failing to underscore how attitudes like your stepfather’s led to the depopulation of Detroit.
See you in the Central District. Or maybe not because you’ll probably cross the street.
To Stevie:
Grow up. You don’t live there, you haven’t lived there. It’s the murder capital for a fucking reason. Detroit is a zombie that no one has told it’s dead. It lumbers on, never trying in the least to fix any of its self inflicted woes. Detroit has NO ONE to blame for its problems save itself. You do not know this because you are not there. Her article is honest and no one in Detroit will fault her for that. Yes color matters there and yes she did very well managing those bondaries.. she survived.
Please pull your race card elsewhere.
So cool to read long-form Kelly O. Unteachable writing style, lovely stories.
Detroit is like your little sister, right.. You can make fun of her but if anyone else does, you want to kick their ass. Detroit is just a good place to be from… and meet any true Detroiter and one of the first things you will notice… they have heart.
I miss home sometimes so much. It’s changing, it’s rebuilding… sure, it is going to take years before we see any large significant change… but I know it will happen in time.
It’s so funny because when I’m home, even when I am walking on the empty streets downtown, or climbing abandoned buildings in order to get a better view of the skyline… it feels comfortable, safe, even though I know it’s just perception.
I visit in three weeks, cannot wait.
Honkey:
There is no mention of blaming Kelly O for Detroit’s problems in my comment. It’s merely a reaction to the boilerplate white-female-survives-black-people/neighborhood scenarios recounted in her stories. It implies there is something extraordinary and pioneering about attending college in urban blight and in your words having “survived”. The author is also the one who plays the race card, creating a tone in her stories that at any moment she was going to be attacked, assaulted, or even worse killed by someone who would most likely be African-American.
And contrary to your belief Detroit is not a zombie. It’s a music, art, and urban cultural mecca. Home to everyone from the MC5s to the late J-Dilla. It’s the “Rock City.”
To Elise81:
Want to get coffee? : )
AWESOME!! more Kelly O stories plzz
Things I would like to forget about Detroit: Bulletproof glass at the register in all the corner grocery stores. Entire neighborhoods that look like Beirut after Israel got through with it. A friend getting his throat slashed for no reason. Having to shield my girlfriend from 2 cars that were driving down the street side by side shooting at each other (one block away from the hall of justice no less.) Tumbleweeds or some wind blown weeds that looked like tumbleweeds in the downtown streets. Billboards that say 1-800-LAWSUIT, and billboards advertising paternity tests. Once, a crackhead broke into Rosa Parks’ house and beat her up (its true, look it up.) I grew up there, its like hell. Like a third world country but worse, a senselessly violent third world country. I try to forget about it. There is a website called Detroit is crap, pretty much sums it up.
I was born in Detroit and moved to Seattle 2 years ago. I feel like the best part of the city was left out. I felt way safer in Detroit then I do here. People look out for each other and have each others backs there. The neighborhoods are protected and people wont bullshit you.
It has a bad rap, but shit is dog eat dog, fucking deal with it.
Kelly,
Read your piece. Humorous and sad. Detroit is the great American city in great decline. There’s a coffee table picture book recently published that has a montage of it’s decline. Check this out:
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/…
Today, it was announced that Kwane Kilpatrick, Detroit’s former disgraced mayor was sentenced to up to 5 years in prison. The city has more problems than it can reckon with. Motown was once glorious. How unfortunate.
So when Kelly O sees me will she also describe me as a gigantic black lady? Is that all you saw was the “black” on people but not the humanity of those people including Nub? Post racial society my ass. Every other paragraph seemed to mention black this, or black that. I can not stand folks like that. Moving to the city to be surrounded by black folks is part of the cool factor? Are we fauna? It seems like you lived amongst Black folks, but not with them. Sad.
Plus, you don’t seem like a very nice person laughing when your landlady’s car was torched. Breaking into abandoned buildings? Not nice either.
so goood!! Kelly O! please, please write more, I loved this!
Sounds more like you were a naive Yooper than that Detroit was uniformly weird/bad. You were probably walking around with a giant sign on your head that said “I’m a hilljack.” I’ve lived in Detroit for years, and like any city, it has its good and rough bits. Sorry you were such an idiot, but don’t use that as an excuse to cash in on Detroit’s current hard times. Cheap.
I love Detroit, Kelly! Did you ever run into Sneak and the Detroit Techno Militia over in Greektown? Best. Parties. Evurrrrrrr. No wait, the best party ever was Dorkwave in Corktown. Best. Party. Evurrrrrrrr. I danced on speakers wearing lobster claws.
My grandmother and mother are total 12th Street Detroiters, it’s fun to see them butt heads with folks, they don’t take shit. Neither do I, of course, so we argue. A lot.
Now I’m all nostalgic.
Having lived in both places I can confidently say that Seattle is not half the city that Detroit is, let alone the city it was. And yeah, Detroit has a fucked economy, rampant blight, crime, crack, blah blah blah. But it also has history, culture, a real music scene, a real sense of cummunity, and some of the most amazing architecture to be found in America. Seattle is a beautiful city, but it’s new, mostly soulless, and full of fragile people who usually won’t even look you in the eye if you pass them on the street, let alone actually exchange a few friendly words with strangers. People in Detroit might be flawed, even tragically so on occasion, but they are definitely REAL people. I’m white as the driven snow and I never once had a race-based problem with anyone there. The thugs and criminals in the D are looking for people who present themselves as scared victims, regardless of skin color. If you live in Detroit and embrace what that means, you will in turn be embraced by Detroit, and that will come to mean alot to you. I’ve lived in other places with such a tight-knit sense of community, but none of them were in the states. Kelly O, whose writing style I generally enjoy, misses the mark with the substance of this story. She should go back there and try to spend some time viewing it and interacting with it without her “scared rural white girl” filters in place. It will be a rewarding experience.
Detroit used to be the richest city on the planet. It has so many beautiful old neighborhoods like Boston-Edison, Indian Village, and Palmer Woods. My man and I used to play a game when we drove across the US…”how many gay men does this town need?” Sioux Falls, 1000, St. Joseph 500, when we got to Detroit we decided on 50,000. Later we read there were 46,000 abandoned homes in Detroit, so we were pretty accurate.
“Your story highlights how diversity in Seattle is illusory and how it lacks the urban legacy so many other great cities possess.”
It also explains why Detroit is one of America’s murder and crime capitals and Seattle so safe; there’s a reason they don’t film America’s funniest black comedy show, “The First 48” in Seattle you know.
the only good thing abort Detroit is escaping to Grosse Pointe.
detroit in better light =
http://www.visitdesign99.com/
http://www.heidelberg.org/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scotthockin…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/opinio…
http://www.detroitblog.org/
http://journey.eyemaze.net/search/label/…
Wah! Kelly described her own experiences and not mine! It’s so unfairrrrrrrrr!
Also… One was only a victim if one Looked like a victim? Isn’t that how rapists decide who they’ll rape next? So… Detroit is a bunch of rapists?
Puhlease. If you are from Detroit (or any other ‘real’ place) and think that makes you all tough and special, get fucked. Seriously, “hurr-durr, my city can beat your city up” is a shitty argument made by weak people.
Dicktation, bitches.
I love how Kelly O’s story tells her truth of living there and what she loved about a city that has an amazing story and everyone sees what they want to see in the story.
Everyone is so quick on defensive when anyone says anything at all about Detroit. Truth is these stories are amazing because for most northwesterners a city like Detroit is beyond our imagination. It is so much different than any US city and words and pictures don’t articulate what has happened there. I don’t understand the immediate hate for someone speaking their perspective, especially when that perspective comes from a place of love. People need to know how fucked Detroit is and things obviously need to happen there so how can anything putting light on that situation be a bad thing?
@7 You have a perspective on Detroit’s contribution to the past, present and future of American music? Point me to your writing. What positive have you done? If you love it so much why are you in Seattle? Get off your pity pot.
she moved from detroit to the whitest place in the country…
What a shithole. I would love to visit. The descritions make me think of Rome after the Lombard Wars. Majestic once, now crumbling.
Hey angry black/white Detroit old schoolers: The author is retelling her experience. Stop projecting all of your personal experiences onto her. It aint about you. Dawg.
What a shithole. I would love to visit. It makes me think of Rome after the Lombard Wars. Majestic once, now crumbling.
Hey angry black/white Detroit old schoolers: The author is retelling her experience. Stop projecting all of your experiences onto her. It aint about you. Dawg.
Ah. The dreaded double post. I blame the ongoing Skynet Bot attack. Suck it Skynet.
BTW – for all the Detroiter’s posting on here… Del Rey in Belltown has Detroit night every Monday night. The fly in Coney Dogs from Koegel’s & use the same sauce as Leo’s & National. Plus they have Vernor’s cocktails…
And… steviewondersgoodeye… um, I’m super easy to find.
Kelly, a cat spoke English to me once also. It freaked me the fuck out. Your story made me feel better about the entire experience.
Love all the ghetto defenders coming to the D’s rescue, from safely behind their nice monitors that they’re able to not have stolen, now that they live in a nicer place than the burned out husk that they so love and miss.
let the haters hate, that’s all they know how to do. This was beautifully written, one of the most enjoyable pieces I’ve read in a long time.
These are the reasons why Detroit is such a rad city, because when you take away all of that grimy bull-shit; you’re left with one of the most real places in this country with one of the best communities, art and music scenes that any one of you can experience.
Most Detroiters look back at the things mentioned in this article with a fondness and love and weird admiration. Kelly O’s experience was different. She obviously didn’t see the beauty that arose out the ashes. Which is totally fine. Give the lady a break. It’s her story not yours.
#35, sure, I romanticize Detroit and I’m quitter for moving on to greener pastures. But this article focuses on a time and place that I’m familiar with and enjoyed, it obviously doesn’t have the same resonance with you. Fine. But I’m not sure why you need to be so nasty.
@35…
Here is something that surprises me.. I was never assaulted/mugged/monitor stolen, etc during my time in Detroit. I mean, it definitely does happen (like any other city,) and I’ve had my car broken into for bottle returns (10 cents each goes a long way, I suppose.)
The cops in the D are pretty rigid though, especially in the downtown/tourist areas. And I stupidly used to walk home from St. Andrews, Bookies, Town Pump or the Detroiter (etc.) alone… Sure Seattle is safer by numbers, but Detroit, the downtown area, is actually very safe. I think their crime record is 12 per 100,000 which is safer than many downtown areas, including NYC & Chicago (not sure of Seattle’s.)
I say this, because I’ve lived here two years.. and in Seattle, 2 blocks from the ferry terminal, spit on & hit by a crackhead… was with a group of friends, not alone, and the cops did not even arrest the guy even though he was on probation for assault and four witnesses told police exactly what happened (they later did charge him, after I pushed and pushed to have it done.)
I thought this was a great piece of subjective journalism a la Hunter S. Thompson style. The author told a story from a strictly internal viewpoint. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the heart of memoir. I am sure 100 different people would have painted 100 different pictures of the same city.
I am much more interested in perspective pieces than bland, top-level “objective” journalism. That’s WHY I read The Stranger, not USA Today.
I would just loooove to hear what she has to say about her crazy times in Seattle when she goes back to the UP. I would bet she says just about the same things about all the homeless and/or crazy people here.
I am willing to believe all of her stories too (even the talking cat), except for the part about Henry Ford Hospital. It is a really great hospital and just because it is in the D, doesn’t mean it is ghetto or low in quality at all. My guess: a) she was hopped up on meds, or b) she wasn’t actually at Henry Ford or c) needed another cool story to tell so made this up.
Anyone who has lived in Detroit has a handful of stories just like this. It is not un common to laugh off things that are fucked up and scary. Sometimes thats the only way to deal with it.
I think the only issues with sketchy people I ever had were at Warren & Cass and Warren by the Lodge. As a little kid, my grandparents walked us around Greektown after dark and showed us 12th and Grand (even though that was in daytime).
“black/white Detroit old schooler”
Black people read Slog?
..yes, the incredible blight and crime are there…and only the most naive/ignorant person would put themselves in the places or situations that KELLY O did. But Detroit also has Indian Village, Boston-Edison, Palmer Park/ Woods, the lobbies of the Fisher and Guardian Buildings, the Art Institute, the largest collection of Mies van der Rohe buildings anywhere, Saarinen’s Cranbrook, Detroit Electronic Music Festival, etc.
Having come of age in a similiar post-industrial environment (Emeryville CA [E-ville]), I found myself laughing out loud at Ms. O’s very accurate observations.
There’s nothing like packs of feral dogs, dead bodies, and denizens in various states of mental unravelling to make one think one has indeed exited Planet Earth.
Favorite find: climbing to the top floor of an abandoned warehouse to find a mint 1969 crimson-red Shelby Mustang under a tarp. Unfortunately the freight elevator was out of service.
@ 7, 17, and 19: before you get away with calling Kelly O naive, can I ask how much do you know about Northern Michigan? Delineate culture from racism.
I suspect that calling any modern US city a ghetto does a major disfavor for families and survivors of the Holocaust. However, Detroit has won the murder capitol title more years than any other city. Heck, the tiny town of Flint, MI, chimed-in once to steal the annual title.
Comparing Detroit to Seattle is unrealistic, Tacoma, maybe.
Also 7, 17, and 19, I do understand your frustration. Kelly O could have focused more on the unity in the Detroit community. Many commenters seem to reflect the unity, although she did reflect *some* unity with the ‘nub man’ story and the police story.
I loved this feature!
It is funny when you realize that Devil’s Night is a not a national arson holiday or that rowdy kids dressed up like clowns aren’t going to douse you with red Faygo (locally manufactured soda).
I understand folks being sensitive to the negative tales. But it’s from her perspective and whether or not you see it, it’s told with love. Yes it’s white girl upper (you-per) michigander love, but it’s love nonetheless. And if you can’t understand that, you don’t know what it’s like to be her in shoes. So give yourself a voice, write from your own perspective, get it out there, and tell the other tale.
I agree with #47, comparing Seattle to Detroit is absurd. You can’t. Even with the music birthplace parallel. Seattle is good but Detroit is a legend. It’s like comparing a spoiled toddler eating his fluffed organic carrot puree to his grandfather who lived through the depression and is nursing an Evan Williams and a Black N’ Mild.
Bored, middle class white girl falls in love with crack ho’s and gangbangers.Pictures at 11.
Bored, middle class white girl falls in love with crack ho’s and gangbangers.Pictures at 11.
“Indian Village, Boston-Edison, Palmer Park/ Woods, the lobbies of the Fisher and Guardian Buildings, the Art Institute, the largest collection of Mies van der Rohe buildings anywhere, Saarinen’s Cranbrook, Detroit Electronic Music Festival,”
AKA Stuff WHite People Like in Detroit….you know, guys from Grosse Pointe with tattoos and chic heroin addictions. THink Spawn Range playing at St Andrews in 1991.