{"id":428,"date":"2005-12-30T15:36:32","date_gmt":"2005-12-30T19:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=428"},"modified":"2006-01-02T12:07:52","modified_gmt":"2006-01-02T16:07:52","slug":"dear-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2005\/12\/30\/dear-detroit\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Castle\"<\/p>\n

I’m visiting hometown Windsor right now. Yesterday I went over to Detroit to visit my long lost friend Emily —- I recently rediscovered her thanks to The Internet. We met at muddy Woodstock ’94 waiting for Nine Inch Nails to come on (no, the one with all the rapes was Woodstock ’99 — ’94 wasn’t so violent), and we spent the next few years visiting and driving around Detroit. She showed me pockets of the city I wouldn’t have found without a local guide — parties in massive Victorian mansions surrounded by ruins, Belgian “feather bowling” bars in the east end —- Detroit is a city of secret pockets of life and activity.<\/p>\n

\"ramada\"<\/p>\n

It’s overwhelming though -— I meant to make a short little post here about some downtown observations, but Detroit is impossible, and incomparable, and heart breaking and difficult to sum up in any way. I didn’t know what to take a picture of either. <\/p>\n

Emily lives downtown, in a huge old Ramada Hotel (pictured at right) next door to the old Michigan Theatre, perhaps the most beautiful parking garage<\/a> ever. I had been here before -— at some point in the 1980s, the huge grand ballrooms were painted black and turned into a massive goth and industrial club called City Club, a place I thought so sinister and absolutely punk rock back when I was 20 or so. It’s still down there, going strong (though my interest in it and Nine Inch Nails have both waned over the years), but the building above functions as a hotel and residence, and is alive and well, with a grand entrance and lobby, a reminder of how magnificent all of Detroit once was. It’s surrounded by secure parking lots, and empty space, and boarded up castles<\/a> (see picture above). There are fences everywhere in Detroit, chain link or steel, separating various areas, almost marking where things once stood. It’s a hard place to live — it’s nearly impossible to walk to anything like a grocery store. People drive from one secure and known location to another. <\/p>\n

\"Skating\"<\/p>\n

There is small and encouraging renewal going on downtown. There are some stores along Woodward (once a fantastic mile of shops and Sax Fifth Avenue type stores), but mostly things are still vacant. A Borders Books even went downtown recently (Borders being the American megastore model for Chapters and Indigo) —- something unheard of only a few years ago. There is even a skating rink in the middle of Woodward (they redirected the street around it). There, a guy asked me if I was a registered voter, and that my support was needed for some school initiative. I said I was Canadian and he said “OK” then yelled “Lucky!” Much of this renewal was helped along by the Super Bowl, which will be played next month at the new Ford Field downtown. There were signs everywhere, including murals on derelict buildings and massive NFL logos on the GM-Renaissance Centre.<\/p>\n

\"Ren<\/p>\n

\"mural\"<\/p>\n

\"osama\"<\/p>\n

The life down there is encouraging —- but the steps are so small compared to how vast the rest of the city is. A few blocks away, there is nothing. After I left Emily, I drove out along Michigan Avenue, once one of Detroit’s grand streets that radiated from the centre of the city (Detroit was once called the Paris of the Midwest for good reason). Past Corktown, past old Tiger Stadium -— block after block of empty lots, falling down buildings and pockets of stores. Detroit is one of the few places on earth where one can walk (or rather, drive) through mile after mile of uncurated modern ruins. This site<\/a> documents those ruins, but beware, you could, as I did when I discovered it, spend hours looking around it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m visiting hometown Windsor right now. Yesterday I went over to Detroit to visit my long lost friend Emily —- I recently rediscovered her thanks to The Internet. We met at muddy Woodstock ’94 waiting for Nine Inch Nails to come on (no, the one with all the rapes was Woodstock ’99 — ’94 wasn’tContinue reading “Dear Detroit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[703,1259,854,1253,1174,1255,1254,1256,1252,21,470,1257,762,1251,1258,853,1260,1261],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-city-club","tag-corktown","tag-detroit","tag-emily","tag-ford","tag-gm-renaissance-centre","tag-indigo","tag-national-football-league","tag-nfl","tag-other-cities","tag-paris","tag-ramada-hotel","tag-steel","tag-the-super-bowl","tag-tiger-stadium","tag-windsor","tag-woodstock-94","tag-woodstock-99"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDear Detroit - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2005\/12\/30\/dear-detroit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dear Detroit - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m visiting hometown Windsor right now. 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