The great Matt Labash went to Detroit recently, and came back with an unforgettable story of humanity struggling against what sounds like the last days of a once-great American city now nearly gone to hell.
There are so many fantastic passages from Labash's travelogue that I won't even begin to excerpt it. What's so poignant about it is that you come away with the sense that there's no hope for Detroit, absent a miracle. But there are people there still plugging away anyway.
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?
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Anyone who's ever found something to love in Day-twa will find a lot to love in "Made in Detroit" by Paul Clemens. It's an up close and personal memoir by a youngish liberal Catholic who lived the meltdown of the Motor City and looks back on what he learned about race, class, politics and the American dream. It's sad, funny and unforgettable.
As for musical biggies, how could you two forget about Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent and, of course, Aretha Franklin? (Okay, I guess just saying "Motown" covers a lot of legends.) Iggy Pop was so unique he influenced David Bowie. Marshall Crenshaw was madly talented and should have broken bigger. Anita Baker. Suzi Quattro. Kid Rock. When I went to school there in the early '80s a band called the Rockets had a few local hits in the power-pop vein. They, too, should have been bigger.
Panic in Detroit -- I asked for an autograph ...
NO is in the sunbelt and you can imagine that if they could get the levees in order it would be a great city that a lot of people would be happy to move to. Detroit is in the rust belt and you can't imagine anything anyone can do that would make people stop fleeing it the same way they're fleeing its entire region.
Only wish Labash was more prolific. Anything he writes makes me laugh, and more importantly, makes me think.
You can't save something that doesn't want to be saved. Detroit and Michigan will probably have to sink even lower before they pull their heads out of their collective butt and elect honest and competent politicians.
I have to agree with Rod here. I've been to Nola as a tourist. I've also been to Detroit for baseball, the museum, and a variety of weddings. Detroit is a disaster and has been for years. It isn't just now going down the tubes. You can buy a city block for $1. No one wants it because it is a total war zone. I feel safer in Baltimore and willingly go there more often. I went to a wedding downtown detroit one time and got lost. A man at a gas station wouldn't give me directions. "You ain't going there, ma'am. No with that skin and not with that car." A white girl in a honda in Detroit? Hell, yeah, I stood out.
Michigan isn't Detroit, though. The rest of Michigan is so different. It's rural and poor, but the higher education is top-knotch, the landscape is beautiful and the beaches are fantastic (at least in August.) Michigan has relied too much on the auto industry, but people have forgotten that Michigan is #2 in fruit production, is home to Kellog's and furniture manufacturing. Michigan is a great state. I have high agrarian hopes for it. Sadly, though. There are no jobs there and I no longer live there.
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