Boarded Up To Tears

Well, here it is. The post you all knew was coming. The post in which I wax pathetic about Detroit. I did it from Munich, I did it from Brussels, and now I'm doing it from Detroit. Just wait until I go to Japan for two weeks next month!

So Detroit is pretty much a dump. The city of Detroit, that is. A lot of the outlying suburbs are fine, just like suburbs everywhere, but the city itself is dying. Maybe it's already dead. But you sure can't tell from a distance.

I can look out my ninth floor hotel window in Dearborn and see the majestic skyline of downtown bristling with skyscrapers. Some are smooth and modern, others are tall and craggy and beautifully neo-gothic. Some look like they were moved straight from Manhattan. And most of them are empty, save the bums and the rats. Their windows are all busted out or boarded up. Graffiti is everywhere. I looks like they haven't been used in almost 40 years. Which is probably pretty accurate, since there were wide spread riots not quite 40 years ago that caused every body to move out.

It's sad to think of what used to be. I can imagine the men in suits and fedoras riding the elevators up to the top-floor board rooms to make decisions on the future of the auto industry. They were rich, they were powerful and Detroit was their home. Lovely, metropolitan, sophisticated Detroit. Those are three words you would never use to describe Detroit today. More like dilapidated, dangerous, and ugly. Detroit used to be the center of the manufacturing world. Fortunes were made every day. Detroit was the engine of the American economy, and now look at it. No one wants to live here, the domestic auto makers are dying, jobs are disappearing. There is nothing good in Detroit's future. Nothing.

The Current Detroit skyline. Most of those buildings are empty.


The skyline during the 1967 race riots.


How to improve Detroit: Photoshop.

How Detroit celebrates a championship. Riots. Just like the University of Maryland.