Day Eight, Nine and Ten (Detroit)

August 19, 2019

This entire trip started two years ago when my good friend, Linda Frazho, decided to return to her ancestral land of Detroit. I told her if she moved, I would come visit in 2019, and here I am! Her great-great--great-grandfather immigrated here in the 1800s and, hell, he has a fairly big street named after him. Here is Linda and her daughter at one of their street signs.

Linda at his grave. The grave could work for her, too! Other relatives are in this small cemetery on Twelve Mile road.

Her daughter, Jessica, and her wife Sandra (a Canadian) also decided to make the move. Too damn expensive in coastal California, as we all know, and it brought Sandra closer to her original home. Plus they could afford to buy a house. (Pay attention Californians - move east!)

Jessica planned a tour of Detroit to show me the good, bad and ugly - all of which it has. Key thing to keep in mind: the population of Detroit in the 1950s was 1.8 million. It is now has 677,000. For the whys of the decline, you can read this. However, the Metropolitan population of the area is over 4 million.

I expected to find that the downtown area was screwed up, but it wasn't at all. Instead, there is a whole lot of beauty and positive energy. I was particularly enamored with the Detroit Tigers stadium - but there are a whole host of great things downtown. We got on the people mover which loops around the whole area - lots of beautiful old buildings mixed with some nice new ones. While there is some blight in the downtown area - really not that much at all.

The blight is between the downtown and Eight mile road. Buildings like this:

All the windows are broken out.

And houses as bad as this:

Now tens of thousands of houses have been cleared so blocks that used to have a house on every lot now look like this:

Thus, a lot of Detroit has a semi-rural feel. Much of the money to clear the homes came from Federal funds during the Obama administration (from TARP funds). That said, there are still something like 32,000 abandoned houses (called bandos in slang parlance) still standing in Detroit proper. However, there is only enough money to demolish 6,000 more. For more information about this massive, on-going problem, read this interesting report.

Moving on to nature. Detroit, like much of the eastern USA, has fireflies. So jealous. And it has cicadas! They are so trippy. The ones at Linda's house haven't sounded continuously like the ones that I have heard to New Jersey. Instead they just sound in little cycles. Below you can listen to one one of those cycles. I realize now that I have been describing my chemo-generated tinnitus as sort of like a weed-whacker sound, when really it is just like cicadas - just fairly distance ones.

Yesterday, another friend, Lynn, who was raised in Detroit came into town to give me a tour of her Detroit. Some of her past was difficult to show me in that the road she lived on no longer exists, nor does her school.

But her favorite park of her childhood at Belle Isle does exist and is looking great. The centerpiece of the park is a really cool fountain (plus lots of side fountains next to stairways) with lots of fun turtle, lions, horns and other water spouts.

Here is Lynn with the lake in which her family spread their parent's ashes in the background, and one of the step fountains.

The City skyline taken from the isle.

As we left the isle, we passed my favorite thing! I didn't get a photo of it but two women were sitting at the side of the road at a card table with this message: "STOP for prayer and popcorn." Lynn offered to double back which I declined, but it will always be in my mind's eye.

We went to the Detroit Institute of Art, which was one of her two sanctuaries in Detroit. (The other being a neighborhood library that was part of our tour.) It's great - so easy to see masterpieces close up! The only thing preventing you from going nose to nose on van Gogh's self-portrait is that an auto-voice comes on: "You are standing too close." That voice feature is only on the more famous pieces of art.

I just loved this portion of what was a much longer video loop with planes flying around an older house. I could have watched it for a very long time.

The most famous exhibit is the Diego Rivera "Detroit Industry" fresco-style room. It has natural light coming in it, which adds a cool element.

We went up Lake Shore Blvd, and I found out about this practice:

Hundreds of boats were in the water on the lake, all near shore. Hanging out. It's a thing in Chicago, too, I have learned. Chicago Tribune had an article about this boat culture.

So much more to say about Detroit but I must head off to Ohio. I will be back though. I love it, blight and all...

Thank you Lynn, Linda, Sandra, and Jessica for the great time.