Withdrawl and Detroit

The city itself was at it's heyday in the early 20's and 30's, when the auto business was experiencing a major boom and the city bars and clubs were hoppin'. Consequently, the city has remnants of beautiful art deco buildings and fascinating architectural works from that period in American history.

Note, however, the use of the word "remnants." Detroit is the city that WAS, and may never BE again. Big, gorgeous mansions sit on the side of the decrepid streets as crackheads sleepily walk by their now abandoned porches. Kdogg and I estimate that maybe one in ten businesses is still up and running, the remaining providing a cityscape of boarded up windows and burnt-out second stories that the mayor is too overwhelmed with to destroy. Of the one and ten businesses that has managed to keep its doors open to the public, maybe one in three is a liquor store. People loiter and stand near public phones, no doubt up to more harm than good in a city that appears to have no public parks, no safe places for children, no cozy neighborhoods. Street after street after street is filled with cracked windows, broken doorways, and sunken porches.

Slightly nervous, the two of us turn down a residential street filled with what were once magnificent homes. The luxurious brick houses with full, wrap-around porches are now either abandoned or barely habitable. Weeds fill up yards in front of those houses that still have residents; the other half of the houses are left to either the squatters or the rats. Children bicycle up and down the potholed street, and as I pass a house with a sinking, cryptic porch, I notice a little pudgy girl jumping down its front steps, staring at the strangers with a detached yet curious look. Her house is a public hazard - on the brink of collapse but still standing - as is every almost house on her street and every street within a ten-block radius. I think of my childhood home, my green lawn, my willow trees and jungle gyms and ponds. She has no green grass, nothing safe to dangle from, nowhere to be a carefree kid. I hope for her - it's all I can do.

I always tell people that if they want to go to Detroit, they should reconsider. But now I think I will tell them that they must see it to believe it. Detroit is a lesson in how not to let such a magnificent place go to shit, and it is evidence of how little we reach out to help sinking communities in need.

The most disappointing thing about Detroit is not the state it is in, but how much it has lost. How does a city with so much poverty and such a depressing environment stay above water? How does what was once a booming city of industry become such a wasteland?

Still, I think there is hope for the city. Underneath all the scrub and dirt and cracked buildings and sleepy sidewalks is a promising place. Beautiful doorways lead to enormous buildings with eloquent art deco entryways and huge ceilings. Remnants of Detroit's glory days line the streets in the tumbling theaters and the ruins of concert halls. This city, if saved, could be amongst one of the most amazing places our country has to offer.

Kdogg and I turn on Jefferson Ave, and we take it down to the very edges of Detroit, where the city casually backs up against neighboring Grosse Pointe - one of the richest zip codes in Michigan, possibly the country. One Detroit city block is filled with drug dealers and broken windows, followed by two planted trees on Jefferson Ave's median. Beyond the two wimpy trees lies a wooden green sign, with 'Welcome to Grosse Pointe' written in swirly letters. Suddenly, the median is filled with lush, blooming plants, and small, independent businesses line the street. Tall, university-like buildings rise up along the shady, flower-potted small-town streets, as if, less than two blocks away, an entire city wasn't wasting away.

A little girl rides her pink tricycle alone down the starchy-white sidewalk on the Grosse Pointe side of Jefferson Avenue. A block and a half away, in Detroit, a group of young men loiter supiciously on a closed-down drugstore's corner. Nobody dare cross the line that seperates them, marked only by a few trees and a welcome sign.

Yet the difference is clearly marked in black and white - both literally and figuratively. Every American should be forced to experience such a disturbing division of race, a division between rich and poor, between helplessness and ignorance. It is frightening and disgusting and, honestly, overwhelming. But Kdogg and I deem it wortwhile, somethingto be seen if it is to be believed.

Afterwards, we discuss how hard it must be for anybody from this depressed community to rise from its ashes. How could they not be angry at their affluent neighbors as their city turns to rubble? We talk of education - how it must be difficult to obtain a good one in such an environment, how even for those that do, it must be hard to find the avenues necessary to get out of a cesspool of decay.

As we talk, we point out beautiful building after beautiful building that has been abandoned and left to waste. We pass by a sprawling lawn leading up to an ornate white building just off of one of the major avenues.

"What's that?" I ask, as we creep by.
"It's the public library," she says back to me. After a beat, she clarifies, "It's boarded up. Closed."

I feel that sums it up.

Let me reiterate that I really like the city. I think it has a lot of potential, and it holds a lot of our country's history in its falling bricks and abandoned warehouses. I am just upset that the rest of the country - and especially nearby communities - sat by and watched Detroit's decline without recognizing its worth as a historic city. Companies would invest, were it not so run-down. Families would move there, were it more safe. It could be the lively metropolis it once was, had we not let twenty years of hard times get the better of it.