Motor City

I'm fucking obsessed with Detroit. I was only there once but the place is burned indelibly in my mind. There's this windswept modernized downtown corridor with all these new skyscrapers and no one walking around. It doesn't look deserted, it looks uninhabited. There's not one little friendly sign of human life. Like if you were walking around University and Dundas at 5 in the morning on Sunday, you could tell people had been there in the not-too-distant past. But in Detroit, fuggetaboutit! There never was anyone here! "We just built an entire city core without checking to see if anyone ever wanted to use it -- and guess what -- they don't!" But that's not all. We visited this street that was the ne plus ultra of divey streets. The name escapes me. But it was hopping. It was like a four-lane street flanked by one-story furniture stores and bars, but you couldn't even see the interiors of any of these places because they seemed to built on the concept of impenetrability rather than marketability, so they were either windowless to begin with, or the windows were boarded up. But people were "shopping" there. One of these windowless bunkers claimed to be a health-food store. I don't think it was the hippie kind, but I'm not sure what other kinds there are. One that sells all kinds of scary body-bulking products that feature giant sweaty meaty man-torsos on the label and silver lettering cut by lightning bolts, I guess.

If you wish to see pictures of the real Detroit, please look at http://www.seedetroit.com. "Seed" is the operative term here.

How could I have forgotten to mention the Detroit train station? I'm in love with the photo above, which is from the train station circa 1930. Doesn't it reek of glamour? Aren't you positive everyone is smoking in the train station and saying things like "Swell, kid"?

Now look at the colour photo (darn it! I have no control over the placement of these photos!). Some people would contest that it has a glamour of its own. I would amend that to mystery. In a way it is kind of cool. I mean, even if they did restore the station, it would be full of annoyingly anachronistic people in Phat Farm caps. At least the way it is now, you can populate it with imaginary 1930s characters, women carrying hat boxes, etc.