Detroit?

[BeBop]

I've got four days in the US over the Memorial Day weekend. Thinking about Detroit, though I've never been there for 'vacation'. Lots of my jazz heroes are from that city, so it holds some interest for that reason. But what's going on now?

[couw]

you know what they say about detroit...

detroit 1

detroit 2

but of course...

it could be worse

[BeBop]

Drat. No audio software on this computer.

[Chuck Nessa]

I suggest a different destination.

[garthsj]

Well.. crossing the river into Windsor, Ontario (where the casino is located) is the highlight of a trip to Detroit ... leave your gun on the American side, though. And you can buy codeine over the counter in Canadian drugstores ... try the Tunnel BBQ ...

Garth.

[Chrome]

I'm pretty sure the annual Detroit electronic music festival is over Memorial day weekend ... it's a big deal if you like that kind of thing.

And there's an exhibit of paintings at the art institute highlighting Whistler and his students/followers that continues through June.

And if you've ever wanted to see a baseball game, the Tigers will be in town that weekend ... should be easy to get tickets.

And there's this organ trio based close to Detroit ... Organissimo or something? Perhaps they'd be in town.

[GregK]

There's really not much to see in Detroit unless you're into big once-beautiful-but-now-empty buildings. The architecture of some of the downtown was stunning, and many buildings remain, although most are windowless and pretty empty (if you don't count the homeless people and the rats). You can literally see burned out, BRICK buildings downtown across from the fantastic Detroit Institute of Arts (if you like art, you must check it out). It's interesting to see at least once, but the real action is in the suburbs, like Dearborn, Royal Oak and of course Ann Arbor. However, the downtown of Detroit is on it's (uncountable) renaissance, so there are a few things to do, but I would advise against driving around looking for where so-and-so lived, for example. The violence has picked up lately in the 'hoods.

If you go to Canada, then you are in Canada, not DETROIT, so I don't see the point if you are wanting to visit Detroit.

Where in Canada can you buy codeine? I grew up in Canada and don't ever recall being able to buy codeine over the counter. I must have missed something

[BruceH]

Check out the Fisher Building! Hardly seems worth an international trip though.

[sal]

Don't do it.

[garthsj]

Where in Canada can you buy codeine? I grew up in Canada and don't ever recall being able to buy codeine over the counter. I must have missed something

Greg.. I am not sure that I want to encourage the consumption of codeine, but in Canada such products at "222's" and Anacin with Codeine, which contain 1/8th gr. codeine, are available over-the-counter in every drug store, and especially in the border cities. I should know, because in my wayward youth I was a product manager for Whitehall Laboratories, who manufacture Anacin. In places like Windsor, Fort Erie, Niagara Falls, etc. we would sell more codeine products than in cities like Toronto. The fact is that you would have to take at least 10-12 of these tablets to get the same "buzz" effect as taking a one prescription-only hydrocdone tablet in the U.S. Of course, if people are willing to distill shoe polish for a high, then taking 12 analgesic pills to get a codeine buzz is small potatoes.

Garth.

[BeBop]

Thanks all for the feedback. I think I'm going to take a pass on Detroit. In fact, I think I'm going to pass entirely on the U.S. (Not based on comments about Detroit - I know better than to make that assumption.)

[Harold_Z]

If not Detroit, surely you could try Paterson, New Jersey. It's really just a hop, skip and jump to Newark!

[Jazzmoose]

While your on a roll, remember if your ever in this neck of the woods, locals "in the know" pass on seeing San Francisco; it's beautiful downtown Alviso for us!

[Chuck Nessa]

You could come to Whitehall and we might be able to hook up with Organissimo! Much better than a trip to Motown!

[BeBop]

While your on a roll, remember if your ever in this neck of the woods, locals "in the know" pass on seeing San Francisco; it's beautiful downtown Alviso for us!

I have a client at Great America Parkway and Tasman. Spend 10 weeks a year there. (Okay, technically Santa Clara, but...)

[Jazzmoose]

I have a client at Great America Parkway and Tasman. Spend 10 weeks a year there. (Okay, technically Santa Clara, but...)

No shit? Well, you're on to me with the Alviso joke then. Wow; that's not too far from here!

[BeBop]

Okay, NOW I'm going to Detroit. Hopefully it's improved in the past year and I'll receive lots of tantilizing suggestions. Or not. (I am planning to be in Ann Arbor on 9 Sept to see Organissimo.)

Between a local client and a brief (I hope) inpatient stay at the illustrious UofM Med Center (Ann Arbor), I'm definitely not going to be able to escape Motown entirely.

If only I could do something to inspire Uptown to release that Detroit Before Motown CD.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

Shrinking Detroit has 12,000 abandoned homes

Yahoo News

Sun Aug 14, 5:03 PM ET

DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Rats or lead poisoning. When it comes to the threats from the broken down house next door, Dorothy Bates isn't sure which is worse.

"When it's lightening and thundering you can hear the bricks just falling," the 40-year-old nurse said as she looked at the smashed windows and garbage-strewn porch. "If you call and ask (the city) about it they say they don't have the funds to tear it down."

There are more than 12,000 abandoned homes in the Detroit area, a byproduct of decades of layoffs at the city's auto plants and white flight to the suburbs. And despite scores of attempts by government and civic leaders to set the city straight, the automobile capitol of the world seems trapped in a vicious cycle of urban decay.

Detroit has lost more than half its population since its heyday in the 1950's. The people who remain are mostly black -- 83 percent -- and mostly working class, with 30 percent of the population living below the poverty line according to the US Census Bureau.

The schools are bad. The roads are full of potholes. Crime is high and so are taxes. The city is in a budget crisis so deep it could end up being run by the state.

And it just got knocked off the list of the nation's ten largest cities.

"Detroit has become an icon of what's considered urban decline," said June Thomas, a professor of urban and regional planning at Michigan State University.

"The issue is not just getting people in the city. It's getting people in the city who can become property owners and stay property owners and pay taxes."

Perhaps the biggest challenge to luring the middle class from the area's swank suburbs is overcoming racial tensions, said Stephen Vogel, dean of the school of architecture at University of Detroit Mercy.

"Suburbanites are taking the bodies of their relatives out of cemeteries because they're afraid to come to the city," Vogel said. "There are about 400 to 500 hundred (being moved) a year which shows you the depth of racism and fear."

Most American cities have experienced a shift towards the suburbs.

What made Detroit's experience so stark was the lack of regional planning and the ease with which developments were able to incorporate into new cities in order to avoid sharing their tax revenue with the city, said Margaret Dewar, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.

The fleeing businesses and homeowners left behind about 36 square miles (58 square kilometers) of vacant land. That's roughly the size of San Francisco and about a quarter of Detroit's total land mass.

While a decision by General Motors to build its new headquarters smack in the middle of downtown has helped lure young professionals and spark redevelopment in some of the more desirable neighborhoods, there is little hope the vacant land will be filled any time soon.

In his state of the city address, embattled mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said even if 10,000 new homes were built every year for the next 15 years "we wouldn't fill up our city."

And Detroit is still losing about 10,000 people every year.

One solution Vogel has proposed is to turn swaths of the city into farmland. In the four years since his students initiated a pilot project dozens of community gardens and small farms have popped up.

But first the city has to get rid of the crumbling buildings that haunt the streets, luring criminals, arsonists and wild animals and creating a general sense of hopelessness.

"It's partly a resource issue and it's partly a bureaucracy issue," said Eric Dueweke, the community partnership manager at the University of Michigan's College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

"It takes them forever to find the proper owners of the properties and serve them with the proper paperwork," he said. "They're tearing them down at the rate of 1,500 or 2,000 a year, so they're really not cutting into the backlog in any significant way because that's how many are coming on stream."

Dorothy Bates has been waiting three years for the crumbling house next door to be torn down. There are nine more on her short block along with several vacant lots that are overgrown with weeds.

Bates does her best to keep her five children away from the rat nests, but the lead creeping out of crumbling bricks and peeling paint drifts in through her windows.

The most frustrating part of it, says her neighbor Larry, is that so many of the abandoned houses could be repaired. The foundations are solid. The buildings are beautiful. Or at least, they were once.

Jesus!!! Dingell, Conyers, Levin....they've been around for ages and have amassed some power....what have they been doing for the past 20 years?

Michigan Congressional Delegation

U.S. Senate

Levin, Carl (D) Detroit

Stabenow, Debbie (D) Lansing

U.S. House

1 Stupak, Bart (D) Bay City

2 Hoekstra, Peter ® Holland

3 Conyers, John, Jr. (D) Detroit

4 Dingell, John (D) Dearborn

5 Ehlers, Vern ® Grand Rapids

6 Camp David ® Midland

7 Kildee, Dale (D) Flint

8 Upton, Fred ® Grand Rapids

9 Smith, Nick ® Addison

10 Rogers, Mike ® Brighton

11 Knollenberg, Joe ® Bloomfield Hills

12 Miller, Candice ® Harrison Twp.

13 McCotter, Thaddeus ® Livonia

14 Levin, Sander (D) Royal Oak

15 Kilpatrick, Carolyn (D) Detroit

[Free For All]

Wow! This went from "Miscellaneous Music" to "Politics" in one post!

[GregK]

don't forget how little Granholm has done too. and Kwame is hopeless. I don't know who is going to be able to help the city. a block away from the Fabulous Fox Theater are abandoned burned out buildings and empty dirt lots. and the streets are deserted after 6pm. I was at the Fox for a concert in April and couldn't find anyplace just to get a coffee!

Edited August 17, 2005 by GregK

[Jim Alfredson]

Okay, NOW I'm going to Detroit.  Hopefully it's improved in the past year and I'll receive lots of tantilizing suggestions.  Or not.  (I am planning to be in Ann Arbor on 9 Sept to see Organissimo.)

←

We're in Kalamazoo on Sept. 9th, not Ann Arbor. Kalamazoo is about two hours from Ann Arbor, I believe.

[sidewinder]

I went there once, years ago, when I 'landed' as part of Canadian Immigration. Stayed overnight in Windsor and then went over to the Renaissance Center (I think that's what it was called) the next day. High-tailed it back to Toronto that night after failing to find the Motown Museum ( ). Whilst standing on the hotel balcony in Windsor and looking over the river to the US side I'm sure I could hear gunshots going off.

[BeBop]

Okay, NOW I'm going to Detroit.  Hopefully it's improved in the past year and I'll receive lots of tantilizing suggestions.  Or not.  (I am planning to be in Ann Arbor on 9 Sept to see Organissimo.)

←

We're in Kalamazoo on Sept. 9th, not Ann Arbor. Kalamazoo is about two hours from Ann Arbor, I believe.

←

Thanks. Let's see if I can get it straight on the 9th.

[Robert J]

My former art history professor at the University of Windsor - Michael Farrell - bought an older abandoned home in the early 80s in Brush Park. It is just east of Woodward. He bought it for a song (I think 50K) and it's a mansion. He amazingly restored it (I was at some of the parties there) to its previous glory and some of his neighbors did the same. However I see in this article that the dream has died. Michael is quoted.

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=1141

Once I took the bus to the Detroit Institute of Arts and I (bravely) decided to walk down Woodward towards the river. This was during the day. I saw some of these houses but I think I took some chances being alone. I remember a guy walking ahead of me about 20 feet and he looked like he was lighting a cigarette. The I saw him drop something - a small jar - it hit the ground and there were flames on the sidewalk and this guy's shirt. I walked much faster after that.

[wigwise]

I'm guessing that a lot of those individuals who knock Detroit have never actually been there. Their stereotypical view is probably based on the film Robo Cop or what they read in the paper. Don't believe the hype and most importantly, don't be afraid.

Yes, there are many abandoned buildings. Yes, there is crime. Yes, there is a lot of poverty. So what? You find it here, you find it there, you find it everywhere. The problems that Detroit has are no different then any other big city. What do you expect, when for the last thirty-some years you have a mayor (apart from Dennis Archer) and city council that know nothing about running a city? Only in Detroit could these people hold political office. Fact of the matter is that you are no less safe in Detroit then you are in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, et al.

Amidst the blight there are actually some great places to visit, believe it or not. Preservation Wayne has some great Architecture tours, there’s the African-American Museum, Motown Museum, there's Greektown, Mexican Town, there's Bert's, Baker's, DSO, DIA. If you want the straight dope on Detroit, visit the DetroitYes.com BB. There is lot’s of information that you might find helpful. There are also a lot of locals who can steer you in the right direction, depending on what you want to do.

When you get back, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.