DETROIT: The Motor City

 

 

The city of Detroit, Michigan was chosen as our first destination for a number of reasons.  To begin with, it is probably the American city associated most with urban decay.  In the mid-twentieth century, Detroit was the booming centre of America’s car industry.  It was also home to Hitsville, USA: Motown.  It was one of the largest centres of black culture, many people having fled the racial oppression of the south.  But as the auto industry began to lose out to foreign industry, Motown moved to California and southern rednecks ever so slowly died off, Detroit began its decline. The city has lost a million citizens since the 1960s.  Now, only a few generations later, people are fleeing back to the south, to growing cities such as Atlanta.  Detroit has one of America’s highest crime rates and is steeped in poverty.  Another reason that we chose this as our first destination is that Detroit is currently in the middle of one of histories greatest attempts at urban renewal and we wanted to see this process in action.  It is also one of the closest cities on the list, and we only had the weekend. 

 

Six of us travelled down to Michigan in a borrowed minivan, and everyone was on the lookout for signs of decay.  People thought we were nuts. Why would you want to go to Detroit? Don’t you know about the crime? Be careful! There’s nothing to do there! Detroit!?  But we ignored them and set off on our journey. We drove down on a Friday evening in the summer of 2001; the awful heat wave was just starting to abate.  We decided to take the drive through Windsor, rather than the shorter trip through Sarnia, because it was decided that this was all part of the Detroit experience.  We weren’t wrong.  While the bridge from Sarnia takes you into Detroit’s suburbs, Windsor leads directly into downtown Detroit.  We arrived at the border, expecting very little trouble.  Instead, we experienced one of the most bizarre border interrogations ever.  I wish we had been carrying a tape recorder, because sadly so much was said that it could not all be committed to memory.  But I will attempt to retell this experience nevertheless. 

 

We drive up to the border at about 10:30 on Friday night, the cars ahead of us pass through the border patrol with seeming ease.  The border guard was a young woman.  “Where are you from?” asked the border guard. “Toronto”. “Where y’all goin’?” she asked.  “Detroit”, our fearless driver responded.  “For what purpose?” “Just visiting” said the driver, not expecting any trouble. “Visiting who?” “Nobody, just visiting the city, going to see the sites.” This was apparently the wrong answer.  “Have you been there before?” She asked in a tone that meant, clearly you can’t have if you think there are sites to see. “No”. “Where are you staying?” “The Shorecrest Motor Inn, four blocks east of the tunnel”. “So you’re just going to Detroit to see the city?” she asked, with a tone of disbelief. “yes!” we all responded, beginning to wonder if we were going to get across.  “How do you all know each other?” She asked, perhaps trying to establish if we were actually trying to sneak illegal immigrants into the country tied to the bottom of the van, because surely we were kidding about the tourist thing.  “We’re friends”. From the expression on her face, it was clear this was not a sufficient answer, so our driver struggled to explain how we had come into each others lives, without going into too much detail.  “How much money are you bringing into the country?” There was further confusion as we calculated how much we had among us (not very much).  Throughout this conversation the border guard has been looking at us like we were nuts, and we have all been trying very hard to suppress our laughter.  “Where did you say you were staying again?” “The Shorecrest Motor Inn” (we had read about this hotel on a number of web-sites which had recommended it, and had originally discovered it in a CAA guide). “You don’t wanna go there, it’s not a very reliable place”.  It was unclear to us if by this she meant the hotel, or the city in general.  We responded with laughter (this was wrong).  She glared at us, and was silent for a moment. We decided she meant the hotel, and pointed out to her that it was recommended by the CAA.  She continued glaring and I, at least, started to believe she meant all of Detroit.   We were all becoming convinced that we weren’t getting across, and some of us were starting to question whether we wanted to. Finally, we asked what this meant.  Our border guard just shook her head and responded, “good luck!” and waved us through. 

 

I’m not sure what the Detroit Tourist Board would have to say about this, but the American border guard trying to keep us poor innocent Canadian’s out of her country for our own sake, confirmed our belief that Detroit had indeed been the best city with which to begin our tour.

 

We had only been over the border for a minute or so when we saw the “Shorecrest Motor Inn” off the road.  It was now close to eleven o’clock and the parking lot of the motel was jumpin’.  We parked the van near a sign which indicated that if you parked illegally and you returned to find your car missing, you should go to the front desk because it might just have been towed (it didn’t mention what the more likely alternative was).  After our border experience, this was not very reassuring.  But, we had already reserved a room, so we went to check in.  While the process was quite smooth for us, the family from Tennessee ahead of us seemed to be having more difficulty (despite very specific criteria for the rooms they wanted, they had failed to make reservations in advance), leading one of the family members to declare that Detroit was one of the most racist cities she had ever been to (throughout the course of our trip, the ridiculousness of this statement would become glaringly apparent).  So, we got checked in and took ourselves up to the suite that we had reserved.  We were still feeling a little shaken from the border experience and just wanted to settle in and go and get something to drink.  We put our bags down and looked around the room, like we had heard, the room was rather simple, but comfortable and was well priced.  Lying on the desk was a list of traveller safety tips from the kind folks at the Shorecrest inn.  I have reprinted these for you below:

 

1.      Don’t answer the door in the Inn without knowing who it is.  If a person claims to be an employee, they will have a nametag or uniform.  You can ALWAYS call the front to verify our staff and their reason for needing access to your room.

 

2.      When returning to the SHORECREST MOTOR INN after dark, you will see our well lighted outside ramps and parking lot.  Be observant and look around you before and when you enter our parking lots.

 

3.      Close your door securely whenever you are inside your room, using all the locking and chain devices provided.

 

4.      Don’t needlessly display your room key in public or carelessly leave it on a table or other places where it can be stolen.

 

5.      DO NOT draw attention to yourself by showing large amounts of cash or expensive jewellery. (SMALL SAFE DEPOSIT boxes are available at the front desk at NO CHARGE—24 HOUR ACCESS!)

 

6.      Do NOT invite strangers in your room.

 

7.      We have excellent security for you and your vehicles BUT DO NOT leave valuables in sight there-by tempting theft.

 

8.      In rooms with an inner door, both sides are locked by our housekeepers.  Always double check these connecting door rooms.

 

9.      If you see any suspicious activity, please report it to the front desk immediately by dialing “0”.

 

Now, we really wanted to go and get a drink.

 

The Shorecrest does not have a bar, and since we didn’t feel like exploring downtown Detroit at night we went over to the nearby Marriott for a drink.  (This would prove to be our local for our trip.)  The Marriott also clearly had a concern for visitor safety for in order to get up to the rooms, one is required to show their key. We had a drink or two and walked back to our hotel.  It was becoming apparent to us that nobody walks in Detroit.  There were plenty of broken bottles on the ground to suggest lots of drunks wandering around, but there was nobody wandering around.  Everyone, was in a car.  Everyone.  There were people parked, hanging out in cars, but nobody actually on the street.  In December, this might make sense, but this was the middle of August and it became evident that it wasn’t just called the Motor City because they make cars there.  And despite the supposed poverty of Detroit’s inner city, everybody was driving a nice car.  There were no beat-up old cars, with a shoddy paint job. These were all brand-spanking-new, big, shiny American cars.  And just as we were beginning to familiarise ourselves with our surroundings, someone yelled out the window to us “White Folk!”.  I feel that somehow, this was a uniquely Detroitan experience. 

 

We put ourselves to bed (after taking in a little of that free HBO) and girded our loins for our full day in Detroit.  We wanted to see as much of the city as we could the next day.  We got up early, as we were sharing a “suite” we had to wait until everyone got ready.  One of us went down to the lobby to get the newspaper, the Detroit Free Press.  The headline showed us we weren’t in Canada anymore: “Sick and Tired of Finding Dead Babies,” it read.   Clearly, Detroit was everything we’d heard it was going to be.  Everyone was finally ready, so we decided to go down to breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which we had heard very good things about.  Apparently, everyone else in the city had also heard very good things about it.  A table was not to be had.  After waiting for ten minutes or so, we finally decided to go find somewhere else to eat, because it was clear that it was going to be lunch time before we were going to get breakfast. In our wait however, we had noticed a very interesting phenomenon: Detroiters get take out (or, “carry-out” as they refer to it) for breakfast.  People flooded in to pick up their orders, it was a very strange sight to behold.  We asked at the front desk where else around we could get breakfast.  The only place the guy could think of was the IHOP “about six blocks away”.  Since we didn’t want to wander the city aimlessly looking for another breakfast joint (in Toronto the difficulty seems to be more a case of trying to decide between breakfast spots rather than finding them) we followed his directions and headed to that all-American institution: the International House of Pancakes.  It was a typical breakfast, but on our journey we began to notice that nobody walked in the light of day either and there is nothing in Detroit.  There are hardly any stores and even fewer places to eat.  Clearly Detroiters like to stay at home or in their cars. 

 

Walking back in the direction of the hotel and “downtown”, there were a number of sites to behold.  To begin with, there was a huge billboard over the expressway which announced : “Bet on a sure thing: Perfecting Church”.  This was only the first out of place odd religious message we were to see on our visit.  More interesting was the gentlemen that spotted the group of out-of-place “white folk” and decided to welcome us to his city.  He gave us a long list of things to see, provided us with directions and (yes, don’t worry we all saw it coming) proceeded to hit us up for money.  But unlike the peddlers home in Toronto who ask for enough for bus fare, our friend the tour guide wanted “8 or 9 bucks, so I can get a cab home”.  Even the bums refuse to walk in Detroit.  And you can’t blame him for not wanting to take the bus, because frankly, there aren’t any.  We put together some money and went merrily on our way.  Our good friend had seemingly put together a whole day’s worth of activity for us.  He told us about the Caribbean festival that was going on, with a festival and a parade.  He insisted we visit the RenCen (Renaissance Center) and see the world o’ shops, that we walk the River Mile along the waterfront, see Hart Plaza, the new baseball stadium Comerica Park, the Fox Theatre, Greektown, go watch the parade and we mentioned we wanted to see Motown.  The nearby RenCen is still being built, its name describes its purpose.  It is part of the regeneration plan, and now houses the GM World Headquarters, a number of other offices and the aforementioned “world o’ shops”.  I have to admit, it is a nice group of buildings.  It would seem well placed in any major city.  Unfortunately, Detroit does not qualify.  While from the outside it is very nice, inside it is dead.  Now, granted it was Saturday afternoon so we couldn’t reasonably expect it to be filled with businessmen.  From all appearances, all that it was filled with were other tourists who had heard about the world o’ shops and were looking about like we were.  I wonder if their search was as futile as ours.  It even didn’t compare with PATH, which most Torontonians will admit is a failure as a shopper’s paradise.  So we left the RenCen and walked along the waterfront for a while, which was nice but seemed to be filled with other tourists.  We carried on towards Comerica Park, passing the People Mover along the way.  The People Mover is downtown Detroit’s transportation system.  It is a monorail that stretches for three miles, leads to nowhere and was empty.  Comerica Park is a monstrosity.  Detroit’s Baseball team (as I learned while I was there) is the tigers.  What better theme than tigers for the park.  Fair enough.  But Detroit planners seemingly have no sense of “too much”.  Statues of tigers, gargoyles of tigers, tigers tigers everywhere.  And right now, it is clean and new, but one can well imagine that in a few years from now when it has had the chance to dirty itself up a bit, it will be even more unbearable.  But the ugly park doesn’t seem to make Detroiters like their home team any less, for the neighbouring church has a sign up that says “Pray for the Tigers Here!”.  What can you say, Americans are a religious people!

 

As we were near the park, the Caribbean parade passed us.  Since Detroit’s black population is (to say the least) significantly larger than Toronto’s, we expected the parade to be at least decent.  We were wrong.  The parade consisted of a few women in borrowed Caribana costumes and a long line of city council and mayor candidates establishing their presence among the people.  It was at the parade that we got a sense for Detroit politics.  We had noticed the signs coming into the city for the candidates, but the billboards weren’t as catchy as the rap lyrics that had been written for the candidates.  “Vote for Gil, Gil Hill” (the leading candidate).  Barbara Rose, a council candidate, was also there in all her glory showing off for the cameras (mine and another tourist’s).  But then I remembered out last municipal election and stopped judging Detroiters.  After all, at least they’re actually having a race, and the candidates are actually in a competition.  “Gil, Gil”

 

Greektown may be the only area of Detroit where there is more than one restaurant packed into a five mile radius.  Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t compare with Toronto’s Little Italy, Chinatown, Little Korea, Little Portugal, or any of our other ethnic neighbourhoods.  But it is a “must see” in all of the guidebooks.  We’d been walking for a while, so we decided to stop and get a beer.  So we went to the Pegasus Tavern.  That’s gotta be a bar right?  Well, not exactly, it has a bar but it is a restaurant.  They didn’t seem to keen on the idea that we just wanted a drink.  But since there was nowhere else nearby we could go, we decided to stay put. 

 

It was now about an hour and a half since we’d met our guide and we’d done nearly everything on the list.  So we decided to proceed towards Motown.  We knew it was going to be quite the walk, but we wanted to see the city.  See the city we did.  Urban decay is no myth.  Detroit has some absolutely beautiful buildings, Toronto would be lucky to have such architecture.  Sadly, they are mostly abandoned and surrounded by nothing.  We saw sky-scrapers with their top windows smashed.  But don’t let the fact that the city is packed with abandoned buildings lead you to believe that there is no construction going on.  Everywhere new buildings are going up, as if perfectly good ones didn’t already exist.  This is a city that is dying for some good planning.  On our journey up to Motown we passed the campus of Wayne State University.  It stretched on for blocks and blocks.  It is not that it is a particularly large campus, it is just spread out.  Never again will I say that there isn’t really a sense of campus at U of T.  Between the University buildings, there was not much else.  No apartments for students to live in, bookstores for students to shop in, restaurants for students to eat in, bars, coffee shops, clothing stores, drug stores, movie theatres, grocery stores, nothing.  Just campus sprawl and abandoned buildings.  It seems that the reason for this is that nobody actually lives near campus, this is evidenced by the mammoth parking lot that puts York University to shame. 

 

The only thing that we did see on our walk up Woodward Ave. to Motown was beauty supply stores.  Detroiter’s apparently take their hair very seriously, and those who simply can’t do anything with their hair have plenty of places to buy wigs.  Hopefully, these wigs are long enough to cover people up Lady Godiva style, because (with the exception of a few pimping outfitters) there is nowhere to buy clothing.  So we walked and walked and walked.  We saw abandoned buildings by the dozen, one of them with a sign up that advertised “luxury condos”.  I guess that when the alternative is living in your car in the Wayne State University Parking Lot, even an abandoned building can be considered “luxury”.  But to be fair, there were some nice townhouses being built.  They were right on the expressway and surrounded by the aforementioned “luxury condos”, but at least they’re trying.  Yonge St. is supposed to be the longest street in the world, but by the time we got to Grand Ave. (where Motown is located) I was starting to doubt it.  Woodward stretches on for miles. 

 

By Detroit standards, Grand Ave suits its name.  But despite the fact that it is clean and home to some very nice buildings, once again there was nothing to do.  Grand Ave. is home to the Henry Ford Hospital (the font on the sign matches that of the company logo), and (as we were very shocked to discover) there was also a residential area.  It looked like your typical middle class neighbourhood, mid sized houses, children, nice cars in the driveway (of course!).  But where these people buy their groceries or meet for dinner continued to be a mystery.

 

Amidst this residential neighbourhood is the Motown Museum.  Except for the sign out front indicating that it is indeed Hitsville USA, there is nothing that makes it stand apart from the other houses around.  I had heard that Berry Gordie had built Motown in his house, but I had assumed that over the years things would have built up around the neighbourhood to take advantage of the fact that it housed what must be Detroit’s biggest tourist attraction.  From the outside it looked dead, but when we got inside we realised that appearances can be deceiving.  The museum was swarming with people who wanted to take the tour.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that we were the only “white folk” there.  I couldn’t help but have the feeling that everyone was looking at us thinking, “oh how cute, the honkies want to know about the history of soul”.  Throughout the trip, I had felt that (despite their surroundings) Detroiters were friendly people.  At the Motown museum I realised that I wasn’t wrong.  If we had been taking a tour like this in Toronto, nobody would have participated, everyone would have pretended they were on their own and you certainly wouldn’t witness what we did on our tour around Motown.  Everyone was talking to one another like they had been friends for life, everyone was talking about Motown celebrities like they had been friends for life and the tour guide somehow managed to find three people who wouldn’t have seemed out of place being signed to the Motown label.  He wanted to show off a particular part of the building that created such a great echo that it was considered part of the Motown sound, so he asked for volunteers to sing.  Never before have I actually seen people willingly volunteer to perform without some serious prodding.  But before we knew it the whole room was singing (in tune!).  The Motown tour was a truly great experience, and I couldn’t help but think we wouldn’t have been able to have the same kind of tour in any other city.  But there was a kind of sadness surrounding it, because Motown isn’t in Detroit anymore.  Like everyone else, Berry Gordie has fled this city and taken his company elsewhere (in this case California). 

 

We decided we couldn’t possibly walk back, there is only so much urban decay you can take in one day.  But before we returned to the hotel, we needed to find a drug store.  Across the street from the Motown Museum is a grocery/liquor store, so we stopped there.  It was kind of an odd place, but I didn’t quite get the full Detroit experience until I arrived at the check-out and realised that there were plastic cups available (because who wants to drink their malt liquor right out of the bottle!).  These types of stores were really the only ones that we saw in Detroit and they all help to feed the atmosphere.  We took a mini-van cab back to our hotel, like most cab drivers, he seemed to know the city well.  In fact, not only did he know the streets, he seemed to know the people.  Just as we were getting on the expressway, he stopped to talk to a homeless woman.  It seemed that she had witnessed a bank robbery (perpetrated by a man in drag) the day before and he just wanted to chat about it.  Like I said before, Detroiters are friendly. 

 

I’ve been on enough trips to know that finding a decent place to eat is often the hardest part.  So before we went, I had printed of a long list of restaurants from a tourism web-site.  It was not until we got there that we realised how few of them were actually in the Downtown area.  The only thing that there seems to be plenty of are non-franchise fast food restaurants that serve “Coney Island style” everything.  Someone had brought a CAA guide, and there were magazines in the motel room, so we figured we’d be able to find something to eat pretty easily.  We were wrong, we looked through the list many times but had difficulty finding any that weren’t a half hour drive away.  This wasn’t really surprising, since we hadn’t seen a real restaurant since we were at the IHOP that morning.  We decided that, since we were in Detroit, we’d try some soul food.  The first place that we called (to see if we needed to make reservations) had had its phone disconnected.  The second place we called was having “work” done on its phone line.  So we settled on a third restaurant that was nearby and didn’t bother calling.  Our lack of choice turned out to be a stroke of luck.  We went to East Franklin for dinner.  It was very close to the motel, but it was hidden down a side street where you couldn’t possible stumble across it.  When we got there, it was very busy (given the limited options this was hardly surprising).  Everyone else was sitting around the entrance waiting for their tables, but we decided to go upstairs to the bar to have a drink.  We were the only ones in there. It was very nice, and you would imagine that by the evening it would be packed (but then again, this was Detroit where anything is possible).  We had a great meal that night.  It was everything you hear about soul food, good, filling and comforting.  Between us we had ribs, meatloaf, fried chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas, sweet potatoes, mash potatoes, the list goes on.  Clearly we had lucked out.  After our great meal, we decided we wanted to go out for a night on the town.  Not being club people, we were looking for a bar or a pub where we could sit and have a beer (we are Canadians after all).    We had passed an Irish pub on our walk during the day, so we decided to head there now.  The city was certainly livelier than the on previous night, this time there were actually people on the street.  The Caribbean festival had obviously put people in the mood to celebrate.  This ebullience did not spread to the Irish Bar however.  When we arrived there I thought it was closed, it was not until someone else in our group pointed out that there were three people sitting at the back that I realised it was just dead.  It is surely a symptom of urban decay that a city can’t even maintain an Irish pub.  We decided that this place was a little too eerie for us and decided that, rather than scour the city, we would return to the Marriott.  When we ordered our drinks we realised that, despite only being about a mile across the border we couldn’t have been further away from Canada if we tried.  These people didn’t have a clue what Rye was.  We tried to explain, but to no avail.

 

The next morning we got a chance to eat at the highly recommend Clique restaurant, located at the Shorecrest Motor Inn.  It was a good breakfast, but from the way it is talked about, you’d think they’d invented the egg or something.  I guess when the only other breakfast place in town is the IHOP, it’s nice just to have a breakfast without Boysenberry syrup.  There were signs up for the Grey Line bus tour of Detroit attractions, after spending a day seeing the city we couldn’t help but wonder what those were.  It turned out most of them were outside downtown Detroit.  There was Belle Isle, which is an island park in the lake; there was all the auto stuff out in Dearborn; the only decent thing that was actually in Detroit was the Motown museum.  The remarkable thing about the Grey Line tour, was that it existed at all.  Who the hell vacations in Detroit?  There didn’t seem to be too many other tourists around.  We’d seen a few in the RenCen and in Greektown, but for the most part it was clear we were the only people who wanted to go to Detroit for the weekend and actually see the sights.  We did see a number of family reunion groups (you could tell because they all wore brightly coloured t-shirts displaying the name of the family being reunified and walked around in groups of fifty or more), but surely they were more interested in seeing each other than seeing the city.  But, tourists we were, so we decided to take the drive out to Dearborn and see what all this auto fuss was about. 

 

Dearborn is not much better than Detroit.  Like its big sister, it has abandoned buildings and not much to do.  But it has Ford, and what more could a suburb want?  You can’t do Detroit without seeing the automotive industry, so we went to the Ford Compound (I don’t think this is actually what it is called – it’s probably the Ford Campus or the Ford Auto Recreation Zone—but I don’t know what it is called, so I’m calling it the compound).  The Compound houses the Ford Estate, the Ford Museum and somewhere off to the side the Automotive Hall of Fame (it’s off to the side, I decided, because it doesn’t just talk about the Ford Motor company, but all those other motor companies that Michigan has to be proud of).  Because we had no desire to mortgage our houses (especially since we all rent) we decided to go to the Hall of Fame, as it was the only reasonably priced attraction.  Of course, it wasn’t reasonably priced, it was a complete rip-off, but how were we to know until we had done the tour?  The Automotive Hall of Fame is divided into five categories; there are the “Innovator”, the “Prime Mover”, the “Creative Spirit”, the “Problem Solver” and (of course) the “Visionary”.  The different leaders of the auto industry have been inducted into said hall of fame, on the basis of being in one of these categories (and yes, the fine people at the AHF realise that some people belong in more than one category).  The on thing these people have in common, as we learned in the “introductory film”, is that they are guided by the “driving force”.  The “driving force” is this really annoying child who appears in the film and lives in the heads of AHF inductees and follows you around the tour giving you explanations of what type of person each inductee was, and how he shaped the world.  The AHF also gives explanations of why horses and bikes are evil.  Especially bikes.  I’ve seen some bad exhibitions in my time, but I’ve never left one of these things with the wish that someone would drive an ice pick through the driving force in the back of my head.  Ladies and gentlemen, I will give you this piece of advise: it is okay to walk through downtown Detroit at night, it is okay to sell your newborn baby to the gypsies, it’s okay to try and dash across the 401 on foot at eight thirty in the morning, but don’t EVER go to the Automotive Hall of Fame.  

 

Having somehow managed to escape the AHF, we hit the road again.  Now we just wanted to get some Krispy Kreme Donuts (please please come to Toronto Krispy Kreme) and get the hell out of Michigan.  On our drive out we realised a number of things: despite (or perhaps because of) its reputation as the Motor City, Detroit has some pretty bad roads – their adopt a highway system doesn’t seem to be doing too well; the billboards on Detroit highways are 90% car or car-related product ads, the other ten percent being made up of alcohol and casino ads; and we had just seen our first dog and it was a dead one, in the middle of the highway.  Detroiters don’t seem to like dogs, but they make up for it with their love of cars and casinos.  The rest of the journey was mostly uneventful, we chose to cross at Sarnia which was definitely the faster trip and while you might want to get to Detroit slowly, you want to get out of there as fast as you can! 

 

The moment we arrived back in Toronto was perhaps one of the happiest in my life.  The skyline is filled with buildings that are clean and in use and the streets!  The streets!  There are restaurants and stores and offices and homes and people everywhere, just walking about!  You really don’t realise what you have until it’s gone and our weekend journey made me love our loopy little city just a little bit more.