COMMUNITY
JEWFRO
Finale Friday Forensics
Ben Falik
I
don't run Summer in the City. Neil, Mi-
chael and I were 20 when we founded
the organization and — like combat,
missionary work and boy bands; it has
elements of all three — Summer in the
City is best run by 20-year-olds. Andrew
Weiner, no spring chicken at 22, moved
back to Detroit from Chicago to run Sum-
mer in the City this year before moving
down the street to be a Repair the World
Fellow (see page 24).
I don't own, coach, manage or captain
Summer in the City, but I do come out of
the bullpen annually to help pitch Finale
Friday. At risk of root, root, rooting myself
deeper into the baseball metaphor, this
is not a "save situation!'Rather a chance
to contribute some scouting, muscle
memory and extra velocity for the win.
Finale Friday, the culmination of eight
weeks of summer service, is my favorite
day of the year. (Go ahead and mark your
calendar for Aug. 12, 2016.) It's the only
day of the year where all of Summer in
the City's volunteers, partners, campers
and friends come together to paint, plant
and play in the same place at the same
time.
Last year, we celebrated Summer in
the City's bar mitzvah at Seven Mile and
Wyoming. Tindal Recreation Center,
closed to the public in 2006 and then
shuttered in 2010, had been attracting
unwanted attention: break-ins, graffiti
and illegal dumping. What had been an
anchor in a community with many long-
term residents and strong block clubs
was proving to be a liability — a casualty,
among many, of mayoral misconduct,
emergency management and bankrupt-
cy. (Tindal also happens to be the site
of the old Detroit Country Day School,
where my grandma taught shorthand in
the 1950s.)
A year after Finale Friday '14, still spar-
kling with a mural designed by one of
my former Wayne State students, Tindal
is preparing to reopen.This is primarily
a function of the industrious work of the
Detroit Recreation Department, though
I'd like to think we're at least a tertiary
cause. Hence, chutzpah:
I asked Alicia Bradford, director of DRD
and quite possibly the hardest-working
woman in Detroit, about Six Mile and
Lasher (aka Lahser and McNichols).We
had partnered on youth programs at the
Howard Hardy Crowell Community Cen-
ter (aka Crowell, just don't ask me how to
pronounce it) over the years. The facility's
weak link — between recently renovated
interior and the park's bucolic surround-
ings — was the tagged, tarnished
outside walls. And when you have a paint
brush instead of a hammer ...
With the recreation department's
blessing, we reached out to the Mars
Agency, a past corporate partner eager
to get their hands even dirtier this year.
Their creatives mocked up seven murals,
each designed to make Crowell more
colorful and creative, warm and welcom-
ing. Nearly 2,000 people voted online
and hundreds weighed in at the center.
While each design received praise and
votes,"Fun in the City" by Brad Fitzgerald
proved to be both the most popular
and the best fit for Crowell's mission and
vision.
At that point, I got way out of the
way. The Picassos of Paint got to work
adapting a 17-inch piece of paper to
8,500 square feet (of wall). The Play Pied
Pipers turned the park into a Choose
Your Own Adventure Land, replete with a
treasure map leading campers to 20 Play
Stations. Many, many people contributed
to the Backpacktacular, outfitting all 600
campers with backpacks, books, school
supplies and, importantly, a bouncy ball.
Importantly, both because bouncy balls
are inherently important and because my
son Judah had so much fun at Summer in
the City that he wanted a"job"for Finale
Friday — so we ordered bulk bouncy
balls, filled his wagon to the brim and put
him to work.
Among the dozens of partners
involved, I would be remiss if I didn't
note Motor City Blight Busters. Without
John George and Blight Busters, there
would be no Summer in the City. John
was as a mentor, partner and cheerleader
back in 2002 before most other groups
would take us seriously. Finale Friday
was just a few blocks down from the
amazing spaces that John and his team
have created for art and community
(and coffee) at Lasher and Grand River.
Crowell benefits from Blight Busters'
year-round stewardship and now boasts
30 cubic feet of donated woodchips they
distributed around paths, beds and trees
throughout the park.
Small notes from the big day include a
visit from Councilman James Tate in what
is now Council District 1; multiple visits to
the adjacent, shiny new Meijer on the site
of what was Redford High School; mul-
tiple visitors from the Jewish Fund, which
helped Summer in the City evolve into a
year-round, Detroit-based operation and
has its 18th chai'nniversary approaching;
Sen. Gary Peters' staff, while he was UP-
ing with his northern constituents; my in-
laws, who perennially painstakingly grill
for everyone; and an alpaca (pictured).
Once we had taken the Finale Friday
Foto, captured aerial footage from a
drone high in the sky and begun the Big
BBQ I asked my Wayne State students
and our Junior Volunteers (JVs), middle
school students from Northwest Detroit,
to meet me under the tent previously
populated by face painting, Arts and
Scraps and a Mathemagician distributing
calculators. Thanks to ongoing support
from Ally Financial, each JV received a
laptop.
Not as a gift, I assured them, but a re-
ward earned by their service and learning
this summer — with Focus: HOPE, Keep
Growing Detroit and other partners —
and an investment in them as the future
leaders of Summer in the City.
They'll be 20 soon enough.
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RED MEAD I September 2015 43