. w w 9 a 4B - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, November 18, 2004 FORGOTTEN GATEWAY MICHIGAN CENTRAL DEPOT AN OSTRACIZED MEMENTO OF A ONCE-GREAT CITY The Michigan Daily - Well, that's like, your opinion, man |w it h A d a m R o s e n ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE, WAR AND HOL By Alexandra Jones Daily Weekend Editor Getting inside Detroit's Michigan Central Depot, the city's 91-year-old abandoned train station, isn't easy. The 18-story beaux-arts neoclassi- cal train station is located downtown near the corner of Vernor Highway and Michigan Avenue. The most obvious point of entry is the front - snip an opening in the chain link fence, cross the courtyard with- out being seen by the cops, and you can walk right in through the front door. You can break into the building next door - formerly a warehouse for the Depot, then a book depository for Wayne County Schools until the building burned - and crawl through a long, narrow tunnel that leads to the pitch-dark parking garage. The entrance of choice for us - the safest, easiest and most direct -is really just a hole in the ground. Since January 5, 1988, when the last train pulled out of the station, creative explorers have dug out the ground under one of the garage's locked steel doors, bent the -door under and piled the dirt in front of the opening to hide it from the road. As we drive down Michigan Avenue, I lose my confidence - this happened last time, and I won't feel right again until we're in the lobby. I eye the blocks of shops with boarded-up windows, the abandoned restaurants and pay-by-the-hour motels, the cute two-story houses with charred fronts, and try to sup- press all the terrible things I've heard about Detroit. I come from a large Southern sub- urb of nowhere, a small city made up of shopping centers and split-levels spreading out from a cluster of old money mansions stuck next to near- segregated slums. There, stores and businesses don't have worn signs written in mid-century fonts; the few old buildings that haven't been torn down are unused, stuck out of sight far down in southwest Raleigh. I look around and just can't believe that nobody lives in any of these pretty old houses. But I'm also shocked to see people walking casually down the street, kids playing basketball, an old white guy riding a Segway - a Segway - by the Wayne State University campus. My fellow urban explorers (who, to their credit, are both area natives), don't help much. "Detroit's one seri- ous piece of shit," says Forest. "This is a dead city," agrees Shaun with a shake of his head. Hie's been in the train station dozens of times, he's climbed the tower on the roof and picked out his favorite room on the eighth floor - the unofficial leader of our expedition. I try to calm down. Don't worry, I think. You've been there before. It turned out fine. It was amazing. With an offhand comment about carjacking, Forest parks his little Honda Civic on a side street next to the dead-looking warehouse behind the train station. Bright signs from restaurants in Mexican Village reassure me a little, but that's not where we're going. I see a man hunched intently over some debris on the ground nearby and what little resolve I've built up vanishes. Last time, stray dogs happened by and I almost couldn't keep going. But now there are three of us, not just me and Shaun like before, and this time I'm not the newbie. I catch up with them, who already crossed the street over to the wide bank of rusted steel and exposed brick that makes up the back wall of the parking garage. Someone drives by just as we're scrambling up to our makeshift entrance - we flatten ourselves against the corrugated steel and wait till they've passed. Shaun disappears into the garage first. I'm next, then the camera, then Forest. It's a few degrees cooler in' here, and besides a tiny slit of after- noon seeping in under each door, all you can see is a dense, clothy black. I latch on to the sleeve of Shaun's jacket, and Forest - after snap- ping a few photos of our entryway - tentatively puts his hand on my shoulder. We walk like this, Shaun pointing out dangling cables and uncovered manholes with the flashlight. Still held by fresl fear, we slowly move a few dozen yards until we hear a voice coming through the ceiling. Someone says "Oh crap," but we all heard it, and we all freeze at the same moment. There's definitely someone above us, and I'm really ready to go back. Shaun decides to lead us to the ramp that goes to the waiting room, where at least there'll be a little daylight, and scout ahead to the passenger tunnel, which is hidden behind grated windows. He can't See STATION, page 5B FOREST CASEY/Daily Michigan Central Depot as seen from the back - the last view of the outside before entering the darkness of the parking garage. -ff Around this time of year, the resolve and character of many students will be tested. A challenge has emerged that will, in the end, separate the men from the boys, the strong from the meek. No, I'm not talking about trying to rush the field after the football team pulls one of its greatest victories against Michigan State in my four years as a student - thanks to the compassion of the Ann Arbor Police Department, you will be maced, beaten and arrested for trying such a simple expression of student pride - nobody has a chance in that con- test. I'm referring to the madness that is the Ann Arbor housing search, a process so competitive and emotion- ally charged that, in the final hour, will ultimately result in a shockingly excessive amount of erratic, ridicu- lous behavior andsneedless estrange- ment of many friendships. You think I'm joking? I wish I was. Consider this: For the past month or so, dozens of groups of students have shown up on my doorstep to check out my humble abode: a seven- person house in a prime location on Central Campus. One group of guys told us that they really, really liked the house. They liked it so much, in fact, that they camped outside of our realtor's office since Saturday morn- ing, waiting, like a bunch of hippies gathered outside of Jerry's shrine, in tents and sleeping bags. The realtor's office opened on Tuesday. Tuesday! Even worse, they weren't the only ones fortified (NOBODY was get- ting ahead of them) at the office. At least four or five more groups were waiting in line, anxiously trying to seal the deal on their dream house. The only saving grace of this ordeal is the fact that Campus Corner was just across the street - if you're going to camp out, why not have a little drink, right, canteen boy? Aside from generating absolute- ly absurd behavior, the student's terminal search for housing often results in soap-operaesque drama. You want to find out who your real friends are? Go hunt for a seven bedroom house on Greenwood. My original plan to live in my fraternity house (or crack house, they can be used interchangeably) fell through at the end of freshman year after the house was. condemned and all of the sophomores living in it were evicted, so with three weeks left of school I had to find a house - and fast. With 22 of us trying to figure out where to live and with whom, the life was not easy. After finally discovering a house suitable enough, we decided to draw room picks. However, one of my roommates and close friends decided at this time to inform us that if he drew the smallest room, he wouldn't be living with us anymore, leaving six of us to saddle a seven-person rent or try to find a new house in the middle of finals week. Of course, I got last pick and landed the smallest room while he got the second biggest. If you're reading this right now, buddy, I lied, I'm still mad at you, and I want my $20 back! Good thing for him, at the time I took the high road and forgave him for his incredible selfish- ness. Sadly, rapprochement such as ours does not occur often - I still know many girls who are definitely not as close as they used to be before they began looking for housing, even though their whole fiasco occurred a few years back. In another development, a girl who wanted our house this year, after find- ing out that we couldn't sign our lease over to her, handled the situation in the most mature, utmost respect- ful way - she had her mom call my roommate and bark at him to "give it up." Unfortunately, he couldn't give the poor girl anything but an invita- tion for a date, but, after losing her prospect of living at our house, she soundly declined. And she was so flirty when she thought she could have our lease ... All of this, of course, begs the question: Why do people care so damn much about where they sleep at night? My only guess is that many people have an idealized image of exactly what their dream house - like their future mate, except perfect houses don't require dinners at the Olive Garden - should be like, and if someone gets in the way of their dream, it's fair game to step over their face with a golf cleat in order to turn the dream into reality. Perhaps the guys camping out for three and a half days saw visions of beautiful women flow- ing out their front door, practically beg- ging to enter "the pimpest house on the block." Maybe my friend saw himself incapable of building the ultimate home dear all evari- theater system in my tiny room, and shuddered at the idea of being unable to host his nightly X-box tournaments. Maybe the group of girls who had one of their mothers call us liked the way our stained carpet matched their blinds. I- guess in life, some important ques- tions must go unanswered. Like, is o MOM awdad o santa o hanukkah a christmas o kwanzaa o graduatior w my birt hde ib aO l 0I El 1.5 80; Air 3-y 1.3 60 Air 3-) 40 20 4G 5c <-4 a+ 0 LI I15e U-M Computer S Michigan Union, grou (734)647-2537 www.showcase.itcs.ur Sale ends December 22, 2004 FOREST CASEY/Daily The station's waiting room was recently used as a set for the upcoming film "The Island." Along with handwrit- ten signs numbering each floor, the production crew left behind this pile of rubble swept into a symbol. FOREST CASEY/Daily A view of the station's back wall through a window on the 16th floor.