D E T R O I T
BY MILES GROFSOREAN, FOR THE DAILY
MORE THAN MIDTOWN:
LESSONS FROM
Wednesday, February 1, 2017 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, February 1, 2017 // The Statement
5B
G
oogle Maps has never given
me much of a warning before
an impending turn. Today is
no exception. Less than 100 feet before
my next maneuver, Siri’s indolent Google
Maps cousin alerts me of the approaching
Michigan Avenue, so I shove my blue Lin-
coln Town Car across a precarious number
of lanes. This would normally be a problem
on a highway, but I’m going to Detroit. Even
when the city’s gentrified midtown experi-
ences a surge of nightlife activity, I’ve never
experienced traffic. The first cross street off
the exit before Michigan Avenue is Ash. Just
Ash. It has no indication of being a street,
avenue or boulevard, perhaps indicative of its
burned-out, crumbling houses, one after the
other, interrupted by the occasional vacant
lot. Even more rare are inhabited homes.
I’ve come to Detroit to make sense of a per-
plexing tendency: What does it mean when
someone who fits my profile — an educated
millennial Caucasian — says they “love”
Detroit, a city whose population is predomi-
nantly Black and remains less affluent than
residents of the adjacent suburbs? And, what
is it they love? Do they come to Detroit to
bask in the recently gentrified districts — a
hub of nightlife and well-to-do transplants —
or do they love the city in its entirety, imper-
fections and all? The task of understanding
all parts of Detroit would take a lifetime.
To understand the city, one needs a point
of contact. I don’t have friends or family in
the area, and my peers who frequent Slows
Bar BQ and the casinos don’t count. I’d basi-
cally be interviewing myself. My most genu-
ine connection lies in my father who grew up
in Dearborn, Detroit’s immediate neighbor
to the west. But growing up in Southeast
Michigan without meaningful experiences
in the Detroit, I felt fake. So, I’ve set upon
my own two-day attempt at understanding
Detroit.
Coming to a halt at Ash, I notice a home-
less man to my left. He’s young, probably my
age, and holds a sign that reads: “ran away
from home please help me buy a bus ticket
God loves a (cereal?) …” The words are too
small to make out. His oversized apparel
is covered in dirt and holes. His head bobs
lethargically up and down, continuously
bringing him in and out of an asphyxiated
sleep, all the while wearing an expression of
sadness to a degree that I can’t explain. The
closest comparison I can conjure is the face
of surrender that Johnny Weeks from HBO’s
“The Wire” always wore. The light turns
green as Ms. Maps tells me we’ve arrived.
I am greeted by Corktown after turning
from Ash onto Michigan Avenue. Home to
the original Slows Bar BQ, Two James Spir-
its, Mercury bar and the hauntingly beauti-
ful Michigan Central Station, this was once a
repository for Irish fleeing the potato famine.
Today, it is largely occupied by longtime blue
collar residents of the city. Corktown evokes
a sense of authenticity — most of the build-
ings are rough brick and still marked by the
original hand-painted slogans of old busi-
nesses, there’s a couple abandoned build-
ings, the Marathon gas station is frequented
mostly by locals from just west of Corktown,
and crumbling brick-and-mortar expands in
every direction excluding east, where Down-
town lies.
Corktown technically starts at Rosa Parks
Boulevard, but the area’s lamppost signs,
placed at intervals of 30 feet, denote a dif-
ferent cartography starting at 20th Street.
The only indicator Google Maps appears to
have used was the stretch of brick road that
extends barely three blocks to either side of
the old Tiger Stadium, which is now only a
baseball diamond on an open field.
Nobody walks in Detroit, at least not in
Corktown. The city was clearly construct-
ed for the motor vehicle — of which there
aren’t many in sight either. That’s not to say
there are no sidewalks. There are plenty, but
weeds overpopulate crevices in the concrete.
Today’s absence of pedestrians is no anomaly
Further down Michigan Avenue into
Downtown is a dead end at Campus Martius
Park: a favorite stop for day-trip visitors and
office workers from the suburbs. Women in
Moncler coats and men in Northface jack-
ets gallivant around the city center enjoy-
ing lattes from Roasting Plant, stopping to
munch on a Potbelly sandwich while loung-
ing in front of the Michigan Soldiers’ and
Sailors’ Monument, supported by a backdrop
of skyscrapers Chicagoan in height. The
foot traffic is still pathetic by the standards
of most American cities, but stands in stark
contrast to deserted sidewalks elsewhere in
the city.
Detroit is oriented around six main
thoroughfares that shoot off from Campus
Martius Park like spokes on a wheel. From
a bird’s-eye view moving left to right, the
streets are as follows: Fort Street, Michi-
gan Avenue, Grand River Avenue, Wood-
ward Avenue, Gratiot Avenue and Jefferson
Avenue. Midtown and the Cass Corridor, the
gentrified areas of Detroit that lay claim to
“Detroit’s comeback” can be reached by driv-
ing down Woodward. Today I’ll get to know
gentrified Detroit. I follow the circular drive
around the hub and turn on Woodward,
which penetrates the center of Midtown and
marks the eastern border of the Cass Corri-
dor.
The early 2000s witnessed a large scale
effort to reinvigorate the old Cass Corridor,
which was rebranded as Midtown. Upon
Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy, developers inject-
ed huge sums of capital including a $650 mil-
lion plan to purchase and refurbish deserted
buildings. The result has been a surge in
luxury outlets and ritzy apartments, accom-
panied by spikes in rent and property valu-
ations that are comparable to gentrification
in other Midwestern cities, namely Chicago.
Posh bars in rugged buildings are a hall-
mark of gentrification and, like many of Mid-
town’s hotspots, the Selden Standard sits like
a vesicle stemming the gentrified vein that is
Woodward Avenue. Three blocks west of the
thoroughfare, the Selden Standard foreshad-
ows what’s to become of the surrounding
empty buildings and lots. Across the street is
one such vacancy, occupied only by an inter-
esting gentlemen clad in a hot-pink cape, red
jacket and yellow shorts with a banana ham-
mock. He’s holding a boombox that’s blasting
“Hot in Herre” by Nelly while fist-pumping
and hip-thrusting. As I walk to the door he
walks to his campsite, comprised of a towel
and a pile of clothing. He puts down the
boombox and continues to dance. We’re the
only two on the street.
I enter the Selden Standard to find a
stark contrast in aesthetic: chic black brick
that matches the exterior, a polished cedar
bar atop an ebony foundation that matches
the walls on the left and cedar boards sus-
pended from above by black poles. Sections
of the ceiling are exposed to allow tasteful
halogen tubes to descend from black rods. The
right half of the restaurant contains an exposed
kitchen and the bar, which is backed by smooth
and shiny white porcelain bricks. The chairs are
stainless steel, true to the grayscale backdrop so
as not to disturb the cedar accents.
The cooks have groomed beards that match
those of the joint’s patrons, and some have tat-
toos of Celtic patterns or Native American
totems. Each hostess has perfect “Urban Out-
fitters hair,” I guess you could call it, one with
a professionally frazzled hipster bob, the other
sporting 1960s bangs.
I ask the bartender making my drink how old
the place is.
“We’re nearing two years in November, which
is ancient as far as the Detroit food scene goes,”
she responds.
Her colleague, sporting a man-bun, pipes in,
“It’s the place to be, man.”
Across the street the dancing man has
changed into red shorts but continues his ritual.
He’s moved aside just enough to reveal a white,
windowless building upon which, in huge type,
is painted: “Honest?” Before I contemplate
this irony any further, the customer next to me
inquires about the dancing man. Apparently
his name is Terry, and he comes to this spot
every day to exercise. In doing so he has lost 125
pounds over two years. “He’s the man,” the bar-
tender says.
When my peers say they spent the weekend in
Detroit, they usually mean they came here. I’ll
admit that the area’s perceived safety, quality
beverages and quirky locals are charming. But
what constitutes the “love” felt toward a place
where the dissonance between Terry’s lot and
this bar is ubiquitous? What does it mean to love
a city that filed the largest bankruptcy case in
U.S. history or razed 2,800 buildings, including
family homes and jazz clubs, to build a highway?
How does one love the fire hazard of 70,000
abandoned buildings and 31,000 empty houses,
an unemployment more than twice the national
average — 10.4 percent according to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics — and the way the African-
American community — 83 percent of the popu-
lation — has largely been excluded from enjoying
the delights of its “resurgence” alongside me?
The Selden Standard, and its surrounding shops,
tell a narrative of the comeback kid. Without
these places there would be even less of a sem-
blance of a local economy, but its presence raises
property values that push away the very people
that make up the city’s majority who need help
the most.
Eric Thomas hates Detroit, a sentiment that
has, as he puts it, become taboo in and around
the city. I’ve been quick to defend the city when
people claim they’re scared of “getting shot.”
“You just don’t know where to go” and “that’s
an incredibly counterproductive attitude to
have” were often some of my responses. I now
regret my patronizing attitude. Thomas, a brand
strategist and senior partner at at Saga MKTG
in Detroit, is a native. In his Metro Times edi-
torial Why I Hate Detroit, he concisely articu-
lates what it is he believes people “love”: the four
miles of Woodward Avenue, the retro Shinola
watches and the tasteful hotspots like the Selden
Standard. But most of all, the outsiders that
these institutions serve love the idea of walking,
wearing or drinking Detroit, which comes in the
form of uneducated consumerism.
“And the most notably, downtown devel-
opments by Dan Gilbert, the DEGC, and the
Detroit Downtown Partnership are infusing the
economic core of Detroit with energy and all-
around feel good vibes,” Thomas wrote. “But, as
for the question of opportunity — let’s examine
what that really means.”
The truth is that my cohort of friends travel-
ing to Detroit to buy posh drinks or attend Tigers
games does little to affect a school system that
can’t guarantee pay and basic school mainte-
nance to teachers, repair or construct areas for
youth recreation, expand mass transit, or inject
cash into household incomes that are half the
national average. These new businesses often
don’t hire locals unless it’s to guard their old
employees or other outside hires. In sum, the
words “I love Detroit” mean nothing to locals of
the poorest city in the nation, who have largely
been excluded from the economic rejuvenation
taking place several blocks away in downtown,
and in the well-to-do suburbs of Oakland and
western Wayne Counties.
With Thomas’ words ringing in my ears,
I venture into the neighborhoods surround-
ing Midtown, specifically the neighborhood
between Trumbull Avenue and West Grand Bou-
levard, and that between West Warren Avenue
and Mckinley Street. These neighborhoods trade
places with the other top 10 most dangerous
neighborhoods on neighborhoods.com — a web-
site which ranks neighborhoods based on crime
statistics — and contribute greatly, along with
several other surrounding areas, to Detroit’s
unflattering — albeit improving — crime figures.
I exit the highway the same as before and
encounter Johnny Weeks yet again. He’s suited
in the same garb, with the same sign on the same
milk crate. This time, however, he’s bobbing his
head to a different tune, smiling in the same
spaced-out, euphoric way his television coun-
terpart does when falling victim to the needle.
Going over the highway and through Corktown,
around the hub and down Woodward, left on
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and right on
14th Street brings me into the midst of an area
that resonates with Forbes’ proclaimed haz-
ardousness. It’s hard to describe this neighbor-
hood without using post-apocalyptic clichés.
Abandoned houses seemed unlimited, which I
expected, but what I was not expecting is how
much more bountiful the open lots are. At times,
nearly 100 yards of overgrown grass separates
two domiciles, and at others there is only one
house per block. The only thing that occasional-
ly distinguishes one empty lot from another is a
scraggly line of unkempt bush, connoting where
DAY TWO
DAY ONE
a fence should be built, or a series of telephone
poles on the brink of collapse. Some of these lots
have an artifact of what used to inhabit their
space, anything from the remnants of a driveway
interspersed with weeds to plastic orange and
blue tricycles.
Dilapidation becomes more visible west of
Grand River Avenue. The houses that remain are
sometimes difficult to categorize as inhabited
or uninhabited at driving speed. One home may
have boarded windows and a car in the driveway,
or crumbling front steps with a light on inside,
while next door sits a house without front steps or
a car. Paint jobs are not a useful predictor either,
since all of them would, by normal standards, be
indicative of abandonment. Often, the most con-
sistent indicator is the collection of play toys,
plastic chairs and bicycles that are strewn in front
of the house or even into the street. One house in
particular had no door or window panes. All that
remained of another was jagged, three-foot-high
perimeter of disintegrating charred brick.
One man walks with his arms held perpen-
dicular to the street while never breaking his
glazed-over forward stare. Others glare at me
incredulously when I pass by their homes, mak-
ing note of my obvious lack of reason for being in
their neighborhood.
“People hate it when you drive around and
gawk,” said my friend who tutors a private-school
debate team in the area once said.
I wish it would be appropriate for me to explain
that I wasn’t gawking, but there is no chance of
that discussion happening, and I think, or hope,
both parties understand. I’ve been twisting
through side streets for about an hour and decide
it’s time to drive to the next neighborhood. I begin
making my way toward Woodward and was one
block away when I was suddenly barricaded. In
front of me is a lightning-blue Ford F-150 with
chrome rims, tinted windows and a waxed body,
setting a maximum speed of 4 mph. It’s shameful,
but the panic I felt was very real, and I’d rather
not describe the scenarios I imagined would
ensue. Had I been in almost any other city in
America I would have been simply irritated, but
the omnipresent crime statistics and myths that
surround Detroit cut through rational thinking.
Two-thirds of the block to go and the pace hasn’t
changed. My head is now level with the steering
wheel. Going around such a massive truck on
these small side streets is impossible, and it would
probably set off the alarm in someone’s head, but
I keep contemplating the possibility. One-third
to go and my knuckles are white, still moving at
4 mph. At Woodward I make the choice to turn
on my directional to convey a message that I don’t
find anything weird, and I am just following traf-
fic laws. He turns left, and I turn right.
I have several hours left on my hands before I
planned to return home, so I decide to go back to
Midtown to check out Shinola and its league of
trendy shops I didn’t get to visit yesterday. Instead
of tinkering with Midtown’s parking meters,
which aren’t meters but rather designated zones
with bothersome rules, I find a space in Will’s
Leather Goods’s parking lot. The place turns out
to be part leather goods store, part coffee shop,
and I enter hoping to find that some kind of
local craftsmanship has found an outlet here
on the corner of Alexandrine Street and 2nd
Avenue. The place is upscale. Leather-bound
books and wallets sit on top of aromatic pine
crates in clusters placed around giant ware-
house-like room. Belts hang from pegs driven
into old wooden pillars. Saddle bags and shoes
sit in front of the enormous floor-to-ceiling
window facing 2nd Avenue, which are book-
ended by rusted scooters, helmets, shovels and
random mining equipment. The place has an
incredibly invigorating aroma of fresh leather
and sawdust without the mustiness, which
makes it cleaner somehow, and wakes me up
like the sour and slightly sweet smell of Red
Bull. In the middle is a giant tepee. Yep, made
of cow’s hide. It stands as tall as the ceiling —
25 feet. I pass the saleswoman, who greets me
warmly, and lie that I’m “buying something for
a friend’s birthday. … No, I’ve never been here
before.” Part of it was true. I duck behind a
pole to check out a $75 belt and act interested.
I don’t really have it in me to fake it today, so
I decide to go. Tip-toeing around the western
side of the teepee, I am stopped by Terrance, a
See DETROIT, Page 7B
PHOTOS BY CAROLYN GEARIG