"That's not the Philippines that's Detroit you idiot," Spoiler 216
Are you in the music industry? It was 1997 and I was in a cab, fresh out of London and heading to the Town Pump in what passed for downtown Detroit. It was a neat evening and, long story short, I moved. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
But what a culture shock, London to Detroit. It's hard to describe even now and it was harder then. Miles of abandoned or half abandoned city blocks, criss crossed by highways and an unrelenting ghetto of decaying, abandoned, burned out, crack den dystopia. And I didn't see the half of all 138 square miles of it.
Is there anything like it in England? I don't think so and feel that friends in the Old Country thought my email reports were tall tales. No, they weren't. Then again, no city in England has lost a million plus inhabitants in the last 50 years and gone from being the automotive capital of the world to... not. So you can excuse incomprehension.
Fast forward to today. I visit the onetime Motor City when I can and always have fun; it's good to see the city's downtown and immediate neighborhoods looking less blighted and no wonder. The burned out crack houses have fallen down and reverted to nature, leaving what was once a city open to agrarian white hipsterdom. Hey, go for it kids. And the result?
A small island of central civility in the increasingly empty shell of a once major city. Not dissimilar, when you think of it, to ancient Rome following the breakdown of western imperial authority. But will America's Motor City grow wings and fly again?
Sometimes a song is worth a thousand words.
Your Old Friend,
LSP
