3/17/09
Hope for Detroit? Or Vultures on Carrion?

Detroit, huh? CNN says there's 'real estate gold' in that place, surprising headline, but rather misleading. They write of homes selling for a mere $50- many of them! I guess there are people, as usual, flipping homes at these kinds of prices. From the article, it sounds like just a few people are making money, and not much at that...
I remember visiting my nonna (grandmother) in Detroit when I was young. She and her family had come from Italy in 1955, my father was only 7 at the time. They bought a house in Harper Woods, my nonno (grandfather) worked at Iroquois Tool & Die. Nonna lived in that little neat brick house for almost fifty years, while the property values rose around them, then began to drop.
Driving through Detroit was always something of an adventure- the highways are sunk below the skyline and as you dip and rise the glittering lights show, despite the factory smog always hovering over the city. We'd arrive, finally, at Nonna's house and eat sesame breadsticks with cold butter while she and my father would argue in rapid Italian. Her house was always perfectly neat, shining and clean, smelling of Ivory soap and Snuggle fabric softener. My nonno would stomp around the house, seldom sober, his cane clumping on the wooden floors and his hair smelling of Brylcreme. She and he slept in separate bedrooms- Catholic birth control that had worked since '69.

I grew up in the country, so this was the first big city in my experience- a fantasy concrete jungle when all I knew was dirt and grass. Some of my fondest memories are of Detroit- dancing in warm street puddles during a summer thunderstorm or eating hot fried fish on a Friday with my nonna. Some of my worst memories are also from there- Nonno drunk at a funeral, falling down and cutting his head in front of everyone, or of the gut-wrenching discovery of my dad's secret first marriage.
As a child, I did not know there was trouble, I didn't understand white flight or crime indexes or racial tensions or the suburbs or union workers or anything like that. It wasn't until the early nineties that I knew something was wrong with the city, but I still loved it just as much as before. As the years passed, I was sad to see the city decay and crumble, yet still relieved when we moved Nonna out to the burbs. Now it's just a place we pass through occasionally, caught at every stoplight on Telegraph Rd, or grabbing a loaf of bread at Tringali's. Now it's just the place both my parents grew up in, a place I seldom even need to see, but still remember with a touch of awe. It's also a place where things like this can happen.
It would be beautiful if somehow the city came back to life- if the crime and homelessness and general rot were wiped away, and some new industry or technology or trade or art were brought in to take the place of rusting cars and shattered windows. It would be amazing to see some of the grand old hotels and buildings brought back to luster, filled with life. I don't know if a few guys flipping houses is going to bring that change, or if its the advance guard to a change about to happen, but I would like to think that possibly there is hope...
Any ideas? Any other memories of the place, or photos?
**fascinating photosets of the place here, here, and here.
Labels: culture, Detroit, harper woods, history, memories, Michigan














