Ignore the shared political stories for a bit. Actually, ignore them for the whole week if you can. If you read anything, read Josh Welton’s story about two Dodge Challengers – a story about Detroit and its revolution.
Quick pic: Detroit Versus Detroit
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11 responses to “Quick pic: Detroit Versus Detroit”
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My how the tides change. The Hooniverse, linking to a former Gawker (now Gizmodo) property.
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Generally speaking, all writers on OppositeLock write for themselves, pieces on there are unpaid, and Oppo (as it is commonly referred) is just the blogging platform that they happen to use – it’s really a non-issue.
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H’verse links to J’nik on a regular basis.
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Oh jeez. 🙁
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Wow, that was a strong, dystopian read. Reminds me of the communist books describing the 1970s USA we got in the GDR: Organized institutional crime, race issues, pictures of abandoned houses and broken cars. I am impressed that the author manages to live through that pressure, even if it takes a dark, dark turn at the end.
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Your stories weren’t entirely inaccurate, they just left off the part about things only getting that way in pockets where local tolerance for such behavior was high and folks that were otherwise inclined left in droves to prosper elsewhere. That dynamic hasn’t stopped.
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Exactly – it always depends on who shines the spotlight where. And in the case of the US, that is a more important lesson now than it has been for a while.
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That’s the most dispiriting thing I have read in a long time, and we just came out of an election year. For whatever the author believes about the good soul of that city, its rottenness is just overwhelming. The political angles just lead straight to everyone’s particular pet narrative in the macro sense. Seeing urban decay affect someone we can identify with in the micro sense is just devastating.
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It is a rare insight into how “the stayers” tick. Written with such clarity, it’s really something to remember. I left Eastern Germany about 14 years after reunification, when unemployment in my region was still above 30%. People kept asking if it wasn’t hard. I honestly believe that staying in the sense of making and succeeding is much harder – I took the easy way out and left.
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Wow. What a sad article. I’ve seen the “ruin porn” before, and heard about the crime, but this article is pretty stark.
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I have no ideas on how to fix the problem, urban panning is way outside the scope of my expertise. I do feel sorry for the guy losing his entire shop. But, this story just confirms my pessimistic attitude about cities in general. I live in the metro Atlanta, GA area and it has seen a decline and renaissance cycle similar to Detroit’s, although nowhere near the scale of decline and probably a better renaissance. Starting in the 1960s Atlanta experienced “bright flight”, most anyone with the means to do so (black or white, mostly white) left the city limits of Atlanta for the suburbs. Atlanta was left with mostly housing projects, very low income neighborhoods, and a few very affluent neighborhoods and virtually no middle class neighborhoods. In the last 10-20 years, but especially in the last 5 years downtown Atlanta has seen a large influx of upper middle class, mostly hipsterish people. What these people fail to realize that even though they live in a cool, $200k, industrial loft in a re-purposed warehouse, there is still a crack house two blocks down and all the crime that is associated with it. It was funny to see the nice condos go up and then 6 months later the razor wire surrounding them. Three months ago I started a job in Midtown Atlanta. This is my first time spending much time downtown since the mid-1990s when I went to school here. It is amazing the number of condos that have gone up and are going up. The change here as been real, but there is still a lot more of the old Atlanta left than many people are willing to admit. Our local government has ranged from mildly competent, to laughably incompetent, to slightly corrupt. I think there is only one former mayor that has served jail time, so far. The thing that I can not fathom is the widespread corruption of local law enforcement. Here the local law enforcement ranges from pretty good to indifferent. Corruption appears to be rather rare on the surface at least and the government corruption is usually related to bribery and contract shenanigans not outright criminal enterprises. I do wish Detroit the best, but I completely understand this guy giving up. I am happy to visit the city, but it isn’t the kind of place that I want to live. I will happily drive 1 hour each way to live “out in the country”.
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