Detroit City Is the Place to Be (43 page)

But something changed in me, somewhere along the way, and Farmer’s sentiments no longer felt worthy of mockery.
All About Detroit
had been published two full years before Henry Ford scraped together enough capital to start the Ford Motor Company. Yet Farmer, a laughable booster, had already been indulging his readers with bigger dreams. His book read like that of a naif, yet he’d engaged in a touching and prescient leap of faith, one that had paid out far beyond any odds he or his contemporaries might have ever thought to set. So, who knows? Why not again?

Now, I’m struck by the way certain passages jump out like lines of verse—reminders of how long people had been wanting to believe this city was blessed, and of the poignant distance between that need and our reality, and I feel like I could be reading about Detroit at the turn of the twentieth century, or about any number of cities at the cusp of their grandest hours—Paris, Beijing, New Orleans, Buenos Aires, Bombay, Addis Ababa, St. Clair Shores, Madonna di Campiglio, Manhattan—or maybe even about your town, right now; about cities of memory and cities of desire, trading cities and hidden cities and cities of the dead, lost forever; about Detroit tomorrow, and about everything we allow ourselves to dream our places could become.

The city is really remarkable in this respect.

Unusually numerous and beautiful.

Admittedly the most attractive city on the northern continent.

First class the year around.

Not excelled by any other city.

Visitors cannot fail to notice the beautiful complexions.

Never a menace.

Always a joy and blessing.

Our skies are as fair as those of Italy.

Progress is manifest.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adler, William M.,
Land of Opportunity: One Family’s Quest for the American Dream in the Age of Crack
(New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995).

Bergmann, Luke,
Getting Ghost: Two Young Lives and the Struggle for the Soul of an American City
(New York: The New Press, 2008).

Bingay, Malcolm,
Detroit Is My Own Home Town
(New York: The Bobs Merrill Company, 1946).

Bjorn, Lars, and Gallert, Jim,
Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920-60
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).

Boyle, Kevin,
Arc of Justice
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004).

Burton, Clarence,
The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701–1922
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2005).

Carlisle, John,
313: Life in the Motor City
(Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2011).

Chafets, Zev,
Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit
(New York: Random House, 1990).

Conot, Robert E.,
American Odyssey
(New York: Morrow, 1974).

Downs, Linda Bank,
Diego Rivera: The Detroit Industry Murals
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999).

Dunnigan, Brian Leigh,
Frontier Metropolis: Picturing Early Detroit, 1701–1838
(Great Lakes Books, 2001).

Farmer, Silas,
All About Detroit: An Illustrated Guide, Map and Historical Souvenir, with Local Stories
(Detroit: Silas Farmer & Co., 1899).

Farmer, Silas,
The History of Detroit and Michigan
(Detroit: Silas Farmer & Co., 1884).

Fine, Sidney,
Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989).

Gallagher, John,
Reimagining Detroit
(Wayne State University Press, 2010).

Gavrilovich, Peter, and McGraw, Bill,
The Detroit Almanac
(Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 2006).

Georgakas, Dan,
Detroit: I Do Mind Dying
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975).

Halberstam, David,
The Reckoning
(New York: William Morrow & Co, 1986).

Hersey, John,
The Algiers Motel Incident
(New York: Bantam Books, 1969).

Jones, Butch,
Y.B.I.: The Autobiography of Butch Jones
(Detroit: H Publications, 1996).

Lichtenstein, Nelson,
Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit
(New York: Basic Books, 1995).

Moore, Andrew,
Detroit Disassembled
(Damiani/Akron Art Museum, 2010).

Parkman, Francis,
The Oregon Trail/The Conspiracy of Pontiac
(New York: The Library of America, 1991).

Sicko, Dan,
Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk
(New York: Billboard Books, 1999).

Smith, Suzanne E.,
Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Sugrue, Thomas J.,
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, revised edition, 2005).

Taylor, Carl S.,
Dangerous Society
(Ann Arbor: Michigan State University Press, 1990).

Vergara, Camilo José,
American Ruins
(New York: The Monacelli Press, 1999).

Vergara, Camilo José,
The New American Ghetto
(Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995).

Watts, Steven,
The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).

Widick, B. J.,
Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence
(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972).

Young, Coleman,
Hard Stuff
(New York: Viking, 1994).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M
OM, DAD, PAUL,
JULIE.

My Detroit players: Corine Vermeulen (urbex! techno!
vacano!
), Steve and Dorota Coy (and Bob, and that kid in the XXL “Made in Detroit” T-shirt), Courtney Smith, John Carlisle, Brian Merkel, Holice P. Wood, Ara Howrani, Marvin Vaughn, Bertram Ferrell, Brandon Walley, Djallo Djakate, Scott Hocking, Chef Las.

Jim Rutman. Riva Hocherman. The best.

Jason Fine and Will Dana, my great friends and fabulous longtime editors at
Rolling Stone
(and now
Men’s Journal
), and assigners of the original story that became this book.

Jann Wenner, Sean Woods, Eric Bates, Nathan Brackett, Mark Healy, Coco McPherson (and the entire research crew), Tom Walsh (ditto for copy), Marielle Anas, Alison Weinflash.

Jessica Lamb-Shapiro (off-season innkeeper
par excellence
), Julia Holmes and E. Tyler Lindvall (together forever on “Islands in the Stream,” L. J.’s Lounge, Halloween 2010), Dinaw Mengestu (scholar, gentleman, confidant, midnight chef, procurer of birthday Ocean), Jonathan Ringen (one of the five great
colocataires
of Western history! [along with Stendahl, Proust, Flaubert, and Brad Pitt]), Bill McIntyre (former Governor Engler wants his sign back), Jonathan Hickman (I concede the married lawyer might also have been a grifter), Mac McClelland (R.I.P. Giant Cat Binelli), Steve Dollar, Chad Post, Caroline Shepard (Massapequa in the house!), Esther Haynes, Kira Henehan, Alex Mar, Wells Tower, Diane Dragon, John Brumer.

The MacDowell Colony. The Corporation of Yaddo.

Detroit, again: John Adamo Jr., Matt Allen, Asenath Andrews, General Baker, Tiffini Baldwin, Bryan Barnhill, Pete Barrow, Dave Bing, the Blackman, Greg Bowens, Michael Brady, Gary Brown, Rev. David Bullock, Eric Campbell, Dan Carlisle, Shance Carlisle, Kenneth Cockerel Jr., Phil Cooley, Mark Covington, Marsha Cusic, Jai-Lee Dearing, Carlie Dennis, Angela Dillard, Rick Ector, Bishop Charles Ellis, Judy Endelman, Duke Fakir, Andrew Farah, Rich Feldman, Geoffrey Fieger, Vanessa Denha Garmo, Geoff George, John George, Dan Gilbert, Ralph Gilles, Ralph Godbee, Kevin and Val Gross, Francis Grunow, Elena Herrada, Steve Henderson, Eric Hollowell, Greg Holm, Mary Howell, Nate Irwin, Annie Janusch, Saunteel Jenkins, Raphael Johnson, Joseph Kassab, Kwame Kilpatrick, Christine Kloostra, Matt Lee, Kathy Leisen, Caesar Lorenzetti, Derrick May, Toni McIlwain, Kurt Metzger, Toni Moceri, John Mogk, Larry Mongo, Eric Novak, Jermaine Overman, the Pettaway family, QuanTez Pressley, Charles Pugh, Sir Mack Rice, Harold Rochon, Ron Scott, Malik Shabazz, John Sinclair, Edwin St. Aubin, Larry Stone, Jay Thunderbolt, Pastor Steve Upshur, Jerome Vaughn, John Zimmick.

The MacDowell crew, especially Scott Ingram, Rosecrans Baldwin, Feliz Molina, Emma Schwarcz, John Haskell, and Missy Mazzoli.

The Atlantic
, Keith Gessen and
n
+
1
, the Inn at the Oaks, the New Politeness, Cafe 1923, Motor City Brewery, Sara Bershtel, Will Sulkin, Rob Levine, Jim Gill, Deckerville, the Park Bar, the Original House of Pancakes (Grosse Pointe Woods, mom’s paying), the Old Miami, Service Street (2009–2012), the YesFarm, and why are those electroclash zombies carrying a moonshine jug?

NOTES

Introduction

  
1
. See, for example, Newsreel LIX, of John Dos Passos’s
The Big Money
: “the stranger first coming to Detroit if he be interested in the busy, economic side of modern life will find a marvelous industrial beehive … ‘
DETROIT THE CITY WHERE LIFE IS WORTH LIVING
.’”

  
2
. The most famous shot in Sheeler’s series,
Criss-Crossed Conveyors
, evokes neither grit nor noise but instead an almost tabernacular grace. The smokestacks in the background look like the pipes of a massive church organ, the titular conveyor belts forming the shape of what is unmistakably a giant cross. The photograph was originally published in a 1928 issue of
Vanity Fair
, where the caption read, “In a landscape where size, quantity and speed are the cardinal virtues, it is natural that the largest factory, turning out the most cars in the least time, should come to have the quality of America’s Mecca.”

  
3
. Surprisingly, Detroit city officials managed to successfully rebrand the night before Halloween “Angel’s Night” in 1995. Thousands of volunteers enlist each year to help patrol their neighborhoods during the last days of October severely curbing the outbreaks of arson.

1. Goin’ to Detroit, Michigan

  
1
. The name was not as racist as it sounds: the area was originally named by the French for its dark, fertile topsoil.

  
2
. The entire city of San Francisco is approximately forty-seven square miles.

  
3
. Our term for liquor stores in metropolitan Detroit.

  
4
. All of this is masterfully chronicled by Thomas Sugrue in
The Origins of the Urban Crisis
, his indispensable history of the decades leading up to 1967.

  
5
. The quirky local dialect developed, in part, as a means of secret communication between clannish traveling
moletas
(grinders), who incorporated Italianized versions of stray foreign words into their private language.

  
6
. By 1971, Sinclair was still doing time, so his supporters organized a “Ten for Two” rally in Ann Arbor, featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, and Allen Ginsberg. It was here that Lennon debuted his song “John Sinclair,” featuring the unforgettable lyric:
   Gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta,
   gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta,
   gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta,
   gotta, gotta, gotta set him free.

2. The Town of Detroit Exists No Longer

  
1
. There was a muddy, often impassable road running along the base of the river, but the settlers simply slipped a canoe into the water and paddled up- or downstream if they wanted to visit the fort or a neighbor. Most of the farms were basically orchards: apple, cherry, and pear trees.

  
2
. Edwin St. Aubin, a direct descendant of one of Cadillac’s original one hundred men, lived in the suburbs and, appropriately enough, sold real estate. We met for lunch one afternoon at an Italian restaurant in a strip mall past 17 Mile Road. A group of old Italian men were playing cards in a side room decorated with a mural of Rome; a poster on the wall advertised a Christmas concert with Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and (inexplicably) Roy Orbison impersonators.
   St. Aubin was in his fifties, with a thinning bush of white hair, along with a mustache and goatee that added to his catlike appearance. He drank three glasses of wine with lunch, the effusiveness of his storytelling increasing with each round. St. Aubin said he had grown up not knowing about his rich ancestry, but then one afternoon he had somehow ended up in the basement of the Detroit Public Library flipping through historical documents, where he discovered his grandfather’s name in direct lineage from the original St. Aubin. Since then, he and his brother had immersed themselves in early Detroit history.
   “You know,” St. Aubin told me, “there’s a whole France-mafia parallel?” He glanced around the room. “I’ve got to be careful what I say in here. But there was a group back then called the Red Poppy Society. St. Aubin was a member. They were basically enforcers, like mafia guys. If you didn’t donate to the church, they’d shake you down. They’d break your fucking legs.” An old man with floridly dyed hair and a cane walked by. St. Aubin mumbled, “Bookie.” Then he went on, “There’s a book called
Frontier Metropolis
that mentions selling land for two cents an acre. Which is about what it’s selling for now in Detroit.” He ate a forkful of salad, then said, “It’s funny how Detroit was originally encased in a fort to protect the city. Now you don’t need a fort. You can’t pay people to go down there.”

  
3
. Around this same time, Hamilton’s justice of the peace handed down a death sentence to a Detroit couple for stealing six dollars from the cashbox of a trading firm and starting a small fire. No one could be convinced to perform the execution; finally, the woman (a slave who had been having an affair with her accomplice) agreed to hang her partner in exchange for a pardon. A public outrage followed, and the Hair Buyer, who it turned out had had no authority to mete out capital punishment, was charged with murder and ended up fleeing Detroit and being captured by Americans. Hamilton’s replacement, Colonel Arent De Peyster, published his own verse, which was not very good, despite such promising titles as “To a Beautiful Young Lady, Who Had on One of Those Abominable Straw Caps or Bonnets in the Form of a Bee-Hive” and “The Ghost of Old Cocosh (a Pig). Shot by the Guard in the King’s Naval Yard at Detroit.”