I stuck my head out this morning and it was snowing again, so here I am back under the blankets and pretending I’m in Havana or San José (Costa Rica) or anywhere that these sandy beaches, palm fronds, and drinks with little umbrellas might actually exist. Somehow that sounds better than more snow plowing and pothole damage.
I did come out from hiding long enough yesterday to attend Lafayette Market’s Edible Wow open house. This was really pleasant, not just because it was warm in the market, but because Phil May provided a nice musical backdrop to the tasting of the excellent wares of numerous local merchants. Everything from jams to hot sauce to cakes, toffee, beer, and wine were being grazed by the fairly large herd of locavores who showed up.
It’s February in Michigan and we don’t have a lot of events to cover at the moment (ok, there were a couple of freeeeezing ones that we could have covered if we had a polar bear for a photographer), but we also know that this is the calm before the storm. Spring is around the corner (it is, isn’t it?) and there will be more happening in SE Michigan than anyone could hope to do. We’re looking forward to seeing you all out there in T-shirts and shorts, sweating in the hot sunlight. I’ll come out from under the blankets then.
Would you like to have a Detroit Metro Mashup gear logo t-shirt, coffee mug, or drinking glass, but really don’t want to pay for it? Well, be the first one to spot Jimmy Hoffa’s picture in one of our “recent event” gallery photos (recent events only, for now) and we’ll send you your choice for free. You don’t even have to pay the shipping! Not only that, you’ll be the first to get DMM swag, because the link to the store isn’t up yet.
When you find the photo with the picture of Jimmy Hoffa in it, just take a screen shot of the entire photo or copy the photo and send it, along with your email address (we’re not selling your info or giving it away or anything) and we’ll let you know if you are the winner. Winners will be announced shortly after the photo is found and submitted. Send it using the contact button below (bottom of page) and use the subject header “I found Jimmy Hoffa.” Don’t forget to include your email, attach the photo, let us know what prize you want and, if it’s the t-shirt, what size. The first entry received meeting all these criteria will be the winner.
Here’s a hint, the Hoffa photo that was inserted into the recent event photo is a black and white photo of Hoffa from just above the waist up, taken in 1957. Having said that, there’s no guarantee that he’s still in black and white or that the entire original photo is included in the photo you are seeking.
Good luck!
Disclaimer:
Detroit Metro Mashup contests have no monetary value and prizes awarded cannot be substituted for any other or for any cash value. The cash value of the prize is $0.01 U. S. One winner per contest only, winner to be determined by Detroit Metro Mashup to be the earliest email received meeting all the requisite criteria, including the correct photo, the sender’s email address, the subject “I found Jimmy Hoffa,” and the prize selected. If you are under 18 please have your parent or guardian submit your entry for you. Detroit Metro Mashup is not responsible for any errors or omissions either in the contest or your entry. Detroit Metro Mashup has no association with Jimmy Hoffa’s family, estate, or any businesses.
There is a circularity to much of what one sees in life. It’s one of those things that becomes more apparent as a person ages, as long as they are paying the slightest bit of attention. One of the circular things, seen in both nature in general and human behavior, is the feedback loop. For example, in nature if there is an abundance of greenery in an area and no predators, the population of bunny rabbits can just go up and up. There is almost always a controlling feedback in nature, however. In this case, if there are no predators then the bunnies will just eat and grow and reproduce until there are so many of them that there simply isn’t enough greenery to go around. Then the bunny population will drop, either gradually or precipitously, depending upon the characteristics of the greenery and other factors. This is a feedback loop exerted by the greenery on the rabbit population; first it was positive, due to excess greenery, then it went negative as the bunnies overwhelmed the growth of the greenery and died out.
There are also feedback loops in human behavior, usually influenced by the fact that everyone seems to love a winner and either loathe or laugh at a loser. Although it has been said that any press is good press, consistently bad press can’t help but harm one’s reputation and cause others to scorn you as a loser. Good press, repeated over and over, applies a patina to a reputation that will resist a lot of corrosion by actual bad behavior, whereas ongoing bad press can sully even the positive aspects of a situation. Since the riots in the 1960s, just how much good press has Detroit had, particularly outside the Metro area? I haven’t researched it (yes I’m feeling lazy today, long story), but having come to Detroit by way of Oklahoma and Las Vegas, I don’t recall having seen ANY truly positive articles in the press about the Big D. It’s all been about a “city in decline,” or the “post-industrial wasteland,” or “ruin-porn,” or Mad Max-type ruminations, or Detroit expatriates who come back for a while to go tsk-tsk in print about what had happened to their childhood remembrances of a fair city.
All of this bad press has caused a seemingly never-ending negative feedback loop for Detroit. If you even considered locating your business here and began to research the city via the media, what would you do? If you had the means to leave the city and saw never-ending stories about the crime and violence and the poor schools…well, I won’t even ask what you would do, because that was what happened. So, if no one wants to move to the city, no one wants to raise a family there, no one wants to start or relocate a business there, and city businesses move to the suburbs, then the tax base begins to collapse and things just get worse. The media picks up on the worsening and perpetuates the negative feedback cycle over and over. Bad press → more flight and avoidance → reduced tax base → worsened city conditions → more bad press, rinse and repeat.
Detroit Metro Mashup has been, in our own small way, trying to stem the tide of bad publicity for what we think is a great city in a great metro region. Other local media and blogs have been doing the same, but our voices are a bit limited in scope relative to the national media. Did I say a bit limited? I meant more like drowned out. But finally, due to massive efforts by countless individuals, organizations, and companies, there is a fair amount of positive news squeaking its way out of the city limits amidst the claghorn (1) squawking of negativism and ridiculous talk of Detroit going bankrupt in a fairly wealthy state.
And, in keeping with our circular feedback discussion, there is finally some positive feedback from the media. Business Insider has just posted an article titled, “25 Reasons Why Detroit Is On The Verge Of An Epic Comeback.” They are postulating not just a comeback, but an EPIC comeback. The article’s link is at http://tinyurl.com/k6fbof5. To us at DMM this is great news, even if they don’t mention the dozens of other reasons that Detroit is making a comeback. We hope that this is the beginning of a long-lasting “positive” feed-back loop for Detroit and the metro area and that we will soon see more stories about people moving into Detroit, about services being restored and enhanced, and the tax base once again increasing. Help us in this effort and promote Detroit!
(1) ”a strange bamboo flute with a saxophone mouthpiece attached to it called a claghorn — a dreadful instrument that I invented" —Ian Anderson, interview with BBC Radio Scotland, 27 August 2001 (from Wikipedia).
Hard to believe this is already the 23rd week of the 52-week year, but here it is. Even though the weather feels like chilly April, summer is nearly upon us, the year is flying by, and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of interesting things for people to do. Since my last blog Detroit Metro Mashup has posted coverage of the Lafayette Market & Café’s Friday Summer Concerts on the Patio, Baconfest Michigan in Royal Oak, the Waterford Peacefest at L. A. Café, and the opening day of Whole Foods Market in Detroit.
Weather permitting, we’ll be photographing the 19th Annual Clay, Glass, and Metal Show in Royal Oak today. This show will have over 125 artists who were selected via a jury process to display their art on Washington Avenue. The show hours are Saturday, June 8, 2013 - 10:00 AM through Sunday, June 9, 2013 - 5:00 PM. There is always some really cool stuff for sale and you are nearly certain to find something that you would like to display in your home. We at DMM have a particular weakness for Doug Spalding’s ceramic factories and robots; several decorate this place. We hope to see you there!
There is something about Detroit that caught my imagination when I came here from Las Vegas. No doubt, Las Vegas is a pretty extreme contrast to any other city, but the contrast to Detroit was beyond stark. When I left Vegas in 2003 it was still a city where property value was king, prices were accelerating upwards, and history was moot due to everything old being torn down to build something new; history was a casualty of the property values. History was a postcard, now was a dollar bill. They even tore down the Stardust. The only things left of the old casinos were, occasionally, their signs sitting on the ground at odd angles in the Neon Graveyard. There was apparently only one value that mattered and it wasn’t having a tie to the past, unless the tie was made out of currency decorated with poker chips and credit cards. I make it sound grim, but living there was actually, mostly, fun. I guess it became quite a bit more grim a couple years after I left and, like Detroit, coyotes and other carnivores began moving into the outskirts to replace the two-legged variety.
When I finally got to Detroit, it had big history, plenty of it, 200 plus years of it. So much in fact that the city and its businesses couldn’t afford it and at least half of it was flooded or burned or crumbling into dust or some combination of these. Mansions built during the days of Henry Ford, the Fisher brothers, and their ilk crumbling like the rusted fenders on a 76 Chevy. Early skyscrapers designed by some of the most creative architects of that same period crumbling inside and out, with nothing left inside to crumble that wasn’t encased in concrete, because it had long ago been looted. Sort of like the tombs of the pharaohs but without the actually mummy, although sometimes these post-industrial tombs did, sadly, hold a body.
The most spectacular and beloved department store the city ever had was gone, imploded, a wound that will take decades to heal even though sutured by the building of the Compuware headquarters. I remember seeing Hudsons on TV in Oklahoma as a child, when I was watching the Thanksgiving Day parades. How could a major city, with a grand past and rich history, let such a treasured business get away, much less allow its building to flood, freeze, and then have to come down in a mushroom cloud of dusty goodbyes? I admit I was puzzled.
I was puzzled that there were actually old buildings from the early 20th century, modern and post-modern, with trees growing in them, not in some spectacular arboretum, but in the lobbies, through and on the roofs, and out the windows. The one I always saw, driving into downtown or back home down Woodward, was the Hotel Granwood. It had become something of an indoor forest and the roof had fairly large limbs and branches growing out from its resident trees. I always waxed a bit nostalgic when we drove by, wondering about the stories of the human residents who had once stayed there, not so far from the old Model T factory, possibly having worked there. At least the city or someone finally, very recently, got around to tearing the old Granwood down, although at what cost to the wildlife I don’t know.
But amidst all this decay, which lacked even the decorum of a naturally rotting tree trunk in the woods, I began to see some hope, the cliché “light at the end of the tunnel,” and the tunnel was primarily south Woodward Avenue. I don’t recall the exact order, perhaps it mattered, perhaps not, probably did to the developers, but Compuware was built to stanch the Hudson’s wound, Ford Field was built (at great expense to Pontiac, but that’s another story), Comerica Park was built, the Superbowl came to town, Slow’s BBQ began to exist along with the Mercury Bar across Michigan Avenue in Corktown, lofts were built in old, and a few new, buildings, the Book Cadillac was renovated, Detroit Beer Company and Small Plates came into my consciousness, Avalon Bakery opened along with several other nearby shops, the Riverwalk was developed, Wayne State kept growing, Ye Olde Butcher Shoppe and Whole Foods moved in along with a crop of young, imaginative, creatives, the Russell Industrial Center is now occupied by artists and craftspersons, the Argonaut Building was renovated and occupied by the Center for Creative Studies, Shinola became a tenant…my fingers are out of breath. Most importantly I began to see a new twinkle in the eyes of Detroit residents, some long-time and some new, young and old, eyes that were looking towards a new future rather than mourning the loss of past glory.
Regrowing a city is somewhat like growing crystals in a solution. You keep adding to it and adding to it until finally something spectacular happens. You add a few particles to a solution that is already saturated, and Detroit is a metaphorical solution already saturated with creative, driven, entrepreneurial people and cheap property prices, and the crystals begin to form, assembling into dendrites that grow in some direction and then branch off into others. If the particles are businesses and you keep dropping them along Woodward and other streets, eventually entire business areas begin to form, seemingly spontaneously, always requiring work just as a crystallizing solution lowers free energy (Too technical? Sorry hard to squelch the chemist in me), but allowing other peripheral businesses that were either already there, or themselves new, to prosper as more people now find the area attractive and accessible.
We at Detroit Metro Mashup see the same things happening in Pontiac, on a somewhat smaller scale, that are happening in Detroit. Excitement, forward-looking people, new businesses such as the Lafayette Market, lofts and the Anytime Fitness gym, the rebirth of Bo’s Barbecue as the Downtown 51 Grille, more lofts coming soon across from 51, renovations to the Thrifty Drug Store, DIA art shows downtown, restoration of the historic Strand Theater, and something more than 100 new businesses downtown in the past couple of years.
Rebirth is everywhere in SE Michigan’s urban cores and Detroit Metro Mashup wants to be part of this rebirth going forward. We want to publicize the events, people, places and things that are driving this engine of Michigan into the 21st century. We will cover the suburbs, but we hope to make suburbanites aware that there is new life in the cities that many of them gave up on long ago. We want everyone to go everywhere in SE Michigan and realize that we are all in this together, that we will be stronger, grow faster, and go farther if we are all rooting for everyone else in addition to ourselves. We want everyone to understand that all our communities need to function like a well-lubricated, highly-machined drive train for the engines that are being built to move us forward at the speeds we need to achieve.
