The Best Muffler Place in Detroit

My car's exhaust system went wonky last week. By 'wonky' I mean entirely too loud for words.  It was the exhaust pipe, and there was no crossing my fingers and hoping it would go away.

I called the fancy auto shop over in Grosse Pointe. They claimed not to fix exhaust pipes. Which was less than helpful. They gave me the number of a muffler shop they recommend, but when I called that number no one answered... on a Saturday morning. Which was even less than less than helpful.

Enter the internet. I found a place with good reviews--multiple good reviews--and I called them up. I was like 'holler, I've got this problem. Do you think you can fix it?' and they were like 'Who knows, we rarely take the word of somebody's random friend, but it bring it down and we can take a look at it right now.' And I was like 'Sweet!' (In this creative retelling I'm clearly stuck in the nineties). So, I hopped in my car and drove up to Six Mile.

Mild digression, for those of you who don't know, Detroit has all these streets called 'miles' that are based on how many miles they are away from some park. Or something.

Six Mile looked pretty good to me. Cute, working class, well kept bungalows, and a nifty muffler place. I parked, went in, and the woman behind the counter's jaw dropped: 'You're not from this neighborhood, are you?'

Admittedly, it was Saturday and I was dressed in my Saturday clothes (yay, saturday!). Blue jeans, converses, a shiny blue LLBean backpack with the name 'Scarlett' embroidered on it (if you go to LLBean outlets you can get monogrammed stuff that people returned really really really cheap), and a wine red cut off t-shirt with a screen print of a dandelion on the front. Oh, and my ray-bans. My Saturday clothes totally blend in a Massachusetts college town, but Detroit's a different world.

After admitting (gulp) that I lived Downtown, I gave the woman the okay to fix my car and asked her if there was a place nearby where I could get coffee while I waited. 'Coffee?' Yep, it was Saturday morning and I'd gone to the muffler place before eating breakfast. Coffee was necessary. She stared at me, eyes wide, for a few minutes before finally admitting that there was a waffle shop down the street and a coney island next door.

Another mild digression, 'coney island' is Detroit for 'diner.' Except, diner's fluctuate in price and relative excellence. Coney islands are universally cheap and greasy.

Off I went, next door to the coney island. Cheap coffee, two eggs, and corned beef hash, all for under six bucks. I sat at the counter and talked to the regulars, old guys who used to work in auto plants. It was fun. I love talking to old guys in diners coney islands.

The muffler place did great work in less time than they'd estimated. I had a nifty breakfast. All in all, it was a pretty good Saturday morning (well, I had to pay for the car repair--which isn't cheap--but still).

I got back downtown and told a friend I'd gone up to six mile to get my car fixed. His jaw dropped. His eyes went wide. 'Six mile? How the hell did you find a muffler place on six mile?'