The Things I Can't Afford in Detroit

Space might be the final frontier, but those of us stuck here on earth there’s one city whose name brings to mind death and rebirth. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, a theme that’s even incorporated in the city motto: “We hope for better things, it will arise from the ashes.”

That’s right.

I’m talking about Detroit.

It’s the new urban frontier, but this isn’t the 1800’s and the safety valve theory of American expansion is dead and buried. People who move here drawn by cheap land and endless opportunity are often surprised to find an existing population that is uninterested in being colonized by East Coast escapees, an entrenched city government that has held on through Detroit’s recent bankruptcy, and a long list of things they can’t afford, like transportation and clothes.

Located in the heart of the American auto industry, Detroit’s public transportation system is inadequate and often disappointing. Aging buses don’t come on time and often breakdown. The much heralded M-1 rail line will only go 3.3 miles up one street, making it more of a shuttle for suburban visitors parking to go to the new stadium district than a useful form of transportation, and the existing People Mover light rail continuously circles downtown on its 2.9 mile loop. For 75 cents it’s the best way to see downtown, but I can walk from one side to the other in five minutes and given the city’s 142 square miles of land it’s pretty much useless unless you want an excuse to shout “Monorail!”

But why would you take public transportation in Detroit? It’s the Motor City not the Light Rail City, but for those of us who live here the cost to drive is extreme. Detroiters pay some of the highest auto insurance rates in the country and—as a result--more than half of the cars on the road are uninsured. Why the high prices? Part of it is Michigan’s insistence on unlimited liability insurance, but Detroiters still pay around twice the amount of drivers in nearby suburbs. When I moved to Detroit I priced insurance for a new car and it would have been more than rent… a lot more. I ended up in a used station wagon with over a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it, and at times I’ve paid over $300 a month for liability only insurance.

And anyone moving to Detroit is going to need a car for their frequent trips to the suburbs to go shopping. Housing might be cheap, but in the city even basics like blue jeans are expensive.

Those same businesses that have been heralded as proof of Detroit’s rebirth in national newspapers and magazines are untouchable by the people who live nearby. I can buy a house for a thousand dollars through the Detroit Land Bank, but if I want a pair of jeans it’s going to cost… a lot. Walking around Midtown Detroit I can buy locally made jeans perfectly crafted from American grown cotton for $250 dollars a pair (actually, I can’t. My boyfriend can, but for women the jeans are all custom made… which means they cost even more). I could also get a t-shirt made out of technical cashmere that can be thrown in the washing machine. It legit feels like it was made by fairies. I legit cannot afford it; or the underwear handmade in San Francisco; or the watches made a few miles down the road.

A food market in my neighborhood has just been renovated and repurposed as an upscale leather goods store. I haven’t been inside. I have nightmares about the price tags.

So, yeah, there’s blight. Yeah, houses are cheap (in some neighborhoods) and there are streets full of empty storefronts waiting to be turned into pie stores and cute little markets. For people who live in New York City where the rent is too damn high, Detroit might seem like a new frontier full of opportunity.

But it’s still not a cheap place to live.

Detroit is for Zombies... and Dog Parks

When I first moved to Detroit it seemed like a war zone. There were no thai restaurants, no fancy coffee shops, and no dog parks. Today, we've got three dog parks:

• The Detroit Dog Park on 17th and Rose Street--It's got a killer view of the train station and is close enough to Astros to pick up a flat white on the way. The dogs are friendly. No small dog area.
• Shinola Dog Park on Cass and Canfield--Privately owned by Shinola, the fences are a little lower and there is a small dog owner (although everyone hangs out in the big dog area). The dogs are friendly... the people are a little more pretentious. You can walk to Melt afterwards for an ice cream.
• Grand Circus Dog Park at Adams and Woodward--Downtown dogs and downtown people. If you live downtown then this is the park for you. Otherwise... there's no parking.

Which one is your favorite? Did I miss any? Have you seen any zombies at them??

Vampires vs. Zombies: 50 Shades of Undead Hotties

I write novels that stomp all over the fine line between urban fantasy and horror. Set in Detroit, the Dead Sexy series is made up of fast paced adventure stories with lots of mystery and tons of romance. The heroine is a mortuary attendant/hunter and the hero is dead... really dead... he's a zombie.

Some people have been asking: "Why zombies? Why not vampires? Vampires are sexy." I totally understand. Vampires are sexy. Brad Pitt is sexy. James Marsters is Sexy. Robert Pattinson is sexy. True Blood is all about the sexy. Why is that?

First, let's take a look at vampires:

Dead Set--Chapter One

Dead Set: Available now on Amazon!

A corpse slammed into me from the side, the scent putrid and gut wrenching. Brute force sent me flying, and I careened into a crumbling wall.

The job was supposed to be easy, but when you hunt the dead for a living, easy is relative.

I rolled back onto my feet and checked my stun gun. It had less than half a charge, enough to take down a human or a charging mountain lion, but not enough to incapacitate a full-grown Biter with a taste for human flesh.

Damn.

The stun gun clattered to the floor, and I grabbed for my Bowie knife. The best way to incapacitate a Biter is to jolt them full of 150,000 volts of electricity. Second best is to take out the major joints, knees, elbows, wrists, and ankles. Take out a kneecap and even the most nerve damaged dead man will pay attention. More importantly, without their kneecaps they can’t keep themselves upright to attack.

The pair of dead men I’d been fighting circled warily. Strips of skin were hanging like Christmas ornaments off their faces, but they weren’t completely feral. They still had enough sense to watch out for my knife.

“What’cha. Doing. Little. Girl?” The one on the right growled. “You. Shouldn’t. Be. Here.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself.”

My name’s Gemma Sinclair, I’m twenty-one years old, and I’m a mortuary attendant. Back before the rising that would have meant preparing bodies for viewing and holding the hands of grieving relatives. These days, it means that I hunt dead people for a living. Monsters. Biters. Zombies.

Not that I’d ever use the ‘z-word’ in polite company.

Dead Sexy--Chapter One

Buy it now on Amazon!

Chapter One.

Andrea Mitchell had been alive for eleven years and dead for fifteen hours before she was released back to her family. That’s a serious breach of protocol, but her father was a government official who had some pull with the coroner’s office. He figured he could handle a hundred pounds of undead pre-teen.

Mistake. There’s a reason new Biters are supposed to be held in government facilities for at least sixty-four hours after death. It’s a real danger zone, when they’re just a bundle of nerves and instincts with a taste for human flesh.

Andrea had eaten two pounds of raw beef and the family dog before her father called in backup.

By the time I arrived, she was making a break for it over the back wall.

Fortunately, I’m a professional. 

My name is Gemma Sinclair. I’m twenty-one years old, I live with my mother, and I hunt dead people for a living. My clothes caught on a piece of loose rock as I followed her over the wall. By the time, I dropped into the alley—ripping my favorite pair of jeans in the process—Andrea was gone.

There was an abandoned car on the south end of the alley—blocking out the sun—the perfect place for the Devil Child to hole up until nightfall. I eased my way forward, careful to avoid any sudden movements.

“Hey, Dead Girl,” I called out, hoping she’d rattle the bushes. “Come on, Dead Girl. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Just a trained Hunter with a stun gun and a Bowie knife. Nothing. “Dead Girl—“

Detroit Bittersweet

I sway

Crossing cracked streets and crushing glass beneath my feet.

I sway

In this southern city built so far to the north I can touch the border, on a coast less than a mile wide;

With barbeque, jazz, and moon pie’s on sale now for a dollar ninety five;

Where boys as black as pitch and pale as ash cut their teeth on race relations I can never hope to understand as a recent traveler to this antique zombieland.

I sway

Catcalls and comments washing over my grungy jeans and laundry day shirt.

The motion of my hips moving more men than all the water in the ocean with the selfsame notion that someday I might turn to you. Talk to you. Smile at you. Laugh with you.

This is poetry in motion, you think.

This is the place where violence begins, I know, with the shouts and the winks and the slowing your car down to call out to some strange woman that you have never met. That you will never meet in this fallen city still desperately hanging on to its Motown beat.

But the only way to change the future is one step at a time. Legs stretching out in one long line. Hips swaying as I go about my business, trying not to listen to the sounds of a city that I would so dearly love to love.

Pop Up Detroit

Sushi Sunday and Taco Tuesday.

All the opportunity of a major modern city, here today and gone tomorrow.

Hipsters and handshake deals transforming empty café kitchens into foodie fantasy—

Offer good while supplies last.

Storefronts exclusively open during events giving rise to vents of anger from a populace hungry for glass bottled sodas and screen-printed t-shirts, the opportunity to spend hard earned money more important than the goods you see—

For a limited time only.

 Books and bags replaced with terraforming florists forming a shifting bedrock of society. Rotating concessions making it impossible to plan ahead.

Leaving instead a sense of dread:

The city you wake up to may be not where you said goodnight.

Act now before it’s gone.

 Marvel at a world of maker vision and opportunity—a righteous renaissance constantly anchored by the next bright idea—never thinking of the opportunity cost of investments unmade, buildings unmortgaged, and dues unpaid in a permanent city left to fade away.

Operation Detroit

I have recently come to the conclusion that I love Detroit. Sure, you can't get soup delivered when you're sick, and I'll admit that I often have to think weeks ahead when it comes to shopping (I buy most of my clothes online)... But the city has its charms: the people, the beauty, and even the difficulties.

Face it, some cities are easy to live in. Detroit's all knuckle.

So, as a lover of Detroit and an inveterate real estate ad consumer, I have come to the conclusion that I should buy into the city. Nothing says I love you like a moldering Victorian, a vegetable garden, and a Cold War with the neighbors over your urban chicken coop.

But how will I buy such a wonderland? Even in Detroit, houses of merit cost money... Not much money, but I digress.

Like all of the pioneers who have come before me, journeying forth into the wild hinterlands, I require a surplus of funds (all I know about the hinterlands I learned from playing Oregon Trail, where the banker always wins and the farmer always loses... Great metaphor for life, crappy history).

So, I will write a world famous series of books about Detroit... And you, gentle readers, will buy it.

Problem, solution.

Tada!

Detroit, Michigan, a city with a heart made of steel and a soul created by hard working men and women. Joe Louis and the Dodge brothers. The Paris of the Midwest (shut up, it's a thing). It's a great setting for... An urban fantasy? Or a hardcore suspense?

Comments? Questions? Suggestions?

The floor is open.

Long Day's Journey into Real Estate

I've got a secret vice, an addiction that sometimes takes over my life... And migrates onto this blog. I am completely hooked on real estate listings.

Like many addicts I caught the bug from my parents. I moved around a lot as a kid, so I have been to a lot of open houses and a metric ton of house hunts. Consider me an expert on wobbly foundations, wibbly molding, and illegal additions.

Dropping me in downtown Detroit is like putting a chocoholic knee deep in Switzerland's finest black gold.

Texas-T.

Damn straight, it's enough to make me pull out a Beverley Hillbillies reference.

Unfortunately, like any kid in a candy shop I'm finding it hard to choose. My eyes are bigger than my head. I want them all... the historic gems on real estate websites for half what an 800 square foot ranch house in California would cost... and the abandoned bungalows, little more than windowless shacks sticking out of the snowy ground. As long as the roof's in good shape and the plumbing hasn't been stripped, I'd be happy to renovate. I even like renovating, almost as much as I like real estate listings, and if the place were in bad enough shape then I could do something really interesting. Replace entire walls with glass brick. Install an outdoor shower in the backyard. Redo an entire bathroom in cedar to make my own sauna. I don't do plumbing, and I don't do electricity but other than that I'm willing to bungle almost anything, consider me locked, loaded, and ready to go.

All I need is a registered deed, a crowbar, and a pallet full of Mexican tile.

It's cheaper than therapy.

Otherwise I just might have to join Real Estate Anonymous.

I might have to start Real Estate Anonymous. Friends of This Old House.

Like a Patient Etherized Upon the Table... With Apologies to My DearCousin

So, here I am at the MOCAD art opening... Which is completely fabulous... And I have once again come to the same conclusion I always come to.

First, this sort of event is better with someone else. When every piece is a discussion point you can spend many happy hours perusing any collection. And, while I like art, that's not something I can necessarily do by myself.

Unless we're talking impressionists... Or colorists... Or any hundreds of other things that aren't this. Some of the pieces make me laugh and while it is an exhibit on perception and interpretation I get the feeling that some of the other patrons want to hit me...

Second, if every single piece has to be explained then you're over curating. And if you're over curating then there might be one or two pieces that could be cut. Art should stand on its own, evoking a response (primal or otherwise) without the use of little cards.

In conclusion, I had fun. It was like something out of Tennyson ("the ladies come and go talking of Michelangelo"). I will probably be back, I think there are some pieces that deserve a closer look when there are fewer people around, and if you're looking for something to do in Detroit than I recommend it. If you're looking to move to Detroit and want to know what kind of scene there is then this is just further proof that there's every kind of scene.

Now, should I go across the street to the super schmancy restaurant or go back to my neighborhood and eat pub food?

The Whitney

I took a wrong turn and ended up at one of Detroit's fanciest dining establishments tonight. Lord Grantham would be proud. He would also send me to my room for wearing jeans, they are nice jeans and I had a fabulous sweater over, but... jeans... That they seated me at all is a miracle. The fact that I ended up by the window and not next to the restrooms is surely proof of a deity.

I ordered the California Pinot Grigio not the Michigan (I'm not that adventurous, and they only had two Pinot grigios by the glass) and the host brought over a shrimp crostini on the house. I don't eat bread, but when you're giving me rare shrimp and goat cheese on a crostini then you're forcing my hand.

The beet salad was fantastic, beats, goat cheese, some greens, walnuts, and a mustard dressing. I'm a big fan of mustard dressings. I make my own. This one was better. The ehole thing was better. Sweet, salty, nutty, creamy, it had everything... Le sigh.

Next was another glass of wine. Again, not something I would normally do. Again, on the house. Free appetizer, free wine, double le sigh.

After that I got down to business, glazed salmon and a Brussel sprout, blue cheese, and pancetta accompaniment. Yumminess. By the end you could have rolled me way from the table. It was so good. I spent all my grocery money on one meal, and I don't regret a penny.

Detroit by Night

It is bedtime here in Detroit (past bedtime, I am trying to be a better person) and you would expect it to be quiet. The last place I lived (western mass) the only thinGs up and about at this time of night were skunks, squirrels, and troublemaking terriers.

Here in Detroit it's another story.

Cars race by my window, the theater next door lets out, and a fluffy gray cat attempts to eat my flip flops (they're his now, damn it). Some people might think this is a downgrade. I don't. Detroit is a city on the edge, a place that can be summed up by referencing zombie movies ("you ever see I Am Legend? It's like that... with brunch."), where you can't by electronics or blue jeans and grocery shopping is only possible for a few hours on Saturday.

But if you can put it up with a thousand small indignities then Detroit is also a pretty cool place. The people are friendly. The food is awesome (don't ask about Chinese, just don't ask). There's always something happening.

And eventually the sound of cars passing on Woodward Avenue becomes a familiar setting for a night's rest. Like waves breaking against the shore, the high revving motors of Motor City lull me to sleep.

Tomorrow will be here soon enough.

Rules For Aleah's Detroit Writer's Commune

1. I am the queen. You will have no queen before me.

2. Rent is due on the first of the month. It is payable by check, money order, Paypal, or cash. Art is also accepted as a reasonable currency (see, I am a beneficent queen).

3. Weekly trips to Eastern Market are optional but encouraged. Seriously, who doesn't like locally grown produce and well hung meat?

4. When I go out of town for work someone has to feed my cat (there has to be some benefit to being queen).

5. Weekly potluck dinners at my place! Or not! Impromptu ice cream parties on the other hand will most definitely be a thing.

6. Free wi-fi! Or, I will put my router near a wall! Or you can put your router near a wall, and I will give you a break on the rent.

7. Pets are allowed, within reason (no toucans, giant squid, or elephants... Even if they are meant to be ironic.)

Seriously though, there is an apartment building for sale walking distance to my work, across the street from the new coffee place. Four units. Twenty one thousand dollars. Who doesn't think that's an awesome plan?