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.

Rules to Live By

I was born in the late eighties in Los Angeles, and I’ve come to realize that most of the cute stories from my early childhood were actually the result of my mother looking for free air-conditioning (tip: art museums offer both culture and climate control). Like all kids, I like to think of myself as a rebel. In my case, this means a life spent following my bliss on nights and weekends while I work a day job. With benefits. I’ll never date an alcoholic or move cross country to marry a long distance boyfriend.

And I’ll never own a beagle.

Still, I’ve taken a few of my mother’s rules to heart:

Always buy art.

Always accept collect calls. No matter who or where they’re from.

Never turn away a friend who needs a place to stay. (In my case, they’ll be staying on the five foot long couch in my shoebox size studio apartment).  

Live like you mean it.

My grandmother can beat up your grandmother.

Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. My grandmother’s about five feet tall—in the heels that she owns but never wears—and despite her daily bike ride and occasional turn on the elliptical you’ll never see her posed on the front of an exercise magazine: ‘Granny’s 10 Tips for Awesome Abs.’

I’d still back her in a fight.

The woman is tough.

At a time when most women were stuck in the kitchen, my grandmother was working her way to the top of her field. All while raising two kids. These days she’s retired, nominally. Which means she takes the jobs she wants—jobs that provide plane tickets to interesting places with great shopping—and is only publishing every few years.

Just don’t ask about her cooking.

Having worked her way to the top of the field she can afford to make her own rules (“I would never take a job where I had to set an alarm clock.”). However, this means she can be out of touch with the realities facing my generation (what kind of job doesn’t require an alarm clock? Seriously, I will sign up right now!).

Sorry folks. This is not your father’s job market. Or your grandmother’s. Old Economy Steve is hilarious because it’s true (awesome meme, check it out).

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.

Reviews

Following my posy about the Whitney I have had requests for more reviews... Does anyone else think this is a good idea? Should I just go back to writing melodramatic prose about Detroit? And what's up with my writing career anyway?

Seriously though, does anyone out there want to know what I think about Slows (go to there), Cliff Bell's (go to there now), or the Grand Trunk (go to there for brunch)

Thoughts and requests go in the comments section.