I am Soskin Benjamin the executive
director of our papers and I am so

pleased to be here to introduce
Marc to you this evening.

I should thank a few sponsors and donors.

We would like to think
one Consulting Group.

Jonathon short penthouse productions and
the W.

Atlanta downtown for being the official
hotel sponsor for A.P. live when it

comes to funding programs we always
need to think our government funders so

thanks to the National Endowment for the
Arts Fulton County arts and culture and

the city of Atlanta office
of Cultural Affairs.

I also want to let you know that the
lecture tonight with Mark as a lead into

the Decatur Book Festival happening
this weekend in downtown Decatur

this year the Decatur Book Festival has
incorporated the arts in a major way.

And please come out and
visit us in booth three three three.

We will be there making collages
from our old magazines and there

are a ton of other arts organizations
that are represented at the festival.

It's free and if you want more info
it's to cater Book Festival dot com.

Before I introduce Mark I want to remind
you that many of you received a survey and

I hope that you will take
the time to fill that out.

It helps us with future programming and

it's also just really important to
us in terms of Grant reporting.

You also saw hopefully

our latest issues of our papers magazine
you are welcome to take one with you and

if you are not a subscriber we urge you to
become a subscriber of the magazine and

finally that was a good segue.

If you would take a moment and
please put your cell phones on silent.

That would be much appreciated.

Now wrestling.

I think that's all kind of
the business stuff to take care of.

So I'd now like to introduce Mark and
Ellie.

Fanfare like it.

Marc grew up in St Clair Shores or
class suburb of Detroit's

east side between eight Mile and
nine mile in his email to me.

Mark offered this a side.

Fun fact about St Clair Shores this is
the real life location of the trailer park

where M.M. grew up but I didn't know
Eminem He did however work as a shorter

cook at the bar a few blocks
from where he grew up.

So I think that gives you a little
bit of a taste of Mark's writing.

Mark as a first generation Italian
American his father was a knife sharpener

and a shop was in Detroit.

So Mark spent a lot of
time making deliveries for

him throughout the city after college.

He moved to Atlanta lived in Camden Park
and to cater for seven years and

freelance regularly for the A.J.C.
covering music theater in the arts.

MARTIN If so New York in two thousand to
attend Columbia University where he got

an M.F.A. in fiction writing and
became a contributing editor

at Rolling Stone where he's written
cover stories on Paul McCartney Jay Z.

Bruce Springsteen Sean Penn and Brad Pitt
Mark has also written numerous feature

stories with topics ranging from teenage
pot smugglers and Idaho a murder

case involving a violent hardcore punk
gang right wing politics in Kansas.

I like how this go together and

the melting of Greenland
in two thousand and six.

Mark published a novel psycho and Vince
that he must die with Docky archive press

and in two thousand and nine he moved to
Detroit to begin reporting Detroit City

is the place to be published in November
two thousand and twelve a metropolitan

Henry Holt will use his book as a jumping
off point for tonight's lecture talk for

about forty five minutes to an hour will
do questions afterwards and I would be

remiss if I did not point out that
the books is hosting a book signing with

Mark in the lobby immediately following
the talk and we hope you'll stay for that.

And Mark will be.

Well we'll sign books for you.

So with that without further
ado I turn it over to work.

Thank you all for coming out and I want to
start by thanking our papers and everyone

in Georgia tak I'm really thrilled to be
here and Saskia said I lived in Atlanta.

For about seven years so it's it's really
nice to be back and drive around and

see al the new developments you got
you guys seem to have the opposite

problem that we have in Detroit too
too much development here possibly.

So I'm going to read something very

very short just the first two pages of the
book just to give you a little little bit

of grounding into what I'm going to
talk about it actually touches on.

Detroit's sort of her trail
in pop culture which you know

can kind of lead into what we're
talking about this image by the way

is possibly my favorite piece
of public art in Detroit.

It's the Joe Louis.

This is Joe Louis the boxer
grew up in Detroit.

He worked to afford plant for
a while but he hated it was too hard.

So he shifted over to boxing and and
this is right on the Detroit River and

it's this giant black forest facing
directly pointed directly towards Canada.

So I've always really enjoyed that.

And this is my

first time using the Power Point program
so I think it'll work fine but we'll see.

Back when I was a boy growing up just
outside of Detroit my friends and

I beheld any mention of the city in
popular culture with a special thrill.

We loved how Detroit was deemed
terrifying enough to be chosen as

the dystopian locale
of Robocop the science

fiction film set in a coil e undated
near future when to try to become so.

Dangerous that the outsourcing
of law enforcement to an armored

have heavily weaponized cyborg
would seem a prudent and

necessary move when the producers
of Beverly Hills Cop decided to

make the hometown of Eddie Murphy's fish
out of water detective our own because

after all what could be more antipodal
to Rodeo Drive in Woodward Avenue.

What more alien presents to
the Beverly Palms hotel than a black dude

from Detroit in Mumford High T. shirt.

We delighted in that we certainly tested
the speakers of our American made.

Whenever Detroit song found itself played
on one of the competing local rock

stations who would be churlish enough
to flag these songs as relics of

an earlier era or point out how the lyrics
pivoted off the city's reputation for

chaos righteousness destruction
to such a degree the very titles

panic in Detroit Detroit breakdown
Motor City may have house

could be mistaken for headlines from July
one thousand nine hundred sixty seven.

And I'll just pause and said this
Ted Nugent song provided the title of this

book the lyrics the chorus goes Detroit
City is a place to be so thank you.

That.

To this day when the plangent
opening piano chords of

Journey's Don't Stop Believin Blair
from a dive bar jukebox.

Who among us begrudge is even
the most overplayed of power ballads

a respectful split second cock of the head
and perhaps a secret inner smile as well.

All because the protagonist of the song
was born and raised in south Detroit.

No matter there wasn't really
a neighborhood called south Detroit or

that the person living there wanted so
badly to get the hell out.

He took a midnight train going anywhere.

My parents subscribed to time and

I can remember excitedly reading a story
at the height of the tension between

Ronald Reagan in the Soviet Union
detailing the effects of a single

nuclear bomb dropped on
a major American city this.

The others explained had been
chosen entirely at random.

But of course it was Detroit.

A choice that by ninety two probably
came across to most locals as an on

gallant case of piling on.

Still a twelve years old I devoured
the shout out as if the city

had won some national lottery.

The article began say it was late
April a cloudless Thursday evening in

Detroit Assume further that
there is no advance warning

beginning at ground zero of the blast and
expanding concentric lee of the story

proceeded to describe in gruesome detail
the fate of Detroit and its residents.

If you happen to be watching a baseball
game at the old Tiger Stadium for

example you would immediately go blind.

Then you would burst into flame.

But the writer continued on.

Hopefully the pain and quickly
the explosions blast wave like a super

hardened wall of air moving faster
than sound crushes the stands and

spectators into a heap of rubble
skyscrapers topple commuters mountainside

their cars even Canadians and neighboring
Windsor act out this I found particularly

satisfying would be fatally pelted with
fragments of the Renaissance Center

rolled across the river by one
hundred sixty mile per hour winds.

Following the geography of
the article to my family's own suburb

I learned that only a minute after
the blast fires would already be raging in

tens of thousands of people dying
survivors crawling from wrecked homes to

see an eight mile high mushroom
cloud in the distance but survivors.

See I pointed out to my little brother.

Even at that early age displaying
the hopeful spirit that all Detroit area

natives learn by necessity to
cultivate like a rare breed of flour.

One of us might live.

To try it.

So the question

I get Here's another cover from time
from two thousand and nine and.

It sort of speaks to a question I get
asked a lot about this book which is why

why write a book about Detroit.

Being from there.

Of course is one was one reason I always
just found a trait really fascinating and

knew I would write about it in some
form but around two thousand and

nine when the cover story
was written in dozens and

dozens of other stories very similar
Detroit had this weird moment where it

became the sort of poster City Opera
prison metaphor for everything

that was going wrong in the United States
in the world really is the economy which

is cratering in it and it is the economy
in Michigan and Detroit in particular was

really being hit hard by the auto
industry is you know basic collapse and

then that's the foreclosure crisis which
hit Michigan very hard in very early and

it Detroit extremely hard and really
sort of undercut the tax base and and.

And hurt the city basically sort of kick
the city you know into the situation.

It is now which is bankruptcy.

So here's Detroit.

I actually have a little
laser pointer I'm told.

OK So
this big shape here is Detroit proper and

these are all the suburbs
surrounding Detroit.

I grew up over here.

St Clair Shores and
this is the famous Eight Mile Road

which is just like a straight line
dividing the city from the suburbs.

So as there I am as

you know as Saskia said

I I grew up in St Clair Shores.

It's basically a very you know working
class blue collar suburb the thing before.

I'm a thing was best known for.

Was is the home of the Reagan Democrats
which was a pollster

in the eighty's named stand.

Greenberg.

Realized that that these union
workers who had been very.

A loyal Democrats were shifting ever in
voting for Ronald Reagan and the case

study that where this was happening was
McConnell County where Sinclair shores is

my father was a knife sharpener
that's not him but he he he and

my parents are both Italian immigrants and
this is this is a shot of a Ford plant.

You know in the sort of
golden age of Detroit and

their story by parents story
was it was a very common one.

You know beginning in the teens and

twenty's with Henry Ford sort
of perfecting the assembly line.

And then eventually starting
when you start to pay people

five dollars a day which
was unheard of at the time.

Later with the strength of
the United Auto Workers.

You know essentially building
the American middle class in lots of ways

workers from all over the country all over
the world were swarming to Detroit and

this was happening you know
basically up through the Depression.

There was alone during the depression then
during World War two The factories were

sort of retrofitted and Detroit became the
arsenal of democracy they were building

tanks and planes and well into the fifty's
Detroit was really kind of booming and

that's kind of a super bright photo but
it's it's the skyline of Detroit

and you know here's a shot from the riots.

Here's another one people.

People often mistakenly
think of the Detroit riots

in one hundred sixty seven is the moment
when everything went wrong but

in fact that golden age that I just
talked about at the seeds of Detroit's

current state were already
being planted back then.

There he quickly.

You know of suburban sprawl Ironically the
very sort of sprawl that the automakers

were were fostering and
promoting was starting back then and so.

So now.

Only white residents but
businesses factories were

moving out to the suburbs where
where you know taxes were loud or

nonexistent land was plentiful and
cheap factories could easily expand.

There was also you know just sort of group
broader sort of macro economic forces

at play that were leading to
the industrialization and and

then of course you know in Detroit
specifically race was a huge

factor in what was what was
going wrong in the suburbs.

The metropolitan area was extremely
segregated this is a sign from a.

From a housing project that
was built in the city.

It was that they were trying to
integrate at the time so Detroit.

You know all those all those things like I
said were put into play in the fifty's by

by two thousand and nine when I
moved back to to write this book.

This was sort of this was
sort of a moment when Detroit

everything that could have gone wrong had
gone wrong and Detroit was really really

become as I said the sort of
the sort of all purpose metaphor for

what was going wrong with
with with the economy.

This is where I ended up
moving right up here.

This was a street were actually
used to make deliveries for

my dad as a kid I would deliver restaurant
equipment to a store right down

there at the time with back this was sort
of artist last and things like that so

going to quickly read another short
section just to sort of set the scene for

when I live what it was like when I moved
back and the particular interest that

Detroit was getting from not
only journalists like myself but

from artists urban planners architects
that sort of thing and this is just a.

A short.

Two page section in the waning
months of the Bush administration

a curious thing happened is Michigan
experienced a small but significant uptick

in one very specific sector of its tourism
economy journalists started showing up.

It turned out that explaining the origins
of the financial crisis in any detail

required elaborate
definitions of complex and

stupefyingly boring financial
terms like credit default swap and

collateralized debt obligation but
with the potential bankruptcy of

General Motors to get something tangible
and wholly understandable to a lay person.

We'd all at least ridden in an American
cart some point just as we opposite

opinions and various ways in which they
sucked even better Detroit provided

the sort of breathtaking visual backdrop
that shots of anxious looking wall street

floor traders or the exterior Bernie made
abscond that simply could not compete with

is the hurricane approaches land
journalistic convention dictates a live

report from the field where the
correspondent must don a rain poncho and

shout into a microphone while being
buffeted by the elements palm trees

flailing wildly on the deserted beach in
the background a visit to the ruins of

the old Packard Plant or a ghost street
of abandoned houses became the financial

collapse equivalent it taken the worst
economic crisis since the Great Depression

to do the unthinkable Detroit
had suddenly become trendy and

so we all came reporters from
Fortune The Guardian C.N.N.

and The Economist advice from Tokyo and
Paris Sydney and Los Angeles.

While attempting to get footage of
the Packard Plant a Dutch film crew was

carjacked which itself
became a news event.

Adding to the Detroit so crazy story line
and a satisfying metanarrative kind of way

at a public school rally in nearly
bumped into Dan Rather was Dan Rather.

Even on television anymore.

And he just turned up on his
own dime drawn by an old

man's vampire vampirish six.

Cents to the most swollen van in
the circulatory system of the present

news cycle.

The new obsession with Detroit did not end
with journalists at least not according to

the journalists themselves who reported on
how artists were also colonizing the city

could this be a first wave of
Bohemian gentrification was Detroit

the next Williamsburg Brooklyn.

One young couple Chicago had
bought a home in Detroit for

one hundred bucks Brooklyn artists came
in for another house in a block of ice.

Thanks to a nearly fifty percent tax
incentive being offered by the state

how they would film crews also arriving
along with actors like George Clooney and

Richard Gere a glossy French fashion
magazine even produced a special Detroit

issue featuring shots of models and ruined
backdrops the magazine cost twenty dollars

in the United States or in local terms one
fifth of the price of a home in Detroit.

Land speculators made the scene to the new
mayor former Detroit Pistons basketball

star Dave bang began to publicly
acknowledge the need for the city to build

shrink in radically reinvent itself
a pledge that urban theorists who had long

regarded Detroit as the unsolvable math
problem of their field found tantalizing

and so they came to align with
the Scandinavian academics in the past or

alien agriculturalists the deep pocketed
philanthropic organizations in the free

market ideologues in the fringe
left utopian as they

are they come to see
the place as a blank slate so

debased and forgotten it could be
remade The irony was almost too

perfect Detroit having done more than
any other city to promote the sprawl and

suburbanization that it's so despoiled
the past century could now become a model

green city for the new century with
with bike paths and urban farms and

grassroots sustainability nudging
aside planned obsolescence.

So I join the wagon train along.

The hustlers and
the do gooders the preachers and

the criminals the big dreamers looking to
make a name for themselves in the heavily

armed as outlets awaiting the end of
the world they we came like pilgrims.

To witness to profit
from to some time somehow

influence the story of the century.

It might very well turn out to
be the story of the last century

the death rattle of the twentieth century
definition of the American dream but

they're going also be another story
emerging the story of the first great

post industrial city of our new century.

Who knows Crazier things
have happened in Detroit.

So yes so I moved back I mean I
came back to to write a story for

wrongs done specifically on
the collapse of the auto industry.

I saw these journalists other
journalists there thought you know

I'm a native I could
hopefully bring more nuance.

To the story bring up things like humor
and and other aspects of the Detroit story

that I felt like journalists just coming
in for a couple of days were missing.

This is a meme again.

So one thing you know one interesting
thing that happened that sort of

touches on what I was just talking
about was the way the sort of national

discussion of Detroit changed while I was
there when I first arrived Detroit was

you know it seemed like
the country really wanted it.

Couldn't get enough grim
stories coming out of Detroit.

They wanted to hear about the ghost
streets in the you know any

sort of crazy terrible Detroit story
seemed to sort of delight people and

in a sort of unsavory way that I
thought like perhaps reflected people's

anxieties about their own situations and
the economy the country as a whole was was

in such a precarious place and
I think it was comforting at that time so

know that at least there was this
place Detroit where you didn't live.

That was much much worse than
wherever you happen to live.

At But I noticed while I was there and

I was seeing it happening
in real time as the recess.

Just continued to drag and a new
Detroit narrative started to emerge and

this was about the comeback people
suddenly really wanted to hear that

Detroit was coming back part of it
had to do with the auto industry and

this is a little still from the the famous
Chrysler ad that ran during the Super Bowl

that people just loved in the following
year they did another one with with

Clint Eastwood and so so people really
I think needed to believe that that

if the worst of our cities could somehow
come back and there was hope for all of us

another part of that narrative I think was
the sort of Arts the idea of the big arts

renaissance in Detroit and this is
the poster for the movie the documentary

to do Tropi a great documentary and
many of you have probably seen this couple

on the cover there featured briefly in
the movie and they were my neighbors on.

Service street and they're there

they're a couple an artist couple
who moved to Detroit from Hawaii.

I joke in the book that that's possibly
the first time in human history that

particular migration made but
if we go back.

So they lived in this building
they had the whole for

a whole floor of this building.

It's an old like for on a chair where
it was a furniture warehouse and

they had an entire floor which had to be
like two or three thousand square feet and

they were paying two hundred fifty
dollars a month so so that you know a big

part of what was driving you know what
was was attracting artists was the cheap

rat I mentioned a hundred dollar house
that story was everywhere and people.

People like the idea of.

You know I mean artists always look for
places like that where they can they can

live cheaply and make their art
in Detroit also had the sort

of the near of authenticity
that that that.

Williamsburg Brooklyn for
example maybe lacked.

So you started seeing all sorts of people

this is the ice house that I also
mentioned earlier these were a couple of

artists from Brooklyn who came
in from an abandoned house solid

sort of I think represent the freezing
of the housing market or something.

It was slightly conceptually
dubious I thought but.

But they got so much attention and

it became a sort of thing where you could
come to Detroit and do an art project and

kind of jump to the front of the line
you get on C.N.N. doing like anything.

It was really and I would see it happening
I would I remember being added some

sort of dinner party where these these
people like local foodie types were were

were sort of having a having a little
a little dinner and this guy who

just moved to Detroit and started making
sausages like three months earlier was

there being interviewed by The New York
Times for a feature and it's like really.

Wow that's what's happening very fast but
so

there at the same time there was you know
it's a real the phenomenon is real and

there are parts of Detroit that
that have changed tremendously and

a lot of it has to do as is often the case
in cities with artists coming in first and

sort of setting the tone and you know
I wouldn't use the term gentrification

in cities like Detroit because I don't
think it's really there yet but but

but you know moving in that direction and
so if you look at this sort of

downtown midtown core of Detroit which
is a very small part of Detroit.

That's kind of unrecognizable from what
it was ten years ago and you actually.

There's a housing shortage.

You can't.

It's very hard to find an apartment in
those neighborhoods and this is in a city

with something like seventy thousand
vacant buildings so that's kind of insane.

And to think about one
pocket of it being so

hotly to me having a lot of
it has to do with artists.

So a few of my for.

Favorite artists.

This is Steven Durata Koya the.

Dress league and they do some really
interesting stuff you can see

this is an old former speakeasy I think.

And they they do the street are kind
of stunts where they play around with

with imagery from advertising and
and that sort of iconography and

it's I think it's a very interesting thing
to do particularly in a city like Detroit

where if you if anyone has been
there if you drive around it.

You start to notice one of the weirder
things about it is the lack of commercial

spaces and instead in signs advertising
things and people trying to get you to buy

stuff and lots of the city it's there's
just there's just nothing and so for

them to come in do stuff like this and
in put up graphics that say coming soon.

Or you know traditional advertising
sort of sort of slogans.

It's kind of cool.

This is Tyree guy who has been been
working in Detroit for for decades.

He he was living in a very
rough neighborhood and

basically started taking over
the neighborhood with with

this massive art installation called the
Heidelberg Project named after the street.

This is a house that's all covered
with creepy stuffed animals.

But he's he was really you
know one of the first first

big artists come out of Detroit starting
back in the eighty's in the city actually.

Was initially not supportive at all
of his work they bulldoze some of

the houses now they've come around and
he gets visitors from all over the world.

It's very.

Makes me think of it like
Howard Finster like that sort of

folk art environment although he.

I believe did go to art school so
he's not untrained this is a photograph

by a Dutch photographer who moved to
Detroit named Curran Vermuelen I find

her work very interesting because she
actually unlike a lot of the photographers

came to Detroit and just took pictures
of the ruined buildings she focuses on

people like almost all of her photographs
have people and this is this is a photo

taken very close to downtown Detroit and
it's one of these neighborhoods that

has kind of used to be a densely
populated residential neighborhood and

now it's you feel like you're out in
the country somewhere and some some of

the people who live that I used to live
very close to where this kid lived and

people started farming and they had
goats and this is an artist who I love

a guy named Scott Hawking who is also
native Detroiter he grew up in a suburb.

But he makes these really interesting
installations using only material he

finds in these sites so this is the inside
of the the old Fisher Body plan which

is a huge factory and you see you drive by
when you're when you know and the major

highway coming in from the airport you
see it and it's this crazy eyesore.

And it's been like that.

I think my whole life.

I don't remember it looked ever
looking differently and so

he built this pyramid using I don't
know if you can guys can really tell.

But the floors of these
factories were beneath

the concrete there were these
wooden little wooden bricks.

So he built this strange
pyramid documented

it by taking pictures and and
then just leaves it there.

You know and whatever happens happens.

So yeah the those were those

were some of my favorite artists This is
of course the famous Diego Rivera mural.

In the Detroit Institute of Arts which
is was in the news recently in May.

If you probably heard
about as Detroit went to

bankruptcy the emergency manager who's
sort of running things in the city.

Floated the idea of possibly sallying
some of the artwork in the in

the museum some of the they have you know
they have a great collection because

it was a collection that was put together
when the auto industry was still booming.

So they have you know mangoes overcast and
red and and so there was this

idea floated that I don't think I don't
think anything's going to come of that but

it freaked a lot of people out the idea
of selling off these paintings to pay off

banks This Diego Rivera mural
was commissioned by Edsel for

I'd came to Detroit first for
several months spent a lot of time and

forwards Rouge plant and it's really
spectacular This is only one of the four

walls and and
it's pretty it's pretty amazing.

And so that sort of takes this so the next
section I was going to read which is

to me sort of a pin in my eyes.

Maybe the height of the absurdity of

some of this some of the sort
of art art scene hype.

It was when Matthew Barney came to town.

So I'm going to read again
a very short short little scene

about about this performance
that Barney did and

it starts at the trade astute
of Arts where that mural was

one October morning two hundred members
of the art world elite gathered for

a catered brunch buffet in the great
hall of the Detroit Institute of Arts

the Museum of those arts temple built
in one thousand nine hundred seven

when Detroit's out of barons
had money to spare for

such conspicuous cultural displays have
been chosen as the starting point of

an epic performance by the contemporary
art superstar Matthew Barney.

That's known for
a series of visually ravishing and

fanatically art directed cream
master films and also for

being the longtime companion of
the Icelandic singer be York the event

was invitation only of the guests
most have flown in from New York and

Los Angeles in the list included curators
from the Museum of Modern Art and

the Whitney auctioneer's from Sotheby's
directors of the Warhol foundation.

P.S. one and the DIA Foundation along
with various other artists gallery owners

wealthy and well connected patrons and
be York herself.

The Barney performance titled coup would
be part of his first major effort since

the cream master films in which
the handsome extracted cast himself

as a grotesque unrecognizably
made up Saturn figure for.

Or as the murderer Gary Gilmore crew
master too often spending interminable

chunks of screen time doing things like
say squeezing through a narrow tunnel

lubricated with what appeared to be
Vaseline Barney's latest project was

a planned seven chapter adaptation of the
Norman Mailer novel Ancient Evenings which

concerned classical Egyptian the oceans
of the seven stages of death and rebirth.

The Mailer's book had been
a decidedly minor late period work.

The choice at least topical has seemed
fitting for Barney whose own films

like allegorical paintings made animate
arrived coated with enough multi-layered

references and fraught symbolism
as to conjure their own mythology.

Unlike remaster this new piece consisted
of a series of live site specific one time

only performances all to be filmed for
some edited future use.

Part of the reason for

the setting of crew had to do with
the local connections of two of Barney's

personal heroes who were referenced in
the production the performance artist.

James Lee Byers who was born in Detroit
and died appropriately enough and Kyra.

And Harry Houdini who died in Detroit and

whom Barney clearly considered sort
of proud of her for months artist.

Barney had earlier spent time in the city
filming a prologue to Ancient Evenings

which culminated with a Pontiac Trans Am
driving off the ballad bridge

to a Houdini stunt performed
in one thousand and

six in which he leapt from the bridge
while shackled with handcuffs

the Trans-Am was supposed to be
a reincarnation of the nine hundred

sixty seven Chrysler crown Imperial used
in the smash up derby in cream Astra three

at the brunch I had some fresh
fruit in a made to order omelet.

While I was standing in line for
the fruit to Detroit.

Artist told me how well taking York on a
tour of his neighborhood the day before he

pointed out a foreclosed home he hoped to
buy with plans of transforming the yard

into skateboarders half björk
misunderstanding had cried

delighted you turning
the houses into pipe organs.

What a great idea.

After brunch we filed
on to the tour busses.

That would shuttle us to the first act
of the performance the buses embark upon

a leisurely caravan through the city
Poznan in front of the abandoned train

station cruising past the more mundane
ruins scarring every other block

a chic British gallery in her
sixties Stepaside me for the tour.

She said she'd been one of the earliest
champions of Barney's work

when we passed the poor teen story
Wurlitzer building her eyes lit up.

She told me the Wurlitzer
is World Family friends.

Turning to one of her travelling
companions a young long

haired artist who looked like
a guitar tech for heavy metal band.

She exclaimed novel.

We should buy one of these buildings for
a dollar everyone around us laughed

eventually our bus was parked on
a residential street a mile or so

west of downtown a couple of
guys in hooded sweatshirts

watched from the front
lawn of their dilapidated

apartment complex as we exited the tour
busses and were directed into a moldering

two story glue factory where folding
chairs had been set up on the main floor.

Along with standing room spots on
a second level loft a group of us.

Line workers toiled a long bench
meticulously assembling about a dozen

junkyard Viola's.

The workers for the most part burly man
with Walrus moustaches ponytails and

U.A.W. Local six hundred T. shirts looked
authentically working class in the set.

Likewise felt real from
the forboding hook dangling

from the ceiling to the defunct heavy
machinery crowding the perimeter.

It was unclear which if any elements
of the SAT had been found and

which had been constructed
by Barney who is known for

his first studious attention to
the tiniest sculptural details.

I didn't find it impossible to
imagine a team of Arden turns

distrusting freshly painted walls with
specially designed dust applicators in

hand flickers Barney himself
was nowhere to be seen.

I was told he was directing the scene
from an undisclosed location on

the Somebody's line the workers were
employing forest manufacturing techniques

each applying himself to a single
specific task from drying strings along

the necks of the instruments to
soldiering their bodies into place

as each below was completed a musician
appeared from the wings and

began to play a tune with dirge
the workers Meanwhile remained

bent to their individual jobs proceeding
at a punishingly unhurried pace.

This continued to half hour giving us
plenty of time to absorb every sarcophagus

detail of the factory space.

I wonder if the hideous screeching of
the tune was distracting the instrument

makers and how it must feel for an hourly
worker in Detroit to play act his or

her trade in a performance with a rep
reputed the five million dollars for

an audience of the cultural elite.

I notice that the actor James Franco
had fallen asleep in the front row.

Maybe one day the only factory work left
in Detroit would be stylized performance

art art.

Manufacturing is historical
reenactment upon leaving

the glue factory Marcion a gangplank
single file onto a two hundred foot barge

that took us on a journey down the Rouge
River through the heart of Detroit's and.

Just real history.

Not only past the Rouge plant but

under the Gothic drawbridge as in
alongside factory smoke stacks spewing

actual flame until it began to feel as if
we were traveling back in time to some

extinct era which of course we
sort of were it was a cold and

wet afternoon in the grey Midwestern sky
looked especially vast and pretend to us

aside from your Could being from Iceland
and dressed appropriately for the weather.

Many of us had shivered in the open air
back occasionally taking seats on a tiered

road damp girders lining the starboard of
the barge like bleachers while helicopters

buzzed overhead to film the forensic
investigation of the drowned a Trans-Am.

From the water with a massive crane and
deposited on the deck.

A smaller motorised boat circled in our
wake a horn section on its own deck

serenading us with blasts of free
jazz later while a pair of male

twins saying threatening operatic arias
the remains of the Trans-Am were moved

from a bar in melted in the furnace as
of the gargantuan multi-story foundry

which this doesn't really do justice
as to how massive this thing was

is several dozen other laborers swarmed
like ants in the yawning quarry.

The rain wind pounded out such a squalid
by the end that most of us fled to

the tour Busters missing the coda
the release of a live vulture

at the after party in line at the open
bar ran into one of the curators and

asked how Barney's location scouts
had chosen the foundry She explained.

Actually none of the founders they looked
at were the right size he built that one.

Where I discovered the blue
collar workers toiling on

the assembly line were not in fact blue
collar workers but art world types who had

helped with the news that have the effect
of making me slightly more depressed.

So this

sort of leads us into
what I think is you know.

A slightly more complicated and

somewhat troubling aspect of of
the new attention being paid to

Detroit and
that is the the aesthetics of Detroit and

specifically the ruins and that you know
that can't be ignored is one of the sort

of huge parts of the fascination
with the city and that definitely

came into play in that in that tour
they took us down before the Barney.

Before the Barney performance.

This is a map of the city and
you can see you know

you can see you can see these
areas that the that have

that have to have the highest
vacancy rates I mean Detroit is

a city that at its peak had
nearly two million residents

at the last census it was down
to about seven hundred thousand

many of those residents of course went
out to the suburbs that were in the map.

I showed you earlier.

But you've got the city with with
a massive infrastructure and

in just not not enough people and
not enough of a tax base to support it

and you've got all these spectacular ruins
from the sort of golden age of the city.

One of the most famous is
Michigan Central Station.

This is the the old train station
that was built by the same

architectural team that did
Grant's Grand Central in New York.

It's about twelve story is and
you can probably tell and

you can basically see
through the building.

It's chorus and it's been abandoned.

Since the eighty's there was some talk
of turning into police headquarters at

one point which would have
been sort of spectacular but

but it's still sitting there
it's owned by this local

billionaire who's been kind of
sitting on the land trying.

To work this sort of
complicated land deal.

You know this is just this is this
is an old robber baron your house

is a whole neighborhood
of houses like this.

You really saw a spike in

photographs like this one taken both by
fine art photographers some of you might

have seen a book by by photographer Andrew
more to try to sample what it is these

these beautiful photos of of
abandoned homes and factories and

spaces this is a science lab
from a from a high school.

This is the lobby of a probably a fourteen
or a twenty story a beautiful art deco.

What was once a sort of highrise
kind of luxury apartment building

this kind of photo became so prevalent.

You know you had fine art
photographers doing this you had

you know news photographers and just
amateurs I mean if you just search Detroit

ruins you'll find any number of you know
sort of flicker sites locals became or

began referring to this is a ruin porn and

understandably they're very
sort of founded and and

just tired of the same old
portrayals of the city and

this is a photo I took
of a burned stolen and

burned car that was left in the Packard
Plant which is this huge factory

goes on for miles and it's been closed
since the one nine hundred fifty S..

This is a house that was taken
over by a pack of wild dogs.

This is another abandoned house
a kind of love that graffiti.

This is an old picture of an old Press
Photo of the Supremes who grew up in this

these housing projects which.

Very close to where I live
the Brewster projects and

this is what they look
like today they're all.

I mean you can see they're
absolutely bacon and so

you know I'm of two minds about the stuff
I mean there definitely is a very sort of

creepy unsavory aspect to some of some of
the way that people gawked at that stuff

on the other hand as I say in the book you
know for a journalist to come to a city

like Detroit I mean if you see the scale
of the stuff to ignore it would be like

writing a travel story about Malibu and
not mentioning the Pacific Ocean.

I mean it's just the scale
is unbelievable.

And so it would be dishonest not
to show some of the stuff and

you know and then the aesthetics
get kind of complicated because

some of these rooms are sort of beautiful.

These are the bad side of room which

inspired Romantic poets like hits and

Shelley and painters like me and
pier in a sea.

You know there's a whole
tradition of of paintings

of people contemplating ruins and

so it's it gets sort of complicated.

You know Detroiters it also
breaks down somewhat along

racial lines in in the sort of
city suburb divide a long time.

Detroit is often I would hear people
say you know just tear it all down and

I can really understand that attitude
you're driving by some of these rooms

every day and it makes sense on the flip

side a lot of the people sneaking
into these abandoned buildings taking

the pictures putting it on the Internet
are white kids from the suburbs and

it's one African-American Detroit or
told me you know.

So if if they caught a black kid from
Detroit in one of these buildings.

He'd probably be arrested.

You know and these white kids can do it
and don't really have to worry about that.

So it's all very kind of the artist

whose work I showed you earlier
Scott Hocking who builds the pyramids.

He did another piece that I
found really interesting and

I this was in the Packard Plant.

Which bill.

You know the PAC It closed in the fifty's
like I said it's just been sitting there.

And it's just unbelievably massive.

I went with him one day one
winter to see this piece.

These are some of the pictures and

I'll just read this the short two
page description of what I saw

one afternoon I tagged along on
a tour of the Packard Plant.

With Scott hocking an artist who'd been
exploring Detroit's ruins for years.

It's got some of the new piece
in the Packard It was December.

So we our work puffy coats as we marched
down the middle of the street our boots

crunching the surface of a deeply impacted
layer of snow and ice we eventually

reached the train tracks that had once
caught carried freight directly in and

out of the sprawling complex
the factory five story

structure across two sides of
a major road seemed to have no and

Scott said you could get lost inside and
that even he hadn't explored every corner

huge chunks of wall had collapsed to
reveal the great innards of the place

in dangly stooped back the trees
hugged the walls like Ivy for years

after it ceased operation the Packard
had been used as a storage facility.

Scott's new installation made use of
a bunch of antique television sets he

discovered in one of the storage sheds and
had involved his painstakingly.

Hollowing the bulky frames to a partially
collapsed section of the roof.

Now he let us through an open bay door is
if in preparation for a public burning

someone who downloaded a dance that could
have tree branches just inside the space.

Otherwise cavernous and empty a section
of brick had been removed from the base

of a far wall forming a tiny scrap
crawl space cartoonish illegible blue

graffiti tag the circumference of the hall
crouching so low he practically Now Scott

led us through the passageway I wondered
if the person who cut it had been thinking

of Lewis Carroll on the other side of
the hallway into the stairwell the stairs

had no railing and each step had
a course treacherous dusting of rubble.

We climbed past broken windows overlooking
a snowy graveyard eventually coming to

the top floor where huge portion of the
roof had collapsed flooding that end of

the space with afternoon light the covered
portion of the floor remained dim and

shadowy The only enhance in the spotlight
quality of Scott's installation

in the place where the roof had caved
he'd arranged as empty television boxes

on top of a number of the exposed
columns which looked like the remains of

some Doric temple some of that I
mean it's really pretty crazy.

It was a spectacular vision.

Some of the columns that toppled over
others remained stoically upright

surrounded by Boulder sized
chunks of concrete and

gnarled fingers of rebar we climbed
up to the roof for a better look.

Scott deriving a perverse pleasure from
pointing out the places he suspected

would soon collapse explaining how
various support pillars are buckle and

the angles at which they
might come to ground.

Kerryn target for who's with us set up
a tripod and took our picture as we

peered over the edge the roof was
covered with snow and in the photo.

It looks as if we're standing on a wintry
plane at the edge of a cliff but

in fact the building had
been abandoned for so long.

That scrub grass and little tree is
to begin to grow on the roof and

not poked up through
the layer of whiteness

the post-apocalyptic grandeur of the scene
momentarily silenced us if we were in

the presence of something demanding
respectful meditation but what exactly.

If you manage to slip inside certain
Detroit ruins your sometimes struck by

their sacred aura like they can feel
beautiful and tragic at the same time

monuments to flawed human aspiration that
in an unintentional way begin to approach

the holy It was freezing her fingers
wet and I'm taking notes and pictures.

Fina another person who is with us said if
the place were turned into a museum you

could fix up a little space on the corner
and put in a cafe make that part warm.

We could hear scrappers in another part of
the plant the clattering of their built

their equipment.

Back inside.

We came across another section of
the building where an industrious type had

dragged a couple of car seats to a scenic
overlook we saw a very fresh footprints in

the snow near a window on the wall someone
had spray paint on one wall someone

had spray painted a blue Krishna figure
over which someone else had written.

Fuck you.

Buddha.

As we were leaving a carload of teenage
boys pulled up looking for a way and

another afternoon at the Packard Plant I
ran into a family from Paris.

The daughter said she'd read about
the building in a Lonely Planet.

Her father had a camcorder hanging
around his neck the previous stop had

been Michigan Central the train station.

Another time while conducting my own tour
for an out of town guests a group of

German college students drove up when
queried as to the appeal of Detroit.

One of them gleefully exclaimed.

I came to see the end of the world.

So that's some of
the room too as in there.

Scott the artists.

Well.

So you know and interesting Lee
actually since I wrote that passage

the wealthy guy from the Chicago area has
been talking a buying the Packard Plant

and possibly doing something with it
which would be amazing and I feel like

there's definitely plenty of blight
in Detroit that needs to be removed.

There are something like seventy thousand
abandoned buildings but there are other

other other places like like
the Packard Plant that are there really do

have historical value and are you
know are sort of really interesting

parts of our industrial history and
it would be a shame to see them all go and

turn into parking lots and
you know the funny thing is

I mean there was a photographer
a Chilean photographer and

they in the seventy's and eighty's who
started photographing ruins throughout

throughout the Rust Belt in cities
like Gary Indiana and Buffalo.

But he didn't spend a lot
of time in Detroit.

His name is Camilla Vergara and
he wrote this essay for

Metropolis magazine in
the ninety's sort of calling

on the leaders of Detroit to just section
cordoned off a section of downtown and

just leave leave these abandoned book
buildings to sort of mold her and

make it an American Acropolis basically
that didn't go over well with

the Chamber of Commerce surprisingly but
but you know oddly I mean this he was and

it was a very cheeky essay that he
didn't really mean seriously but

but he was sort of a prophet
because that is happening now.

Tourists.

You see tourists at the Packard Plant
at the train station every day.

I mean you can drive by there at any time
and you'll see people taking pictures.

So it seems like there should be
an interesting way to sort of use some

of these ruins to you know to incorporate
them into whatever Detroit become.

Moving forward.

Which brings us to the last part of
the talk and that's you know what

you know what Detroit might become this
is these population figures are wrong.

This is old but just to give you
a sense of the size of Detroit.

It can fit San Francisco Boston and
Manhattan within within

the city limits and so we're talking
about a one hundred forty square miles.

About forty square miles
are it is vacant land.

And here's an aerial shot
of of a neighborhood.

You know and again this you know this used
to be a dense residential housing and

now these are fields I mean you go to some
of these neighborhoods in the summer and

the grass is up to here and feel like
you're in rural Alabama or something.

And this is very close
to downtown Detroit and

so that's been one of the one of the big
very interesting challenge challenges and

potential assets for a city like Detroit.

It does have the space and
what do you deal with that here's

another aerial shot this is

this is actually the old
ball park Tiger Stadium

which was torn down when I first moved
back to Detroit in two thousand and

nine they tore in like half of it down and
they ran out of money.

So it literally looks like the coliseum
in Rome and it was that way for

like nine months and then they
finally tore the whole thing down.

And now people will occasionally
play baseball sneak in there and

play baseball in the old Diamond.

That's a casino in the background some
of the great new architecture coming

out this is another former
neighborhood that was totally cleared

as part of this development plan they were
supposed to build lots of factories and

nothing really came of it and so
it's this my friends called the zone.

It's basically like blocks and
blocks of this where

you don't even see the sidewalks you feel
like you're out in the country somewhere.

So the question is sort of you
know what to do with the space.

One of the more interesting
plans to sort of

come out of all this new
interest in Detroit.

Was originally called Detroit works.

They've since changed the name to Detroit
Future City and the idea was you know

it was put in place by
the by the mayor there but

also by you know it's basically funded by

by private private foundations because
the city have money to pay for this.

They brought in.
Tony Griffin and

who's an urban planner from Harvard and
lots of other people thinking about how to

transform the city that you know I'd
compare it more to a city like Los Angeles

very spread out you know not
much in the way of high rises or

apartment buildings more
like single family homes or

Raja's driveways How do you make
that city dense more urban and

and then turn the turn the turn all
this bacon land is something else.

So you know they talk.

This is one of the sort of things
they came up with the idea of having

these different zones
of land use the carbon

forests that the idea behind that is
planning trees around industrial zones and

along highways to sort of
soak up the air pollution.

Blue infrastructure would be you know
actually sort of capturing rainwater and

in you know almost creating wetlands and
going all the way into.

The idea of of actually making large
scale farming in the city proper

one of the one of the plants that has
gotten a lot of attention was come up with

a guy named John Hantz who is a hedge fund
guy who grew up in rural Michigan and

lives in the city now but
wanted to do this large scale farming.

He's been somewhat stymied but he has a
sort of small test farm up and running and

his idea was to do a sort of mixed use
thing a lot of the soil obviously being

Detroit is you know you know he couldn't
grow vegetables and things like that.

So for for those sorts of areas
he suggested a Christmas tree

farm things long things like
that recreation facilities with

horses he want to do
it on a massive scale.

This is another rendering.

Detroit has already become sort of
the urban farming capital of the US What I

mean there are thousands of of the little
gardens and farms throughout the city.

This is one of the the Hance plan
was greeted with some skepticism

by the more grassroots people
who've been doing this for

a while they're nervous
about a corporate takeover.

Here's another little garden.

The second thing that's

part of the the Detroit's future city
plan is light rail Detroit basically

as the Motor City had had no
public transportation to speak up.

Other than the really kind of shoddy
bus system a bus system that again

is there's a Detroit only bus system

there's a totally separate suburban
line which is really surreal so.

One summer when I was working when I was
in college and living at home with my.

Parents I'm working downtown I
would get on the Suburban boss.

It would pick people up through
the suburbs hit eight Mile Road and

immediately go express.

Straight downtown so
you have these suburban buses

in Detroit buses kind of
driving side by side and that's

you know kind of the story of Detroit in
a lot of ways the lack of cooperation

between city and suburbs has been
a huge part of the problem but

they did get funding for this light rail a
lot of it comes from private foundations.

But they're built there.

They're getting ready to start the first
phase of that which is a huge deal for

a city like Detroit.

This is a rendering one of the big
players is a guy named Dan Gilbert.

Who the owner of Quicken Loans He
also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers.

And he he's really this is a rendering
done by his people and he's

he's really invested in downtown Detroit
a lot of these buildings that were Garwood

was talking about making into necropolis
Gilbert has bought and he's moved

a lot of his employees downtown convince
lots of other people to move downtown.

This is one of the one of the areas
that I talked about at the beginning.

That's really really is thriving it
doesn't look quite like this but

he's bought about forty
buildings downtown and

it's really it's it's
it's pretty impressive.

This is Lafayette Park which is a huge
These are means bandura buildings and

there's also a bunch of low rise
buildings that he designed.

And this is one of the reasons you
know Detroiters are wary of top

down urban renewal programs this
happened in fifty's sixty's.

And a huge There was a there was
a storage lead black neighborhood

in Detroit called black bottom that was
kind of the thriving sort of Harlem.

Detroit at that time was completely
demolished in the name of urban

renewal and they've built these high
rises in a freeway basically so.

So there's there's a lot of wariness
about about what is what is going to

happen with something like Detroit Future
City especially when you talk about

moving people from their homes and
getting people to move to to

these denser neighborhoods that
will supposedly be better.

You know on the one hand you look at you
go to some of these neighborhoods and

you see literally a single
house left on a block.

So you think well that's a good deal for
this person to move on the other hand

you know this is maybe an old lady has
been there for forty years it's her home.

She's held it down when
everybody else laughed.

You know it's it's a tough sell.

And there's no eminent
domain in in Michigan.

So that that's something they're
really working out and the other

thing that I think is tricky about this
plan is is as I said I mean Detroit.

Detroit is in the middle of this
bankruptcy the city itself has no money to

pay for any of the steps of there's
really a huge reliance on foundations and

private individuals wealthy people like
this guy Dan Gilbert wealthy people like

Mike Ilitch who is the owner
of Little Caesars pizza.

He also owns the Detroit Tigers and
the Detroit Red Wings hockey

team he's about to build a big hockey
arena in downtown and is getting.

Taxpayer money for that even while they're
talking about selling paintings from

the museum and

this is the interior of one of
the Danielle brick buildings.

So I think this points to
another potential problem.

You know when you talk about seating so
much power to

these unelected rich people they they
might have questionable taste and so.

So it's all very tricky.

I do and the book in a note of cautious
optimism that I think the bankruptcy

the bankruptcy is really totally in
flux right now we don't know how to turn

out in a lot of it depends on the the it's
in bankruptcy court at the moment so

a lot of depends on what the judge
decides to do but in theory

it could wipe a lot of these debts clean
in open the way to lots of new investment.

The the sort of new the Nuestra businesses
that are coming into the into downtown and

some of these buildings that
Gilbert is hideously renovating

it's a really do much more interesting and
diverse mix of new industries and

in the past one of the problems with
Detroit was that it was really such a one

industry town and
there was always an almost

you know per turn alist idea
of of the auto companies and

that they would always be there to sort
of watch over us and come back and

take care of the city in those
solutions have been sort of.

Vanquished.

And so there's really much
more of a willingness to and

a desire to diversify the economy and

bring in tech companies and in all sorts
of smaller entrepreneurs maybe won't have.

G.M. opening up huge auto plant that
employ five thousand people that you're

having a lot of smaller shops
with one hundred people and

the third thing that makes me hopeful is
that the demographics of the city and

suburbs are are changing somewhat people.

People talk about to Troy you know and

they can either mean
the city proper bordered by.

Or the metropolitan region as a hall
which if you include the suburbs.

You know depending on where you draw
the lines is anywhere between three and

four million people.

So that's you know that's still a still
a serious number of people and you know

some of the suburbs farther north are some
of the wealthiest suburbs in the country.

So if there were more regional
cooperation there could be

a lot more could be done and
you've seen with the past censuses.

You know middle class blacks
whites from Detroit has made

the suburbs much much more
diverse than they ever were.

You know historically the suburbs
were very red lined so

they were basically whites only.

And now the suburbs are are are getting
very diverse the city.

Likewise saw its first uptick in in white
residents in something like forty years in

the last census so
that seems like a positive movement and

like it could lead possibly lead
to to further their regional

cooperation which I think would really
be the key to fixing things in Detroit.

I thought I would just and
with one more of very short reading and

this is just a little scene
in one of the neighborhoods.

I was describing former neighborhoods I

guess where there are only
a few houses left and

I when I moved back to the city I live
near one of these neighborhoods and

I would ride my bike occasionally and and

yeah I think that's all
you need to know so

people like

to compare the amount of vacant land
in Detroit to equivalent sized spaces

of Paris could fit into Detroit's
forty square miles of a.

Nothing or two Manhattan's
slightly shaved Boston such

formulations though inevitably lead one to
imagine a continuous contiguous land mass.

Several as a rotten limb or
possibly something to be cordoned off and

beautified like a Central Park which of
course is not the case they can parcels

were spread throughout the city closer
in spirit to tumors revealing a body.

When enough of those parcels happen to
cluster together you had urban prairie his

entire neighborhoods nearly wiped
from the map the inevitable result

of a place built for two million
servicing less than half that number

an exemplary swath of Perry had crept
within walking distance of service street.

Some call the neighborhood I'm talking
about South Pole town polish factory

workers populated the area several
decades ago but I started thinking of it

is upper chain after Shane Street which
runs straight up from Detroit River

on the two mile stretch of Shane itself
once a thriving commercial strip.

You could count the viable
operating businesses on two hands.

Several of the now unrecognizable
storefronts have been burned and

partially collapsed years
earlier looked like

funeral pyres left untouched as
a more monument to the dead.

On the residential streets
entire blocks had gone to fields

the remaining houses
arranged schizo frantically

from obvious drug spots to beautifully
kept up brick ranches from old wooden

bungalows to foreclosed properties
scrapped to the joists by copper thieves.

Once I shocked my trepidation at
venturing into such a lonely and

forbidding territory.

I began taking long bike rides around
upper Shane and summer afternoons

the insect noise could be deafening in
though the people sitting out on their

porches would stare and soon learned
that country rules applied here too.

If you smiled and gave a little wave or

a head nod you generally
get the same back say.

Of course the dope boys whose hard gazed
dedication to radiating inscrutability and

menace convinced me to
drop the smiling part.

Mostly though the menace was due
to the absence of people and

thus far more rural than
urban putting me in mind of

seventy's exploitation movies
like The Hills Have Eyes or

Texas Chainsaw Massacre in which naive
city folk venture down the wrong

dirt road and find themselves on
the business end of a meat hook.

The scrappers were everywhere.

One Sunday morning in broad daylight
on a desolate stretch of grandee

I rode past a guy pulling pipes twice the
length of his body and loading them out of

the basement of a foreclosed home into
a white minivan a few blocks later

a couple of entrepreneurs came driving in
the opposite direction in a pickup truck.

It's bad overflowing with
twisted pieces of metal

including what looked to be
a number of shelving units.

In another field a chain and Canfield
Tyree Guyton the Heidelberg artist

had arranged a bunch of discarded
shoes in the shape of the river.

Shortly after he'd laid
out his installation.

I had noticed some kids from
the neighborhood waiting right through

the middle of it like anglers
when I asked was what was up.

They said free shoes.

The little girl warned me that was hard
to find your size or even a matching pair

a few blocks away just past the Church
of the Living God Number thirty seven.

A white pit bull began barking furiously
at me from the yard of a home that

I thought abandoned.

When I got closer I noticed a young man in
a crisp Tigers kept staring calmly at me

from one of the broken windows a bicycle
down a block of Dubois with just a single

house left standing almost dead center
of one side of the street the whole

of the other side had turned Fiero
forested by a tangle of on mowed grass and

gnarled trees.

Despite its isolation the two
story wood frame house

had been neatly maintained with
a handsome grey paint job and

a lush garden of rose bushes and
fruit tree is surrounded by picket fence.

Around faced man in a bright red T.

shirt and Bermuda shorts sat
on the top steps of the porch.

I stopped and said hello.

His name was Marty.

When I got closer I noticed
a cane next to him on the porch

the writing on Marty's flip flops
proclaimed him big slugger number one dad.

Marty used to work in the auto industry
and also a thorn in Apple Valley a sausage

planet near Eastern Market that closed in
one thousand nine hundred eighty eight.

I had made frequent deliveries to for
an Apple Valley as a teenager.

My dad sold them sausage casings.

Marty and I bonded over the side
coincidence that we figured out.

We probably never met back them.

I did things with pigs
live pigs he told me

widening his eyes theatrically to
signify you really don't want to know.

He told me anyway while
he bit never butchered he

had the comically unpleasant job of
hurting the soon to be slotted pegs into

the Avatar using a weapon he got into
the habit of naming his favorite pigs and

keeping them in the back with
him as long as possible so

eventually they all had to go and
ask Marty if you'd be willing to move if

the neighborhood got right sized and
that was the you can mystic term the.

Detroit works project
rightsizing the city.

He shook his head.

This is our house for generations we
pay our taxes that's not happening.

So when I open the gate at the side
of the House who's back there.

Marty asked you turn out to be as aunt who
also lived in the family home she tended

the flowers in the saffron is pulling
a red wagon laden with gardening supplies.

I do it as much as I can she said my piece
of the house had been in his family for

fifty years sixty four years.

His aunt said my mother bought this
house when I was three months old.

You get to analyze this Marty
said these are some rough times

we're living in most of
our jobs went overseas.

I never seen an economy like this ever
he lived on the block his entire.

Life.

Watching the neighborhood
disappear around him.

The barber shops bars ice
cream parlors all gone.

This neighborhood used to be straight.

He said.
He squinted at the thicket of trees across

the street you get used to it.

The one thing it's quiet here.

Don't be all that crazy stuff around here.

I like the serenity of my environment
to me all this is a big plasma screen.

You just have to be strong and
keep God with you.

What does the Bible say
you're in this world but not.

No wait I said I thought
it was of this world but

not in it and he nodded Right right.

The later I realized I'd screwed up
the quote of course we're all in it.

Thanks thanks.

For.

I shan't.

Know I Detroit City is a place to be but

not when you're actually trying
to write a book about it.

I had to it was one of those
places that as a writer.

It was kind of an embarrassment
of riches I would open

the paper every day and some new
crazy thing would be happening and

I'd think like I've got to put this in the
book and so eventually when it came time

to write the book I moved I went back to
New York I kept my apartment in New York.

Ironically I'd had no
trouble subletting my place

in New York when I was living in Detroit
want to sublet my Detroit place.

One of my neighbors ratted me out
to the landlord and I had to.

The apartments.

Sadly in the city of
seventy thousand make it.

Buildings I lost my my place.

But I go back a lot.

My family still lives there.

Yes.

I did.

Very briefly Yeah he's you know

I mean I was sort of I guess
mocking the piece a little bit.

But it was you know also really

kind of amazing I mean one of the more
amazing things I've ever seen.

I mean just the amount of
work that went into it and.

I mean being on that barge
the slides I showed of

the industrial portion of the river
don't quite do it justice.

I mean it's this area of Detroit.

You can't really can't really get
there unless you're working at

one of the plants and
just slowly be going down this

river kind of into the heart of darkness
with you know like I said flames literally

spewing from the tops of these factories
and you know it was Barney's so.

So you didn't really know you never
really knew what was real and

what he built and south this giant boat
came by at one point like a giant and

we were all wondering like did he time
that like exit came out of this really

perfect moment and it was like there's
no way he could have time that but.

Yes I met a very briefly and he was he
seemed very nice but you know he's isn't

like I didn't interview him he doesn't
even really like to talk across much.

Well General Motors

moved their headquarters to the
Renaissance Center so that they were there

were some danger of them leaving the city
at one point they did an older building

called the Fisher building which is
this gorgeous kind of art deco building.

Now they're in the Renaissance Center.

Beyond that I'm not sure you know I think
that they they they take up a lot of it.

People don't know the architect
is an Atlanta architect right.

Yeah.

So it's this crazy you know I don't know.

I find the inside.

I think people hated it for

a long time I find that it's dated in sort
of a weird interesting way of I'm not.

You know.

An architect.

But I think the Renaissance when
I was a really cool building.

Yeah so that's all I know about it.

Well it wasn't it hasn't been
totally vacant this whole time.

Like I said it was used for

storage for a while I think it was like
a big paintball complex at one point.

I've seen people.

I mean now you see people there posing for
wedding portraits.

I mean it's really become this crazy.

Iconic tourist stop.

But yeah.

Part of the problem was the city
couldn't figure out who owned it.

It had like passed through so
many different hands this

convicted ecstasy dealer at one point
they thought he was maybe the owner but

they couldn't prove it.

So in the city didn't have the money to
tear it down themselves because it's it's

just so massive and it's just
environmentally it's kind of a nightmare.

The idea of tearing down some of these
factories a camera that's an Albert con

building or not but you know those
buildings were like these concrete bunkers

I mean they have these shows you saw those
columns and so they're just it's a really

expensive to take those down to the city
even though it was this massive eyesore

and a lot of people wanted to see it
come down city couldn't really afford to

do it and they couldn't I think
it's been really difficult for

them to figure out who
they could force to do it.

So yeah it would be interesting
if the you know the talk

of this guy buying it is very
it's in the very early stages and

part of me would be surprised if
something actually came out of it but

it would be kind of great if they
could at least keep part of it.

Yeah much.

Yeah probably that that sort of interest.

I think has increased over the last ten or
twenty years I think I think even back

going back to the the early days
of Detroit techno music like in

the late eighty's I think there have they
were having raves in the Packer plan and

now and that was when it was
a bit more in taxes like now.

Kind of dangerous like that shot
of of us standing on the roof that

whole section of the roof has
completely collapsed since then.

So they're always there often fires there

another film part of one of
the Transformers movies there.

They've been filming a lot of kind
of disaster movies they filmed

the remake of Red Dawn in Detroit
as well one of the filmmakers

told me that they love shooting in Detroit
because it's the only city where you could

just do like a massive explosion in the
middle of downtown and like nobody cares.

Yes

that was definitely the initial response I
think I mean people like I said you know

there's the trees have long memories
there's this sort of history of urban

renewal kind of gone wrong in Detroit and
so they you

know that those developments left a very
bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.

They were you know they were
very they at least paid lots and

lots of lip service to sort
of community feedback.

I mean the roll out for this thing
basically lasted the entire time I lived

lived in the trade writing a book I mean
it went on for like two or three years

it was sort of interminable and but
they had all these town hall meetings and

in sort of ways in which the traders
could sort of make their voices heard.

I think they basically had the plan.

You know the plan that they came out with
was the plan that they had you know kind

of Invision from the very beginning but
I think people are you know the they don't

the farming thing is not
incredibly popular in

the city you hear a lot of people talking
about the sort of plantation model.

You know they just that people
don't like the idea of.

You know farms in a city like Detroit.

I want to see across the board but I'm
just saying you know that that's that's

one thing you hear you know and
it's tricky.

The idea of you know getting people
to move is also really tricky

as you saw in that section I just read
that you know a big problem in Detroit and

again this is a historic
thing as people see.

All of the money and

all the resources being poured into
a very small section of the city.

So you've got you know a lot
of what's getting good value.

Is that downtown midtown
core of Midtown is sort

of the the University Medical Center and

that's where the light rail will go
right through the middle of that.

And then you know the neighborhoods
they're first talking about fixing or

kind of you know coming off of that but
the vast vast majority of the city is

just you know has been ignored for decades
and decades and that's going all the way

back to you know the seventy's in the
eighty's with with mayors like call common

young that was the rap on him to building
things like the Renaissance Center and

in ignoring the neighborhoods and
and so I think there's there's quite

a bit of cynicism about this kind
of top down top down plan but

there's also some you know justifiable
cynicism about whether there will ever be

money to really do it you know outside
of what these private foundations and

you know rich investors like
Dan Gelber decide they want to fund

All right great.

Well thank you all for coming.

Thank you.