tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55386012009-02-21T11:32:00.582-05:00You have found the detroitblog. This is about my wanderings and debaucheries in Detroit, as well as observations, news, commentary and ramblings about the city itself. I love Detroit, even the old Detroit of blight, waste and emptiness. Hockeytown. Motown. I grew up here, had my best times here. It's my town.Johnnoreply@blogger.comBlogger269125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1123167335280344642005-08-04T10:55:00.000-04:002005-08-04T10:55:35.290-04:00

So it's Freman vs. Kwame, as expected. The final results of the primary came in, a scant 12 hours after the polls closed Tuesday night. City Clerk Jackie Currie is reducing her lag time behind every other community - way to go, lady! Word is, some equipment "went missing" for a while last night, causing the delay in full results until this morning. That's not alarming or incompetent or

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1122990510125356942005-08-02T09:46:00.000-04:002005-08-02T14:18:54.270-04:00

Today, of course, is Primary Election Day in the city. I'm not going to be one of those self-appointed public service announcers that exhorts people to vote. Do what you want - you're rational adults. Well, you're adults anyway, most of you. Except the ones who aren't alive but who still receive ballots from Jackie Currie, our 141-year-old city clerk. However, if you think that Mayor Kwame

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1122920217984343082005-08-01T14:11:00.000-04:002005-08-02T09:49:34.223-04:00

In what has turned out to be merely a short respite from this otherwise horribly swelterting summer, we spent part of this weekend outdoors in the temporarily nice weather, enjoying the Mexican Fiesta in southwest Detroit.Only in Detroit would they move the festival from the wide-open riverfront at Hart Plaza over to the edge of crazy Delray at a pre-Civil War army fort. Smart way to keep the

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1122497337613952112005-07-27T16:48:00.000-04:002005-07-27T18:56:28.936-04:00

Illness and summer don’t mix well at all, I’m learning. The oppressive heat drags the situation to an awful new level of humid misery, leaving one with as much life as the Sharon McPhail campaign. Yes, only six days until the primary election, something obvious by the saturation of local TV with odd homegrown political advertisements.For Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s latest ad, his staff seems to have

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1122039639599126532005-07-22T09:40:00.000-04:002005-07-22T09:40:39.613-04:00

It's amazing how much something as small as a tooth problem can bring normal life to a screeching halt. Add to that an unfortunately timed illness, and you have the makings of a living hell. This is where my existence stands. It's hard to know whether to pass out or vomit at this point. Hence, no blogging lately. And no living. And no beers. And no meals. And no socializing, And certainly no fun

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1121285669856023912005-07-13T16:13:00.000-04:002005-07-22T09:45:58.030-04:00

What an odd coincidence. A day after I went roaming through the Jeffries Homes housing projects (the header photo on top), or what's left of them, on my own help-yourself photo tour, part of it went up in flames. When I was there, a lone person sitting on a chair eagerly waved me into the complex as I initially lingered on the perimeter; apparently I had stumbled into the "pharmacy" section of

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1121199996777538032005-07-12T16:26:00.000-04:002005-07-12T21:46:34.810-04:00

Note that the following post took until about 4 p.m. today to get done despite me having a light load at work today. That’s a reflection on the number of $8 beers I consumed last night to celebrate my free entry into the All-Star Home Run Derby, and the havoc said beers are causing in my brain today.Parking for events like these isn’t daunting to me, because I know every square foot of downtown.

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1121109217986531142005-07-11T15:11:00.000-04:002005-07-12T22:02:04.366-04:00

Was all ready to post something, then had All-Star tickets fall into my lap for tonight, so I'm in! I didn't even have to abuse my press pass to do so. Thus, the posting will come tomorrow, written in hangover prose, complete with observations of tourists, mockery of security personnel, conversations with hobos, and maybe even a word or two about baseball.

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1120851314589740432005-07-08T15:34:00.000-04:002005-07-08T15:56:27.186-04:00

Work is busy busy busy, so here's some random babbling:The Red Wings fired Dave Lewis as head coach today. What’s most remarkable about this story is that it’s actually news about hockey, something we haven’t seen in a year, apart from discussions about the NHL lockout, also known as the Worst Failure of a Labor Strike in History. Yes it was technically a lockout, but a lockout only because the

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1120593045847034362005-07-05T15:50:00.000-04:002005-07-05T15:50:45.853-04:00

Busy weekend. Packed in several Tastefest visits, an impromptu Saturday stop at Comerica Park to watch the Tigers give up a 4-1 lead to the Yankees and lose, late-night movie watching in Campus Martius, Mexican dinners in southwest Detroit, fireworks at Greenfield Village, and luckily nothing involving walking on the ledge of a skyscraper trying to dodge security guards looking for me. And I

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1120152048528247602005-06-30T13:18:00.000-04:002005-06-30T15:39:09.476-04:00

The Freedom Festival fireworks last night went off without a hitch, a hitch being the shooting of people. And nobody shot = event success in Detroit. The crowds were a bit thinner, largely due to lingering gunfire fears from last year, but that didn’t stop the maddening traffic gridlock from forming once the fireworks were over as everyone fled the city at the exact same time.It seemed all my

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1119985043462599362005-06-28T14:56:00.000-04:002005-06-30T16:05:42.503-04:00

Man, it's hot. The kind of hot that makes being alive unpleasant. Being outside is out of the question. Yet couch-sitting isn't happening either, since my redbrick apartment, built in the 1920s in the unadorned, workingman's style apparently meant to keep workers suffering in the summer, not only absorbs heat, it almost seems to generate it, making it hotter inside than out, no matter what. The

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1119623814845258812005-06-24T10:36:00.000-04:002005-06-24T13:33:53.163-04:00

Well, that certainly sucked last night. For us, what began as a lot of drinking adding up to a happy buzz became a lot of drinking adding up to an unhappy hangover today. The Pistons were up by nine points in the third quarter, yet they still lost. Where was Tayshaun? Where was Chauncey? And now, because there’s no victory, we miss out on the mayor and others telling us to pat ourselves on the

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1119463654783182732005-06-22T14:07:00.000-04:002005-06-23T09:38:48.880-04:00

This is going from being detroitblog to being Lost Detroit History blog. From Scovel Memorial Church to the Jefferson Avenue Baptist Church to the Statler and Madison-Lenox hotels to the recently torched Studebaker plant, it’s becoming hard to keep up with what is being destroyed around town so far this year. I can only imagine what the second half of the year will bring, as Superbowl pressures

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1119283056103503702005-06-20T11:57:00.000-04:002005-06-20T11:57:36.110-04:00

While everyone is going bonkers over the threatened removal of those goddamn whales from the Broderick Tower in favor of proposed advertising, a mural featuring a local icon that actually does have something to do with the city was removed in favor of crass automobile advertising by General Motors.While Wyland, who loves his homestate so much that he moved to California, got his wish to keep the

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1119030873548247172005-06-17T13:54:00.000-04:002005-06-17T14:50:22.600-04:00

Just when I began wondering what happened to mayoral candidate Sharon McPhail, she pops back into the eye of the media by announcing a new McPhailesque idea – naming a “population czar” to stem the flow of people out of the city.The last we heard about her, she had arrived a half-hour late to a Detroit mayoral candidates' debate on Mackinac Island in true scatterbrained fashion — is there

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1118750337323585972005-06-14T07:58:00.000-04:002005-06-14T07:58:57.333-04:00

The Delray post was perhaps a bit, um, long-winded, so it’s probably even better that I kept out this stuff, which would have extended the post to attention-span-stretching proportions. After spending way too much of my spare time in Delray this spring, I’ve got a number of these kinds of leftovers, sort of like the extra tracks recorded for an album but left off at the last minute and later

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1118349610206985072005-06-09T16:39:00.000-04:002005-06-13T16:57:53.063-04:00

The city of Detroit as we know it today was formed in large part by annexing to its core a number of surrounding suburbs into a sort of supercity near the turn of the century. Yet a number of these former villages and townships retained their character and identity as distinct neighborhoods long after being swallowed by Detroit. One of the more notorious of these, on the southwest border of the

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1118236641411462732005-06-08T09:17:00.000-04:002005-06-08T09:37:33.270-04:00

The Freep inadvertantly stole my thunder by writing an article about the Delray neighborhood yesterday, the topic of my next post, which I've been working on for a while and should be done later today. Suddenly my work will be about as spontaneous and fresh as a debate question for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. So much for surprises.On another note: dETROITfUNK has an article, a cover story no less, in

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1118154791767955562005-06-07T10:32:00.000-04:002005-06-12T00:30:43.746-04:00

Of all the abandoned buildings in Downtown Detroit, one is utterly unique: the castle-like Grand Army of the Republic Building at Cass and Grand River.A medieval-looking building constructed of rough-hewn stone, featuring turrets with battlements and fronted by a grand, two-story arched entrance, the GAR was built over 100 years ago as a memorial and meeting place for Civil War veterans from

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1118066182987263522005-06-06T09:56:00.000-04:002005-06-06T09:57:30.493-04:00

Got some killer posts — laden with photos and chock full of fascinating explorations — coming up this week, once I finish them. Now that I’ve got that self-pat on the back out of the way, a bit of news:Taking Off the Gloves, part two: As further proof that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is little more than a thug, he is now threatening to cancel the International Freedom Festival fireworks display if

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1117829620213927882005-06-03T16:13:00.000-04:002005-06-03T16:23:43.590-04:00

Time to break up the interesting, photo-heavy posts with some less interesting, dry, dull text:A new EPIC/MRA poll suggests just about anyone who can stand up on two legs can run against Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and beat him in a head-to-head matchup.Even state Sen. Hansen Clarke, the classic, unknown, dark horse candidate, would beat him, according to the survey results. On the downside, EPIC/MRA

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1117551176194458742005-05-31T10:52:00.000-04:002005-05-31T14:00:20.080-04:00

Memorial Day weekend in Detroit means it's time for the technofest, also known as DEMF, oops I mean Movement, oops I mean Fuse-In. In reality, the event should be called Invasion of the Skinny White Kids.The constant name changes reflect the schitzy, haphazard way the thing’s been organized over the years, so poorly in fact, that for the first time in the history of Hart Plaza festivals, they had

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1117117112063211252005-05-26T10:16:00.000-04:002005-05-31T10:54:43.326-04:00

Lost sight of, perhaps, in the recent troubles in the city is the fact that it’s springtime, which, even amid hectic days, quietly compels us to savor it.And nowhere downtown does it seem more springlike than Campus Martius Park, formerly Kennedy Square, which had for years been a dirty, all-concrete home to pigeons and lunatics. Now redone and in its first year as a rebuilt public square, it’s

Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538601.post-1116870208836257082005-05-23T13:42:00.000-04:002005-06-03T20:10:20.476-04:00

The Madison-Lenox Hotel is now gone forever, with no remnant of its existence other than lingering clouds of dust borne on asbestos fibers and a giant pile of historic rubble. And as has become a habit here on detroitblog lately, here is an obituary for yet another piece of our history that's gone:The Madison Hotel was built in 1900 on the edge of beautiful Harmonie Park, on the swank corner of

Johnnoreply@blogger.com