The man was standing in the doorway of our hotel restaurant. Inside. The restaurant had two entrances - one from the street, where the hostess was; one from the hotel lobby, where the restaurant’s bar was the first thing you saw. We entered from the lobby and this man was standing, backpack on shoulder, shorts, and a Detroit Tigers - orange T-shirt on, and stopped us with a head tilt: “Hey! Help a guy out, sir!” - he said to my husband - “Help a guy out!”. We kept walking, and I felt some remorse, truthfully. It was Sunday. I should have given him something. Or at least offered to pay for a meal. As we were sitting down and several minutes after that, after ordering, I could not clear this man out of my head. I was thinking, “I should give him something. I’ll buy a meal for him right here at the restaurant. I need to ...”. But before I could voice what my plan was going to be to help him out, our waitress came back to our table. She had taken our order, she had brought us our coffee, we hardly had time to sip our first sip, why was she back? She leaned over to our table and in a whisper she said: “There was a guy at the back door, at the bar. He watched when the bartender went to the bathroom, then snuck behind the bar and stole her purse. The police were in the lobby and caught him, so he didn’t make it very far. They took him away, there was no violence, but just wanted to alert you to be careful.” This is when I felt a mix of sad, guilty, and scared ... But not angry. Just sad, guilty, and scared. Then, I said to myself: “Boy, I guess Detroit does live up to its name nowadays.” We were downtown Detroit, in a somewhat high-priced hotel, at 10AM on a Sunday. I have traveled a bit and I had never stayed in a hotel where we had a pair of city police officers at our hotel’s reception virtually 24 hours a day, every day. Virtually everyone I know that heard that I was going to Detroit follows it with “Wow! Be careful! Lots of crime there.” Or “Detroit? Why?” As some of you who have been following my blog for years know too well - there is no such question for me as “why are you visiting a place?” Any place. Every place in the world, every rock has a meaning and a story to tell - and that is why enough for me.
Detroit skyline as seen from Belle Isle across the Detroit River. That Ambassador bridge that connects America and Canada (faint, on the horizon) was giving me nightmares. It's famous for not being marked clearly enough and people cross it by mistake. I was worried they won't allow us back!
But Detroit will not stay with me as a crime city. Not in the least. Detroit was not a city of crime, but of dreams. Dreams come true - maybe a long time ago. But also dreams that have been broken. A city that built America. Just as much as New York City or Los Angeles.
In its most profound way, Detroit felt like a gorgeous, rich city, with more history than I could absorb that no one loves anymore, if they ever did. Like a neglected child still beautiful but savage, or a neglected garden - still beautiful but leggy and unyielding ... Like an aged person who shows all the scars of their life, wrinkles, growths and all, Detroit shows its age and its character. No different than any other historic city, as history goes, for America which is not much longer than a family album. There is a passion and an intense-ness about a heavily industrial city. I was born and raised in a university town, with a very small industrial district. But when I wandered off in the “industrial zone”, the pulse of progress, of a life driven forward, as opposed to stagnation, felt real. Felt alive. Felt strong. In the streets of Detroit - you feel that - you feel what it must have been like 100 years ago, when plants were hopping and people came from rural America to work on the assembly line, as Johnny Cash tells us. Detroit once put America on the map of the world! And to some extent, you still feel that - in the streets, in the history, in the architecture, and stories. The architecture alone rivals that of Chicago and New Work City. The streets are wide and lined with as many styles of construction as there are books on architecture. The materials are diverse and for the most part durable. But the vicious winters, the lake-effect weather, the winds, the many years of neglect have left deep scars on every brick and every marble panel. Detroit used to house about 1.8 million people back in its industrial heyday. Today, it barely has a bit over 600.000. Our culture has vastly changed and our lifestyle shifted, here in America: back in the day, people worked and lived in the city. Despite being the birthplace of the American automobile industry, a legacy that gifted it with the nickname of Mo(tor)town City, having a car was a luxury. People could not afford to ride to work and in cold, long winters, they preferred to live close to where they worked. Things have changed. Now, everyone rides. Everyone drives. People moved outside the city, in the suburbs, and some jobs remained in the city, while others, the industrial ones, got shipped, mostly overseas. This gutted the industrial Midwest, and Detroit was probably its heartbeat. You can imagine the emptiness that a city built for 1.8 people to live and work in leaves when it cuts that population to a third! Detroit just about feels like it’s populated in about a third of its spaces ... The empty two thirds echo with ghosts and memories ... The rest of the buildings are prey to decay and rot. Unfortunately - and I mean this with all my heart. You can see the uniqueness in the craftsmanship and the inspiration of every architect that ever designed for this city - much like Chicago, but in its own style and vibe. Although Detroit comes across as a big American city (sky rises, aerial tram and interchanges, urban feel), it has the noise and crowds of a small town. It’s sleepy and quiet. Hardly anyone walking around or even driving around. We had the least amount of traffic in any big city we have ever been in, for sure.
People are amazing! We never encountered a rude, vulgar, or snappy person during our stay. They are polite, smiling, patient, calm, incredibly kind and welcoming. We asked one of our restaurant waitresses if we could bring our drinks from the bar across the lobby into the restaurant so we could have their dessert - something that I am pretty sure was not allowed, since the restaurant had their own bar and was more than willing to make a sale on their own beverages. She made up an answer: “Sure! Why not?” I asked her, “Is this legal?” She said with a smile and a shrug: “Well, if it’s not, no one told me, so I say it is legal. Come along.”
Just like there is such a thing as "Southern hospitality", there is also such a thing as "Midwestern down-to-earth-ness." A friend of mine (from Ohio, oh my!) spoke to me in my earlier years of living in America about Midwestern values - blue collar, hard work, honesty, trust. You feel these in every interaction with people here, too.
As wonderful as the renowned Henry Ford museum is (and its outdoors counterpart, the Greenfield Village; and yes, you can really see the actual car that JKF got shot in as well as the chair that Lincoln got shot it in the Ford theater in DC), the Detroit Institute of Arts was really my absolute favorite! As much as this Beaux-Arts-style building impresses through its own style, it impresses more through the top-notch exhibits that it houses. Entire houses and churches ensconced within its walls, original paintings by Monet, Van Gogh and monumental, large-scale industrial murals by Diego Rivera overwhelm you. We spent about three hours there but I don’t think we saw half of it. Not in depth for sure. I could have spent a day. The only other museum that impressed me more was The Met in New York - and we didn’t finish that one in one day, either.
Just like I failed to eat a slice of the famous Chicago pizza last year, I failed to visit the Motown Museum this year in Detroit. Another local landmark not met. This was on my bucket list, as they say, but we got there too late and the tickets were sold out. Cannot tell you what a sigh of disappointment I unleashed! And that was the last day in the city - so, no do-over - the next morning very early, our plane would take us back home.
Ah well, we always need reasons to go back, right?! I have a friend who was born in Detroit. When I met him, in 2000, and asked him where he was from, he reluctantly said “well, I was born and raised in Detroit.” He was quick to follow with: “But none of my family lives there anymore.” - like it was some kind of sin to admit this. He went on: ”I feel about Detroit, just like you feel about Romania: I am from there. But I have no desire to go back.” I felt a lot like I used to feel about Romania on this trip: a place that was beautiful, with hidden gem-like history pieces, but a place that its own locals didn’t know how to sell and brag about. I no longer feel like Romanians do much of that anymore - Romania has, finally, earned its well-deserved place on the map of Europe and the Romanians I know are proud of it. I hope that Detroit achieves that too. One day, soon!
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