Detroit Spirals Further into Misery: Last Grocery Stores Close - Page 2

From what I've heard (Which isn't much since I don't live in MI) is that the state as a whole has its own problems stemming from it's over reliance on the big three 9Amongst others). In fact, IIRC there was a thread similar to this that addressed such issues.

I'm surprised Detroit hasn't built a teleportation network so all the white people can safely enter downtown for Wings, Tigers and Lions games.

It's called I-75 S to 375 to Jefferson Avenue. It's like you never left the Burbs.

Yeah, this entire state is fucked. We've been in a single state recession since 9/11. While the rest of the country was enjoying a housing boom, we've had a mass exodus occurring. It doesn't help that Jenny "From the Block" Granholm, our governor, is an idiot about to shut the state goverment down over cuts to the budget vs jacking up taxes on people who are flat broke to begin with.

I've actually been meaning to ask you this for a while now, Surge, but I never remember:

Why are you still there?

What's even weirder at least to me is that despite this massive urban decay. The Detroit area boasts two of the most powerful members of congress (Rep. John Dingell and Rep. John Conyers) ya think they would have some influence in trying to help things. But once again, the federal government proves itself by its actions or really lack of.

Windsor is really, really nice. It's shocking in comparison.

Also: All Nude Strip Clubs.

I'd like to say its so my son can hang out with his grandparents, but it's really because I can't sell my house. Nobody can.

The whole state's in an economic recession and the government is facing a possible shutdown because there's LOL NO MUNNYS.

The state's manufacturing dependency is the same problem as other Rust Belt cities and states, but what seems to be the big kick in the pants is the state's been unable to get any sort of serious investment from other industries like white collar and technology. Additionally, Michigan is one of only two states that lost population from 2000-2005, so there's a major brain drain going on that further discourages economic growth.

Detroit's an unsalvagable money pit. There's no way the city can support its own sprawling, infrastructure, so the state has to help, which just puts a further burden on resources.

I guess that can be a good thing. We've got a few in LA, although I haven't been in a strip joint since '03 (I've got my reasons). Although I've never had the desire to get another full nude lap dance from a girl who had three piercings down there. Luckily it was dark and I was being pretty liberal minded at the time.

In regards to racism in Detroit:

Metro Detroit is the result of 40+ years racial division. Since the Riots in the 60's, there's a divisive line between black and whites despite the heavy mix with regards to the workplace.

The interesting thing about Detroit is the majority of overt "racism" stems from blacks regarding whites. The city council tosses out the race card at the drop of a hat. I couldn't stop laughing when one of them accused the non-profit Detroit Zoo organization of it when it volunteered to handle a bunch of financing in exchange for taking over the management of it. The Zoo....The Race Card....It boggles the imagination.

A lot white people in the burbs, especially those born since the the late 60's were suprisingly non-racist in comparison to their parents, but start to become more and more "closetly" racist in response to reverse discrimination resentment as the years go on. Affirmative Action was a nice idea, but implemented so heavily here with regards to government positions and business company incentives that it's had the reverse effect of creating more racial tensions than it ever was able to solve.

I haven't been a Michigan resident for very long, but Detroit's problems seem to be a continuation of bad planning stemming back from the 1950s. It's a very sprawling city, especially for one so old, and as such the city has a major financial burden keeping roads, sewers, trash, etc. all serviced and maintained.

Couple that with a near-continuous loss of jobs and extreme white flight in the 1960s that deprived the city of its biggest tax base, and what the city is right now is just the culmination of an unsustainable economic situation.

I mean, look at the population decline. 1,849,568 residents in 1950, 951,270 in 2000. That's virtually HALF the population spread out over the same area that the city is responsible for maintaining. Basically, there aren't enough people actually LIVING in the city to support it.

Detroit sucks (I lived there, was born there, and visit often), but I still really like it. Saying you're from Detroit is like saying you have a stump for a hand because it was bitten off by a grizzly. It's weirdly intriguing.

Plus, Detroit has WDET and the wonderful Ed Love program, which those A-HOLES pre-empted by an hour a few months ago for an awful, useless political talk show. And, it's near Ann Arbor and the fighting Wolverines. Oh, wait.

That's exactly it. It also doesn't help that city has bascially been ripped off from within the city governement. Aside from the Dennis Archer era, the city government has been nothing but graft, nepotism, and corruption for close to 30+ years.

I always say the best thing about being from Detroit is that everywhere else you go...Is really nice.

There's the infamous Detroit race card. What's really humorous is one of those White Jurors went to the press, and noted that the city vetoed 4 different African-American jurors before he was selected. Kwame and the city were so guilty on this that they stacked the jury ahead of time knowing they'd need an appeals ground.


The best part of the story is missing from this, in that the whistle blowers were investigating an "alledged" party at the mayor's mansion where a Stripper named "Strawberry" performed and was later found shot to death in a "Drive By" shooting with police style 38 revolvers.

We don't just have thieves in charge...we have murderers.

I dunno, if I were a black guy in one of the poorest cities in America, which happens to be surrounded by some of the wealthiest, whitest suburbs in America, I'd probably feel pretty bitter myself.

Not saying that the mayor's not kinda a tool, just saying that I have severe doubts that the city's problems stem from excessive use of the "race card." If anything, what killed Detroit was white people abandoning the city so they wouldn't have to live around minorities.

I think I've read four crime novels and seen eight movies that all had this same story.

Someone should really do a 'The Wire' style series set in Detroit.

What, is the Wire just not depressing enough for you?

I grew up in a suburb outside Detroit and the city has been in a constant slide into a sewer of shit and filth, yet the citizens really don't seem to give a fuck. The re-election of Suge Knight Da Mayor in 2005 confirmed this. This corrupt bastard has used city money (which is in short supply) to take his family on vacation as well as other items (cars, etc.). When something goes wrong, he immediately blames the "white suburbanites" and claims that the city doesn't need the help of the suburbs in order to survive. Yes you do, you stupid fuck--you need the businesses that fled the city after the 1967 riots to come back and pump money into the floundering economy.

It's pretty realistic in Baltimore, trust me. Though, I will say, after reading this thread, I'd like to thank Detroit for making Baltimore and DC suck just a little less. Yay Charm City!

Because the citizens of Detroit are goddamn idiots. I like going downtown every once in awhile when I am back home, but only to a very select few locations. I'm very surprised that there weren't any major incidents when the Super Bowl was in town. I was anticipating some out-of-town journalist getting lost, driving along Chene in Detroit and getting robbed.

I'm originally from Detroit's suburbs too, and I could probably count the number of times I've gone to Detroit proper on two hands (not counting driving through it.) Each of those times was probably for something relating to education or art, too. A music show, a play, a film festival or museum. There's a cultural core in Detroit that is struggling to exist but I fear it just won't survive the blight.

It's sad but it's also part of the reason I moved to Pittsburgh years ago. It may not be the cultural hub that a New York or Chicago would be but it's a historically industrial town whose cultural and environmental movements have a fighting chance. It's also got suburban sprawl but because of the terrain it's resulted in more neighborhoods and communities with their own identities.

Detroit, on the other hand, is a monument of decay smack in the middle of the blandest, yuppiest suburbs you can imagine. I admire the friends I still have there for trying to make it work, but I feel like everyone I know in Detroit has someplace in the front of their mind they'd rather live. Heck, even Jack White skipped town for Nashville.

What suburb, Ellis?

Great places of culture in Detroit (the DIA, Fox Theatre, Opera House, etc.) will probably be allowed to enter into severe states of decay and disrepair as the city worries more about fucking casinos and other bullshit.

When I would go downtown, it would either be for a sporting event, trip to the DIA or to Greektown for drinks with friends. Hell, my favorite bar in the world is in Detroit (Old Shellelagh) but it pains me to go down there sometimes and see that city just wasting away. My mother tells stories of how great things were in Detroit when she was younger. What am I gonna tell my kids, how I've seen people shooting up on street corners, a homeless man taking a shit outside Comerica Park and how I have been robbed 3 times when out at night?

I have many friends from both college and growing up that are still in the Detroit area and most of them seem content not leaving the area. A good amount of them had parents who work(ed) in the auto industry, so they fall into that rut and never think of leaving the state. Nevermind that the economy in Michigan is just this side of Bosnia in the 1990s, they "can't imagine leaving the state they call home." I applaud their loyalty, but I'm dumbfounded by their lack of vision. These are individuals with college degrees too, not people that celebrated their 16th birthday by dropping out of high school.

Hell, an ex-gf of mine didn't want to move out to NY with me because she felt that the NY economy would be too difficult. Granted, she would have easily been transfered by her accounting firm and gotten a roughly 75-85% pay increase (she would have received a promotion as well), but her thought was that the NYC cost of living is so high that it is pointless to leave "a great economy"--mainly because she would have been paying twice as much in rent in NYC than she would in MI. Now she bitches all the time about how the unemployment in Michigan is terrible and that her firm has been laying people off due to how shitty things are. But yeah, Michigan is soooooo great.

(okay, sorry for that little rant at the end)

I always joke around the office when people talk about how expensive real estate is in LA. Talking about you could get a house in Detroit for $50,000.

Yeah, but nothing makes you think that's a sound investment for the near future. Plus you don't want those houses.

I know, that's why I'm joking when I say that. Believe me, I'd convince them not to if they thought I was serious.

Bay area/LA are ridiculous though. Would it be wrong to say that you cannot buy a nice house for under one million?

My bad...I'm fucking exhausted, had a very long past 2 weeks of work. My joke detector needs new batteries. Maybe I can borrow the ones in my gaydar.

Yeah that is also very fucked up but I figure I probably won't be getting a house any time soon. Which isn't even a concern for me. But yeah the prices in the relatively nice areas are pretty fucking outrageous. Although I do think the lofts that are in downtown and also over in North Hollywood are pretty damn nice looking.

This is all very interesting in relation to what it was like 12-13 years ago when people were fleeing to Oregon after they had enough of LA after a huge number of disasters and the defense industry having its legs cut out from under it.

This thread is alarming. I always knew Detroit was bad off, but I had no idea. How does something like this get resolved? I don't think we've ever had a major American city just spiral downhill like this. Could there come a point where the state just says "fuck it" and abandons the city?

By the way, the median house price in Seattle just went over $500,000. Insane.

That's already occurred. The city has been steadily losing people for decades, (note Werbal's stats of 1.8 Mill in 1950 to about 850,000 today) and that won't change. The real city exists in all of the surrounding city suburbs, which have no general commonality with any other city suburb other than getting screwed over by the Detroit Water department. And most have zero personality.

Detroit does zero to attract new citizens, with the most obvious roadblock being that there's a 2.5% city income tax. That's right, 2.5% of your income to live in a city with absolutely zero services, where as all of those generic little cities surrounding it cost you nothing and an ambulance will show up at your house if you call them.


Other than people coming down to visit the stadiums, Detroit should be empty by 2040.

It's been nearly 24 hours and I still can't think of an Action Jackson joke. This is disheartening.

Anybody seen these Jeff Daniels Michigan commercicals?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iXVLw1AiqCw

Strangely enough, I ran a Google Map search for "strip clubs Detroit" and got a bunch of tits.

Zing!

Another problem is that too many residents are still hung up on "how goes Detroit, so goes the state". I don't care for the conservatism on the left coast of the state, but the Grand Rapids area has been building itself up for years and has been attracting business and people. I went to school at Grand Valley State, and the downtown area of GR is as attractive as any "classy" city.

I live in a rural town (between Alpena & Oscoda for any Michiganders and ex-Michiganders out there...) 4+ hours from Detroit with a pop. of 550, and the old-timers here blame the lack of work and families on the decline of Detroit. They also neglect to notice that 8 new small businesses have opened within the past year in Harrisville, that the school system welcomed nearly 100 new students for this school year, and that fifteen new homes have been built on my road alone in the past five years.

Everywhere that I have travelled, I've run into ex-residents, who invariably say how much they'd love to come back someday. We have excellent colleges and universities and yes, even some culture.

I didn't really mean to get so defensive, but as much as its fun to dump on Detroit, and Michigan in general, there are pockets of sunlight under the darkness, but nobody is looking for them.

Y'know, I just noticed that Detroit is where that Justice Dept. employee went to have sex with a 5 year old girl. Oh Robocop, where art thou?

The only place I know of that has city income tax is NYC.

Sorry, us Yoopers can get a bit prickly about those sort of misstatements.

They used to do that pretty efficiently on Devil's Night but stopped for some reason.

This thread actually made me feel postivive about New Orleans for the first time since Katrina hit. For as bad as shit is down there, at least there is a slow (and growing) trickle of people moving back into the city.

Thanks, Detroit.