I mean... it's my region. And it is still in Wayne county. But still, I think I've always carried a grim sort of fascination with Detroit. The poverty, the violence, the corrupt politicians, every time I look at it, and think people can't get any worse off, the statistics can't get any lower, or the people in charge can't get any worse... they do.


Point of interest one - The city council are a little racist. Cobo center is the home of the annual Detroit Auto Show, and they're discussing renovating it. All semantics aside, a few of the finer points from the discussion:

I watched the tape of last Tuesday's council meeting, the one that considered the Cobo Center expansion deal. It was a tragic circus, a festival of ignorance that confirmed the No. 1 obstacle to Detroit's progress is the bargain basement leaders that city voters elect. The black nationalism that is now the dominant ideology of the council was on proud display, both at the table and in the audience.

Speakers advocating for the deal were taunted... cut short by Council President Monica Conyers. Whites were advised by the citizens to, "Go home."

Opponents were allowed to rant and ramble on uninterrupted about "those people" who want to steal Detroit's assets and profit from the city's labors.


A pitiful Teamster official who practically crawled to the table on his knees expressing profuse respect for this disrespectful body was battered by both the crowd and the council.
When he dared suggest that an improved Cobo Center would create more good-paying jobs for union workers, Conyers reminded him, "Those workers look like you; they don't look like me."



Desperate, he invoked President Barack Obama's message of unity and was angrily warned, "Don't yousay his name here." Juxtapose the place and the faces and imagine a white Livonia City Council treating a black union representative with such overt racial hostility. The Justice Department would swoop down like a hawk, and the Rev. Al Sharpton would clog Five Mile Road with protesters.

I'm rarely one to pull the race card. Problems are sociocultural and economic, so this sort of shit bugs me.

Point of interest two - The median cost of owning a home in Detroit now is $7,500. Yeah. That's right. Two zeros. Seventy five _hundred_ dollars. I made that working 12 hour weekends, in half a year.

Point of interest three - Despite this, detroiters are abandoning entire neighborhoods.

I'm starting to wonder if this is a little too close to home for schadenfreude.