You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Detroit.”
When I was seven years old my mother, ignoring my protests, packed me into the station wagon and drove downtown to the Detroit Institute of Art where I proceeded to vomit on the marble floor. I blamed my sick stomach on a sculpture, but it was more likely the stack of pancakes she fed me for breakfast. I tried to [...]
So I fell in love with this girl named Kate. And all that remains is this sordid little correspondence that I have left from the beginning our affair. I wish it included all the walks we took on the snowy streets of Detroit or the hours we spent laying in bed daydreaming about tomorrow. But it doesn’t, it’s just a [...]
At the beginning of February, the city was overrun by rabid sports fans. I went downtown about 9 days before the big foosball game. Streets were barricaded and blocked off. Downtown Detroit had a different type of buzz. Metro Detroiters were excited because so many people would be in town. Here in the Midwest, we suffer from big big city [...]
Super Bowl XL was just a few days ago, and Detroit and its suburbs did their best to present a great image. Visitors did not see our homeless, as they were tucked away in various city and suburban warming centers or temporary shelters . . . Manna House, South Oakland Shelter, Most Holy Trinity Church, Salvation Army facilities, etc. In [...]
Well, Super Bowl Sunday is done, or so they tell me. I was oblivious to the hype and I had no idea that Super Bowl Sunday had arrived until Saturday night, when someone asked me where I was going to watch Super Bowl XL. I thought "XL" meant "Extra Large," a size that, over the years, I have come to [...]
The headline on the Detroit Free Press was bold. But it was just another clever way of stating the obvious. Ford Motor Company was going to announce "The Way Forward," actually a way to cut back. Ron Novack sat at his kitchen table and skimmed the story about the plant closures and layoffs that would be announced today. He sipped [...]
I learned a lot from my grandpa, John Francis O'Brien, a native of Cork city (Ireland) and an immigrant to America. He used to always say that he was closest to God when he was connected to nature. Grandpa was quite an unusual character in our working class neighborhood on Detroit's West Side, just a few miles from the city's [...]
Where do I begin? On Christmas Eve 1999, I was doing the usual stuff… Following my family's long tradition of going from one home to the next, delivering Christmas presents and cookies, eating and eating some more, singing carols, and sharing midnight mass together downtown. This year, my brother needed a ride back to his in-laws, so we us drove [...]
This morning, before I was able to take my coat off, my #1 Work Wife, Brianna, confronted me about my conduct at an after-work affair, last Friday. She scolded me for leaving her sitting unattended and drink-less at the affair. One might ask: how does one find oneself in such a predicament? I’d have to admit, it’s the result of [...]
Born and raised on the eastside of Detroit in the 1960's I had grown accustomed to shopping downtown, taking the boat to BobLo Island, the downtown ethnic festivals, the Detroit Art Institute…and the derision from people outside the city. OK, the riots and the murder rate did not help the image of the city. But tourists still visit Germany, and [...]
[The following was originally published in "Piece From Life's Crazy Quilt," a collection of personal essays about growing up in Detroit in the 1920's, 30s, and 40s by Marvin V. Arnett. The collection first appeared in 2000, as part of the University of Nebraska Press's "American Lives" series (Series Editor: Tobias Wolff), and the University of Nebraska Press has shown [...]
I live and work in midtown Detroit in the area known as the "New Center." This area is in the midst of a new housing boom. Lofts and condominiums are springing up as fast as the land can be acquired. The area is recapturing the grandeur of the 60’s and 70’s, when it was the business hub of Detroit. The [...]
“Kneel. Sit. Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand!” Sister Mary Angelina bellows these words to a congregation of frightened eighth graders at St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in southwest Detroit sometime in the mid-1980’s. Almost twenty years later, those angry commands from the most powerful nun known to the class of 1985 have not been forgotten. They are engraved into [...]
Have you ever had a great experience or adventure and you want to share it with every one you know, but you just don't know where to begin? Well, that seems to be my particular problem right now. I've been staring at my laptop for at least an hour and I still can't seem to figure out where to start. [...]
She did not call him. She leaned back, listened to the music and examined the ceiling. slicing eyes. beauty and envy in one frame. "I'm here," she tossed. "Seriously?" "Yeah. In the Red Room." Her pink, dainty pumps wept silver jewels in the fronts. Her hair was maybe too big but it worked. The drive had been defined by the [...]
I pull on my brand new Calvin Klein white cashmere coat, wrap a cozy hand-knitted scarf around my neck, and then pull the matching mittens over my hands. I glance outside into the snowy night and curse because my hair will frizz in the snow. I scurry out the door of my apartment building and gasp when the frigid blast [...]
“Athens has got ruins, Rome has got ruins. Ours are bigger, but there’s no guidebook to them.” —Lowell Boileau Part collage, part museum, part mausoleum, and all constructed around a series of intricately conceived online “tours,” detroityes.com depicts Detroit’s past and present in a library containing thousands of vivid photographic images. For many, the centerpiece of the website is “The [...]
"Hey, can you spare some coin?" The guy sounded pleasant enough as he approached our car. Todd was tucking his spare keys into the ashtray and I was applying Mac lipstick (ooh baby) to the sounds of John Briggs (a local jazzy techno artist). We climbed out of Todd's shiny 1998 Pathfinder, we were summer-drunk and ready to hit the [...]
Cops. The left lane is for passing only, did you know that? I must have forgotten since driver’s ed class, like I’ve forgotten to take speed limits seriously. Even when you literally can’t afford not to, even in daylight. Which I can’t and which it is. But I’m going ninety in the left lane and ten minutes into my morning [...]
In a small Detroit suburb referred to as Ferndale is a bar known as "Como's." It sits just off Main Street, which is quiet, solemn. Streetlamps give off an orange glow over a trash-littered sidewalk. Empty storefront windows line the street. Faded signs stand out from the few businesses that struggle to remain open. Buildings are old, uncared for, withering. [...]
The first time I ever went to a rave it was in the old Packard Plant. I didn’t know the name of the Plant at the time, nor did I know where it stood in relation to the city at large. I was told that the event was “at Packard,” not realizing that this was shorthand for a historic auto [...]
For reasons that involve politics, religion and the pursuit of life's persistent questions, I found myself gardening in front of my Church one Sunday afternoon in June 2005. First Church is located in Detroit, on the side of Forest Avenue where students rarely park, lest their cars turn up missing when they return from class. The Church has been a [...]
