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Downtown and midtown Detroit, the only places in Detroit where people of your ilk will go anyway, are not dangerous places. Downtown Detroit has similar crime rates to most other downtowns, and much of Midtown Detroit is policed by the Wayne State Police as well as DPD. Now violent crime does exist in Midtown, but it is not rampant. The neighborhoods of Detroit, where I live, has that crime, but you are not going to be visiting Grand River/Greenfield ever in your lifetime.
Concerning your other post - besides the high-end shopping, downtown and midtown Detroit has some great destinations, and there are high-end hotels like the Book Cadillac Westin, the DoubleTree Fort Shelby and the Marriott at the Renaissance Center.
What I am trying to get across is that Detroit does not have a vibrant, walk-able, safe downtown like other American cities do. Take a stroll around San Francisco or Chicago then take a stroll around Detroit and you'll see what I'm talking about.
If a family were to book a couple night's stay at the Westin in downtown, what exactly would they do once the sun goes down? Can they exit the hotel and enter a safe walkable street filled with shops and restaurants? I don't understand why so many of you are making excuses for mediocrity.
What I am trying to get across is that Detroit does not have a vibrant, walk-able, safe downtown like other American cities do. Take a stroll around San Francisco or Chicago then take a stroll around Detroit and you'll see what I'm talking about.
If a family were to book a couple night's stay at the Westin in downtown, what exactly would they do once the sun goes down? Can they exit the hotel and enter a safe walkable street filled with shops and restaurants? I don't understand why so many of you are making excuses for mediocrity.
Fact is, yes they can downtown, and why don't you know this? Conventions are a big business in Detroit.
Also curious - what is your great interest in pointing up Detroit's warts daily 24/7 while actually providing nothing new or of value? Nobody is making you move here.
What I am trying to get across is that Detroit does not have a vibrant, walk-able, safe downtown like other American cities do. Take a stroll around San Francisco or Chicago then take a stroll around Detroit and you'll see what I'm talking about.
If a family were to book a couple night's stay at the Westin in downtown, what exactly would they do once the sun goes down? Can they exit the hotel and enter a safe walkable street filled with shops and restaurants? I don't understand why so many of you are making excuses for mediocrity.
I think my downtown is one of, if not the worst in America, but it is making great strides and has attractions and restaurants. Besides Greektown, there is not contiguous stretch of We don't have the retail and high-shopping.
To answer your question about the Westin:
If they walk to the west:
Nothing much. 4 blocks will get you to MGM Casino however. To the southwest, the DoubleTree has a restaurant (Finn Porter Steakhouse)
If they walk to the north:
There is a 2-block dead space between the hotel and Grand Circus Park, however on Grand Circus Park, you have Rub BBQ Pub, and a nice bar/club at the corner of Adams and Woodward. If you go down Park Avenue, you have Mo' Better Blues, Cliff Bells, Bucharest Grill, Hot Taco, Town Pump, and Centaur. On Woodward, you have the restaurant at the Fox Theater and Hockeytown Cafe, which has a comedy improv theater.
If they walk to the east:
Lafayette and American Coney Island and the Bathtub bar are on Michigan Av, the club on top of the David Stott Tower, they can ice skate at Campus Martius, there is the Hard Rock Cafe, Jimmy John's, Orchid Thai on Monroe, Texas de Brazil Steakhouse and Olga's Kitchen on Woodward. Then there's Greektown, "Bricktown", further east, and Harmony Park, the Music Hall, and Broadway Ave.'s venues to the northeast
If they walk to the south
Not much, there is a sushi place and a club at the corner of Shelby and Congress; there is the Riverwalk, the Anchor Bar; The Ren Cen has a couple restaurants and a movie theater.
I think my downtown is one of, if not the worst in America, but it is making great strides and has attractions and restaurants. Besides Greektown, there is not contiguous stretch of We don't have the retail and high-shopping.
To answer your question about the Westin:
If they walk to the west:
Nothing much. 4 blocks will get you to MGM Casino however. To the southwest, the DoubleTree has a restaurant (Finn Porter Steakhouse)
If they walk to the north:
There is a 2-block dead space between the hotel and Grand Circus Park, however on Grand Circus Park, you have Rub BBQ Pub, and a nice bar/club at the corner of Adams and Woodward. If you go down Park Avenue, you have Mo' Better Blues, Cliff Bells, Bucharest Grill, Hot Taco, Town Pump, and Centaur. On Woodward, you have the restaurant at the Fox Theater and Hockeytown Cafe, which has a comedy improv theater.
If they walk to the east:
Lafayette and American Coney Island and the Bathtub bar are on Michigan Av, the club on top of the David Stott Tower, they can ice skate at Campus Martius, there is the Hard Rock Cafe, Jimmy John's, Orchid Thai on Monroe, Texas de Brazil Steakhouse and Olga's Kitchen on Woodward. Then there's Greektown, "Bricktown", further east, and Harmony Park, the Music Hall, and Broadway Ave.'s venues to the northeast
If they walk to the south
Not much, there is a sushi place and a club at the corner of Shelby and Congress; there is the Riverwalk, the Anchor Bar; The Ren Cen has a couple restaurants and a movie theater.
Don't forget Cafe D'Mongos on Friday nights, but only Friday nights. Best speakeasy in Michigan. Downtown Detroit.
We live in a world of deception and the unreal. Very little is genuine anymore. Fake body parts, fake hair, fake, designer clothing, fake degrees, fake or embellished life stories, fake online social network profile, photo shopped pictures, all in an attempt to present ourselves as something that we are not, in order to gain greater acceptance and or to hide who and what we truly are.
In a sea of so much deception, one has to figure America is deceiving itself also about race. Yes, we have come a long ways, in terms of changing laws, but America is being deceptive about race and the consequence of racism. In a nation full of people attempting to mask and hide the reality of who they really are, there is no doubt that people are hiding and masking their racism, by various means.
What can you say about a nation that will not fully embrace the consequences and responsibility of its wrong? The narrative of this nation would have one believe that neither past nor present racism produces negative resultants. It’s akin to kids growing up in a household with chain smoking parents, who, for the life of them, cannot figure out why their kids have respiratory issues like asthma and bronchitis. The parents will come up with every reason to explain their kids health issues, but never make mention of their chain smoking habit. Even if it’s true that they have since cut back on their smoking, they ignore the damage that has already been inflicted.
Black people in this country have been immersed and inundated in a racist environment for centuries, yet, either the result of a miracle or a grand deception, the cultural and socioeconomic conditions and of black America have not been adversely impacted by this racism. All the problems in the communities have little or nothing to do with the combination of historical and contemporary racism. Again, the chain smoking parents’ narrative excludes their habits from being the main culprit in their children’s ill health. In the same way, we can talk about Detroit, all its problems; yet, the narrative excludes the racist habits of the era that shaped Detroit into what it is today.
Let’s also be clear about something. Black racism is not what we are talking about. People seem to deflect by trying to normalize racism by talking about “black racism” as if whites were paralyzed by black racism to the degree that blacks have been paralyzed by white racism in America. I mean, Coleman Young experienced a lot of racism in his lifetime. That was just the era that he was born into. Does the fact that he was not happy about it and spoke truth to power about it make him a racist? Yes, if you let America tell it. I mean, one way of dealing with your ugliness is to try to make everyone else out to be just as ugly. Thus, all the talk about “black racism”, but that is for another day.
The reality of Detroit is the product/resultant of the self-fulfilling prophecies of people like L Brooks Patterson. In a majority rule construct, where the demographic who are the majority and who also disproportionately holds the income, wealth, political power, corporate power, judicial power and the like, decide in their heads that something is going to fail, with many salivating for its failure out of spite/racism, it WILL fail. However, the failure will be most profoundly the resultant of the speculations, which changed behavior and which in-turn, fulfilled the prophecy.
I can guarantee you right now that if Warren Buffet along with a host of other powerful and influential investors and market analyst start talking gloom and doom about a stock, or the stock market in general, regardless of the fundamentals of the market or stock/company, that the stock or the market will tank. Pessimism in market economics creates decline while optimism and confidence optimizes growth potential. The REAL truth is that Detroit declined to the degree that it did primarily from the pessimism the white population has toward the black population, especially in regards to leadership ability and competence.
The ugly truth about America is that this society, white society, does not have confidence in black people to the same degree that it has confidence in white people, because the society sees blacks are inferior to white people, unless the venue is sports. Thus, as soon as it’s seen that blacks might become the majority in an area, white flight accelerates and when blacks then have majority rule control, the flood gates open and whites pour out of the area, leaving a shortage of residents, tax revenues, businesses and the like and causing rising crime rates.
The crime rate being higher in the black community, for historical reasons, makes a city’s crime rate ranking rise when white flight takes hold, even when absolute rates of crime remain the same or fall. Hence, Detroit’s crime rate, as a city, is so high because there are such a small percentage of whites in the city. If Detroit annexed Wayne county or Oakland county, the city’s crime rate would plummet. If 300,000 whites were living in the city of Detroit, now, the city’s crime rate would plummet. Thus, white flight is what helped the crime rate rise. Many cities have and have had crime for a long time. Crime is not unique to Detroit. Racism of the area is not unique to Detroit either. What’s unique about Detroit is how the racism lines were drawn between the city and the suburbs, where in other cities it often split the town within the city proper, like the South side and North sides of Chicago.
I could go on….but what does it matter? Americans are just living in deception and denial of reality.
At 8:29, this so-called "leader" expresses his disdain that LBP would equate Detroiters with "savages", but LBP never called Native Americans "savages". It was this "leader" that called Native Americans "savages".
Where's the outrage? Or is it okay for Native Americans to be called "savages"?
At 8:29, this so-called "leader" expresses his disdain that LBP would equate Detroiters with "savages", but LBP never called Native Americans "savages". It was this "leader" that called Native Americans "savages".
Where's the outrage? Or is it okay for Native Americans to be called "savages"?
The right wing has historically deemed native Americans "savages" - especially when Manifest Destiny was instituted. You know - the God-ordained profit motive.
Detroit has very little redeeming about it, and I know because I lived there for a year. While I wasn't the victim of any crime, I did see it committed more than any good-natured person should, and as a result never felt comfortable in my surroundings. Decisions that normally required little thought -- i.e. should I make a 2 a.m. run up the store for cough syrup to assuage this cold -- now demanded major contemplation and a precise calculation of risk.
Another crucial problem, which was absent in Patterson's rant but actually would have strengthened his argument, is that Detroit has no viable grocery shopping venues. Not a single big-box retailer operates within the city's boundaries, making it incredibly difficult for locals to attain food. You might point to the newly developed Whole Foods, but high-end retail is simply not sustainable for a young person and those of low-income. Why they decided to open in Detroit baffles me. Local citizens do not shop there on a regular basis. It caters almost exclusively to the Grosse Pointe crowd.
A problem of geography also looms. Detroit is big -- too big. It was at one time built to satisfy a population growth unseen by any other city in American history, but less than a century later most of the constituents of that population growth have left the city, along with the jobs, tax revenue, and businesses they supported. The result is a city that does not have a healthy framework for business owners, its infrastructure, or public services.
All this talk of "Detroit Revival" is a bunch of non-sense. People who think urban-gardening and recycling farms are the underpinnings of a positive transformation in a city plagued by both severe financial and social problems are naive. Most of this namby-pamby pastoral-ism originates from the suburbs, a place that has been seriously disconnected from the issues of Detroit for a long time. It is an admirable sentiment, but planting flowers and painting abstract murals on buildings does nothing to lift a city that can't keep its street lights running, its police force in motion, its buildings from burning, its politicians from stealing, its retirees from starving, etc.
At 8:29, this so-called "leader" expresses his disdain that LBP would equate Detroiters with "savages", but LBP never called Native Americans "savages". It was this "leader" that called Native Americans "savages".
Where's the outrage? Or is it okay for Native Americans to be called "savages"?
"Put them in a pen and throw in corn and blankets." If he wasn't referring to "savages" or animals and American Indians, was he thinking of Detroiters as cute lil babies in a playpen? Not sure how you can rationalize that statement away into thinking he meant something else more endearing.
When these interviews go down (like Duck Dynasty Phil) and others and they open up to the reporter and you get a glimpse of their true un-edited self, I have found in my lifetime that it never comes out that the person was "better" than what was portrayed by the media. They are generally "worse" and you didn't really get the full gist of their horrible beliefs. Get LBP in a room with a couple of scotches and a cigar and I'm sure his beliefs would probably make the average person's hair stand on end. I've been in rooms with people like that. Rather scary.
L Brooks is a fat drunk, albeit a fairly smart one. I'll give him that. His comments, at best, are inappropriate. They just highlight the utter disdain that suburban mindset has always had towards Detroit. How's the saying go? "There's nothing new to see here, folks."
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