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I have known a couple of writers for the Times. Unless you have another career it's extremely difficult to survive being just a writer. A guy I know who works for the Times occasionally had to go on FOOD STAMPS.
The front page Times writers are often professors, politicians, or other experts (and so they have other income).
I'm not attacking the writers. I'm attacking the editors.
The article is an oversimplification of Detroit's ills. This isn't the Bronx in the seventies or the Lower East Side. This is an issue of magnitude much, much, greater than that. If you haven't visited Detroit since the seventies and seen it firsthand you could never appreciate it.
The city could use a million hipsters. Not just the handful they interview for the article. And I don't see those people staying in Detroit. Its 80 percent Black, many of whom are racist. Not to mention the racist Whites that live in that city. It isn't the cooperative oasis the article paints it as.
Sure you have change, but that's a blue collar, liberal, city, set in it's ways. That is a huge part of the problem. I would love to see the city turn around, but its a slow process that will take as long as it took for that city to get into the fiscal mess it is in.
New York's social problems seem minuscule in comparison to what goes on in that city. For one, even though New York has it's problems people are not as socially and ideologically isolated as they are in Detroit. You don't have the self segregation that goes on in Detroit and other Midwestern cites. White people still live in the city in New York. Not so much in Detroit.
It is interesting, but you can't just write an advertisement for hipsters to move to Detroit disguised as an article and expect people to take you seriously. Especially with a situation as misunderstood and complex as Detroit.
If aren't good upper middle class jobs in the area there won't be yuppies. Maybe some artists and other stragglers but it can't take off without a solid job sector base.
Explain this to me then. If 6,000 people live in Download Detroit, in a city of 700,000, that's less than 1% of the population. That is an apples and oranges comparison to gentrification movements that started in NYC when "downtown", AKA Manhattan housed the largest population of residents in the city over other boroughs.
Call it pessimism if you want. When is the city going to address the other 99% of the population? What about the hipsters that aren't downtown? Anyone can talk about amenities that appeal to hipsters downtown, when most cities, offer similar weird, eccentric, eclectic, experiences downtown as well. The article could have as easily been taking about Pittsburgh. That's all I'm saying. I want to hear about what is being done for regular people that grew up in Detroit that never left for safe haven cities like NYC where they were free to live out their dreams and make artistic statements. So they struggle to pay bills in NYC and move back home. That happens every single day. That doesn't speak for regular residents just trying to make it, that were not able to afford to move out of the city.
Take myself for example. I was struggling in Ohio. An opportunity to move to Virgina presented itself and I took it. I struggle here, but not to the same degree as I did in Ohio. So I stay here. If I moved back to Ohio and took what I learned in Virginia and opened up something that only appeals to the curated palate of those few who could afford it; is that newsworthy? Eh, that happens more often than not.
It just feels like a conversation among cultured, bourgeois individuals that doesn't really have anything to do with anyone other than the few who would be interested. Like "hey, I can be a New Yorker in Detroit now". Well you always could. Detroit has always been a big supporter of the arts and there is room for everyone in that city, all types. But some people need to be told by a publication, when they could have just talked to a Detroiter and learned as much. The Times needs to give their stamp of approval for it to exist.
Ha...reminds of that Bourdain episode where he's in that hipster interpretation of a Greek diner in downtown Detroit. He asks the owner how establishments like that help the average Detroiter. Dude responds unironically and with some aggravation, how does it not? Then they do a panning shot of the restaurant, and not a single nonwhite face was in the crowd.
Ha...reminds of that Bourdain episode where he's in that hipster interpretation of a Greek diner in downtown Detroit. He asks the owner how establishments like that help the average Detroiter. Dude responds unironically and with some aggravation, how does it not? Then they do a panning shot of the restaurant, and not a single nonwhite face was in the crowd.
I am a cultured snob. All my trips down South have reinforced that I could never live among too many troglodytes. The furthest South I could manage was 6 months in North Delaware...I nearly lost my mind.
Yes, becuase we all know suburban New Jersey/Long Island is a creative mecca..
Most places in the world, even Europe, 99% of the folks around you are day-to-day people trying to get by, not worried about when the next "Life through the eyes of Pollack" exhibit is rolling through.
And I say this as someone who loves art. I just hate the snobbery that comes with it.
I'll put it this way: there aren't enough apartments downtown to feed the demand. There are TONS of people living downtown.
It's going to be difficult to convince people to move into the neighborhoods of Detroit from the suburbs or wherever without a thriving city center. Also, our public transportation is 3rd world at best. We'll see how the M1 rail changes things.
Detroit cannot survive being a "hipster mecca". I see this all the time. Yes, I like art and I play in a local band and I support local businesses, but I also have a full time job. And I pay city taxes. Many people my age with the same interests are perfectly happy living in cheap houses and making crappy art. This cannot be sustainable.
The good news is that more jobs are coming downtown, and I don't mean the Big Red Q on Woodward.
There's this thing called Tech Town here, and it focuses on supporting startup technology businesses. We also have Ponyride, which is a business incubator of all sorts of businesses from internet based to manufacturing.
There's a lot offered here in Detroit, especially for serial entrepreneurs and those trying to do actual business. It's not all indie coffee shops and bad music/art.
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