Detroit, Lowdown on Motown

This is the home of Motown. It's located in the city known as Motor City. It's also the place the Detroit Tigers call home, with a lavish stadium known as Comerica Park complete with massive concrete-cast tigers perched for the kill. It's the city that is desperately trying to change its image. We know a little about that in Erie, also being plagued with the stigma of a worn-out old Rustbelt town.
  I attended the National Society of Newspaper Columnists conference in Detroit. I was perky with anticipation because I have never been there and it is one of those brick and mortar American cities, like Chicago, that I wanted to explore. Detroit is where my husband worked and lived for the decade of the 80s, leaving with a hearty love of the gritty city and a Red Wings jersey.
   The stories I heard from him, however, were of a different time and a different town. Detroit had a population of 1.6 million when he worked there. The circulation of the Detroit News was 850,000. The Big Three auto manufacturers were fat, dumb and happy. And while there was always crime and always poverty, the robust health of the city overshadowed the bad. Those were its salad days. Today, Detroit has lost more than half its population, and is down to 700,000.
   It was an impressive four days. The tours that the coordinator and host of the event planned carried us past daunting Comerica Park to the stately Whitney Mansion for dinner, the breathtaking Detroit Institute of Arts, and a funky outdoor art project that spanned several city blocks known as the Heidelberg Project. We then entered the inner sanctum of Quicken Loans for an orchestrated tour and rallying speeches about the revival of the big D's downtown. Quicken has already purchased and is renovating a building and will import an additional 1600 employees. There was also a visit to the educational think tank for entrepreneurs and start ups, called Tech Town, Detroit’s research and technology park. It was a lot to see and a lot to absorb.
   And a lot of tap dancing. In the old days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, that was the phrase we broadcast reporters used to use to describe when someone we interviewed would avoid the question by blabbering on and on about something else. Reporters, by nature, are a cynical lot. It's an occupational hazard. At times during all the touring and speeches about how great Detroit is going to be again, I felt like I did when we were touring Cairo and our guide wanted us to look beyond the sewage, abject poverty and clear evidence of an oppressive regime and see all the pretty pyramids.
   To be fair, Detroit is a great city. There are some impressive attractions. Yes, it has block after block of empty and rundown buildings, systemic crime, poor schools, poverty and a list of crippling problems that will take more than just enthusiasm to fix. But I like the city. And I would have appreciated a more honest view, a holistic approach to our host town.   
   But in the long run, face it, it benefits Erie directly if Detroit can clean up its act. After all, we are currently the recipients of the worst of Detroit. Rtes. 80 and 90 have become the mule road for Detroit's exportation of drugs and thugs. Any positive change affected there is sure to have a spillover effect here.