Re:Something, Something, Something, Detroit
by mitjak on Monday October 04, 2010 @02:30AM
(#1754804)
I was in Detroit a few weeks ago during the jazz festival, the first American city to be visited under my US visa (I'm permanent resident in Canada). It was beautiful and shocking in a very post-apocalyptic way every Fallout fan has dreamt of: at noon on a Saturday the streets were completely abandoned. We rode the People Mover with 2 other people, looking at gorgeous art-deco monuments to capitalism. At the shoreline we met visitors of the festival, most of whom were tourists.
The only busy areas of the city were the casinos where we almost suffocated from the ubiquitous fog of cigarette smoke. Overall it was very interesting but largely as abandoned as what you described.
It's true that much of the decay isn't recent. It's also true that real people are living and suffering in the city.
But it's a fact of life that people are voyeurs, and the more grisly the topic, the more they like to gawp. To many, Detroit is a living cautionary tale, a city with problems, someone to gossip about and resure themselves that at least where they live isn't as bad as that.