True Romance.
As surfers, we sometimes feel we, and our coastal enclaves, are most superior. Sure we deign inland family members and friends with our salt-encrusted righteousness, telling them we “enjoy” their quaint landlocked burbs, “like” the change of pace etc. but do we ever mean it? No, and what is worse, our inland family members and friends know that we are being utterly condescending.
Well, friend, I’ve got a place that will blow that sun-bleached hair right off your forehead and have you thinking, “Damn it, I’m beat.”
Detroit, Michigan.
I was in the Motor City, over the weekend, on assignment for a popular car magazine, and had never before been. The only things I really thought about Detroit were “birthplace of American automotive industry,” birthplace of Aretha Franklin, Eminem and Jack White (plus many others), a depressed husk that represents all that went wrong with the American dream.
And so I landed ready to be completely underwhelmed.
Over the next two days, the “birthplace of American of American automotive industry” and musical heritage made themselves way cooler than I had imagined. The towering art deco buildings erected by Cadillac, Chrysler, Ford etc. are true architectural wonders and while swaths of the city are still somewhat gutted, the roar of internal combustion down Woodward Ave. at night is a wild sensation. The music venues, abandoned fields and spots on 8 Mile all still there, still hosting a new generation of artists plying their art before savvy audiences who know what greatness sounds like.
It was also the subtle bits. An appreciation of past, by locals, and recognition of hard times while being decidedly not depressed. Sallying forth, as it were, making something new from the old but not forgetting, weaving the old back into the new.
And I haven’t even started in on the food.
I left Detroit thinking, “Man, that place is undeniably cool.”
You can also get a 9-bedroom mansion for under $400,000.
Something to think about.