Live from Detroit (a personal plea)
I’m spending a couple of days in Detroit on my way home to DC. (It’s a nice way to catch up with old friends while splitting up a mind-numbing 750 mile drive.)
One of my biggest regrets about my time in Detroit is that I didn’t get to learn the city very well until it was almost time to leave. I’m fairly certain that in my first year here, I made a grand total of 3 trips into the city. I caught up fairly quickly though, and by the end I honestly feel like I knew things about Detroit that friends who’d spent their lives here didn’t know. I learned my lesson from that, though, and I made it a point to embrace Chicago and city life (despite living in Evanston) when I moved last summer.
Anyways, I still follow a lot of the positives of whats going on in the city (Twitter has been especially awesome in this regard), and its been especially exciting to hear about young people moving back into midtown and creating a real city lifestyle (unfortunately, the hope for good public transportation seems light years away here).
Last night I got into town around 7 and headed to midtown with two good friends — Stacey and Angela. We started at Union Street, where we had some beers and dinner (excellent eclectic menu with a good beer selection, btw). We ended up at a bar near Comerica Park (the name evades me right now).
It was nice to get a small glimpse of what’s going well in Detroit, but I really want to get a feel for it from someone who’s living there every day — so I’m making this plea to anyone who’s reading this: I’m leaving town for DC tomorrow, but I have some time in the morning to check out the city. If there is anybody who is free to meet me around 9 or 10 am tomorrow morning (Friday), and wants to show me around midtown for an hour or two, please get in touch with me. I would love to see it from an insiders POV.
