Mm——
Its carbon and monoxide
The ole Detroit perfume
It hangs on the highways
In the morning
And it lays you down by noon
Oh papa hobo
You can see that I’m dressed like a schoolboy
But I feel like a clown
It’s a natural reaction I learned
In this basketball town

Sweep up
I been sweeping up the tips I’ve made
I’m living on Gatorade
Planning my getaway
Detroit, Detroit
Got a hell of a hockey team
Got a left-handed way
Of making a man sign up on that
Automotive dream, oh yeah, oh yeah
Oh, papa papa hobo
Could you slip me a ride?
Well, it’s just after breakfast
I’m in the road
And the weatherman lied,
Oo——-, ah—–, oo——-

Detroit once vied with New York as the most important town in America. Alas, that dream went away as racial animus, and the success of the union worker led to its own demise. The workers kids all became college grads and left – and bought foreign cars to boot.

The Republicans urged on the demise of the Auto companies (and the unions) and got a two-fer , slaughtering their political foes as well as increasing profits for their business friends (by lowering labor rates).

The working man's paradise ground down and was abandoned. Detroit , with it's world class art institute as well as Gilded Age and Neo-Classical architecture, is reminiscent of the old European cities, only mostly abandoned.

The history is sad, but the fix is almost impossible. Detroit today is about 85 to 90% black, and the people there are illiterate to the tune of 50% and have almost no family structure in the typical middle class sense (two parents). With and 80% out of wedlock birthrate, by the time these kids drop out and become criminals, the cycle is ready to repeat. Keep in mind the dropout rate is 60 to 70% and of the dropouts, 75% end up in prison. So not only is Detroit a failed state, they are taking the state of Michigan down too, with out of control social and prison costs. Crime is the main problem and it drives the poverty –Detroit is the poorest city in America. All of the figures I quote have been published by the local paper, the Detroit Free Press.

Many of these poor kids are the descendents of the ‘great migration’, hard working blacks who came from the south to work in the auto factories and escape Jim Crow. A large black middle class exists in the area, but the city is mainly the very poor and very uneducated. It is sad to hear the likes of Newt Gingrich bemoan Detroit as an example of “failed liberalism”, when those poor and uneducated residents all came from the South, where they were getting lynched , beaten and denied even basic human kindness.

One of the biggest problem is these people have grown up with stories of the white devil, ready to come and hurt them. They continually get exploited by cynical black politicians , and the beat goes on. It is hard to say how to break the cycle, but 100,000 artist might just do the trick. If enough new voters show up, perhaps things might change. Detroit arguably has the worst race relations in North America. That is saying a lot!

So, please move here, but be prepared for a Kafka like place. We have an embarrassment of riches, “good bones”, easy traffic and an international border.

Sadly, there is so much crime, corruption and murder that it truly has to be considered a failed state.

As much as I love the place, I have not been to a worse city in North America. I wish it wasn’t true, since I grew up here, but I have not seen a similar sized city that is such a failure, in all of North America.

And Detroit is not "the next" anything. It is and always has been Detroit. A place for music and art inhabited by people that would never use any kind of phrasing like "the next…" and would probably rather finish burining to the ground than be compared to Brooklyn. But come on over – we are really friendly.

Sure, I see potential here, lots of space and time… and overall support for the arts. But you won't see the kind of gentrification enjoyed by the likes of Brooklyn and Austin until a political and economic upheaval takes place. There's a lot of corruption keeping this city down. Houses are cheap, sure, but if you want to start a business, expect your start-up costs to be twice that of any other city… why? Extortion. The people here are great… the politicians, not so much. But there is hope here, a vision shared by many Detroiters… how appropriate that the city's motto translates to, "We hope for better days; It shall rise from the ashes." (written in 1805) That is the lure.

That said, most of them won't admit publicly that the city has gigantic, potentially insurmountable problems. It has the highest crime rate of any urban area in the country, with a police force that the majority of residents have given up on. The unemployment rate — which counts only people looking for work, not those who are underemployed or have given up on finding a job — is over 24%. No one knows how many blighted buildings Detroit has — certainly tens of thousands — but enough that no one can make a trustworthy survey. A staggering amount of the downtown, the supposed centerpiece of the city's revitalization, is abandoned. The local government, despite having a number of good people — big ups, Kym Worthy — is at best feckless, at worst corrupt. And it hasn't seen the full fallout of the auto industry's collapse yet.

Detroit, considered from a distance, indeed appears to have the makings of a perfect artists' sanctum. Upon visiting it, however, the qualities of the city conducive to a creative effloresce — cheap housing, liberal politics, a superabundance of poetic urban decay and poignant physical metaphor — quickly recede in value when weighed against the misery of spending time in the civic equivalent of a failing restaurant. Which isn't to say you can't build a happy life there: as the above poster testifies, people have and do. But its difficult to see why one would choose Detroit over a number of other safer, more prosperous places, save for a peculiar love.

I love the city, at least the idea of it, and in a perfect world where I was not already unemployed and hard strapped for income (let alone getting off of unemployment…I'd say YES to moving there. And it's true, I just don't see Brooklyn trustfunders parading around in tight jeans and fixed gear Bianchis when it's -15 degrees for 20 days straight.

To Tammie, yes the Bee is cool. But, it's one store. There's a market like that out here in LA on every block. We have problems out here too, but I wouldn't trade it for the world…even if we aren't the hipster capitol of the world.

At best, Detroit will be the Midwest's Portland…a cool, cool town to get a cup of coffee or PBR, but not to have a job. That is, if you're not already living off of that family wealth. Being a working artist, I don't have an extra $4000 to buy the house, an extra $50,000 to fix it up, and another $20,000 to live off of and pay the bills for the 1st year of existence in Detroit which, God bless it…just doesn't have any sort of support network or familiar security for me.

Yes, Detroit has its problems. But the arts can play an integral role in addressing those. And the community embraces those who come to the city with this kind of vision – providing support in ways you won't find anywhere else.

There are places to buy food in Detroit, albeit not enough. The HoneyBee Market in Mexicantown is an amazing place to shop, and Eastern Market has a spectacular selection. No, it's not as easy to get around as a New York or Chicago, but with some planning and ingenuity, you'll be just fine. There is an extensive bus system, and private investors have spearheaded bringing lightrail to the city, which may arrive as early as 2010.

If you're looking for a posh lifestyle where things are made easy, Detroit is not for you. But if you want to be a part of something bigger, helping to redefine a city that so much of the nation has given up on, Detroit should be one of your top considerations.