[NoWorries]

Detroit is a beautiful city. Just don't go into the suburbs. And stay away from the downtown.

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NoWorries', 'D')etroit is a beautiful city. Just don't go into the suburbs. And stay away from the downtown.

[Fishman]

Go Heels!!

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NoWorries', 'D')etroit is a beautiful city. Just don't go into the suburbs. And stay away from the downtown.

[Leanan]

Or forget going to a game, and use the money to buy a house instead!

[bratticus]

Be sure and visit the gun-toting church lady! Tell her "Hi from Bratticus!"

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Putting faith in a Bible -- and a gun

Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News
Thursday, February 26, 2009

DETROIT -- Paulette Bouyer is a member of a peculiar little sorority in this city; a church lady who keeps a loaded pistol.

Once a rabid booster of living in Detroit, Bouyer's home was broken into in broad daylight two weeks ago. The interlopers even made it through the iron gate that covers the door. Now, Bouyer says, she is so afraid, she is prepared to break the Sixth Commandment -- thou shall not kill -- by virtue of her Second Amendment right to bear arms.

"If I could get a covered wagon and a mule and a piggybank, I'd get up and ride out of here tonight," she said. "Because if somebody walks through my door uninvited, somebody else is going to have to carry him out. Is that any way to live?"

She spends her days locked in her house of bars on Greenview Street on the city's west side. She watches the street suspiciously through a peephole covered by the metal security gate. In her window facing the street is a Bible opened to the book of Job.

Bouyer said she wishes to leave today. But she cannot leave today or tomorrow or next week. Who would buy her small three-bedroom bungalow?

"It's worthless," she said. "I can't get out."

... snip ...

[bratticus]

Plus remember to enjoy a 6-pack of crispy critters! New-tricinal Supplements!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]To urban hunter, next meal is scampering by
Detroit retiree, 69, supplements his income by living off the land
Travels with Charlie
Thursday, April 2, 2009

Detroit - When selecting the best raccoon carcass for the special holiday roast, both the connoisseur and the curious should remember this simple guideline: Look for the paw.

"The paw is old school," says Glemie Dean Beasley, a Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman. "It lets the customers know it's not a cat or dog."

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.

... snip ...

[Plantagenet]

Don't waste money on a hotel room in Detroit----you can camp for free in one of the abandoned factories.

[bratticus]

What do you call a trip to Detroit? Driving against the traffic.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Leaving Michigan Behind: Eight-year population exodus staggers state
Outflow of skilled, educated workers crimps Michigan's recovery

Ron French and Mike Wilkinson / The Detroit News
April 2, 2009

... People are leaving Michigan at a staggering rate. About 109,000 more people left Michigan last year than moved in. It is one of the worst rates in the nation, quadruple the loss of just eight years ago. The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving -- young, well-educated high-income earners -- are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild. ...

[bratticus]

this

[oxj]

I left Detroit in 2001, before 9/11. Then the crash happened, and I couldn't sell my condo, and I had to move back. See the previous poster's news clip about the exodus beginning 8 years ago.

It was easy to get a job in Detroit back then- and the nice thing about greater Detroit is that it's cheap to live there and you make a lot of dough. Of course, your milk probably has PCBs in it and my condo was near the Uniroyal superfund site. You always got the feeling that it was a game of musical chairs, though, that whoever would be stuck owning a house during the downturn would be screwed. Knowing I still had to get out, I switched careers and went to Wayne State School of Medicine in downtown Detroit, the largest single campus medical school in the country. Magically, we sold the condo a couple of days before school started, and we were able to get a cheap flat in the ghetto, over by Michigan and Livernois, a particularly rough area. We had been living in a condo over by Belle Isle, and life there was nice. But after we moved to SW Detroit, someone stole my jointer-planer, my wife and I got shot at, someone told my wife that they'd steal her bike and kill her, she was propositioned for sex numerous times, we audiotaped an amazing amount of New Year's day gunfire, a pile of dogshit was placed on my windshield, parts of my car were stolen, our landlady started demanding $600 for rent instead of the agreed $280, the list goes on and on. We moved out to a tiny apartment in Roseville for $550. We had to leave after medical school because my wife from flyover country couldn't take it any more.

If I had stayed there, I probably wouldn't have lost my residency position, but moving here to Wisconsin, well, it just didn't work out, too much of a culture clash. So my career in medicine is over, but after fourteen years, at least I don't live in Detroit any longer. Yeah, Detroit's groovy, it's got a lot of cool things starting with the DIA and its collection of art, the fifth largest in the country, to the Michigan Opera House, one of the most ornately decorated opera halls I've ever seen, to Neemi Jarvi, to incredible Lebanese food to Indian food to renowned sushi... I loved cities before I moved to Detroit, I never lived in a place with fewer than a million folks. Now, I'd just like to buy an island somewhere, far far away...

[3aidlillahi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')on't be silly, downtown along the river front is beautiful, and the new center area due west is nothing to be afraid of. Hell I grew up on a tiny farm in the country and I am not afraid of going most places in Detroit, the bad reputation was not earned and is not deserved.

[bratticus]

Michael Moore about Roger & Me on a November 18, 2008 Larry King Live interview:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Larry King Live: Michael Moore Interview Part 1

1:02 - Segment from Roger & Me

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GM CEO Roger Smith', 'G')eneral Motors won't be doing anybody any service if it goes bankrupt. It has to do what it has to do in order to stay competitive in today's [1980's] economic climate.

[Revi]

I agree that Detroit is just the first city to go down among many. The big industry, car making is turning out to be something that we don't need any more. We only have demand for 7 million vehicles, and we have capacity to build 10 million or more.

Who wants anything that they are turning out in Detroit any more?

It's hard to buy a car from a company that's called general motors.

There will be people selling cars, but nothing like it was in the 20th century.

It's all over now.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') agree that Detroit is just the first city to go down among many. The big industry, car making is turning out to be something that we don't need any more. We only have demand for 7 million vehicles, and we have capacity to build 10 million or more. Who wants anything that they are turning out in Detroit any more? It's hard to buy a car from a company that's called general motors. There will be people selling cars, but nothing like it was in the 20th century. It's all over now.

[Roy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')etired truck driver Glemie Beasley of Detroit is a seasoned hunter who sells and cooks raccoons and other critters on Detroit's west side. (Max Ortiz / The Detroit News)
Thursday, April 2, 2009, Travels with Charlie
To urban hunter, next meal is scampering by Detroit retiree, 69, supplements his income by living off the land

Detroit - When selecting the best raccoon carcass for the special holiday roast, both the connoisseur and the curious should remember this simple guideline: Look for the paw. "The paw is old school," says Glemie Dean Beasley, a Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman. "It lets the customers know it's not a cat or dog."

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.

While economic times are tough across Michigan as its people slog through a difficult and protracted deindustrialization, Beasley remains upbeat. Where one man sees a vacant lot, Beasley sees a buffet. "Starvation is cheap," he says as he prepares an afternoon lunch of barbecue coon and red pop at his west side home.

His little Cape Cod is an urban Appalachia of coon dogs and funny smells. The interior paint has the faded sepia tones of an old man's teeth; the wallpaper is as flaky and dry as an old woman's hand. Beasley peers out his living room window. A sushi cooking show plays on the television. The neighborhood outside is a wreck of ruined houses and weedy lots.

"Today people got no skill and things is getting worse," he laments. "What people gonna do? They gonna eat each other up is what they gonna do."

[bratticus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]GM Bankruptcy May Say ‘No Reason to Stay’ to Detroit Residents

... “People have no job, no home, no credit and no reason to stay,” said Bob Daddow, deputy executive of Oakland County in suburban Detroit, which expects to lose one-third of its property-tax revenue from 2007 to 2011. “We’re very much still on a downward spiral and we haven’t hit bottom yet. I don’t see anything that will be good with the bankruptcy of GM.”

[Novus]

Detroit could only save itself if they can make a fuel efficient auto's or electric cars that don't cost $50,000+. They are either too greedy or too stupid to figure this out. People are converting cars themselves to pure electric on $10,000 budgets. Mass production should be a lot cheaper than people doing it themselves but American auto makers don't seem to get it. If America can get past the past the gas guzzling phase dollar declines would actually help American industry. A 50% or 60% dollar decline would make American autos so much more competitive. But that decline can't happen as long as America is addicted to oil. Having $10 gas would destroy the country if we can not make EV cars.

However, it is much too late to replace the car fleets now. This kind of hard medicine had to be take a decade ago and they even now they still don't understand what needs to be done.

[timmac]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', 'D')etroit could only save itself if they can make a fuel efficient auto's or electric cars that don't cost $50,000+. They are either too greedy or too stupid to figure this out. People are converting cars themselves to pure electric on $10,000 budgets. Mass production should be a lot cheaper than people doing it themselves but American auto makers don't seem to get it. If America can get past the past the gas guzzling phase dollar declines would actually help American industry. A 50% or 60% dollar decline would make American autos so much more competitive. But that decline can't happen as long as America is addicted to oil. Having $10 gas would destroy the country if we can not make EV cars.

However, it is much too late to replace the car fleets now. This kind of hard medicine had to be take a decade ago and they even now they still don't understand what needs to be done.

[mos6507]

The batteries are the budget-buster for EV conversions. Nobody wants to drive a lead sled. Lithium doesn't come cheap.