By Chris Radcliffe

Two groups of white urban underground explorers ran into each other in the largest abandoned building complex in America and a fistfight broke out. The origin of the fight was an internet tiff from three years before. It involved the ethics of trashing these kinds of ruins. I stood there with my friends wondering if this was going to spread into a Donny brook. I’ve lost touch with how this must sound to most of you. To me, while ironically absurd, it was just another strange weekend. Nothing came of the fight, someone cried uncle, lesson learned. This all happened last Saturday night in the Packard manufacturing complex (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paanta/sets/731080/) in Detroit.

I’d come to town expecting things like this. We had broken into a sixteen story department store downtown earlier in the day. I usually start at the top and work my way down. I’m interested in the architectural artifacts that get left behind when they seal what’s become a sarcophagus. Old neon signs and the crest that every architect worth his salt would have had sculpted to cover the water tower at the peak of a building seem to recall the history that I’m standing in. Old gothic train stations and the dead hulk of obsolete steam powered electrical plants are my favorites. Every major city has something like this but Detroit is the mother ship.

Detroit is not going to experience the urban renewal that seems to follow a sudden influx of artists. Its scale is too vast, the level of devastation too widespread. David Best, a well known west coast artist, built a temple to the American dream in northwest Detroit last year (http://www.detroitdreamproject.com/project-photos/). I went in search of it on my last night in town. In any other city it would be sitting in a major public square, in Detroit it was swallowed up in one of the tens of thousands of vacant lots off any of the major roads leading into downtown. It had no context other than a let them eat cake kind of feel. Even something monumental is dwarfed in that landscape.

There are two city blocks that make up the Heidelberg Project (heidelberg.org) that begin to attempt working at this scale. The artist that started Heidelberg used whole building as his canvas, one completely covered with numbers in various fonts and sizes. The next house was painted with multicolored dots and another had stuffed animal toys nailed to every inch of trim work. These houses were still all occupied in the middle of a mostly empty neighborhood. Whether that was due to the identifiable nature of this distinct place among the ruins or because its been a cause celeb for so long and attracts bohemian sycophants I couldn’t say, but there it was. I was inspired by the spirit more than the aesthetic. There was a building in another part of town that I saw glittering in the middle of a square mile of leveled city blocks. It was covered in broken mirrors glued to scavenged plywood that caught my eye the same way. It all looked like dead flowers on an enormous grave.

Detroit like Chernobyl won’t be coming back anytime soon. If there are other uses for this kind of environment maybe it time to seize that place. As a scene all it takes is common purpose and specific gravity. The next thing you know, what do you get? That's the real question, what do you get. I had a coney at Lafayette's before I left. I sat with a bunch of cops that looked like they'd been under siege for a long time. I didn't get the feeling that they were going to roll over for a bunch of artists with good intentions. But there is a place that could start fresh, inside the Zug Island salt mines the are hundreds of miles of caverns. Maybe in Detroit the new canvas is right below your feet.

http://metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=2625

Anyways, there is so much art and music that comes out of Detroit for a few real reasons. One – tons of places to show or play or exhibit. You can get a gig somewhere. Two – Civic pride. People love this area, love that they are from here, and don't take a back seat to anyone. People here may dream about making it big in New York City, but when they get there, they make sure to talk about where they are from. Three – No rules. The city has long been a DMZ. Now it is less so, but you can find a spot to do something and it will be free or cheap. Need an art studio? Need to put on some kind of super mechanical dragon battle? Whatever, you can do it and the cops are probably not going to hassle you.

You can see garage bands, techno, hip-hop, whatever – whenever. Then you can drive a couple hours and camp and canoe and look at the stars.

Also, you can read about Detroit's ice cream trucks here.

anyway, all we need to get the ball rolling is about 500,000 energetic types with coastal fatigue who have come to the conclusion that money isn't everything, and have no time to waste listening to the bickering that has gone on in Metro Detroit since the 1960's….all these new arrivals would see is the potential, as you see it., and things would really start to happen.

a word, though, to anyone who is considering moving to Detroit: Manage your expectations re: change (put that on a frigging plaque and hang it above your bed, seriously), really do watch out for scrappers, and always, always tread lightly.

curious outsiders often make the mistake of thinking there's nobody left here, and that's fair, because often times, after 7pm most evenings, anyway, it does seem like that.

however, there are more than 800,000 people who still call Detroit home. it is not a circus sideshow, it is not a ghost town, these are not the roman ruins, the majority of Detroiters are not waiting for you to come save them. in fact, that majority will fiercely defend themselves against outside influence, even if it is to their own detriment (see above: regional bickering).

That is all.

We have lots of open space here in Michigan and in the midwest in general and it's one of those things that really hurts us when it comes to designing and deploying infrastructure. The lack of infrastructure is a huge wall in the path of civic projects which would take root so much easier in denser communities.

things have definitely rebounded a bit since I was a kid in the 80's. Hopefully we can rid ourselves of this current stain of rotten politics, lessen our overall dependency on the auto industry and make some more progress towards that brighter future.

Of note – the comment about the scrappers is not even slightly exaggerated. Those shameless mofos are really incredibly industrious. It's too bad they dont put the effort into above board trade, they'd be able to accomplish great things.

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