Buzz

Oh, Detroit, you're so crafty. And here's another reason why: Craft blog writer finds herself at Foran's, er, the Grand Trunk Pub (they've changed their name and expanded next door), ordering a Faygo Diet Red Pop from the silversmith bartender. He makes Old English D rings, among other things. If you want one, go in and ask for Pauly.

Excerpt from Craftzine's blog:

Pauly is a silversmith and has been for about 15 years. From designing a piece to the wax work and adding precious stones, Pauly does it all. He learned his craft from his father, also an expert. His father owned a shop and it didn't take long for Pauly to develop a love of the craft.

The Old English D rings are also a tradition from his father. His dad had seen a similar ring and created a modified mold to make his own version. Pauly took on making them as well. Whenever he would wear one out, someone would ask him where he got it, just like I did. A great story of crafty word of mouth.

Just like me, Pauly believes that Detroit is packed with crafters and DIY folks. Many of his friends are also artists and inspiration flows throughout their groups.

Read the entire article here.

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Detroit Girls About Town, a web site that's aimed at keeping Detroit girls in the know, had a great idea: a guide to graffiti. So, the enlisted artist Shades to list some of the best spots in the city to peep some damn good graffiti. The list, taking you from the Dequindre Cut to MCS, could make a nice little afternoon tour on a lazy sunday.

Excerpt from Detroit Girls About Town:

1) Dequindre Cut.
The best place in the city to see graffiti and get into the feeling of what we [graffiti artists] experience would be the Dequindre Cut. It's an old, shut down train line that ran south to the warehouses on the river and north towards the major lines that would lead the trains out for industry. The two-mile area is now, for your pleasure, a bike/jogging trail from the river to eastern market.

Read the entire article here.
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The Center for American Progress is a think-tank dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through thoughts and ideas, which will hopefully spur action. They released a top five list of cities to go for the green jobs. Detroit was one of them.

Excerpt from the Center for American Progress:

There's good news for Detroit despite Michigan's 15.3 percent unemployment rate. Department of Energy green technology grants to fund factories and create green jobs will tap into the Motor City's skilled automotive workforce to bring hybrid and electric technology to the forefront of the American auto industry. Michigan had already created more than 22,000 clean-tech jobs by 2007, and the new federal grants will make those numbers grow. Automotive companies not based in Detroit have recently opened hubs in the city, and a mechanical engineer working on plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles in Detroit can expect to make $63,600 median pay with a bachelor's degree, reports Clean Edge.

Read the entire article here.
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More national media discussions of Detroit's land use issues.

First, Kurt Metzger, director of Data Driven Detroit, talked with NPR about the survey his firm conducted and how it will play into Detroit Mayor Dave Bing's plan for downsizing Detroit. There are a lot of questions and not many answers. But the good news is that these questions are now being raised from the top, not just the bottom.

Excerpt from the NPR transcript:

NORRIS: How do you compensate people who have to move? Because as I understand it, they're entitled to 125 percent of taxable value for their property. But their property values have plummeted; have deteriorating along with the surrounding property, so how do you make them whole?

Mr. METZGER: That's a great question and that's one of those questions that I don't know that we have the answer for. I mean, I think we just can't give money and say: Good luck. Go find a place to live.

I think we have to come up with those housing alternatives and work with them both to relocate them into a home that's better - whatever that means. And I think that's something that still has to be worked out. I think we're going to have to really work with individuals, work with the neighborhood groups and other providers in the area and try to really understand how best to move them, keep them whole where they still are more or less with people that they've been around or that they feel comfortable with.

Listen to the report here.

And then we have this from Fast Company, examining the proposed Hantz farm and other urban farming ideas. Will farms exacerbate Detroit's problem of too much unused land, destroying hopes for rebuilding density.

Excerpt from the Fast Company story:

Together, Bing's and Hantz's plans must sound like a model city for locavores, urban farmsteaders (although Detroit's are actually suspicious of Hantz) and anyone concerned about the fate of sprawl in the era of peak oil. And that might have been so, were it not for the fact that Detroit doesn't fall away to the real prairie at 8 Mile Road. The city of Detroit may be a shadow of its former self, but metropolitan "Detroit" and its suburbs still contain 4.4 million people, more than metropolitan Phoenix, San Francisco or Seattle. And while Detroit may be shrinking in area, "Detroit" is doing anything but.

This fact, which is so often absent from reports about the city's plight, fatally undermines Bing's best intentions. His plan won't make Detroit any denser, but the opposite.

Read the full story here.

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If you follow us on Twitter, then surely you know that at the annual Downtown Detroit Partnership, May Dave Bing said that the M-1 Rail line was a go and should be "shovel ready" by the end of 2010.

That's great news for Detroit and Detroiters. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it'll actually happen then. However, if the words of the mayor aren't enough, check out the M-1 rail line website. Nothing says "commitment" like a website.

Find the M-1 rail line site here.

Read a Detroit News article about the M-1 rail line and Bing's words here.
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What should we do with the Michigan Central Station? A lot of ideas have slipped through Detroit's hands since the behemoth building went vacant more than 20 years ago. Everything from extreme games park to aquarium has been suggested. And, still, behind it all is an owner with an iron grip. There are a lot of hurdles to jump when it comes to the MCS, but maybe some of the more recent suggestions -- Michigan State Police HQ -- might have legs.

Excerpt from the New York Times:

Mr. Blashfield said his company was not interested in demolition, but needed an anchor tenant or at least "a critical mass" of businesses or government agencies before it could pay for any renovation. And that is the hard part; grand and varied plans have been proposed over the years, with none coming to fruition.

But there is new hope that momentum is building for Michigan Central to become a hub for some government security functions, like the Detroit headquarters of the Michigan State Police, some state and federal Homeland Security offices and, given Detroit's location close to the Canadian border, a center for trade inspections, Mr. Blashfield said.

Plans are preliminary, but they offer the most promise of anything proposed lately, especially if federal stimulus money can be used.

"I think this window of opportunity is very narrow, and if we don't seize the moment, we may lose it," said Cameron S. Brown, a Republican state senator who supports having security agencies use the building. "The clock is ticking."

Read the entire article here.
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Midtown is Detroit's shining example of density. There are shops and cafes and bars and stores one can pop in and out of along and off of Cass Avenue. Dave Mancini, owner of Eastern Market's Supino Pizzeria, blogs for Metromode about just that. Read further and you'll learn a little bit about opening a business in Detroit and why he puts an egg on one of his signature pizzas.

Excerpt from the blog on Metromode:

A couple of months ago on an unseasonably lovely Monday, I wandered into Curl Up & Dye on Cass north of Willis in Midtown (helping Detroiters look like Detroiters – awesome tagline from this fantastic little salon's Myspace page) for my semiannual haircut without an appointment (because that's sort of how I operate). I was told I would have a 45 minute wait. So how to entertain myself for a bit?

Then it occurred to me that this is one section in Detroit that has newly established the sort of 'walkable neighborhood – retail density' that we all get geeked about. Just around the block on Canfield I went to grab a beer at Motor City Brewing Works. On my way there, I passed two stores that, like my business, are closed on Mondays. But most days of the week, you can check out beautiful, locally crafted art and gifts and vintage clothes at City Bird, or fantastic design elements for your home, curated by the eminently tasteful Claire at the Bureau of Urban Living next door. I finished my beer and cruised around the block, past the Avalon Bakery (their bear claw pastries are the greatest) on to Goodwell's, a natural foods store par-excellence, and home to one of the tastiest avocado sandwiches you'll ever sink your teeth into. Now I'm a carnivore, but this is one vegan meal that can satisfy my people. I still had four minutes left as I walked by another anchor of this neighborhood, the Spiral Collective, and got back just in time to get a great haircut while listening to the owner drop the occasional f-bomb, one of the particular charms of this place.

Read the entire blog post here.



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Good Girls Go To Paris Crepes started humbly in that little spot on John R. Then they opened a bigger spot in the Park Shelton in Midtown. And now? The crepe shop is looking to build on that by opening up a new location in Toledo, Ohio, a few other spots in Southeast Michigan, and maybe even one in Chicago.

Excerpt from Metromode:

Good Girls Go To Paris Crepes is opening up a new location in Toledo and building out a new space in Grosse Pointe. The Detroit-based creperie is also looking at opening in a few other spots in southeast Michigan and even other major metro areas in the Midwest, such as Chicago. This latest burst of expansion is expected to grow the company's payroll from eight people today to 24 by the end of the year.

Expanding in today's tight credit market is no easy feat for small businesses. Torya Blanchard, Good Girls Go To Paris Crepes' founder and owner, says she is accomplishing this by taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to her. For instance, Blanchard says the Toledo location, which is near the University of Toledo, was formerly a café, making the expansion inexpensive.

"It's a lot of hard work and good luck," Blanchard says. "You need to keep your nose to the grindstone and make rational decisions."

Read the entire article here.


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If you made it out to the Metro Times Blowout a few things may have happened: You may have drank too much, you may have had permanently damaged your hearing, and you may have witnessed an unscheduled appearance of a marching band -- the Detroit Party Marching Band. Word on the street is this isn't the last time you'll hear from these guys. Maybe we'll see them sometime soon when lots of people are wearing green, perhaps?

Excerpt from the Metro Times Blowout Blog:

So, you may have been hanging out at Small's last night sipping a drink in the bar room waiting for the next band to start, or may have been hugging a wall in the hallway of the Gates of Columbus when, out of nowhere, you see...a marching band?

Not part of the Blowout schedule or planned by the Metro Times in any way, this assemblage of horn blowers, bass drum thumpers, and cymbal crashers crashed Saturday at the Blowout (although respectfully by not entering the actual performance spaces while a scheduled band was playing).

Read the entire post here.
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If you weren't one of the hundreds of people able to see Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes at MOCAD, don't worry. You can now download it.

Excerpt:

Film archivist Rick Prelinger sez, "Thanks to word of mouth and Boing Boing, Lost Landscapes of Detroit [ed: a show of public domain footage showing the grand landscapes of Detroit in its heyday] screened two weeks ago to a standing-room-only and vocal audience of Detroiters. It's now online for free downloading (and, I hope, massive and widespread re-editing). If you want to see Detroit as it was, and hopefully as it will be again, check it out.

Read the entire article here.
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Detroit's land is huge and the population isn't. There's a lot of space and not enough coverage. Mayor Dave Bing sees that and is looking to enact a plan to address this problem from a governmental level.

Excerpt:

The mayor is looking to the diminished tally, down from 951,270 in 2000, as a benchmark in his bid to reshape Detroit's government, finances and perhaps even its geography to reflect its smaller population and tax base. That means, in part, cutting city services and laying off workers.

Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Bing, a Democrat first elected last year to finish the term of disgraced former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, hasn't touted big development plans or talked of a "renaissance." Instead, he is trying to prepare residents for a new reality: that Detroit—like the auto industry that propelled it for a century—will have to get smaller before it gets bigger again.

Read the entire article here.

Urban Planning Department head at Wayne State University, Robin Boyle, chimes in on a smaller Detroit here for the Freep.

The Detroit News chimes in with a few words on shrinking here and here.

Even mLive got in on the game here.
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The snow is starting to melt a bit. The sun should be out this week. Of course we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves but it is March after all. So, let's keep a positive attitude and hope this damn snow will soon be gone.

@Levi_King, however, is thinking ahead: Another sunny day in Detroit....I hope this means no more snow and an early Spring!!

You and the 900,000 (or less) people living in Detroit.

@tinewebanalyst wants to start another Detroit blog. She asks: as I think about writing my blog about life in "The D" I wonder what you (my audience) would like to read about? #detroit

@noeljesse has something you can write about: Grabbing lunch with a potential Detroit church planter. So cool to hear about people wanting to move TO Michigan!

When they get here, they join the cause with @gouramigirl:Let Mayor Bing know you would like the Belle Isle Aquarium back. It's yours. Just ask.

Oh well. At least we still have Autoroama
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ReadyMade, a mag devoted to arts and crafts, finds itself in Detroit and running down all the things that make it worth while - Heidelberg Project, the Powerhouse, Eastern Market, Hamtramck, etc., etc., etc.

Excerpt:

The slogan is prominent on the city's flag—a reminder that if ever there was a time for a slogan to ring true, now would be it. Everyone has heard the stories of the epic destruction that has taken place in Detroit over the past 30 years but it's still shocking to see in person. But what has always resonated more with me is the amount of energy, creativity, and enthusiasm that exists in the midst of so much devastation.

Read the entire article here.
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Is the Red Dwarf to blame for all of Detroit's woes? Hell no... but we can blame the devilish little thing if we want.

Excerpt:

The Nain was first described by none other than Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, way back in 1701. Legend has it that Cadillac was warned by a fortune teller to appease the dwarf, but didn't listen. Years later, the Nain attacked Cadillac, who hit le petit rouge homme with his walking stick… and things went south for Cadillac. Think imprisonment, indictment and the Bastille.

Since then, the dwarf has been sighted before all kinds of historical disasters: the Battle of Bloody Run in 1763, just before the great fire of 1805, attacking a woman in 1882. The Nain took almost a century off, but was seen before the riots of 1967 and prior to the ice storm of 1976. You get the idea. He's a bad dude.

Detroiters of yore were sly to the Nain's tricks, says Grunow, a law student who owns Midtown's Bureau of Urban Living with wife Claire Nelson, and conducted a semi-regular ritual called Marche de le Nain Rouge to banish the evil critter.

It's a ritual Grunow — and 177 Nain fans (anti-fans?) on Facebook — hopes to revive. With a wink, to be sure, but Grunow says his effort is also a deliberate effort to connect Detroit with its pre-automotive-era history.

Read the entire article here.

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