Clare Pfeiffer Ramsey's Latest Articles
Game On, Detroit
Surely some people are sick of the Super Bowl hoopla already. It’s just a game, right? Sure it is, but the impact of the game on metro Detroit will last long after the VIPs have hopped on the jets back to wherever they came from. City and development leaders say much of what’s been started in the name of SBXL has been in the works for a long time, and the big game just gave them a reason to get the ball rolling a little faster.
Detroit Wants You
Detroit graphic artists are trying to do for Detroit’s image what Uncle Sam, Rosie the Riveter and Chairman Mao did for their causes in the last century. In an exhibition of propaganda posters about the Motor City, more than 50 graphic artists will offer positive messages of city pride.
Day of the Dead Comes Alive
El Dia de los Muertos – or Day of the Dead — is becoming a big deal in Mexicantown. Thousands of visitors – including more than 600 schoolchildren – will come by the busload to see the vibrant displays and to buy skulls made of sugar, breads shaped like bones and countless other delights made especially for the traditional two-day celebration of the dead.
Where Detroit’s Elite Meet for Eternity
Iron gates. Cold slabs of granite. Crinkling leaves. Tolling bells. Morbid, maybe. Creepy, sure. Still, a fall cemetery tour is a chance to commune with Detroit’s past, experience its present, and maybe even think about its future.
Who Ya Gonna Call?
Angels’ Night’s guardian angel and Motor City Blight Busters founder John George has been taking on the city’s problems full-throttle for more than 15 years. From his northwest Detroit headquarters, he’s built an army of volunteers and a legion of corporate supporters, on a guerilla campaign against blight.
Detroit Tourists – From Up North?
When a couple of Up North resort owners want to take a quick break in a big city, they head some 200 miles southeast, to what some would say is an unlikely spot for a weekend away from it all — Detroit. With culture, sports, music and meals to remember, plus unique places like the Inn on Ferry Street to stay, they say the city makes a great place for an urban getaway.
Detroit 101
Ann Cuddohy Slawnik leads dozens of metro Detroiters on a three-day crash course in all things Detroit — from the impressive mansions of Boston-Edison to the hip new lofts downtown, and all the good and bad, ugly and beautiful in between.
Time for Transit = Now
Why can’t metro Detroiters shuttle around on General-Motors-made electric buses (Seattle bought a bunch) to and from work, to and from restaurants and bars, to and from the hospital, saving on air quality and decreasing unemployment? Detroit is late on mass transit. But it’s never too late to jump on the national bandwagon, say proponents of mass transit.
