Cristal-guzzling trendsetters in designer clothes at home amid Motown’s nightlife

Excerpts from the story:

With its neon-tinged, Art Deco-like facade, velvet rope and immaculately manicured young women in low-slung jeans waiting outside, Bleu Room Experience here in the heart of downtown would be right at home on South Beach in Miami. True, it is about 40 degrees outside, and a few abandoned skyscrapers loom like hooded muggers within blocks in either direction. But Bleu Room is not alone.

In the last five years the lights have begun to shine once again in the former no-man’s land of downtown. And when some of the nation’s most conspicuous consumers of Cristal champagne and Chloé handbags descend on the Motor City this week for the prelude to the Super Bowl next Sunday, they may be surprised to learn that yes indeed, there is life after dark in Detroit.

When Bleu Room opened in 2001, it was one of the first outposts of cool to spring up among the boarded windows of the once-bustling commercial district around Grand Circus Park. Now, in the wake of ambitious downtown redevelopment schemes, there are moody martini lounges, opulent nightclubs and casinos, rock clubs, and restaurants serving everything from fusion to upscale soul food within walking distance of Ford Field, the new football stadium where the Super Bowl will be held.

Proud locals are hoping the coming week will shatter some stereotypes of Detroit as a ghost town felled by urban blight. “You will never find a place like this,” said Kristin Abel, 25, who grew up in the wealthy suburb of Grosse Pointe and returned to Detroit after graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts. “It’s got its own flavor. New York is great, don’t get me wrong, but Detroit, there is something more raw about it that I really, really adore.”

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