MI Love: Detroit (childhood edition)

I was blessed to have a mostly happy childhood - we lived in a safe middle class suburb, attended adequate schools, and were never truly short money for necessities. We had many family trips to the zoo, to my grandparents' property Up North, and to visit family in other states.

That said, I think one of my favorite childhood memories is the first time I remember visiting Detroit. My mother worked alternating weekends as a nurse, so my dad was responsible for us then and normally arranged his schedule so that we could be his first priority. One weekend, he absolutely had to go into the office to do work for a few hours on a Saturday. It's the only time I remember that happening. Since there would be no one else there, he took us with him, making sure to bring books and games. I couldn't tell you now how old I was exactly, but I must have been in elementary school.

We weren't terribly upset to have to go the office with him - it was so cool to us that he had access to the parking garage and so many access codes into the building (our dad must be so important!), and we probably would have spent half the morning curled up someplace reading anyway.

But he felt badly, I could tell, because he took us to some of his haunts later, downtown, where we had never been. We had deep dish pizza and then baklava in Greektown (maybe my first time having either), rode the People Mover (yes, pretty useless, but it was my first time on any kind of transit), and then visited Hart Plaza. There was nothing going on there that weekend - I think it was the middle of the winter and pretty desolate, actually - but my dad told us that things happened there, and I remember a sense of importance for that place.

Every time I go to Greektown or past Hart Plaza, I think of that quiet day and of the feeling a born and raised suburbanite had seeing a place where so much history had passed. Hart Plaza and the Riverwalk are much busier now - all of downtown is, in fact. I've had the fortune to come in and out Detroit enough to see foot traffic increase, buildings fill in, rental prices rise - not overnight, not magically, not perfectly. And I hope that many of the people coming in now can still sense the wonder of a place where much has happened, but where things were dormant for a little while and you had to really look to see the beauty. So many people stayed and never stopped seeing it. Some are moving back now. Some are moving from other places, drawn by what I saw that day and so many other aspects of the city.

And I guess that feeling - whatever it was - is the reason that the ruin porn has never overtaken me. Even before I had worked in the city, made friends in the city, I knew in my heart that the naysayers, the ones who insist that Detroit is dangerous, that no one should go there or live there, that it's done or doesn't deserve an art museum or a bailout or anything, they don't know, haven't seen, haven't felt what I have felt. I hope they will one day.