I said yesterday that I was shocked by how derelict downtown Detroit was back when I was covering the auto show. I couldn’t image it’s gotten better, and apparently it hasn’t. Newswires columnist Al Lewis is there this year covering the show, and has a post with a series of photos to illustrate what he calls’ “Detroit’s Apocalypse.”
John Linardos, brewer of Ghetto Blaster ale, shared a laugh with me over a New York Times article that proclaimed, “small businesses are budding around Detroit.” (Click here to read Times piece.)
“This is where all business stops,” said Linardos, owner of Motor City Brewing Works.
This seemed a fitting signpost on my latest visit to Detroit. It even reminded me of Dante: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
Sunday morning, my old buddy Louis Aguilar of the Detroit News, took me for a ride around town, and it was not difficult to see what Lindardos was complaining about.
The pictures are a stark illustration of what I was talking about. It’s almost mind-boggling that a major American city, or at least what used to be a major American city, could fall so far. If you haven’t been to Detroit lately, check out Al’s post.
Incidentally, Aguilar documented at least 48 office towers in downtown Detroit that are 100% abandoned.
“By day, they look ordinary enough, but at night, these unlit monoliths cast the darkest of shadows over the city,” Lewis writes.
“The prairie,” he say, “will reclaim the city in time.”
