We pulled up to our new home . The houses were so close together . My father joked that he could reach out the window and shake our neighbors hand . We lived in a downstairs fl at . We split the building with our upstairs neighbors . All of the buildings on our block were a sooty , red brick . We had arrived in February . The skies were mostly grey . There was a lot of snow . My brother and I said the place was depressing . We also had to shovel the driveway every morning that it snowed .
When the snow thawed and spring came , it didn ’ t take long for us to fall in love with baseball . My dad had a coworker who had a younger brother who was a couple of years older than I was . He explained baseball to us . I still love the stats .
That summer , Detroit had one of the worst race riots in the history of this country . Homegrown star Tiger , Willie Horton , made a plea for his fellow blacks to stop fi ghting . They continued to fi ght , ignoring Horton .
It was 1967 , the Tigers ended up losing the pennant to the Red Sox . It was a tight , four-way race . The following season was one of the best . Denny MacLain — a pitcher who played the standards on a Wurlitzer at Ramada Inns during the off season — was the last pitcher to win 30 games , and the fi rst since Dizzy Dean in 1934 . The Tigers beat the Cardinals in the Series . MacLain looked like a future Hall of Famer , but his career took a dive because of injuries and personal issues . Following his retirement from baseball , he was in and out of prison for fraud . He appeared to have more in common with my father than I realized .
A few weeks ago , my friend Greg and I fl ew into Detroit , picked up a rental car and headed to Dearborn , because we had heard so much about the long Lebanese history there . We wanted some Lebanese food . We were not disappointed . My friend Mike Khoury had grown up in Detroit . Not only is he a great violin player , but he is also our go-to person when asking where to eat .
The fi rst night we went to Redford , a suburb of Detroit on 6 Mile road . Mike had just opened his venue . It ’ s a part of his label , Entropy Stereo . We met his fi rst artist-in-residence , Leyya Tawil . Leyya is a dancer who performs with Mike .
We stayed in an AirBNB in Hamtramck . When I was a kid , Hamtramck was mostly Polish . There is still a Polish population , but it also has a large Islamic population . We ate at a Yemeni spot and a Bengali restaurant there . While in Detroit we went to Mexican town , MOCAD , a Tigers game , had a Lafayette dog , a Vernors Float , and a lot of things I ’ m
Photo by Ashley Inguanta
forgetting about . I saw the sad remnants of old Tigers stadium . I went by the house that we lived in . I couldn ’ t tell which one it was . It was in the middle of several others that looked just like it .
I may have visited the city a little wide-eyed , but I know there is still a lot of soul in the town that I lived in , the town that brought the whole school to the auditorium to proudly watch a Motown documentary .
I also know that the city has a reputation for being a ruin , but it is so much more . I was inspired by the artists there . Popps Packing ’ s 80s Mitsubishi van that was converted into a sauna . The whole place , by Graeme Whyte and Faina Lerman , is a beautifully piecemealed compound .
We went to an opening that was very down to earth , and felt more like a neighborhood party . I met another great Detroit artist , Scott Hocking . His site-specifi c sculptures of ruin within ruins have become a familiar sight on websites like Hyperallergic . We also visited Power House Productions , by Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope . They had bought a few Hamtramck houses and made them into art projects . One is the sound house ; there ’ s a theater house too . The skate park they made in a fi eld is very popular . Most of these artists would be considered social practice artists , but there is a feeling that they learned plenty in art school and went renegade , and door-to-door with their fi ndings . It is a social practice that is integrated into the community and doesn ’ t feel laboratory-like .
I found a different Detroit than I remember as a kid . I could still see a familiar landscape , but I had changed . I ’ m much older . My trip might have had some nostalgic motivations . Though I don ’ t want to relive my childhood in Detroit , I know it helped form who I am .
Lincoln Street Art Park , Detroit , photo by Pat Greene
Orlando ’ s Art Scene , v . 1.3
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