Pink reader Natalie gave me the head’s up that the Washington Post published a great little write-up on Detroit, MI in yesterday’s Travel section of their newspaper. Rather than following the herd that seems to love bashing Detroit Rock City (many times without even bothering to pay the city a visit), the Washington Post instead writes up a charming little review of the town I love so, painting a picture of the city that is so dead-on that I can’t wait to share it with all y’all:
I saw it first by night. A metropolis unveiled in viewfinder snapshots through the smudged windows of an elevated train. Gothic towers crowded close, proud detail etched on gray stone. A beaming stadium full of red-capped baseball fans, its front side left open as if to console the devoted others it couldn’t quite hold. A neon neighborhood of revelers, trying their luck with the cards and with each other. A river that bounced fractured glints of the city back toward the heavens. It was beguilingly authentic — gritty and romantic — and it was decided: I would side with Mary. Mary, the smiling lady of the hotel lobby, not Alexandro, the cab driver who brought me to her. “Is this your first time in Detroit?” Mary inquired. “You’re going to love it! It’s just like Paris.” Minutes earlier Alexandro laughed incredulously when I told him what I’d come here to find. “Happiness?” he scoffed. “I can’t really see it. Everybody’s just so miserable.” Which is what Forbes magazine said, too; the Most Miserable City in America, it claimed in a report earlier this year. “Imagine living in a city with the country’s highest rate for violent crime and the second-highest unemployment rate,” the article proposes, by way of introduction. But after riding the looping downtown train — slickly named the People Mover — and stepping into the Greektown section of the city, where I was met by saxophones singing from opposite corners and a scene that looked like the quaint, Hollywood version of a 1940s gambling town, it was over … I could be happy here. I already was.
You simply must read the rest of Ellen McCarthy’s 5-page piece on Detroit … she talks at length about the places she visited and the people she met while in Detroit. She really does Detroit very proud, which is a nice change of pace. It gets very frustrating when people continue to bash the city I love so much. Of course there are problems in Detroit but there are problems everywhere. Detroit is my home and I love it. And I love Ms. McCarthy for writing such a lovely piece on my city :)
I should also note that Pink reader Natalie also sends along the Washington Post piece on Hamburg, Germany — her home town — which is featured in the same Travel section of yesterday’s paper (she sent in both because she was born in Hamburg and her son was born in Detroit). After reading that piece, I’m reading to get my buns to Germany for a great vacay as well ;)
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