Visiting Detroit?
 

I fly in to DTW several time a year to see my daughter in College. And of all the times I've done so I've never seen Detroit.

I do know how bad it can be, but I'm fascinated with the stories I've heard of the place. Its grandeur and its ruin.

So I am thinking about heading in to the Motor City early on a Friday morning - say around 6:00am on a Friday in March. Bad idea? If not, what would you see and how much time would you take?

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Have not been there in 10 years, but I easily get sucked into watching videos of the abandoned buildings.

Go to the renaissance building and then drive South for block after block of burned out/abandoned/scary buildings from the riots.....just don't stop at the street lights or make eye contact with anyone !

The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn is fabulous if you dig cars and mechanical things.

What a weird city. You head west to Royal Oak and go Lotus shopping in your furs, or east to Grosse Point and dine by all the yachts. Or miss a turn downtown and see a bum in a dumpster, a pack of wild dogs, and two dudes in a car up on blocks. I ran that light.

Must stop in for a Coney Dog on Lafayette....

Lolz. You guys are too much.

I lived in Detroit, by the old Tiger Stadium. Most of Detroit is abandon. Drive around Cork Town, the old train station, check out the mansions in Indian Village, drive around downtown. Great Greek food in Greektown. Stay on the major streets to get from location to location. You should stay out of the Highland Park area.

Or skip downtown and head for The Henry Ford museum over in Dearborn. Amazing cars/trains/planes/machines to be seen.

America's Greatest History Destination - The Henry Ford

Definitely do it. No one is up at 6:00 AM bring your camera. Drive down Woodward and see all the shuttered high rises, drive a mile or two west on I think its Grand River, miles of shuttered store fronts. Go in some of the former residential areas, you'll see blocks and blocks of empty fields that used to be packed with working class homes.

Would an "Escape from Detroit" movie be in the future? ;)
No CGI necessary.

Try to rent a white Crown Vic so it looks like you're driving a cop car.

Extra coolness points if it's missing the cigarette lighter.

_

Go to Joe Lewis and see the Wings play!

I will be in Detroit for one night next week.

Bill

I used to go to the Nascar race at MIS in the late 80's. After we crossed the border we made our way to Michigan Ave. We stayed on that road until Wayne Michigan then hit Interstate 94 the rest of the way.
I remember seeing lots of burnt/boarded up buildings,and Tiger Stadium was cool (I saw the Tigers destroy the Blue Jays in 84)
I remember seeing a building set back around 500 yards from the road. From a distance it looked like an abandoned hospital. Pretty spooky. The architecture was beautiful.
I later found out it was a train station.

+1 on Greektown and the food. There is a casino on the same block. Last year my wife and I walked around that area and saw a cop every block. The Downtown area has some great old buildings. You can always take the tunnel to Canada, which is kind of cool.

Greektown is ok, but it's more like Greekblockandahalf. Other than that Detroit is a depressing chithole.

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The DIA (Detroit Institute of Art) holds the number 6th ranking in global "Importance" for Western Art. Unfortunately, most of the good stuff (including a bunch of Egyptian artifacts and mummies, Impressionist paintings, etc) is all packed away to make room for the African Art. True.

However, the Diego Rivera murals are very interesting. But to the unfamiliar viewer I would recommend hiring a guide to explain what you're looking at. The D is actually kicking around the idea of selling off parts of it's collection to pay some of its bills.

If you drive around, which requires some prudence and situational awareness at night, be advised the streets are laid out in the typical urban grid but overlaid with a pattern similar to the spokes of a wheel emanating from the hub which is at the beginning of Woodward Avenue at the Detroit River. In addition, there are numerous freeways overlaid yet again such that the unfamiliar will most likely end up completely and totally lost going the wrong way on a one-way street in a scene reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic psycho drama.

I find stuff like that to be so intriguing. Sort of a real life post-apocolyptic world, The Walking Dead minus the zombies.

I've got an idea http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/wat6.gif In NZ we are flooded with refugees and imigrants with no intention of working and demand the government (us taxpayers) provide them with a house etc. What a great idea. They get a house and we re-populate Detroit in the process.

A tour of Detroit is a must; there's something to be said about experiencing the city in person; imagining what it once was like in its prime, observing the decay up close, the small pockets of rebirth peppered throughout, that can't be translated into a youtube video.

I would be happy to give you a tour, or at least give you some suggestions; pm me when you have your date finalized and if my schedule works out, I'll join you. I would allow a morning for the tour capped off by an early lunch/late breakfast.


Spend some time on this website to get you up to speed:
Experience Detroit -- Architectural Tours