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No, not my hometown. Hometown is in WA state.
Why Detroit? Simply put, I fucking love Detroit.
This could end up quite the rant.
Detroit, what can you say. At one time the wealthiest fastest growing city in the USA. The hub of the auto industry, an industrial giant.
Then an amazing thing happened. The African American population moved in from the southern states for cheap jobs in the auto industry.
White people freaked the fuck out. Race riots, slums, ghettos, the Klan, you name it, whitey went ape shit. And so began the largest and best example of "white flight" that this country has ever seen. Millions fled into the suburbs.
What happens when over the course of 40 years a largely poor and uneducated population take over one of the most prosperous cities in the USA?
Take over a city filled with the most amazing architecture and city planning ever seen in the midwest?
It becomes a ghetto almost over night.
You can drive through Detroit for hours and hours and drive through neighborhoods of amazing brick turn of the century home that are now ghettos. Neighborhoods of houses that anywhere else would cost 6 figures and up just laid to waste. Its like driving through the set of a mad max movie.
And in isolated pockets of the city you can find these isolated villages of mansions that were once owned by the likes of Henry Ford, politicians, monsters of history.... just completely surrounded by ghetto that goes unrivaled.
Im from the west coast, we dont have any old architecture, brick homes, or really cool historic districts. Let alone ones that have just been laid to waste. The ghetto is truly one of the most depressing things I have ever seen, but one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. And there is ALOT of ghetto. Damn near the whole city and Detroit is fucking HUGE.
And surrounding this city, an imaginary line that seperates black and white. Cities like Grosse Pointe that border the City of Detroit. This is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. You stand in the middle of Mack Ave and on one side of the street, ghetto. Look on the other side of the street, clubs, resteraunts, property value just shot up into the millions in a matter of feet. Never have I seen a contrast like that.
Its the best example of economic red lining I have ever personally witnessed. And you can see it everywhere.
Thats just the history part of Detroit that I love, and I barely scratched the surface.
The whole murder city and anger aspect of Detroit I love as well. Fuck around in Detroit, and you die. The way it should be.
Detroit. You call it armpit, I call it the greatest living sociological experiment still in progress. Detroit rules.
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