Freedom Trip - Day 7

Madison, WI to Detroit, MI
Long day on the road - way too much.  A failure of planning or overly aggressive thinking - not sure which.  Sun was behind us the whole day and long gone by the time we finally arrived.  I was teasing Dodo "Get ready for gang warfare!  Get ready for gun shots and mayhem!"  Detroit is a scary place, at least that's how I was thinking as we drove in.

After breakfast in Madison we headed south and eastbound, ignoring Chicago once more.  About 460 miles, our longest day by far.

We stopped for lunch in Gary, Indiana.  We pulled off the highway towards our chosen restaurant and parked near a Jackson Five mural - I'd forgotten about Gary's one claim to fame.  Two characters were shuffling down the sidewalk as we got out of the car.  A man with a tattooed face and a woman wearing dirty white slippers.  "Got a light?" she asked.  "No, sorry, I don't smoke",  Dodo responded softly.  She stared angrily and it felt like hours before they slowly shuffled off.  Had we not been starving we'd have gotten back in the car and taken off.  We took a seat near the window and kept watch on the Smart with each bite.  The rust in Gary is alive and thickening.

Detroit is marked off by mile roads.  It begins at 8 Mile Road and continues one mile at a time until you're downtown.  We'd rented a bedroom in a large brick house just south of 7 Mile road.  It was surreal.  This is where all the car company big wigs live or used to.  In the depths of 2008 you could've picked up one of these for around $90k.  

Just a quarter mile away from our brick Tudor there were blocks with just a few houses standing and I'm using the word "standing" loosely.  It's what a city looks like after you turn everything off and leave for a few decades.  Nature slowly takes it all back.

Closer to downtown, it looks livelier.  There's a new casino slash hotel and a combo basketball and hockey arena.  We went for breakfast in a cafe in Corktown, so named for its once majority Irish inhabitants all of whom reportedly hailed from county Cork.

It smelled familiar - just like every other downtrodden hood that starts to sprout seedlings.  Bike lanes, cafes, restaurants touting their local pedigree, small cinemas - all the ingredients for gentrification soup, slow on the boil.  It's only a matter of time - at least for Corktown.  I simply cannot believe it will spread too far.  Detroit has lost 300,000 people in the last 10 years.  It boggles the mind.

Jean had promised a colleague she'd swing by his house and so we did, from 1 Mile Rd up towards the higher numbers, past 8 Mile and suddenly in the burbs.  Leafy, green, Whole Foods coming up on your left, more Starbucks than you could count.  It was like driving out of a dark tunnel and into a bright warm summer day.  Birmingham, Michigan.  Exhibit one of white flight.  We had lunch at an outdoor cafe.  No free parking anywhere.  I spied a woman wearing an Oscar-worthy dress and high heels pushing a baby carriage.  Her colleague, Sean, looked a bit nervous "I should've dressed up, I think."  Nice guy.  Told us a crazy story about how he wanted to put a new door on his garage and had to have a meeting with the planning commission.  He had to bring his architect and his lawyer.  They didn't like his plan, which called for a single opening for a two car garage.  The planning commission likes two doors on two car garages.