You guys!

Big news today: Megan Breukelman, one of Ryan’s comrades during his time at Ringling College of Art and Design is hanging out with us in the D! Sharp as a tack and quick with a joke, she’s a photography student at School of Visual Arts in NYC with an emphasis in curation. She also cofounded a magazine called Atlas Magazine, a magazine which has garnered world-wide attention; she can definitely give us a couple of pointers on entrepreneurship.

She came to Detroit today with all the normal preconceived notions that, truth be told, we both shared before the project (lots of crime, people are tough and unfriendly, etc); but after only about 6 hours she has revised her opinion.

Let’s backtrack and talk about how she came to see the city this way.

We took her to Belle Isle, a small island in the middle of the Detroit River and one of the “sights to see” in the Detroit metro area. It was poppin’ in the city’s golden years, but as the city reached its decline city officials “let the park go”. However, as of 17 months ago the powers-that-be have worked diligently to restore it to its former glory.

Worn down buildings at Belle Isle still being fixed up

We were hoping to check out the Aquarium on the island. That was closed. (only open on Saturday and Sunday)

We drove around and tried to check out the Natural Zoo. That was closed.

We made two more friends who also wanted to see fish at the aquarium

But we got to speak to a Michigan Conservation Officer who generally enforces laws set out by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “I’m a fish and game guy” he said, “but here my main goal is to make sure people are safe.” He said that up until 17 months ago, the Detroit PD handled the park’s security. “Detroit PD turned a blind eye. We can’t do that. This is a state park, but they ran it like a city park…and they would patrol but they didn’t have the manpower to keep the riff raff out”. Now, it’s the only state park with 24/7 police surveillance.

Also, he said that crime in the city was on the rise, “not general crime, but terrorists, people trying to start stuff. The public doesn’t hear about all of that.”

We spent at least 30 minutes trying to find the only lighthouse in the country made entirely of marble. We asked everyone we saw on the island and no one knew where it was. On the way, we ran into more Conservation Officers BBQing after a survival training. One officer said that the crime rate was dropping (a direct contradiction of the other officer) and that when the city is short on money they layoff police officers, “then they [the public] complain about the rise in crime afterwards. They need to make up their minds.” We need to get some concrete data about the crime rate here to set the story straight.

The lighthouse was cool, though.

More friends at Belle Isle

“I’m so much happier when I’m singing”

For lunch we made our way over to Greektown (a part of downtown).

In this area we saw the most concentrated number of pedestrians we have seen yet.

While looking for a restaurant, we approached Sunn Andersn, a painter selling his work on the sidewalk. “A lot of young people are moving to Detroit” he said. “I’ve been in this spot 10 years and I’ve been seeing a lot of new people coming in, maybe visiting Detroit.” The most striking thing he said was this: “I do better here than in New York City.” That bodes well.

We then ate at an amazing greek restaurant, the Plaka Cafe which is open 24 hours. We had a server who compulsively sang along with the songs on the radio. Megan liked her so much she suggested we tip her the rest of our grant money.

Considered it. She was pretty awesome…but we have stuff to do.

The server told us that Greektown is one of the busiest strips in the city at all times because of the Greektown Casino which opened in December, 2000. Last Saturday, the cafe had a line of people outside the door waiting to sit down at 5AM. Despite the controversy about the Casino’s worth and benefit to the city, it draws a large, diverse crowd willing to spend money.  When we inquired about about a theater in Greektown, she quickly told us about an open storefront on the strip! We hope to get some numbers about the real estate in the area but we are assuming that it’s quite pricy.

“Dude, check out this storefront”

Spurred by our server’s suggestion, we took to the streets to check out the surrounding real estate. We ran across a surprising amount of locations for sale/rent…many of them owned by Bedrock, the real estate company that Dan Gilbert works with to buy and refurbish abandoned buildings.

Should we open up downtown? Many of the younger, excited Detroiters we ask encourage us to. But many of the older or more pragmatic people we ask say move to smaller outlying communities that are experiencing a lot of economic growth at the moment. For example, we ran into one of the leaders of the Motor City Pedicab Company who gave some very studied information on the traffic and prices in the city. He corroborated what we’ve been hearing about Corktown and Midtown: downtown is established and very expensive; other neighborhoods provide an opportunity for businesses to grow with them.

Best location: TBD.

A Change of Heart

When we got in the car, Megan voiced her new impressions: “There’s a stigma about the city which lacks validity”. She cited the friendliness of the people and the seeming lack of crime, despite what the news has told her. “The people are so nice!” She also shared our fascination for the abandoned buildings.

Oh, and she definitely appreciated the beauty of the sunset.

On a serious note, we have tried to infuse the blog with all the impressions of Detroit and its people that grew on her so quickly. Interestingly, Megan has read every single one of our blogs. But seeing is believing.

I suppose it’s easy to read our words and think “these two guys are crazy about Detroit and that’s keeping them from giving the whole picture”.

Well, that’s not true: the jury is still out on the D. We are not sold that this is where we want to open our theater. And we have been trying really hard to seek out negative opinions as well as positive ones; however, we have heard overwhelmingly positive opinions. Is this because Detroiters are eager to encourage artists to come to their city? Is it totally genuine? Is it somewhere in between? Do they give a positive answer out of a cultural predisposition to agree out of default (that general Midwestern niceness)?

We have come into contact with each of these. So what do we do with these conflicting motivations? More on this as we go.

Detroit Police Headquarters from 1923 until 2013. Future of the building is unknown.

“Best Jam in town!!”

We ended the day with some laughs at the Planet Ant Theatre. Tonight’s show was packed, all 50 seats were filled, a huge difference from Saturday night. It was definitely heartening to see a sold out crowd we would hope for in our theater. We hopped up and played a couple of games in their “Ant Jam” part of the evening: “Put your name in the Ant Jam Jar and we’ll call you up to Jam with the best Jam in town!”

So today we Jammed, we chilled with the cops and we converted a non-believer…

Much love from the D,

R&R&M

🙂

R&R by the sign that started it all.