Dear readers,

We celebrated Memorial Day on the seats of bicycles — which we’ll definitely remember for at least a week.

Aj picked us up in the Bold Mobile (of Detroit Bold Coffee) bright and early at 8:30. After greeting him we gave Aj a gift: a Whole Foods hat with “DETROIT” embroidered across the back.

A little background: on Friday at about 4 pm we were driving around with Aj and Dustin. After browsing his email Aj exclaims seemingly out of nowhere “we got into Whole Foods! Let it be known that — what is this a Subaru? — let it be known that in the Subaru on May 22 we got into Whole Foods!”

Aj was very excited to get that Whole Foods hat.

After that, Aj explained the seating arrangements for the Bold Mobile: one of us would have to ride in the back…in a lawn chair. We rock, paper, scissors, shoed it and I (Rory) won, meaning I could choose between taking shotgun or the better bike. “Give me the better bike” I said as I sat in the unsecured lawn chair.

It was actually a very fun ride.

“Lord God we pray for a pleasant bike ride”

We were warmly welcomed as we approached the house that had been deemed the headquarters for the ride. After some initial handshaking, we listened to Rev. Dr. Nicholas Hood III lay out the rules of the roll. After that we all introduced ourselves (we won for longest commute); then we prayed together.

After that, we mounted our steel steeds and rolled out.

The best part about the day was that we were among 5 white people at the event, and our car made up the majority of that demographic. However, at no point did anyone bring it up…

…except one guy who said “you’re obviously not a racist since you’re riding with us — unless you’ve got a swastika under that shirtsleeve.” I replied “nope, just skin” — after a moment of fumbling for words.

The guy who freely joked about swastikas and racism is named Steven Hood, a local TV personality. I approached him because I’d heard I should talk to him about our research.

I barely finished describing the project when he energetically broke in: “there are a lot of grants out there right now and you can get them because you’re white. A soul brother trying to do what you’re doing wouldn’t get the same opportunities, but they’ll open their doors to you. I’m not a racist pig, I’m just telling you the truth.” When I voiced my repulsion he said “take advantage of it since you can. I would, but I’m not in your position.”

Again, I fumbled to keep the conversation going.

Then I asked about locations. “Get a grocery store,” Steve said. “The population of Detroit cannot support the number of grocery stores in the area, so they’re closing left and right, or have been closed for years. Those are very open spaces that can become whatever you want.”

Then a lady he knew started talking to him about the neighborhood we were riding through. He commented that the area had been “de-blacked; they had all the soul brothers kicked out and then fixed it up.”

This is a guy who speaks on TV. On his website, he says “Many Detroiters feel that there are two cities: Downtown, Midtown Corktown and the rest of the city. I along with others am working hard to make us one city.” He does not mind speaking his mind, which is quite admirable; and his mind is on the ongoing disenfranchisement of members of his community. For example, the more we hear about grants within the city we continue to hear about politics that empower people from outside the community at the expense of native Detroiters. jessica Care moore also voiced the difficulty black Detroiters face when applying for grants: “we hang out, we know each other.” She said that they even feel afraid to apply, knowing the track record.

What do we do with this state of affairs?

Rory’s take on Steve’s advice: We should take the grant opportunities and use them to empower the community through work that matters, that challenges the very state of affairs we are playing into. Will this be like Sean Bean trying to use “one ring to rule them all” for good? Will the status quo eventually corrupt us?

I say no. But I’m sure that many have said that and subsequently sold out.

Here’s Kirk’s reaction to Steve’s words:

“Detroiters, especially blacks, see the world in black and white. Guys, we’ve been recovering from 1967 since 1967. What you’ve seen in Ferguson and all over the country — we’ve been there. Our police force is over 50% black so we don’t have that problem. You’re talking with an older guy, so my viewpoint is based on a lot of experience.

“I don’t want you to leave Detroit hardened by what you see here. It depends who you talk to and where you go. In my house I treat you like my sons. Other places it’s different.”

We also ran into Peter C. Banks, the author of No Medals, a memoir of sorts about his father’s experiences in World War II. During the war blacks were given higher responsibilities but retained lower ranks and pay; Peter’s dad was one of them. Peter also told us Hollywood needs real stories, stories with heart; “it’s become over-saturated with movies that sell”. That’s why they’re looking into his book for a screenplay. Go Pete!

When I asked him “what does this city need?” he had this to say: “We need a blue collar industry in Detroit again. It used to be that you could graduate college, walk across the street and get a job making $85,000 a year at a factory. Those days are gone.”

This is part of that disenfranchisement: outsourcing jobs to cheaper economies, giving up on remaining industries and leaving people with mortgages they can no longer pay.

Of course, Ryan and I can do very little about that with our small theatre/film company. We can employ some people, but we can’t give all the disenfranchised population of Detroit steady pay. What we can do, though is educate people: we go into schools and expose children to life-giving art; we create work that encourages people to follow their dreams, even if they’re risky — and we do it in a way that speaks to the real world, not the one we thought existed when people said “you can be anything you want to be when you grow up” because that’s just not true.

But first we need to make contact with the reality these people live in, to let them know they’re heard before we can fill their worlds with any kind of uplifting message.

So we chilled and ate some delicious barbecue after the ride and rolled out in the Bold Mobile.

When Aj dropped us off we actually thought we would get work done on the blog.

How naive we were.

But we did have a half-baked, slightly delirious business discussion. We talked about the pros and cons of opening a coffeehouse/gallery/performance space. We came to no conclusions but this: we are both interested in many different things, but paramount we are interested in giving people a means to share their voice.

At least we can agree on something. 

Ryan met a budding filmmaker, Nick Hampton (right) 

“Hey Ryan, have you seen Rory?”

Ryan woke up about 2 minutes before me, and I woke up to Kirk and Ryan trying to figure out where I was. If I hadn’t been half asleep I would’ve laughed.

Anyway I rolled off the couch and we were in the car within half an hour…on our way to the SLOW ROLL!! (Aj deserves a shout out for lending us the bikes. Thanks Aj!!)

“Pothole!”

Ryan: Today’s Slow Roll was a moving experience. When we went to our first Slow Roll two weeks ago, we got rained out but ended up riding anyway with about 50 people. Last week we couldn’t get our hands on bikes. Now that we had bikes thanks to Aj, we were finally able to participate in a legit Slow Roll.

Everyone met up at a new Midtown restaurant/bar called the Hopcat. Over 2,000 people showed up to ride. A sea of bikers filled the streets. Traffic was stopped by 16 police officers in front and behind us. I have never felt a part of such large group of like minded people before.

We rode through many areas of Detroit that we had not seen yet. During the two hour bike ride, I spoke to no one because I was so overwhelmed by the experience.

Families in affluent areas and depressed areas ran out of their houses laughing, smiling and dancing while we rolled through their neighborhoods.

The guys at Slow Roll have created something that brings so much joy to this community, I can only wish that our theater company might have that kind of impact.

Jason Hall (right) one of the founders of Slow Roll

Also, we ran into Brice!! (we met him at the first (unofficial) Slow Roll!) Just turned around and there he was! Very cool guy and very cool to randomly see him in a group of 2,000+ bicyclists.

After the Roll, Brice grabbed his friends, I grabbed Ryan and we all went to the Jolly Pumpkin and had a jolly time over a chicken, kale and feta pizza. Amazing.

We learned that, while Brice’s friend Greg was wearing a camo hat he is not in fact a redneck. We also learned that Ford Motor Company offered him with an engineering position before he’d graduated from Central Michigan University. “Before college, people told me “don’t study engineering, no one’s hiring engineers” and now everyone is. I got lucky.”

Brice’s other friend, Mike is also doing well as a new police officer in Novi, with a salary starting at around $49,000. Detroit PD starting salary is around $27,000. Which job would you take: the job in an affluent area with great pay or the backbreaking one that barely covers rent and utilities? Not only that, but due to lack of money Detroit cut back from 6,000 officers to about 2,500 officers in the last several years (that’s right, 3,500 cops lost their jobs). Thus, patrolmen don’t have time to worry about misdemeanors here. That said, Novi enjoys a comprehensive police presence – probably more than they need.  

Now for the most disturbing part: a Novi police officer has to log at least one “incident of contact” every 30 minutes. He said that if you tail a car for long enough you’ll find a reason to stop them and satisfy the log entry for that half hour.

This practice is tantamount to quotas, when police chiefs require their officers to arrest a certain number of people in a set amount of time. This leads to police doing what is described above: scrutinizing people for anything they can use against them. And this is not the individual police officer’s fault — they’re simply trying to keep their job. This is an administrative problem. Detroit does not have this problem because they don’t have the funding for it. We have seen countless drivers run red lights and stop signs as well as people drinking and smoking freely through the streets.

Just like the wild wild west, the people here own the city.

Thanks for checking out the blog. We love knowing people are reading, especially the Detroiters.

All the best,

R&R