Former Talking Heads frontman and bicycling evangelist David Byrne lands in The Motor City to work on a film and decides to pedal around the city. He reflects on the past, present, and future of Detroit on his terrific blog.
Excerpt:"In another universe these empty apartments would be offered to the destitute and the homeless as cheap housing. But in a city where more than half the population has left, maybe there just aren’t enough bodies to fill these things anymore.
In one neighborhood I came across a flock of pheasants, calmly grazing on seeds in the fields between houses. In some places these would be hunted for sport or food. A local artist has a line of T-shirts featuring Detroit wildlife. I heard that a dad was about to take his kid hunting on the upper peninsula (UP) where they would encounter wildlife, but the kid's first glimpse of a pheasant was in central Detroit.
It's a great city for biking. Not much traffic, and flat—apparently there were some hills but those got smoothed out to create more arable farmland. Right now the weather is gorgeous, sunny, but not too hot. There’s an event on Saturday morning called Tour De Troit; it's a 30-mile group ride with beer at the end. It’s not a race.
3,000 folks joined this thing—they could have gotten more people but I was told the police said that without more cops they'd have to cut it off there. The ride began in the morning at the abandoned train station. Sometimes I sensed that folks here have gotten used to how things are, while we out-of-towners stare at the massive abandoned buildings with our jaws dropped."
Read the entire (and most excellent) post
here.
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