This Macomb writer needs to visit Detroit more often . . . and more open-mindedly
Chad Selweski, who put in three decades at The Macomb Daily, has more knowledge and insights about that county’s politics than anyone I read. But this 58-year-old hasn’t been in Detroit for a while, a new essay clearly shows.
As another veteran of daily newspapering who’s also a suburbanite, I speak bluntly here to suggest Selweski doesn’t represent all Metro Detroit journalists of a certain age. This fraternity brother, in effect, is an outlier.
His July 14 commentary at Dome magazine, a Lansing monthly, recounts a Saturday afternoon big city visit “when I served as tour guide for an out-of-town couple.” Pearl-clutching starts in sentence one as the Macomb Township adventurer suggests other outsiders seeing Woodward Avenue downtown and in Midtown “will be dismayed — perhaps even stunned.”
It’s not April 1 and Dome doesn’t do parody or satire, so the only conclusion is that Selweski’s breathless astonishment at “the land of gentrification” is cathartic venting about new kids changing a place that’s not the way he remembers. The “get off my Woodward” tone makes me visualize an open can of Pabst alongside his keyboard.
Hyperventilating fills the 21 paragraphs of “Detroit’s Twilight Zone.” This 1981 Michigan State grad is a traveler from another dimension, so his headline must refer to geographic and cultural distance from Michigan’s biggest city in 2017.
There’s even nostalgia for “glory days:”
I doubt that anyone who was a part of the relatively diverse population that made Woodward a bustling corridor in the glory days of decades ago will recognize a single city block along this route.
Selweski does observe, validly, “a far-from-diverse crowd that certainly offered a distinct disconnect from the decaying neighborhoods and shops within a reasonable walking distance from Woodward.” But the overall gasping suggests a naif from the hinterlands.
Everything’s up to date in Kansas City
They’ve gone about as far as they can go . . .
’Cause up to then I didn’t have an idea
Of what the modern world was comin’ to!
Sample these can-you-believe-it descriptions from his July 1 walk and QLine ride through a streetscape evidently not seen in quite some time:
- “This is not Motown, this is hipster headquarters. Long beards, man-buns, thick-framed glasses and purple hair serve as common sights.” [Oh my, we’re not in Macomb anymore, Toto.]
- “The Woodward corridor has become a strange mix of chic shopping normally found in Birmingham or the Bloomfields and pubs/restaurants that duplicate the beer-specialty hangouts in Royal Oak and Ferndale.” [That’s bad why?]
- “If you seek a pumpkin-flavored beer or a brew with a distinct orange peel taste, you’ve come to the right place.” [No PBR?]
- “Prices along this yellow brick road match the most outrageous mark-ups seen in upscale boutiques in suburbia or at Troy’s chic Somerset Mall.” [How dare Detroit merchants try to be upscale?]
- “ Shinola offers a unique blend of . . . upscale twinkling trinkets, not bling-bling. You will need a credit card to afford a purchase.” [Well I’ll be — a credit card, you say? Everything’s certainly up to date in Detroit City.]
- “I stopped at a pub that was packed with Millennials on a mid-afternoon Saturday. . . . The cost of a small sandwich and a 12-ounce draft brew was just short of $20.” [Good thing he has a credit card.]
- “This is not a rebirth. This is a transformation. I don’t know that I will be coming back anytime soon.” [Hope John Varvatos and Bad Luck Bar can scrape by somehow.]
Opinions are just that, so his aren’t invalid or wrong — though they may say more about the person posting them than they reveal about Detroit.
My own opinion is that gentrification is one of many rebirth signs three years after the city came out of bankruptcy. So are pumpkin beer and Oberon.
