Detroit, where resurgence is at Slows pace
It’s 9 a.m. and there’s barely any cars downtown in the Motor City.
The collapse of the car industry has left areas of Detroit looking like a set from The Walking Dead. Neighbourhoods that should be bustling are broken. At night, majestic homes look like haunted house attractions, the eerie moonlight illuminating their handsome, neglected features. As many grand mansions as squalid hovels lie derelict. That’s what really throws you.
These aren’t revolutionary thoughts. Detroit’s slide into desolation is well-noted. I still didn’t expect it to be like this. No-one’s putting the streets where my parents grew up on a postcard, but the deprived areas of Greenock or Glasgow don’t register on the same scale. Granted, they didn’t fall anywhere near as far or as fast as Detroit when the shipbuilding industry shrank after World War Two.
One familiarity with my hometown is the people. They’ll start talking to you for no good reason. The ones with the meanest mugs are often the nicest. We needed help from one of those friendly strangers to find the entrance to Slows Bar-B-Q, a food haven in Corktown at the forefront of the burgeoning food scene that’s helping to revive the city.
“It’s the door that don’t look like no door,” he said with a warm cackle.
The hickory-smoked comfort food was worth the several minutes of embarrassment squirming outside while tables of customers watched us fail to get in not one, not two, but three false doors.
We retired to our Airbnb on the corner of Shady Lane (you couldn’t make it up) to binge-watch House of Cards after eating ribs that would make the show’s character Freddy proud.
The food was first rate, but the signs of desolation are still all around. To one side of the restaurant, an estate agency listed a three-bedroom ranch for only $19,000. In the other direction, large advertising boards offered help with bankruptcy.
The next day as we went to leave, a guy called Tim handed us a flyer for his repair company. He must be helluva’ busy.
