I had to drive to downtown Detroit Saturday to drop off an internship application, and I decided to get out, walk around and take some notes, considering I hadn’t spent any time in the area for nearly a year.

  1. It Lacks the Feel of a City: I’ve got to be honest, I spent most of my life in the suburbs. But in recent months, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in Madison and Chicago, and they both have a certain feel for them. Detroit simply doesn’t have that–it’s quiet, cold, almost dreary. It was Thanksgiving and there was nobody shopping, nobody out and about.
  2. Bums: Think State Street is bad? Oh man. The sad thing is the bums have given up on asking people for money–they just curl up in a ball behind a bus stop or in a park.
  3. New Bars, Buildings, Hotels: There are several new of each of these in the downtown area from when I last walked around there in Thanksgiving of 07. Coming up is the Fort/Cadillac Hotel, which was remodeled into a Hilton.

Traffic, construction and the roads were awful too, just as a side note. If any of the Big 3 go down, part of Obama’s “New New Deal” may include redoing roads in Detroit, giving the jobs to former assembly line workers. As for the white collar jobs…I don’t know what’ll happen to those poor people.