The Mbad Museum

Of all the dead-end streets between Grand River and I-96 on the near-northwest side, Taft is by far the most interesting. That's where the Mbad Museum houses a bead gallery and outdoor exhibit. Here are some photos of the outdoor art:













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Rotary Park

Rotary park is one of the few recreational gems in the inner-ring of metropolitan Detroit. It's located in Livonia and features a fabulous set of nature trails. Here are some pictures:






The inside of a hollowed-out tree




Actaea pachypoda - "Doll Eyes"


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"Historic Dismantling" of Tiger Stadium on Hold

News from Mayor Kilpatrick's office: that the "historic dismantling" of Tiger Stadium is going more slowly than originally planned. Originally scheduled for demolition this month, developers are now being asked to submit proposals "in a few months." The Mayor attributes the delay to a number of factors, including that the building will be "historically dismantled" and not "demolished" and that he believes the city can sell off artifacts to help pay for the semi-erasure (promises to save parts of the main entrance and the field have been made). This is why Detroit News' price tag for the job today of $2-5 million was lower than the original $3-6 million. They think they can fetch a million dollars for memorabilia left rotting for 7 years.

The famous neon lights

Will this landmark actually come down in the coming months or will it fall into the limbo that continues for the Michigan Central Station? Should these buildings be rehabilitated or scrapped? If the buildings should not be rehabilitated, what should replace them? Should the owners of these properties be held accountable for the obstructions to city planning that these limbo-state buildings create? (The city owns Tiger Stadium and the owners of the Ambassador Bridge own the train depot.) Should the city and private landowners be forced to restore or destroy, so that the city can move forward?

In Ann Arbor on Wednesday, two free and open to the public events will discuss the Tiger Stadium site:

4 :00 to 5:30pm Panel discussion in Angell Hall Auditorium C with Preservation Advocates:
Peter Comstock Riley, Founder of Michigan and Trumbull, LLC Isaac David, Preservationist and Architectural Historian

6:30 to 8:00pm Film screening in Angell Hall Auditorium D "Stranded at the Corner: The Battle to Save Historic Tiger Stadium"

Tour Detroit 2006

Saturday, September 23rd was the annual Tour Detroit bike ride. The ride began and ended at Roosevelt Park in Corktown and travelled 35 miles around Detroit with a police escort and a Sag Wagon. The day was gray and the forecasters promised rain, but somehow it held off for the entire ride. Here are photos from the event:


On the way to the event... Note that N. Corktown is littered with old campaign stickers for Teamster political candidates. The Teamsters' headquarters are on Trumbull in N. Corktown, just blocks from numerous permanently stickered street signs. It's become an eyesore. Not to mention the Teamsters have lost 150000 members since Hoffa's re-election in 2001. TDU... Anyhow...


Back Alley Bikes showed up to help get some bikes in shape. They are a volunteer-run collective that promotes knowledge about fixing bikes as well as bike repair.


The event was police escorted.


Riders enjoy the riverview.


A menacing tiger statue doesn't stop these cyclists as they pass the home of baseball's Detroit Tigers, who are playoff bound for the first time in 19 years.


There were a few upscale neighborhoods on the route. Here's Boston-Edison.


About halfway through the ride, we took a break at Fort Wayne.


Here is the coolest cop I've yet seen in Detroit. He's listening to his walkie-talkie at Fort Wayne.


Riders stop for a train by a junkyard in downriver Detroit.

The educational and organizing potential of this event can be better fulfilled in the future. Though the literature provided for some of the sites on the route was interesting, it was brief and people did not usually know what they were looking at as they coasted past. I'm going to ride around with a bullhorn next year or something...

Update: Plans are in the works for the route next year to concentrate on the eastern half of the city.

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Mogwai back in May

Catching up... Mogwai came to Detroit to play at St. Andrew's Hall on May 18. The Earl of Bandwidth and I promptly sallied to their performance from Ann Arbor, since I hadn't yet moved to Detroit.

St. Andrew's Hall is a former church in downtown Detroit. To indicate that the edifice now exists for musical congregations, a disco ball hangs from the ceiling. The building is a large rectangle replete with a modest second floor balcony spanning three sides. The second floor balcony offered a lovely view to complement the mathematical psychadelic atmospheric sounds of Mogwai:


The lads all came out in green adidas warm-up jackets.


They quickly shed the jackets upon evaluating the temperature and ventilation in the packed house.


A capacity or near capacity crown of nearly-motionless indie-rockers are illuminated by Mogwai's elaborate lighting system.


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Corktown Sucks

These images were captured on June 4th. They are from the area near Tiger Stadium.


A distant view of the stadium might lead a stranger to assume it weren't abandoned. Notice the Tiger logos blending into one another above the glass doors.


A neighborhood hardware and lumber store on Trumbull has survived over 100 years. The elaborate fencing and razor wire are more recent.


A casino expansion rises to the northeast. All 3 Detroit casinos are expanding and/or relocating into their permanent locations and adding hotels. This is the (Marian) Ilitch owned casino. After 10 years of legal gambling in the city, Detroit's unemployment and poverty rates remain near the highest among U.S. cities.

Update re: the absurd: Flick-err has twice stopped this photo of the casino's construction to be posted on here.



The pedestrian bridge from Tiger Stadium over I-75 might be the largest in Detroit.


The other side of the bridge (north of the Fisher).


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