St. Patrick's Day Parade

This year's Saturday calendar date (Mar 17) for St. Patrick's Day means 7 days of mid-lent partying in Detroit. That's because our St. Patrick's Day Parade was Sunday (Mar 11) in Corktown. Corktown was Detroit's hub of Irish immigration from the 1830s onward and still (cheaply and desperately in some ways) retains it's Irish character. Today, it's the last neighborhood in Detroit where you can find homes built in the 1840s and it still hosts a string of Irish pubs and plain old bars along its main corridor, Michigan Avenue.

Here are pictures from the parade:


This was perhaps the funniest thing spotted at the parade. A public short bus from the city of River Rouge has been converted into a rolling keg party.



The white castle on Michigan Ave. gets a "walk-thru" on parade day. It was astonishing to see so many white people walking around a neighborhood where you rarely see white people walking around.


People tend to think of Detroit as a "black" city, when in fact white people still wield an astonishing amount of influence in the city through property ownership, businesses, churches and politics--even "ethnic" whites still retain a presence in 2007.


White people

Not surprisingly, the "droves" of white people mostly drove to get to the parade:







Afterwards, a Star Wars troupe (except for Vader) agreed to pose for me in front of a beautiful Corktown home. Please note the Storm Trooper on the segway.

More from the Winter escape: Miami

In Miami on Super Bowl weekend:






We conned our way into a recently-gated older neighborhood in NE Miami:



But everywhere's got a ghetto...

Roadtrip: Antiwar in D.C.

The month-long hiatus on this blog resulted from a two-week roadtrip and a nasty virus contracted upon return. The last few weeks have been like a fever dream at times, but I am back and ready to battle.

Catching up:

The three bears started their road trip by driving to Alexandria, Virginia and attending the Jan. 27th war protest in D.C. Here are some photos:


An idyllic street in Alexandria, VA.


What a beautiful day to protest. As Detroit plunged into a deep freeze, Washington, D.C. warmed into the 40s with sunshine.


Devil and son costume


On the way out of town, a broken down metro train resulted in long delays. I was forced to stare at this "defense" advertisement. There were no peace advertisements.