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From The Star
Super Bowl glitz among Detroit's ruin
Feb. 1, 2006. 05:36 AM
DAVE FESCHUK
DETROIT—Stepping outside Ford Field yesterday, you could have been briefly convinced that this much-maligned city gets an awfully bad rap. A scattering of restaurants looked happening and appetizing. Shiny Cadillacs and immaculate Hummers lined the curbs. Freshly paved streets suggested ongoing renewal, not long-talked-about decay.
And on a big screen atop a popular roadhouse, Detroit's mayor declared his jurisdiction primed for Sunday's Super Bowl XL: "A vibrant downtown awaits 100,000 visitors," Kwame Kilpatrick said.
But downtown Detroit, save for small pockets of prosperity abutting its crown-jewel football and baseball stadiums and its trio of casinos, is an eerie ghost town. A short walk from where they'll stage the sporting world's biggest one-day spectacle — where multi-millionaires employed by billionaires will compete in front of a rarefied audience that can afford tickets worth a minimum of $1,200 a pair (all figures U.S.) — the urban landscape is startlingly bleak. Building after building is vacant or dilapidated or both. Window coverings appear to come in two varieties: iron bars or plywood sheets. And the few souls who populate the streets stand on street corners or loiter outside the liquor stores that are the only hubs of commercial activity.
Larry Jones, exiting a liquor store on the notoriously poverty stricken Cass Corridor yesterday, bowed his head in mourning for his down-and-out hometown. "I've watched my city die," said Jones, 62. "In fact, I don't even want to live here any more."
Like the hundreds of thousands who fled to the suburbs in the wake of the the1967 riots, Jones doesn't live here any more. He still comes into the city every day to drive a taxi.
"I've got a daughter," he said. "She's 14 years old. I don't like the city. I don't like what goes on in the city. (In the suburbs) my daughter can walk the streets without getting molested. Poverty. Prostitution. Drugs. There's desperation out here. This is the ghetto."
This week there will be gluttony next door to the ghetto. The high-rollers who propel the NFL's uber-party will be arriving in private planes and travelling in SUV limousines. And they won't be coming to the hot-dog-and-beer bash the game used to be. Ford Field's kitchens will be stocked with two tons of lobster. The lucky few with tickets, only 35 per cent of which are doled out by lottery to the actual fans of the actual teams at a face value of $600, will need more money for the modest motels going for $400 a night.
But while the NFL likes to call the Super Bowl an undeclared national holiday, while at least one cultural commentator has coined it the "new Mardi Gras" now that New Orleans lies in water-logged ruins, many residents of this city will be excused if they're not in the mood to party hard. Last week, the Ford Motor Company, controlled by the dynastic American family that is hosting the game at their eponymous stadium, announced its intention to eliminate up to 30,000 jobs and close 14 plants, including one in nearby Wixton, Mich., and another across the river in Windsor.
It was only the latest in a long line of economic punches to the Motor City's collective gut. One in three Detroiters lives below the poverty line. The 2005 unemployment rate, 14 per cent, was 2 1/2 times higher than the national average.
The local organizing committee talks of the game's economic impact in the hundreds of millions, but it's clear that millions have been spent to prepare the city for its few days in the spotlight. Graffiti has been scrubbed away. Many of the abandoned buildings, including the original headquarters of Motown Records, which had been long turned over to the prostitutes and the addicts, were demolished in the lead-up to this week. Ron Scott, a local anti-violence activist, said yesterday that the city's homeless population, estimated at anywhere from 12,000 to 40,000, has been encouraged by police to stay away from the bustle.
"They've been told they'll be hurt if they don't get out," Scott said. "(Police) are sweeping the dust under the rug."
There is too much dust to hide. Blocks from the epicentre of this week's festivities, there are houses with holes in them. One two-storey brick walk-up is sagging so badly that a mud-splattered sheet of black plastic appears to be standing in as a second-floor wall. And just when you think no one could be living in such squalor — with no window unbroken and a front door off the hinges — you see a dog happily panting on the front porch.
It wasn't always so. More than 2 million people lived here at the post-war peak. But what made the city thrive — the automobile — facilitated the ensuing exodus to the surrounding area, which continues to thrive. More than 4 million people live in metropolitan Detroit, which extends to leafy Dearborn, but only 900,000 live in the city where, to the surprise of some visitors, there does not exist a shopping mall of significance.
As one customer at a hot-dog stand outside Ford Field said yesterday, "Nobody down here has the money to shop." The presiding vendor, who identified himself only as The Hot Dog Man, said he was leery of the NFL's claims of trickle-down prosperity. Though he said he earns a profit of about $1,500 on Sundays when the NFL's Lions are in town, he is prohibited from setting up shop on Super Bowl Sunday.
"They want all the money for themselves," he said. "Ain't none of it going to the people actually trying to make a living."
That's not exactly true. Local hero Jerome Bettis, the Steelers running back who grew up in a downtown house that is now a ruin, had his name attached to a donation of 1 million cans of soup to a local food bank. The league boasts of its community initiatives, its building of sports fields and its planting of trees. And the Ford family has been given credit for moving the Lions from suburban Pontiac to the inner city in 2002.
They have also been criticized for holding a super-sized spectacle in down-sized Motown.
Said Scott: "It's contradictory. You have to have blinders on not to see what's going on here. (General Motors CEO) Rick Wagoner will be sipping champagne at parties this week while many of the folks here have a hard time buying a soda."
Super Bowl glitz among Detroit's ruin
Feb. 1, 2006. 05:36 AM
DAVE FESCHUK
DETROIT—Stepping outside Ford Field yesterday, you could have been briefly convinced that this much-maligned city gets an awfully bad rap. A scattering of restaurants looked happening and appetizing. Shiny Cadillacs and immaculate Hummers lined the curbs. Freshly paved streets suggested ongoing renewal, not long-talked-about decay.
And on a big screen atop a popular roadhouse, Detroit's mayor declared his jurisdiction primed for Sunday's Super Bowl XL: "A vibrant downtown awaits 100,000 visitors," Kwame Kilpatrick said.
But downtown Detroit, save for small pockets of prosperity abutting its crown-jewel football and baseball stadiums and its trio of casinos, is an eerie ghost town. A short walk from where they'll stage the sporting world's biggest one-day spectacle — where multi-millionaires employed by billionaires will compete in front of a rarefied audience that can afford tickets worth a minimum of $1,200 a pair (all figures U.S.) — the urban landscape is startlingly bleak. Building after building is vacant or dilapidated or both. Window coverings appear to come in two varieties: iron bars or plywood sheets. And the few souls who populate the streets stand on street corners or loiter outside the liquor stores that are the only hubs of commercial activity.
Larry Jones, exiting a liquor store on the notoriously poverty stricken Cass Corridor yesterday, bowed his head in mourning for his down-and-out hometown. "I've watched my city die," said Jones, 62. "In fact, I don't even want to live here any more."
Like the hundreds of thousands who fled to the suburbs in the wake of the the1967 riots, Jones doesn't live here any more. He still comes into the city every day to drive a taxi.
"I've got a daughter," he said. "She's 14 years old. I don't like the city. I don't like what goes on in the city. (In the suburbs) my daughter can walk the streets without getting molested. Poverty. Prostitution. Drugs. There's desperation out here. This is the ghetto."
This week there will be gluttony next door to the ghetto. The high-rollers who propel the NFL's uber-party will be arriving in private planes and travelling in SUV limousines. And they won't be coming to the hot-dog-and-beer bash the game used to be. Ford Field's kitchens will be stocked with two tons of lobster. The lucky few with tickets, only 35 per cent of which are doled out by lottery to the actual fans of the actual teams at a face value of $600, will need more money for the modest motels going for $400 a night.
But while the NFL likes to call the Super Bowl an undeclared national holiday, while at least one cultural commentator has coined it the "new Mardi Gras" now that New Orleans lies in water-logged ruins, many residents of this city will be excused if they're not in the mood to party hard. Last week, the Ford Motor Company, controlled by the dynastic American family that is hosting the game at their eponymous stadium, announced its intention to eliminate up to 30,000 jobs and close 14 plants, including one in nearby Wixton, Mich., and another across the river in Windsor.
It was only the latest in a long line of economic punches to the Motor City's collective gut. One in three Detroiters lives below the poverty line. The 2005 unemployment rate, 14 per cent, was 2 1/2 times higher than the national average.
The local organizing committee talks of the game's economic impact in the hundreds of millions, but it's clear that millions have been spent to prepare the city for its few days in the spotlight. Graffiti has been scrubbed away. Many of the abandoned buildings, including the original headquarters of Motown Records, which had been long turned over to the prostitutes and the addicts, were demolished in the lead-up to this week. Ron Scott, a local anti-violence activist, said yesterday that the city's homeless population, estimated at anywhere from 12,000 to 40,000, has been encouraged by police to stay away from the bustle.
"They've been told they'll be hurt if they don't get out," Scott said. "(Police) are sweeping the dust under the rug."
There is too much dust to hide. Blocks from the epicentre of this week's festivities, there are houses with holes in them. One two-storey brick walk-up is sagging so badly that a mud-splattered sheet of black plastic appears to be standing in as a second-floor wall. And just when you think no one could be living in such squalor — with no window unbroken and a front door off the hinges — you see a dog happily panting on the front porch.
It wasn't always so. More than 2 million people lived here at the post-war peak. But what made the city thrive — the automobile — facilitated the ensuing exodus to the surrounding area, which continues to thrive. More than 4 million people live in metropolitan Detroit, which extends to leafy Dearborn, but only 900,000 live in the city where, to the surprise of some visitors, there does not exist a shopping mall of significance.
As one customer at a hot-dog stand outside Ford Field said yesterday, "Nobody down here has the money to shop." The presiding vendor, who identified himself only as The Hot Dog Man, said he was leery of the NFL's claims of trickle-down prosperity. Though he said he earns a profit of about $1,500 on Sundays when the NFL's Lions are in town, he is prohibited from setting up shop on Super Bowl Sunday.
"They want all the money for themselves," he said. "Ain't none of it going to the people actually trying to make a living."
That's not exactly true. Local hero Jerome Bettis, the Steelers running back who grew up in a downtown house that is now a ruin, had his name attached to a donation of 1 million cans of soup to a local food bank. The league boasts of its community initiatives, its building of sports fields and its planting of trees. And the Ford family has been given credit for moving the Lions from suburban Pontiac to the inner city in 2002.
They have also been criticized for holding a super-sized spectacle in down-sized Motown.
Said Scott: "It's contradictory. You have to have blinders on not to see what's going on here. (General Motors CEO) Rick Wagoner will be sipping champagne at parties this week while many of the folks here have a hard time buying a soda."