El Detroit-o Cinco de Mayo
(Hotel Eddystone near the Masonic Temple. Nothing worth anything is left in the well-built structure. Photo Socotra.)
Well, the conference wraps this morning and it is soon going to be my happy feet tapping on the gas pedal of some anonymous rental on the concrete strip north.
It is more than a little emotional. Not as much, maybe, as the raw adrenalin that coursed through my veins as I found myself walking in the raw cold darkness down Michigan Avenue in the empty city the other night, coming back from the Lafayette Coney Island, where I voted for Lafayette over the adjacent American Coney- the latter is a nicer and cleaner facility and the former has the best goddamn chili dog outside of the Vic Socotra kitchen.
(Lafayette Coney Islands with everything and a Labatt’s Blue. Photo Socotra.)
I will share the recipe in the Cloak and Dagger cook-book, since it is the ultimate bachelor meal, and I can do it better than the Greeks in their Coney-speak, but sitting in a place that is alive and unchanged since it opened was pretty cool, considering the rest of the down is abandoned.
But in the darkness, alone, I found myself on hyper-alert, full adrenaline jolt, wondering about each moving thing in the darkness, and if that Coney would be the last ill-advised thing in my life.
No shit, Detroit is abandoned.
I had to see it for myself, and rented a cool ten-seat van to haul my butt around the vastness of what used to be the Motor City once things reeled down yesterday. It was awesome. Every bit of it had a story, as Rod Stewart used to say, and every picture conveyed a story of misery and gritty survival.
There are people living here amid the ruins, and all I could think of was what was Rome, and the fact that history might have passed the town by, but there were still people and still life, even if it was nothing like it had been.
I will break from tradition here, and say, just go to the Facebook site and check the photos…
Lauren-the-driver drove up a few minutes before the appointed minute. Not as many potential passengers showed up, though I had thoughtfully provided a case of Labatt’s Blue and some pre-mixed vodka tonics, and I was gratified to say that it didn’t matter.
(Lauren and the Bus. Photo Socotra.)
It is the best $230 bucks I have ever spent. I was lost in a reverie from the time the bus pulled out until our little party had hurtled out through Hamtramck to the closed American Axle plant, whose loss has not yet wiped out the hamlet inside the Detroit City limits (though it will), to Palmer Woods (where I used to live), to the Fairgrounds and the giant stove, and Baker’s (the “keyboard lounge” letters have been crowbarred off the marquee) and back from 8 Mile down to the New Center and the Fisher Building and the former GM HQ and Motown Hitsville to the World’s Largest Masonic Temple surrounded by bombed-out buildings.
(Perhaps the most icon of Detroit’s ruins, though by no means the largest. Photo Socotra.)
The last stop I requested was a ceremonial pass through the circular drive in front of the Michigan Central Station just south of Corktown, where there used to be a ballpark at the corner of Trumbull and Michigan.
I asked Lauren to pull the van over to look at it- I had missed it on the passage to the train station, which sits majestically in the middle of a vast campus of abandoned Corktown buildings.
In this photo we are sitting directly behind Home Plate at a Big League stadium, with a couple traffic saw-horses indicating where the dugout were that Al Kaline and Gates Brown and Ty Cobb used, waiting to take the field of dreams.
Damn. That was just the home team. JTodd asked me if I remembered Reggie Jackson’s HR off Doc Ellis in the All-Star Game of 1971.
JTodd is from Pittsburg, and hence his interest. He said, looking at the empty lot, “Jackson hammered a slider on a line to right-center field, clearing the roof and slamming into an electrical transformer about 100 feet above field level, at a distance from home plate of about 380 feet.”
I leaned forward to the window, trying to place where the towers had been. The only thing on the vacant lot besides Home Plate and the saw-horses was an outré flag pole that the demolition crews had left upright. No flag, of course.
(Mr. September Reggie Jackson slams one in the 1971 All-Star Game. Photo UPI.)
“Timing the home run was impossible to do directly, but with some physics, some jokers derived the kinetics of Reggie’s swat. When all the factors were put together, the speed off the bat was more than 122 mph, and would have socked the ball right out of the stadium if it had not hit the light pole. Would have been more than 530 feet if it hadn’t, and might have hit a car on I-75.”
“It was impressive, I grant you, but that isn’t the home run I remember.”
“Which one was that?” asked JTodd.
“Mickey Mantle’s last appearance at Tiger Stadium. You know who served that one up, don’t you?”
“It was that drunk Denny McClain, last 30+ game winner in Major League Baseball, right?”
“Yep. Denny said he must have taken something off his fastball and served it up, belt high, right down the middle for the Mick, by mistake. Then he winked.”
JTodd pulled another icy Labatt’s out of the basin in the middle of the van. “That was something,” he said. “A mark of respect for a real legend.”
(View yesterday from behind home plate at the former Tiger Stadium at Michigan and Trumbull in Corktown. Left field line is the diagonal behind the saw-horse marking the visitor’s dug-out in the mid frame. Reggie’s HR would have disappeared out of the dream to the upper right. There is a sign on the wire fence declaring this is “Ernie Harwell Park,” a tribute to the long-time Tiger announcer. Photo Socotra.)
“Yeah. Respect for legends. Look at what the city has done for this one.” I took a sip from my traveller and called out to Lauren: “We are done with Detroit, Lauren. Run us back to the Marriott.”
“As you say,” said our driver, and we headed north on Michigan Avenue in the bright sunshine. Crazy town. Amazing we threw it away.
When I got back to the room, I read a note from Dee, who is retired Up North like my folks. She had seen some of the pictures and said:
“It has been years and years since I have been downtown Detroit……your e-mails beckons to me to once again visit….I know it is not the same as 60 years ago, but some renovations seem cool. As a young adult, I frequented Cliff Bell’s night club. I think they have reopened it…..I am not quite sure where it is located. It used to be very nice…..good food, dancing, drinking etc……even had a live orchestra.. “
(Cliff Bell’s club in the Day. Photo Cliff Bell’s Jazz Club.)
I wrote her back, since it was sort of eerie. I had walked by Cliff’s earlier that day. It is back. The little club off Grand Circus opened for business in 1934 after Cliff got clear of the booklegging gig for the Detroit Athletic Club.
(Cliff’s before restoration in 2004. Photo Cliff Bell’s Jazz Club.)
In 1985 the famous club closed and remained empty until in late 2005. Some enterprising folks decided to restore the name and the place. It is hanging on, like the Elwood Bar a few blocks away.
Hell, maybe there is hope for something out of all this misery and desolation. You never can tell, I suppose. It is going to take a hell of a lot of work.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
