I flew into Detroit to go to a wedding in Michigan. I have never been before, so I asked the locals who picked me up if there was anything to see in Detroit that is a little touristy but something you have to experience when you get there. Like national landmarks or something. They responded with "I don't know. Sadness?"
On NPR I heard that you can actually buy a rowhome in the worst parts of detroit for a couple grand. Things have to be rough there.
I never saw any of Detroit and am sorry if i offended any detroitians with my story.
At least the Phillies are in first place and they seemed to have solved the bullpen problem for now...
Go Phils!
This all stems from the inability of our state to get a budget passed, and once that happens (maybe next week, now?), this kind of thing should stop and perhaps be reversed. Consolidating/combining some libraries might be a good idea, though.
Hey, my town doesn't have any ambulances because we have been spending all that money in horrid statues that nobody likes. And the mayor keeps doing that, isn't it great?
@nickfil
Wow, I thought Detroitd was a concrete block but not so much!
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Xonticus wrote:Closing the libraries? what the hell is happening to society? If I wasnt so damned busy and actually had a day off, I would venture to the library... but then again is that the way our society is moving? For the sake of knowledge and information, libraries should not be shut down.
Thats what I was thinking. To me, this is the equivelent of book burning.
my state/city is still doing well we have surplus left over, they actually just built another library branch recently which I love. Probably could have cut something else but honestly few people use libraries-people are dumb and lazy for the most part.
As a public school teacher... I am not surprised.
In Ohio all the schools are funded by property tax. The government steps in and gives us just enough money to pay our utilities, but the community needs to pay the rest.
So I am not surprised with the closing of libraries... the Government offered our district enough money to buy a new school (they said we needed to tear down the three in our district or fix them within a set amount of years) only if the community would approve a tax increase to pay for the second school (we want to save money by making 2 large schools instead of 3 small ones.) So the deal is if these people who lost their jobs because of the recession and fall of the car industry pay more money that they don't have we can get new schools. If they don't vote for the tax increase THE GOVERNMENT GIVES US NO MONEY AT ALL even to repair out current schools.
So the people living in the community have to drop an extra $25 a month on a one hundred thousand dollar house to get a free school. Or we have to slowly increase taxes over the next couple of years to fix the three schools we have now... But we still do have a library.
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Makes me feel good about Omaha. A few private donors kicked in a couple hundred grand each on the condition that the city keep funding the libraries at 2008 levels. Our mayor was apparently able to find the cash so we get to keep our libraries. Score one for flyover country.
We are prepared to live in the plain and die in the plain!
Inazuma wrote:Libraries? What are those? Oh wait, I remember now. That's the place I had to go for school projects back when I was a kid. It's too bad they are shutting them down. I mean, what are today's school children going to use for their homework? It sure would be nice if they could get that same information in their own homes, like over a phone or cable line. Even better, it would be great if the home version was vastly superior to the library, making it totally worthless in comparison. Then the school kids wouldn't mind losing it. How unfair for the city to remove all traces of information like that. Now there is no way to learn anything.
Next thing you know they will stop selling VHS tapes at the store, making it totally impossible to watch any movies.
I wish I could simply hate people to death right now...
MrPopo wrote:The life lesson here is jobs will come and go, but Earthbound will always be there for you.
I flew into Detroit to go to a wedding in Michigan. I have never been before, so I asked the locals who picked me up if there was anything to see in Detroit that is a little touristy but something you have to experience when you get there. Like national landmarks or something. They responded with "I don't know. Sadness?"
On NPR I heard that you can actually buy a rowhome in the worst parts of detroit for a couple grand. Things have to be rough there.
I never saw any of Detroit and am sorry if i offended any detroitians with my story.
Detroit earned it's reputation in the 70's and 80's, but it's not the same city as then. That's both good and bad.
Detroit's population has plummeted, but they're actually all still there. Everyone lives in the suburbs now. We're talking monstrous suburbs here. Non-Detroiters don't realize this; they just see the population fall and doom photos on the net. What they don't see are cities that were doing quite well before the economy collapsed. Cities like Troy, Shelby, Rochester, Sterling Heights. These are fairly large cities, and you will see about 5 of them on CNN Money's top 100 places to live in the U.S., with Troy at #22.
Though these residents may live in Troy or wherever, they generally just say they are from Detroit. I guess what I'm saying is that the metro area is still pretty frickin large, and it's not all doom and gloom like the city of Detroit is.
Anyways, Detroit's Mayor from 1974 to 1993 was Coleman Young, and he bred racial hatred. The infamous 8 Mile Road separated Detroit from the inner suburbs and was labeled by locals as Coleman Young Way; because he wanted all the whites out of his city. And he got what he wanted: whites moved out of the city in droves.
When Coleman Young was finally replaced as mayor, Detroit had some hope. Dennis Archer came in and started to make a difference. Now, you can't turn a city around in a few years, and he wasn't perfect, but he made a considerable effort to make the changes.
I saw the good Archer did first hand. He began cleaning up the city, both literally and figuratively. Many downtown areas were cleaned up and redone. Museum districts got facelifts. Everyone was excited because they thought the city was going in a new, and prosperous direction.
Instead of spending time spreading hate, he made the effort to mend the relationship of the city and the suburbs.
When his term was up in 2001, Kwame Kilpatrick was voted in as Mayor. Touted as the first hip-hop mayor, he tore the city apart. I'm sure most of you have heard of him due to the troubles he had last year. But his troubles started the year he was in office when he threw a party at the mayors office that includes strippers (long story short, a stripper that his wife attacked out of jealousy was later found murdered).
Detroit's first hip-hop mayor destroyed everything that Archer started. He had a chance to finish the job and make Detroit a great city, but spent it on entourages, strippers and partying at the taxpayers expense.
And the worst offense that I still can not comprehend: he was voted in for a second term.
It's really a sad story.
I wish people knew more about this city than just "Robocop took place in Detroit" and "Stupid auto companies and unions."
It really was a great interesting city at one point. And hopefully it will be again.
Sorry for a not-so-complete recent history from just a local, but you would feel sad to if this happened to the city you once loved.
