And Funky Sour Cream, an arts collective originally from New York, arranged an installation of little cupcake statues in the window of a long-shuttered bakery on Chene Street. A woman who moved to Detroit from Brooklyn began to take nude photographs of herself in wrecked spaces (thrusting the concept of ruin porn to an even less metaphorical level). My friend Phil has staged secret, multicourse gourmet meals, prepared by well-known chefs from local restaurants, in abandoned buildings like the old train station John and his buddies like to play ice hockey on the frozen floors of decrepit factories. Still, for all of the local complaints, outsiders are not alone in their fascination. Detroiters, understandably, can get touchy about the way descriptions and photographs of ruined buildings have become the favorite Midwestern souvenirs of visiting reporters. And in Detroit, you can’t talk aesthetics without talking ruin porn, a term that has become increasingly familiar in the city. This is not exactly a question of gentrification when your city has 70,000 abandoned buildings, it will not be gentrified anytime soon. Does fixing the very real problems faced by Detroiters, I began to wonder, mean inevitably robbing Detroit of some part of its essential Detroitness? Detroit’s brand has become authenticity, a key component of which has to do with the way the city looks. Their ideas have included casino gambling, an ’80s festival mall, new ballparks, hosting a Formula One grand prix, hosting a Super Bowl, even commissioning (this was Mayor Coleman Young, in 1984) Berry Gordy (who fled Detroit for Los Angeles by the early 1970s, taking the entire Motown operation with him) to write a city theme modeled after Frank Sinatra’s “Theme from New York, New York.” Another member of the Rat Pack, Sammy Davis Jr., was conscripted to handle the vocals, but sadly, Gordy’s song, “Hello, Detroit,” failed to burn up the charts.īut now much of the attention being showered upon Detroit from the trendiest of quarters comes, in no small measure, thanks to the city’s blight. For decades, a succession of city officials has struggled mightily to rebrand Detroit’s battered image.
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