Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey

by Colby Buzzell

  Chapter Eleven

  Detroit

  “There is no substitute for Victory.”

  GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

  June 6, 1944, the largest amphibious assault ever in the history of warfare took place on the beaches of Normandy, France. While driving lockjawed and staring straight ahead, sights on Detroit, I envisioned myself as an E-4 infantryman, my 2nd ID combat patch on my right shoulder, locked and loaded, riding on the back of a landing craft headed straight toward Omaha Beach. It was about a ten-hour drive from Des Moines, which meant I’d get there sometime in the middle of the night, which should be fun.

  The term postapocalyptic is often used when referring to Detroit. After one radiator, two oil changes, three generators, four balding tires, and more than four and a half thousand miles on an engine built during the Johnson administration, I was there.

  It didn’t take me long at all to realize that Detroit was the perfect city to be alone, since there was hardly anybody else here, which instantly put me in a blissfully soulful mood. If only my car stereo worked so that I could listen to “South of Heaven” by Slayer—the opening would have been the perfect soundtrack as I crept into the concrete ghost town.

  “Before you see the light you must die!”

  Navigating my vehicle through the dark sea of urban decay, I decided it was time to park, dismount, and patrol the area on foot. I turned into a parking garage. A black guy wearing a hat and yellow jacket was working the booth, and kind of lit up when he saw me pull up to grab a ticket. He pulled open his booth window, eyed my ride enviously, asked me what year it was, and even guessed ’64.

  “You are correct,” I told him.

  “How much you pay for that?”

  “More than what I wanted to but a little less than I expected.”

  “California car?”

  “Yup. Drove it all the way here.”

  “You drove all the way here from California?”

  “Fuck, yeah. Been on the road for a while now, and um, yup, now I’m here.”

  “What you got going here in Detroit?”

  “I don’t know yet. What’s there to do here?”

  He told me of a couple nearby bars and restaurants that were in walking distance, which of course went in one ear and out the other, since you can find those in any city no problem. When I asked him if he was from here, he told me no, originally he’s from Chicago, but he’d lived here for the last couple of years now. When I asked how he ended up here, he said, “Wife and kids,” and “You know how it is.”

  Actually, I don’t know how it is. I pretended I wasn’t freaking out as it occurred to me that my life could also change in that same way.

  “Is it safe for me to walk around here at night?”

  He shook his head casually and simply told me, “You know how it is. The world is a ghetto.”

  Was that a rap song, lyric, or the name of a Nas album? Not sure.

  “What do you mean?”

  He then broke it down for me: it was the same in Detroit as anywhere else, and as long as I didn’t go around acting a fool and get caught up in shit that I shouldn’t be involved in, I’d be all right.

  Sounds like prison.

  He told me that he’s lived all over during his lifetime. “I’ve even lived down in the South for a bit, and in my life I’ve been the only black on the block twice, and Detroit is just like anywhere else, man. As long as you do yo’ shit, don’t bother nobody, don’t get caught up in nobody else’s business, then you be all right. Just do your thang, you know? Be a loner, don’t be gettin’ stoned with nobody, and you be all right. Detroit ain’t that bad, it really ain’t, nope.”

  I thanked him, and before I pulled into the garage, he told me one other thing. “And don’t be going around here badmouthing Detroit. People here, they don’t like that. They love their city, don’t know what that is, but they do and they don’t like it when other people come up in here and badmouth it. They got a lot a pride here in they city.”

  I parked the Caliente up on one of the top levels and stepped out of the parking garage. I saw that there was a chain-link fence all around the building across the street, which was heavily grafittied from top to bottom. Hung on the fence was a warning sign: “Demolition Work in Progress.”

  Instead of destroying it, why don’t they restore it?

  Next to the condemned building was a name-brand hotel. As with Walmart, I try to avoid those, but as with Walmart, sometimes you don’t have much of a choice in the matter. Since it was getting kind of late, I decided to just check that out instead of driving all over the place all night looking for a place to crash.

  A couple of businessmen wearing suits and ties walked out of the hotel lobby; I did a double take as I made my way past them. I asked the lady working the desk how much for a night. She told me the walk-in rate is $110. I nearly fainted. Leaning with my arm resting on the counter, I thought, Goddamn, that’s way over my budget for a night in this town. With the exception of Motel 6, I’d noticed that the hotels with brand names and commercials on the tube went anywhere from $70 to $150 a night, no matter where they were. Shit added up after a while.

  That’s partially why I’d been frequenting the down-and-out weekly and monthly hotels that run about eighty to a hundred a week. Some have toilets and showers in the room, some don’t, some have hot water, some don’t, most are filled with people living off GA (government assistance, aka your tax dollars at work), just staying in their rooms waiting for the day to end, loners who have lived there for years and who spend most of their time trying to drink themselves to death. Every single one of these hotels has one or two residents who insist on borrowing money from you and promises to God that they’ll pay you back. Some will even knock on your door at three in the morning, asking you for a couple bucks or a cigarette. These establishments aren’t to be found anywhere online, which is kind of refreshing, since the mysteries of the entire world are now solved with a few clicks. Not these gems. You must seek them out.

  There are several ways you can find these hotels. You can ask any police officer where the bad part of town is located and just start walking in that direction. Or ask any homeless-looking person on the street, and ten times out of ten they’ll point you in the right direction as well as ask you for some spare change. Adding helpfully, “I wouldn’t really stay there if I were you. People die there all the time.”

  Since it was getting late, and I’d rather explore than waste my time looking around all night for a motel, I decided to just check into the Holiday Inn Express. But first I needed to get this lady to lower the price somehow. From experience I’ve found that hotels are kind of like antique stores; the price that they initially give you isn’t necessarily the price that you’ll pay. So with a pained face I asked her if that was the best she could do. She told me that it was, and when I asked her if she knew of any others in the neighborhood that were more reasonably priced, she then told me that she could do $79 for a night. Still way over my budget, but since it was late, I told her she had herself a deal.

  I’d now gotten my wish, I was all alone. In Detroit of all places, all by myself, at night, lost, unarmed, half a pack of smokes left, hadn’t shaved in a week and I couldn’t remember the last time I did laundry. I guess the look that I unintentionally had right then, with the beanie, thrashed Cons, thrashed dark gray nonpleated khakis, filthy gray socks that used to be white, thrashed flannel—buttoned up all the way, since I’m from the West Coast—and thrashed hooded sweatshirt, I guess this look would be considered homeless or jobless chic, and I think I have this look down, because many times on this trip people I came across on the street would ask me if I was homeless and recommend places for me to eat. I’ve gotten plenty of free meals thanks to this look, mostly at churches. And people will also tell me where all the shelters are located. But it’s more than the clothes. I think you also have to walk around w
ith this defeated appearance as well, which I’ve noticed many people here have, too.

  After dropping off my shit in my room, I hit the streets with nothing but my military-issue digital camo backpack and a camera around my neck.

  As I walked around downtown Detroit, I noticed that there was not a whole heck of a lot of foot traffic, and most of the buildings were boarded up, empty, totally dark, nearly all with FOR SALE and/or FOR LEASE signs, many with foreclosure notices stapled to the door. I came upon a historic plaque on the side of a building. It stated that the building was the “Birthplace of the Ford Automobile.” I looked in the lobby. A black guy wearing a security uniform was working behind the desk; leaning back in his seat, he appeared bored. I walked around the building and saw that on the side there had once been a theater of some sort, but now it was all fenced off and dilapidated and seemed to have been turned into some kind of parking structure.

  I wanted to check it out, legally, so I went inside and asked the black guy if I could please have his permission to do so. His expression didn’t change one bit as he denied my request with a simple “No.”

  Okay, I could see that I’d have to use some finesse here, so I asked him if this was fairly common, people like me just walking in and asking if they could check it out. He releases a yawn. “Yes,” he manages.

  Getting him to talk was like pulling teeth, so I decided to go ahead and ask: About how many of those people, would you say, that come in and ask if they can have your permission get your permission?

  Eyelids remaining at half-mast, he told me that he denied nine out of ten requests. Nine out of ten is not bad—it’s better than ten out of ten—and when I asked him what exactly I had to do to be in that lucky 10 percent, he told me that I had to be either filming a movie or a professional photographer, both of which I’m not.

  I guessed I was shit out of luck then, so I thanked him for his time, and as I was about to exit so that I could just physically hop the fence myself to sneak a peek, he asked me where I’m from, so I told him, and that I’d just got here, and we got to talking. I asked how safe it was for me to walk around here, and he told me that I was fine, that no random crimes happened here really, most of the crimes that went on involved both parties knowing each other. He came to life, sort of, and worked to make a point. “It’s not that bad here,” he said. I again thanked him for his time, and this time as I was about to leave he released a sigh, picked up his keys off the desk, got up from his chair, and told me to follow him. Awesome. I followed, and he guided me up a flight of stairs and opened up a door for me. “You have ten minutes and ten minutes only,” he said.

  I stepped in, with both eyes wide open taking in as much as I can, and he asked me what I thought. I took it in for a couple seconds. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Ten minutes,” he said. “That’s all you got.” He turned around and walked away, leaving me in there all by myself. I was in shock, and couldn’t fucking believe that I was having a near religious experience inside a fucking parking garage. I then started going crazy with the camera.

  The only car parked there was a black late-model Mercedes. It sat there all by itself, surrounded by the walls, the moldings, the faded colors, the decay, all of it beautiful. At least they turned this structure into a parking garage and didn’t tear it down, I thought. But at the same time I wondered why we don’t build theaters like this anymore.

  Thanking the security guy, I headed toward an area several blocks away where I had seen a lot of cars were parked. I looked down at my watch, and wondered why I hadn’t been mugged or robbed yet. After walking across several empty lots, I stopped at a street corner. Several Mercedes, a Hummer, a Lexus, late-model SUVs with expensive rims were parked right there at Park Avenue and West Montcalm Street, sandwiched between two bars. I looked into the windows at one of the bars, a place called Centaur, and was stunned to see an extremely upscale joint—art deco interior, a martini bar, and everybody inside dressed up like they were on their way to the theater, or headed to a ball game at Comerica Park, where the Tigers play. There wasn’t much life along these blocks, but here they were. The bar was located on the first floor of a restored building; the floors above it looked like high-end lofts. I crossed the street heading over to the bar on the other corner, the Town Pump. Peering into the windows I saw all the business casual attire. Everyone looked as if they had money, and were having a great time, too. It all seemed to be for my benefit, like actors staging a fabulous dinner party on a barren Beckett landscape; as soon as I left, they’d break set and go home to the suburbs. I took a step back and looked up at the building. This one towered many stories, and it was called the Park Avenue Hotel. When I peeked in the lobby, it looked like one of those hotels that cater to those in the lower tax brackets, featuring weekly and monthly rates.

  I walked inside.

  The lobby interior of the Park Avenue Hotel was old-school Italian Renaissance. A black guy was silently smoking a cigarette and listening to jazz, slowly dragging behind the old wooden lobby desk, with wooden mail slots on the wall behind him. He unenthusiastically buzzed me in through the heavy steel gate. I crept in and asked the guy if they had any rooms available and if they had weekly rates, since after my visit with my buddy Callahan I’d need a place to stay in Detroit. He told me that they did have weekly rates, but right now they were all booked up. This, I thought, was amazing. I’d never encountered this before; every SRO (single room occupancy) hotel I’d ever been to had a vacancy. He told me to come back in a couple of days, and something might have opened up. I thanked him, and before leaving, I noticed that right there on the corner of the desk was a huge stack of the Times Literary Supplement, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times, as well as a couple back issues of the Economist. Interesting. I asked him who those belonged to, he told me the owner. I told him I’d be back and stepped outside, wondering what to do next. I took a glance over to my left, across the freeway, and noticed that the area over there was the complete opposite to the one I was standing in the middle of. It screamed, “Stay away!” The street lights over there didn’t seem to shine as bright, and there were two towering abandoned hotel buildings surrounded by vacant lots, a couple beat cab companies, a divey-looking liquor store, a handful of abandoned and boarded-up buildings, a couple semi-burned-down, perfect-for-crack houses, and one or two people just idling on dark street corners, hooded sweatshirts with the hood up, just standing there, and one or two people just walking slowly, like Night of the Living Dead, one step at a time, slowly, slowly, over a graveyard, their heads down. Lost.

  The game was on the television when I walked into the bar. An angry old-timer was telling a couple other barflies all about how it’s a goddamn ripoff to purchase season tickets and why in the world should he do that, spending a couple hundred dollars for seats when he can just sit in a bar a couple blocks away and watch the games for free, as well as the drinks at the bar are way cheaper than the ones they sell at the stadium. He had a point; why do anything at all when it’s cheaper not to do it, or to do it at home, in a bar, or on the computer?

  I asked the bartender—who, I could tell by his tattoos, listened to hardcore punk bands—if he knew of any good weekly and monthly hotels. He actually lived at one, and after he told me where it was located, we got to talking about Detroit and he told me that a lot of films get made here now. “Yeah, Drew Barrymore has done two movies here already because they got a new tax break thing if you film in Michigan, and they’re doing a lot of films here. Quite a few movies are going to be filmed here, Gran Torino was also filmed here—”

  “They shot Gran Torino here?”

  “Yeah, they shot that, and now they’re shooting the new Red Dawn downtown, and they’re doing another movie here that’s about the Irish gangs in Cleveland but they’re using this neighborhood because it’s more run-down and fucked up than Cleveland is—now that they kind of cleaned Cleveland up a lot.”
/>
  A regular down at the end of the bar heard this and blurted out, “Amen to Cleveland!”

  I raised my beer to that, and just then a white guy with dreadlocks walked in. He and the bartender were good friends, and the bartender introduced him to me. A musician, he was actually in a Misfits cover band. He also worked on the assembly line at Ford, putting Ford Focuses together. He told me he’d got off work early tonight because they’d run out of parts to assemble, so they let everybody go halfway through their shift. I asked if that happened a lot, and he told me not all the time, but it happened, and when it did, the funny thing was that all the guys would go directly to the bars, especially the married guys, they’d go to the bars and wouldn’t tell their wives that they got released early from work, because if they did their wives would be like get your ass home, and the females, what they’d do was go straight to the casinos, and they’d do the same thing, they wouldn’t tell their husbands that they’d got off work early, they’d just go straight to the casino and then come home afterward like they just got off work. Basically what he told me was what auto industry people do when they’re told to go home, not working, or out of a job.

  Since he was in a Misfits cover band and into punk, we talked music for a while, and later on, after he left, I found myself sitting down next to an old black guy. Casually sipping on his beer, he told me that he’d lived in Detroit since 1950.

  “I came from out of the Midwest because there was no work out there, and so I came here and I got a job about eight hours after I got off the bus. Back in the fifties you could get hired in the morning, work a day, quit the next morning, and have another job by noon the next day.”