Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey

by Colby Buzzell

  Callahan’s friend then asked me where I was headed after Detroit. I told him, “I don’t know yet. I don’t know what city I’m off to next until I get there. . . .” For some reason I paused for a second, knowing that there was more to this than what I just said. “I don’t know why this is, yet, but I’m actually thinking about ending it here in Detroit.”

  “Most people do,” he says.

  Smile.

  The next morning when I woke up, I saw that I was out of smokes, so I took off to the gas station on foot to restock.

  On my walk back to Callahan’s I came across a yard sale, a one-story located on a busy street with the garage open and all sorts of items out for sale. They even had a couple moped scooters for sale, the kind that I’d seen a lot of the Academy of Art kids like to ride around on back home, one of which had a price tag of $600. When the guy came out, a white guy about retirement age, I asked him about the moped, wondering if a big guy like me—six-one, two hundred or so pounds, who could easily bench-press 275 prior to this road trip—could ride on one of those things. He told me yeah, no prob. “Gets eighty miles to the gallon,” he said, and when he told me that he could sell me one for $400 but not less, I asked him why he was selling all his stuff. He was moving, he said; he had purchased a place in the South. I then told him that I was from California, had just gotten here the other day, was staying at a friend’s place around the corner for now, and that I liked the scooter a lot and that it would be perfect for what I was going to do. I told him that I could cover a lot more ground and navigate my way up, down, and around downtown Detroit a hell of a lot better on a moped than on foot, and when I told him this, his whole attitude shifted and he didn’t want to sell it to me anymore.

  “You want to drive around downtown Detroit on this thing?”

  “Yeah. It’s perfect.”

  “I’ve worked in downtown Detroit for thirty years building bridges, and I would never, ever, go down there unless I had a firearm on me. Do you own a firearm?”

  “No.”

  He then shook his head and lost all interest in me.

  When I walked into the lobby of the Park Avenue Hotel, an older white lady was leaning against the lobby desk, talking to the black guy working behind it. I asked if they had any rooms available, and what they cost. The lady told me that they had one, and she sized me up and asked how much I could afford to pay for it. I politely told her that I didn’t want to offend her by suggesting a low amount, and that I’d pay the amount that they were asking for it as long as it was reasonable. She then asked if I was employed and what I did for work, since they also only rent out to people who have jobs. This was a first. Most of the places that I’d stayed at didn’t care as long as you could pay the rent.

  Be the person you want to be.

  With a straight face I told her that I was a writer. Yes, a writer from California who was just traveling across the country doing what writers do, working hard on a book, and long story short, here I was in Detroit.

  While I stood frozen in fear, not quite sure if she’d believe me, not quite sure if I believed me, she asked, “You’re a writer?”

  “I don’t believe it either, but yeah, I guess I am.”

  She warmed up to me a bit and asked where I’d been, and after I listed off all the cities and states I’d passed through on my way here, she got back to work and asked how much I’d paid for the last place I was staying. I was paying ninety a week at that last place back in Des Moines, and seeing the sign on the counter that indicated a hundred a week, I told her that I’d been paying eighty in hopes that she’d meet me halfway. She shook her head and told me that she couldn’t do eighty, that was way too low, but she could do a hundred a week. Doing the math in my head, I figured out that it’d be four hundred for a month, which ain’t too bad, so I started reaching for my wallet.

  “Cool. I’ll take it.”

  “Don’t you want to see the room?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  She grabbed the keys and took me up to the third floor. She was wearing jeans, a floral-patterned blouse, hair pulled back like she was ready to work. I got the impression that she was a very kind lady as well as a very tough one, and while we waited for the elevator to come down she informed me that she and her husband managed this building as well as the building next door, and then she looked at me. “What are you?” she asked. I tell her that I’m half Korean and half white. She then very proudly told me that she was Dutch, which explained her thick accent, and that where she was from they don’t look at color like they do here, and that she didn’t discriminate, and more importantly in her building she had zero tolerance for racist behavior and wouldn’t tolerate any of that garbage one bit—her brain didn’t even work in that fashion. “People are people,” she said. I was immediately reminded of my mother, who would say the same thing all the time, that people are people and that there are good people and bad people. That’s it.

  The elevator arrived. Its doors are brass, with an art deco design carved into them. On the way up to the third floor she told me that she wants my room to be comfortable, and how she hated to rent rooms that are not taken care of because a lot of people here come from environments where “things are very depressed and a lot of people are losing their jobs and there’s a lot of friction.” They come here, she said, “and I say as long as you’re staying here, this is your home, and please think of it as your home, I want to make it homelike and not just another hotel room. You know what I mean?” I nod yes while thinking about that. “I think this is the only way that people can survive here. I don’t know what it’s like out there in California, but these are bad times here.”

  The room she showed me was 315. The room had my name on it. Somebody had carved U FUCK UP deep in the red-painted door, and she opened it up and it was perfect— like warm freshly baked bread straight out of the oven, small bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower, a closet, a bedroom with bed next to a chair and desk, an old-school radiator room heater by the window. The walls looked like they’d been painted white at least a hundred times, and had two framed twentieth-century Expressionist pieces of art nailed to them. Both pieces looked exactly like something you would find at the Salvation Army, Goodwill, or the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Four white walls and a window. That was it. Very postmodern. I loved it.

  What’s strange though, was that the apartment was laid out exactly like the one I lived at in San Francisco. It was also the same price as the studio apartment in Los Angeles where I lived when I first moved out of my parents’ house over a decade ago. Well, that apartment was actually a bit smaller than this space—a lot smaller—but it had a great view of the Hollywood sign, and I remember waking up in the mornings looking up at that thing and thinking, Well, at least I’m in Hollywood. How bad could it be, you know?

  When I looked out the window here under overcast conditions, I saw that there was a breathtaking view across the freeway to the Cass Corridor. A couple street people were walking around as if they were lost on their way to the methadone clinic. I turned to her with a smile and said that it was perfect, above and beyond my expectations, and that I’d take it. She cheered up and told me that was great, and that whatever I did, not to go over there past the freeway. “We have kind of a raunchy ripe environment over there,” she said soberly, and then offered to get me a television for my room, no problem, and I instinctively cut her off by telling her no—that wasn’t necessary, I didn’t like TV and could live perfectly fine, if not better, if I didn’t have one.

  Are you sure?

  Yes, definitely.

  I’m not one of those elitists who tells everyone they know how they don’t have a television set so that they can think they’re so much better than others for not having one. I just don’t want one because there’s really nothing on that I care to watch, so what’s the point? It’d just take up space on my desk, and I need that for my laptop. And
beer and wine bottles, ashtray, etc. Less is more.

  Ever since I moved out of my parents’ house over a decade ago, I’ve always sought out the cheapest available apartment to live in, even if it meant living in a neighborhood that most people would never consider moving into. I never once really thought anything of it, but my mother was the only one who ever figured it out and knew exactly why this all was.

  “You always choose to live in tiny apartments in garbage neighborhoods because you think that’s the best you can do. You never think big. It’s okay to pay a little bit more, get bigger place, live better, work harder. But you think you’re no good. That’s why you choose to live like that. Those people have no choice. You’re choosing to live that way.”

  On the way down the elevator, the Dutch lady views my ring and asked me if I was married, while smiling. I told her that I was. Happily, even.

  “She doesn’t mind you being here?”

  “No. Well, she’s a bit nervous about me being in Detroit. She doesn’t want me to get shot here.”

  Mrs. Harrington assured me that I would be fine here at her hotel, and joking around she asked if I knew who was spreading the rumor of Detroit’s rough reputation.

  Not knowing the answer, I shrugged.

  Once back down in the lobby, she also told me about her breakfast café, which she’d just opened up; two dollars for eggs and coffee was their special, along with a full breakfast menu. Her husband even had the idea that if you lived in the building and paid your rent on time, you’d get a free breakfast. I asked her how that was going, and she told me not so good; right now there were creative differences, if you will, going on with her and her cook, who lived in the building and was allowed to stay there rent-free as long as he worked at the café. She had a certain vision for the café, coffee and good breakfast food, but the cook wanted to cook soul food instead.

  “I gave him all of the books and told him to make breakfast this way, do this, do that, and start making good smells, like bake your own apple pies, and he just sits there. Some people are good entrepreneurs and artists,” she told me, “and some people have to work for someone else.” She kindly added that he’s a really nice guy, and makes really nice food, “when he can.”

  With all the people coming into and out of the building, I felt like I was at a cocktail party, being introduced to a bunch of people that I didn’t know yet. All were kind, and she introduced me to every single one, all of whom she knew by name. We shook hands, and she told me what they do and a little bit about each. Like this five-foot-something arty Japanese hipster kid who hardly spoke any English at all and was always happy and smiling. He just ended up here while traveling. She then introduced me to a black guy “who’s a well-known comedian. They tell me that he’s fantastic,” she said. “One of these days I’m going to get dressed up and go see him!”

  I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels just like this, and this was the first time I came across one where the owner cared about the people who lived in her building. It was like they were all a part of her extended family: she knew them, and they knew her.

  The comedian who lived in the building was actually playing at some legendary club in Detroit on New Year’s Eve. It was a block away, and when he invited me to his show, I told him that I was not quite sure if I’d be able to make it, since I might be off to another city by then. Mrs. Harrington told me, “Well, who knows, you might fall in love with Detroit and decide not to leave.”

  We shared a chuckle, though in the back of my mind I must say I thought, anything can happen, I guess. I did join the military in a time of war never thinking that I ever would, and I did become a father without ever thinking that would happen either, so I guessed I couldn’t really rule out any possibilities. Just then a white guy walked in the door, forties, very relaxed casual air and dress, and she brought me over to him and introduced me as a “writer from California.” She then told me that he was an architect who used to live out in Hamtramck and moved into the building a couple months ago.

  Mrs. Harrington then suggested that he show me around Detroit some time. He said he could do that, no problem, and then asked me what I was up to right now. I told him I wasn’t up to anything, just hanging out, and he asked me if I wanted to go with him right now on a walk around the city, and he could take me to his work downtown. And just like that, we were off to discover Detroit.

  Once outside the hotel, I asked my new acquaintance what kind of architecture he did. “Whatever comes down the tube,” he said.

  At the corner he pointed to a bar down the street, surrounded by empty lots, and told me that he did that bar. They gutted the building, and he did the interior. Prior to that the building was just a flophouse. A couple vagrants were just hanging out, not really doing anything, so I asked him about the neighborhood.

  “A lot of crooks in this town.”

  “Like breaking-into-cars kind of stuff?”

  “No, like gank you and take your money kind of stuff.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. I got a friend from Louisiana who came here, and he got mugged on his way to that bar. Took his wallet and watch.”

  He told me that all these vacant lots around us are now all “surface level” parking spaces for the sporting events. They all used to have buildings sitting on them, but they figured out that they could make more money converting them into parking spaces and charging twenty dollars to park there whenever a concert or sporting event happens, so they just tore them all down instead of boarding them up, like the handful of buildings that still remain on this street.

  As we made our way down Park Avenue, no one in sight, he told me that all the bars were doing really slow business, now that baseball season was over. He added that back in the day the street we were on used to be a hangout for the Purple Gang, Jewish mobsters who were rumrunners in the 1920s.

  We passed by an empty storefront that carried a sign indicating a pizza restaurant coming soon, but a sign next to that indicated that all construction for that pizza restaurant had been halted, and as we walked through Grand Circus Park, which was like an outdoor break room for panhandlers, he told me that right now they were filming a movie downtown. I had noticed a lot of film trucks and production vehicles driving around. He said they were filming the new Red Dawn movie here, and he thought the story line for this one was something along the lines of the Chinese taking over America. “But if you think about it, they already have. Just go to Walmart, we don’t make anything anymore.”

  When we stepped inside the lobby of his building, he told me that it had been an office building, but that right now eighty percent of the building was empty. While we waited for the elevator, I asked when this particular building was built, since I liked how the lobby was designed, and he told me that it was developed at the height of the art deco period. “The days of making buildings like this one are over,” he said. “And they’ll never come again.”

  “Why not?”

  “You couldn’t make this building now. All the marble, steel, plating, everything, you couldn’t match it now. You’d go broke. Not anymore. Now everything is made cheap.”

  His office was located up on one of the top floors and had a spectacular panoramic view of all of Detroit; since the weather was clear, you could see for miles in all directions. He explained the layout of Detroit to me, saying that it’s based on a wheel system. All the streets—Woodward, Gratiot, Michigan—start here in downtown but go out for miles and miles, all the way to the suburbs. He told me where all the neighborhoods were, which ones are which, Greektown, Hamtramck, Grosse Pointe, Midtown, East Detroit, Dearborn, and even Canada.

  He then pointed to a building with a blue awning across the street and told me that it used to be a homeless shelter until it closed down not long ago. They gave out free food to all the bums, and all these bums would come down here from off Cass to get their free food, and of course the local b
usinesses didn’t care for that too much, since it was drawing the bums in. Now that the shelter was not there anymore, fewer homeless people came around. So that meant nobody came around.

  He pointed out the many buildings around us that were bankrupt, one right after another. “That one’s bankrupt, that one’s bankrupt, that one’s bankrupt, too, that one over there is pretty close, that one over there is, that one I’m pretty sure is, I think, that one is, that one, too. . . . What we’re trying to do is get a population in here instead of just emptiness.”

  When I asked what they had in mind, he pointed out a building. “You mean the one that looks like a middle finger?” I asked. He told me that I was correct.

  “We’re doing that building. It’s the old Free Press building.”

  “What are you guys going to do with it?”

  “Condos.”

  I tried not to cringe. It seemed like every single one of these buildings across our country that used to house things called jobs were now vacant, showing FOR SALE or LEASE signs, and were now being converted into condos or lofts. Perhaps they moved online, or to a different building? Who knows?

  His boss, who was well dressed and looked like an architect, then pointed out the drafting plans for the Free Press building, which were sitting on a nearby table. I asked if I could take a look at them. He told me sure. The boss, who was wearing a scarf indoors, migrated over to me and in a calm voice explained, “Underground is going to be parking, the first floor is going to be retail, the second floor is going to be offices, and the rest are going to be apartments.”

  I then realized what he was showing me. It wasn’t the floor plan to that building, it was the floor plan for this country—the beige condominium nightmare. That building used to have jobs inside it. Since those were all gone now or had moved somewhere else, the building was now empty. Since we don’t know what to do with this building and all the others like it, they are all being converted into condos. I’m starting to think that we are all headed toward living in a country of beige condos and working service industry jobs, since those will be the only jobs left. One day I’m going to be tipping you, and you’re going to be tipping me.