Detroit Literary Blog

Buddy Holly and Detroit

2011-09-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

Is it a coincidence that the best songs on "Rave On," the Starbucks tribute album to Buddy Holly, have Detroit connections?

With some exceptions (see Nick Lowe), the other covers on the album range from the forgettable to the lamentable to the execrable. In the latter category put the disappointing Paul McCartney and Modest Mouse contributions.

Maybe Detroit musicians are better able to capture Holly's roots-rock authenticity.

This includes "Crying, Waiting, Hoping," by Karen Elson, produced by Jack White. It includes "Well All Right" by Kid Rock. It includes "Words of Love" by Patti Smith, who lived for many years in the Detroit area. Best of all is "Heartbeat" by the Detroit Cobras, the best rock n' roll band-- and best kept secret-- on the planet.

New Detroit E-Book

2011-07-18T11:07:00.000-07:00

Three of my best-ever stories which in some way are about or take place in Detroit, are now available via the ebook, Mood Detroit.

The three long tales are:
-"Kevin and Koreena"
-"The Zeen Writer"
-"Bluebird"

You'll find none better. Each one carries Detroit mood and soul.

They're available right now as a Nook Book at www.bn.com, and very soon at the Kindle Store at www.amazon.com.

Mood Detroit by King Wenclas. At a ridiculously low Detroit price. Purchase it now!

Other Fiction

2010-01-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

Check another style of my writing (and hopefully others') that will be going up at
www.americanpoplit.blogspot.com

My serious, Detroit writing will continue to post here. I'm in the middle of two ambitious stories giving different aspects of the Motor City.

"Death of a Detroit Drug Dealer"

2010-01-02T11:26:00.000-08:00

A Story by Karl Wenclas

I.

THE REALITY of Detective Rolls was opposite to how he appeared to the world.

Modest; lean; soft-spoken; Detective Rolls wore the facade of mild-mannered intellectual; even something of a nerd. His eyeglasses added to the part. In truth he was the most feared investigator in the Detroit Police Department. Rolls was methodically ruthless in building cases and putting a fair portion of the city's vast number of miscreants behind bars.

Prosecutors worshipped him. When defense attorneys saw Rolls take the stand against their clients, hope vanished. Juries were captured by the modest exterior bolstered by his methodical presentation of facts. Never did he raise his voice, or appear impressed with what he said. His demeanor expressed, "Here it is. That's it. These are the facts. Nothing more needs to be said."

In truth, when Detective Rolls closed his notebook-- knowing himself when questioning was over-- the case was over. The guilty verdict to follow was afterthought.

Someone once asked me which city is tougher, Detroit or Philadelphia. I answered that Detroit is 500 times tougher. It isn't, really, not by that much-- but I didn't know how else to express Detroit's unique character of people. Even its liberal artists carry scarred shells: invisible scabs from countless wounds; from the very fact of existence in such a world.

Detective Rolls knew this character well, and so, showed no mercy for anybody. To Caucasions he showed not a sliver of either resentment or deference. When one claimed Rolls hated white people, Rolls paused for a moment of reflection then said, "I hate everyone." To African-Americans who called him "bro," he'd reply, after jotting unknown, frightening words in his notebook, "I'm not your brother."

On his job, to him, all the refuse of humanity were assholes-- that being not an emotional thought but an objective assessment.

This was the uncompromising man suspects faced in the interrogation room. Detective Rolls spent a fair amount of time in this room-- often with individuals who weren't suspects so much as potential sources of information, picked up on Rolls' say-so for some one or other nebulous ongoing investigation. In a city where 80% of all homicides went unsolved, there were at all times plethoras of ongoing investigations to choose from. Detective Rolls knew what any police force was-- just another gang; albeit a gang just a little better organized and approved than other gangs, if not always better resourced. A gang which worked for a clientele of businesses, property owners, and residents; the advocates of "civilization" and "order"-- themselves nebulous concepts in Rolls' Detroit world. Rolls knew how to martial the underfunded resources of his gang; sending underutilized officers in scout cars on patrol-- who'd been hiding someplace from duty-- to pick up, with blaring sirens and flashing lights, one of Rolls' designated suspects.

The officers knew that Rolls' targets needed to be turned upside down once or twice in process of being delivered to him for scrutiny. They were left waiting in the interrogation room a couple hours before Detective Rolls himself, like a busy doctor, ever got to them.

One such person sat in front of him now; a scrawny black street rat. He'd given Rolls a piece of information which the detective did not jot into his notebook.

"I'm not lying," the shaking addict said. "The details are right. Check them out. Two million dollars, cash money. In the apartment."

They were talking about the city's most notorious drug dealer, Mr. Zongo, who lived in a pricey apartment complex downtown.

Rolls knew of Zongo, though the man's path hadn't crossed his-- yet. Zongo was one more of a succession of young thugs of short lifespan who continually cropped up to, seemingly, dominate, for a year or two, illegal trade in the town. By all description, Zongo, lean, six feet tall, was a younger, cooler, more handsome, if no less intelligent, version of himself. Just the sort of upstart who needed to be broken. Rolls was pre-eminently loyal to the city's official gang, as well as to himself.

What the man had told him intrigued him. Rolls stared into his notebook for ten minutes, though he was actually staring inside himself.

"Bullshit," he at last said in an even, fearsome voice. "Get the hell out of here."

In the next few weeks Detective Rolls did some patrolling on his own, accidentally but invariably taking him through the parking lot of Zongo's apartment complex, or on the street in front of it, or on the side of it. Rolls smoking a cigarette outside the entrance, like a visitor awaiting a resident; or a resident enjoying the outside world. The art deco building-- orange, with black highlights-- was like the city; once modern and elegant, now a melancholy reminder of past success.

His excursions netted him his second piece of important information: Zongo had a girlfriend. The importance wasn't in the fact itself, but that Rolls recognized the trashy blond white girl on Zongo's arm. But from where?

Rolls puzzled over his memory, and scanned his notebooks. Then he remembered. The blonde had once been girlfriend of a white car thief in southwest Detroit named Skarzski. Rolls had busted him a few years prior. A little checking revealed that Skarzski's was out on parole.

The solution to Rolls' puzzle began to present itself. He saw his way inside the fortress.

This was a case which needed to be worked outside official channels. His first step, before moving the Skarzski piece, was to enlist a pair of confederates.

In chess you first control the pawns, using them to control the board. Rolls chose his pawns carefully.

One was a 6'2 250 pound bouncer at a club who'd once killed a patron with his bare hands. He owed Rolls over the matter. The bouncer's name was Clevis.

The other pawn was a short, sociopathic young tough named Leonard who'd been put away for a couple years by Rolls; who feared his reputation, his power, and his inscrutable facade.

"I can move my little finger," Rolls had told him once, "and you'll do another five years hard time. For no reason at all. I'll find a reason. I have a file the size of a phone book of unsolved crimes in this town-- half of which were committed by creeps like you. You can stand in for them as well as anyone. Provoke me with another word and I'll do it."

Leonard knew that everything Rolls told him was true.

"You will do everything I tell you to do," he briefed his pawns, separately. "No hesitations, no fuck-ups, no questions asked. When we're finished you'll have fifty thousand cash in your pocket. Payment for a job."

When the other parts of his plan were lined up, Rolls had Skarzski picked up and placed into the interrogation room. Rolls fiddled at his ancient desk, read a magazine, called his wife-- hearing static of the building's creaky phone system-- stared out the gray-stained window, and dawdled at the coffee maker, giving Skarzski a proper amount of time to consider the ruthlessness of Detective Rolls; the possibility of going back behind bars.

When Rolls entered, Skarzski sat at the edge of the room's heavy wooden table trying to hide his concern and anger. A lightbulb behind a cage in the ceiling exposed him even as it failed to enliven the faded green color of the walls. Rolls sat across from him.

Skarzski had dirty blond hair and the cold blue eyes of a cunning animal whose first necessity was survival. An animal easily enough bluffed. The building around the two men was chief instrument toward that objective. Its columns and masonry facade made it resemble a Greek temple or a reserve bank. The Department's appearance of efficiency and power was largely facade. Yet, at times, the system worked. Rolls had made it work. Skarzski had felt its power.

Rolls dealt with tough people every day. He knew their toughness was cover for their own weakness. Rolls operated on the principle that in a city where everyone was dangerous and everyone fearful, HE was the man to be feared.

"Tell me about Kelly," Rolls said with his usual manner of preparation and threat. "Still hear from her?"

"Now and then," Skarzski said.

"Ever work for Zongo?"

"No way. We, uh, travel in different circles."

"Surprised that Kelly's with him?

"She has a way of landing on her feet, you know," the white man stated.

"Known her long?"

"Since she came to Detroit. Kelly was waitressing at a diner I hung out at, and was crashing with a co-worker in a sooty old building near the cemetary at Woodmere, near the railyard. They got locked out by the landlord one night. That's when Kelly started crashing with me."

"Where is she from?"

Skarzski gave the name of a small town sixty miles from Detroit.

"Parents still there?"

"Her mother is."

"Know the address?"

"Yes."

"Does her mother know you?"

"Yes."

"Does she like you?"

"Yes!"

"Is Kelly sentimental or practical?"

"She's more practical."

"Is that why she left you? A better deal come along?"

"I guess. I suppose."

"Did she love you?"

Skarzski pondered.

Rolls said, "Come on, be real. Why was she with you? Why is she with Zongo now? You were supplying her with her smokes. Marijuana, I'm talking about."

"No, you're right. To be honest she never loved me. I always knew that."

"Women are more practical, more hard-headed and hard-hearted than men. They know what it's about. The bottom line is what it's about. Give them a provider. When the man can no longer provide, he's through."

"You're right," Skarzski said.

"Did you love her?" Rolls asked.

"I was crazy about her."

Rolls allowed himself the trace of a smile.

"I'm going to bring Zongo down," he informed Skarzski. "You're going to help me do it. I'll tell you exactly what to do. At the end of the game you'll have fifty thousand cash in your pocket, no questions asked, nothing ever said. Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

"Do we have a deal?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Once you ran into me, my friend, you never had a choice. I play the cards. You make the best of it."

He gave Skarzski exact instructions about what he needed to do with Kelly, what he should tell her, what he needed to find out. Rolls had him repeat the instructions. Then he handed Skarzski a wad of spending money and a small .380 automatic pistol.

"Unregistered. It'll serve your purpose if you need an added threat with her. Get some rest tonight and think about how to make the approach. You have three-to-four days to meet with her, get the info, and get her on the bus."

He handed Skarzski a cellphone.

"Here's a ghetto phone. Not registered to anyone. The number is on the back. 100 minutes have been put into it. This is how we'll stay in touch. Once the job is done you destroy the phone with a hammer and discard it. I have a phone just like it."

He had Skarzski memorize a number to call, making him repeat it a dozen times.

"You'll keep me posted about everything you do; everything that happens."

"Sure," Skarzski said, showing in his eyes a hint of excitement about what was ahead. This was a good sign. Rolls didn't want his people too beaten-down. They had much to do. A certain amount of initiative was called for.

Would it work? Rolls knew that the young woman had once been a prostitute. Kelly had a prostitute's mindset. She knew how to be serviceable. She was used to having men do her thinking for her. Kelly was the crux of the plan, but a reliable crux. She was a chess piece that was perfectly predictable. As they all were.

"You were her boss once," Rolls told Skarzski. "Be her boss again."

At home that evening, Detective Rolls envisioned how Skarzski's scripted conversation with Kelly would go.

Skarzski to Kelly:
"You're in effect being kidnapped. Give me both keys to the apartment, and the pass card to the building. Now your cellphone. Good. The word has come down. Zongo is through. It's been decided by powerful forces-- forces that could crush you and me like bugs-- and will, if we don't do exactly as we're told. We'll be dead. There are forces in this town more powerful than we could ever know.

"You'll be put on a bus to your mother's. Wait there. In a few days you'll receive an overnight package that will contain thirty thousand dollars. Your retirement fund. You're retiring from Detroit. You're to never come below Eight Mile Road again."

Rolls gave himself high marks for thoroughness. A chess player doesn't move until studying all possibilities. Was everything covered?

Clevis and Leonard had copies of the floor plan of Zongo's apartment. Leonard would be watching Zongo's building beginning tonight, tracking his movements. The rest depended upon Skarzski.

To go against Zongo, Rolls had recruited three of the smarter, more dependable of their violent, criminal kind.

He sat pondering in his subtly-lit study. Rolls lived in a solid home in one of the city's few remaining respectable neighborhoods, on a quiet street of security and substance. He was married to an educated, well-spoken black woman ten years younger than himself. His two well-behaved young sons studied in another room. His well-groomed wife put her arms around him from behind.

"You're thoughtful," she remarked. "Tough day?"

"I deal with some bad motherfuckers on my job," Rolls told her.

Two night later Rolls received a text from Skarzski on his ghetto phone: "It's a go." Rolls texted the other two. Within the hour he'd picked up big Clevis. They drove downtown. They parked in a fast food parking lot across from the bus station. After a time, another text: "She's on the bus."

Rolls and Clevis stepped out and walked across the street. Skarzski waited outside the station. He pointed them to the car he'd stolen, a large Ford Crown Victoria.

"Plenty of backseat room," Rolls noted with approval as they got in. "How'd it go?"

"Good," Skarzski answered.

He handed a plastic card and two keys to Rolls, who passed them to Clevis in the back seat.

"The larger key's for the deadbolt," Skarzski told Clevis. To Rolls: "I ditched her cellphone, per your instructions."

Leonard waited for them near Zongo's building, which looked tall and ominous at night. The Crown Victoria pulled up to him. Leonard put on a look of fake unconcern. The detective rolled down the window.

"It's only me," Rolls said. "Get in."

From the roomy backseat, next to Clevis, Leonard gave his report in a fast-talking voice.

"Zongo came back from the casino little after twelve. Been there five hours. Looked very relaxed. Very. From his apartment window, looked like he watched TV for awhile. Then it went off-- thirty minutes ago."

Leonard pointed toward the structure's seventh floor. The orange-brick building before them resembled a castle.

Skarzski added: "According to his girl, when she's there they sleep in the back bedroom, but when she's not he watches TV and falls asleep on the large sofa, five yards inside the door to the left. The money should be in the back closet, as said, inside a black duffel bag."

They considered the layout inside their heads.

"Must be a big motherfucking television, based on the light it puts out," Leonard said.

"Security?" Rolls asked him.

"Like you said, during the week the night man at the sign-in desk goes into the back room about two. He's there now."

"What do you think he's doing?" Rolls asked. "Watching the monitors? Or sleeping?"

They laughed. Rolls handed the two men in the back seat snub-nosed revolvers with rough tape on the handles. They all wore gloves.

"Unregistered and untraceable," Rolls said. "Doublecheck, but they're loaded and ready to go. But remember, I want him brought to the car."

They were parked with a good vantage point of the entrance. Leonard said, "Okay." Clevis grunted, putting the revolver and a roll of strong packing tape he'd brought into his jacket pocket. The two stepped from the car, then walked across the driveway and casually within the building as if they lived there. Meanwhile Skarzski opened the car's trunk with a screwdriver through a hole where the lock should've been. He left the lid slightly ajar.

Rolls sensed Skarzski on edge. Rolls remained calm. It was little more than a chess problem. He expounded on this as they waited inside the Ford.

"I realized the trick was to get Zongo out of his place. Nobody cares about a man like him. Those who know him will be afraid to report him as missing. Who they gonna call? The police? Anyway Zongo doesn't announce his moves. He might be in the islands, on vacation for all anyone knows. Without a police report, no one's going to check the building's video tapes. If there was a scene, a body inside the apartment, all that changes."

He studied his watch.

"I told them to get out immediately as soon as they secure Zongo and the bag. The key is to have a plan and everyone has to follow the plan."

As if in confirmation, several minutes later Clevis and Leonard were exiting the building, a third person being escorted between them-- half-walking and half-dragged-- Zongo! Clevis did most of the escorting, one hand on the back of Zongo's neck. Leonard's free hand carried the duffel bag.

Rolls tossed the bag in the trunk as Zongo was put in the back seat. In the car's dome light Rolls saw tape over Zongo's mouth, his hands taped together in front of him.

"In front?"

"I thought it'd look less suspicious that way, on the lobby's camera or if anyone saw us," Clevis explained.

A flashy blue sportjacket was draped over Zongo's shoulders. Rolls pulled this off and walked to a nearby dumpster, where he deposited it. As he slid back in the front seat he noticed a sick bruise splayed across Zongo's right eye and much of his renowned face. Clevis had been forced to get rough. Rolls didn't look directly in the drug dealer's eyes. He didn't care one speck what was in them. To Rolls the man was already dead. Rolls looked at Skarzski.

"Drive!" he ordered.

The car took a left off Fort, down a side street past warehouses to the river, then a right through a gravelly yard, past a large abandoned truck terminal, over railroad tracks to the edge of the river itself. They drove parallel to the tracks and the river for a distance, near a closed shack. In the distance: a dark rail tower and a vast, no longer used railyard. No man's land.

"This used to be a slipdock," Skarzski explained. "Barges with railcars came across from Canada. I worked as a barman here, opening railcars with a crowbar, before it closed."

The lights of the Renaissance Center and the rest of downtown were to the left of them-- to the east-- as they stepped out. They gulped the necessary air after the hideous stuffiness of the car. The span of the Ambassador Bridge loomed to the right. Clevis finished taping Zongo's ankles together, and put small iron weights in his trouser pockets. Leonard helped him drag the man out of the car.

"Drag him right to the edge," Rolls said. Then, to Leonard, "Shoot him."

Leonard held a revolver but looked at Rolls with anxious eyes and shook his head, making a sound in the negative. Clevis and Skarzski looked away, not wanting the assignment either. Clevis still had one large hand on Zongo, propping him up near the water.

"That's Murder One," Leonard put into words.

Rolls had a distaste for firearms, though he qualified with them at the range for his job. Sometimes they were a necessary evil.

"Give me it," he ordered.

Part of being a leader was exhibiting your fearlessness. Rolls put two shots into Zongo's body at close range. The others jumped. It was the first time he'd shot someone. The noise and smell irritated him.

"Dump him."

Zongo vanished into the river. Rolls threw the revolver after him a minute later. Clevis tossed his as well. The four men watched the rushing water, the hard dark waves, imagining how cold it was. They stood and stared at the hectic river for several minutes as if something could come out of it.

Rolls had Skarzski open the trunk. Rolls opened the duffel bag. Inside: bundles of cash. For some minutes he assessed the amount, counting a few bundles bill by bill. The other three men looked at one another, wondering how much was there, but said not a word. They knew Rolls thought on another level from themselves.

"Twenties, fifties, and hundreds," Rolls said. "The man was well-organized."

He handed each man his share. They jumped in the vehicle and with spinning tires Skarzski turned around the car. Now they wanted to get the hell out of there.

Clevis and Leonard were let out at separate bus stops. Morning buses began running in a couple hours. Skarzski dropped Rolls at his car parked across from the bus terminal.

"Ditch the Crown Victoria at least two miles from here," Rolls said as he departed with the duffel bag.

Later that morning, sunrise not yet appeared, Detective Rolls stood in the front room of his house staring out the large picture window at the world beyond. There hadn't been two million dollars in the bag--more like a third that, but it was enough. In a few hours he'd stow the cash in a bank safety deposit box.

As Rolls watched, the bushes and spruce tree in his front yard moved. Shadows closed. He imagined a person out there; an animal skulking about. Predator in a land of predators-- likely a cat or dog. He closed the heavy drapes, shutting out that nightime world.

II.

"You're shitting me," Skarzski said.

He was on a cell phone call with Leonard five weeks after the robbery. They'd surreptitiously exchanged real cell phone numbers when Rolls wasn't looking-- had done it without a word. Now Leonard had called to tell him Clevis had died in an auto accident.

"Ninety miles an hour into a telephone pole," Leonard said. "His alcohol content three times legal allowable limit. From what I'm told, the car smelling of whiskey. What doesn't add up about this?"

Skarzski was silent.

"Clevis worked in a fucking club! Bouncer and bartender. Those cats don't drink. They don't drive into telephone poles!"

"Maybe--" Skarzski said.

"It warn't an accident. It's Rolls, I tell you. That motherfucker's evil through and through. He's got to eliminate us to cover himself. I saw it coming. It's the only way he's safe. This is how the motherfucker operates. He leaves no loose ends. Detective Rolls! We're fucked. Rolls has the power of the entire system backing him."

"No, he forfeit that power," Skarzski said, "by becoming one of us."

"They found Clevis with his hands inside the steering wheel," Leonard went on in staccato fashion. "Figure that out. His head smashed the steering wheel and through the windshield. Completely dead. No seatbelt. Airbag never went off."

An air of finalty punctuated Leonard's statement, as if he'd presented a case.

"Thanks for the heads up," Skarzski said.

They agreed to lay low and stay in touch.

"Watch yourself!" Leonard said.

Skarzski turned off his phone, as if its very existence would give him up-- or send more unsettling news. He sat in a well-lit kitchen with a tiny window near the ceiling with an old bullet hole through it; part of a tiny studio on the third floor of a rickety old wooden house in southwest Detroit. Sounds: creeping outside. Steps on the narrow stairs.

That night while asleep, Skarzski saw a corpse with two smoking holes in it. This morphed into a dream about Kelly. She stood, beautiful, in a short skirt, on a sunny day. A man waited on the edge of the dream, in shadow, near a tree. Skarzski didn't know if the man was Rolls or Zongo. Kelly stood with strong legs and back turned, a breeze rustling her skirt. She knew Skarzski was there, but walked away from him. He wanted her. "Kelly!" he said.

Skarzski awoke in a cold room, shaking with anxiety and longing.

Over coffee at a diner he reviewed how his encounter with Kelly five weeks before had gone. He had not followed Rolls' instructions to the letter. Some of them were ridiculous. The gun he'd given Skarzski looked like a cap pistol. He'd tossed it. It would scare no one. Kelly would've laughed at it.

The payoff for her was silly as well. What was thirty grand to Zongo's girlfriend? Skarzski hadn't mentioned it. The delivery to her mother's house probably alarmed her. Blood money-- if she suspected Zongo was dead. Did Rolls think Kelly had no scruples at all?

Skarzski didn't tell her Zongo would be killed. He told her flat out the police were involved. He presented it was solely about the money. He let Kelly believe that Zongo would be temporarily arrested. The cash would vanish, never to be seen again. The price of business. Best if she not be there.

"In the back closet?" Skarzski asked her.

"Yeah, on the floor. In a black duffel bag."

They'd sat in the stolen Crown Victoria smoking some good weed Skarzski provided. He handed her a strong antidepressant capsule and had her swallow it. Carefully he took her cell phone away. Then her pass card and keys.

"You're such an asshole," she told him. "I never trusted you."

"I'm looking out for you," Skarzski said. "You'd go into the slammer sooner than Zongo would."

"I guess you're right. Zongo won't do time. He's smarter than your cop friends."

"You don't know these cops," Skarzski said.

"I know them. I've had enough encounters with them to know all about them. Not a one doesn't believe his badge turns him into God."

Skarzski moved toward her, as if to kiss her. Kelly's sneer and cold eyes turned him back.

Skarzski put Leonard's call out of his head until a few days later when the radio mentioned a victim of a drive-by shooting. The name sounded like Leonard's. Thirty minutes later he listened closer. It was Leonard, gunned down walking home from a store. Twelve bullets in him. Later reports speculated it wasn't a drive-by, but made to look like a drive-by. The killing shot happened at close range, through the head. Leonard had been on his knees on the sidewalk, landing then on his wrists, which had been in front of him as if he'd been praying or begging.

Skarzski packed a bag, took the portion of cash hid under his sink, and left his apartment, not looking back. Later that day he rented a room a mile away, paying cash. He looked at the remainder of his survival money. The bulk of his fifty grand was still in a secret place near the riverfront. He needed to get it and leave town.

First he wanted to know what was happening.

Was it Rolls?

He didn't think so. Too messy. His style was to have others do his dirty work.

Kelly?

She had a temper-- he wasn't sure she had that much of one.

Zongo himself?

Skarzski had seen the gunsmoke; had watched Clevis toss Zongo into the black water as if he were a rag doll.

Skarzski took a bus to another part of town. At a working payphone next to a closed gas station, he phoned Kelly's mother. The woman told him Kelly had split a week after arriving. She hadn't been heard from since.

Next, Skarzski phoned Rolls at his office.

"Heard the news, Detective?"

"I heard it. Someone else here is on the case. Where are you at? Give me your phone number. I'll call you back in thirty minutes."

"Bullshit! We'll talk now, and quick. I don't want you tracing where I'm at."

"Oh yeah, maybe I can look at the caller ID this antiquated phone system doesn't have," Rolls said. "Maybe I'll send helicopters to find you. Settle yourself down. I just wanted to be out of the office when we discussed this. But we can talk here. No one's on this floor right now, as a matter of fact. Saturday afternoon."

"Why are you there?"

There was a pause. "I'm spending more time at the office, until I get this matter solved."

"Will you solve it?"

No response to this. "Where's Kelly?" Rolls asked.

"No longer at her mother's. Think she's behind this?"

"Who knows? This might be all, you know, coincidence. Or she might be working with someone. I've looked into Zongo's background. He has two brothers."

"What if it's Zongo?"

"That's impossible."

"But what if it is?"

"It's not Zongo."

"You should've shot him in the head."

"I know. I've thought about that. But it's not him. If it is, we'll figure him out. I know his kind."

"Yeah. But before, you knew where he was. Now he knows where you are. He knows about me. Kelly will sic him on me. We were tracking him, but now he's tracking us."

"Don't panic. If he's alive, I'll find him. But it's not him. Someone wants us to think it's him. You find Kelly. I'll take care of Zongo."

Rolls voice faded in and out. The police phone system was truly bad. His final words to Skarzski sounded like from a far distance. "Zongo. . . ."

If the killer was Rolls himself, Skarzski was safe until Kelly was found. Rolls needed Skarzski to get to Kelly. Unless he'd already got to her-- and eliminated her.

Skarzski lay on a thin mattress in the rented room, smoking weed. As the weather outside darkened, he planned his exit. Rolls and Zongo both had networks and could find him. For now he was like an animal trapped in a hole, waiting to escape.

Monday Skarzski learned the killer wasn't Rolls, when the radio reported the detective's death. A passing mail carrier had seen through a front window of the Rolls house the shadow of a hanged man against a wall inside, and reported it. Given that Rolls' hands had been bound in front of him, the death was not considered suicide.

"We have a lot of suspects," a police spokesperson said. "He had a lot of enemies."

The killer worked fast-- like the devil himself. Skarzski acted.

Clouds of fog, mist, rain, and blowing snow made the world around the hesitant car a land of chaos. The windshield wipers swept unevenly. "Thunk, thunk." What a shitty poorly maintained vehicle. It deserved to be stolen-- but he who'd stolen it paid the penalty for its condition. As long as it made it to the town. He'd find Kelly. The crazy mystery would be solved.

Fog; snow. "Thunk; thunk." Weak headlights protruding into an unknown void. Instinctively he thought about what a clusterfuck life was; yet like a distorted crazy machine, every part and every act within the madhouse were connected. A tiny point-- Zongo's hands taped in front of him-- might've led to a series of steps which now took Skarzski on this nightmare road. Might've. Had it? No-- it was madness. Zongo drowned. What was indisputable was that some part of the Detective's perfect plan had gone wrong.

Up an exit, down dirt roads, around sharp curves, pulling in front of a misshapen white shack house on the outskirts of town. Kelly's slutty alky mother lived in the house.

Skarzski took with him a two-foot long screwdriver used in his work. He'd made it himself, some years ago in an industrial shop. The screwdriver had a hardened amber plastic handle around a steel bar with a flat, sharp bevelled edge at the end of it. It was serviceable as an advanced crowbar, great for breaking into things, but also, if necessary, for fucking people up.

From outside, through ugly yellow curtains, he saw Kelly's hard-faced mother watching television, Kelly nowhere around. With the handle of the screwdriver, he tapped on the door.

"Have a seat," the mother said as she let him in. The room smelled of gin. Her eyes noted the object in his hand. She didn't comment on it.

"I'll stand," Skarzski said while she turned down the screaming volume of the television. "I won't be long."

Once, this unfortunate vision of what Kelly would look like in twenty years had hit on him herself. She knew what he could do with the screwdriver-- had no illusions regarding men-- but with hardened cynicism, liked him regardless. She leered at him with a cockeyed grin.

"I told you, she flew the coop," the woman tried.

Skarzski laughed out loud. He weighed the balance of the heavy screwdriver in his grip.

"I see some of her stuff. Kelly leaves nothing behind when she moves. Where is she? Out catting around? Some bar? At Parkies??"

Parkies was a dump Skarzski and Kelly often stopped at when visiting her mother, before the visit and after.

"No," her mother said, but he knew by her pleading expression that she lied to him.

The crooked door wobbled after him.

Parkies had a large neon sign on a pole in its parking lot. The saloon resembled an extended trailer. It was as cheap as you could get. The interior was done in fake-wood paneling that gave out a weak green glow in the artificial bar light. The mismatched tables, chairs, and barstools were from someone's kitchen.

A warped pool table sat unevenly near the back. Two bearded young men in green baseball caps with the logo of an agricultural implement company on them shot amateurish pool. Kelly sat at a table in the center of the room with a dark-haired girlfriend of hers. Many long-necked brown beer bottles covered the small table. Skarzski noted from inside the door that the bartender was a woman. No men in sight but the two at the back. No black man.

Like the thief he was, Skarzski walked like a cat. In a moment he stood over Kelly and the other woman. He'd been there half-a-minute before they noticed.

"Take a leak," he told Kelly's friend, then sat in her already-warmed chair.

He waited until the drunken friend vanished into the bathroom, the thin door clattering shut. Kelly's fucked-up eyes stared at him. She dragged on a cigarette. Kelly wore thick purple eyeshadow and bright orange lipstick. Skarzski had enough emotion about the situation to stare back.

Kelly's eyes burned through him.

"I hear your detective friend is no longer with us," she said.

"He wasn't my friend."

"I feel sorry for his wife and kids, I really do. What a pathetic asshole. He really thought he could go up against Zongo. The detective was insane. He was deluded by his comfortable world. Zongo is way smarter and tougher. He's had to be. A doberman against an arrogant poodle. Even you might stand a better chance."

"A poodle which almost killed the doberman," Skarzski told her. "Have you seen Zongo?"

Kelly dragged on her cigarette.

"Yes."

"Oh shit. He's alive?"

"Your detective friend never stood a chance. Now, hardly do you."

"Will you give me up to him, Kelly? Really? You've told him who I am, haven't you? How much you hate me still. How much hate. . . . Where is he?"

"He's coming for you."

"Shit. Where is he?"

"I'm not telling you."

Skarzski stood, knocked over her beer so that it spilled over the table and onto her, as she calmly smoked and glared at him. He cuffed her on the side of the head, hard enough so that she winced, then he was outside and quickly in the car; quickly driving out of the lot.

Quickly; quickly. What headlights behind him were Zongo's? What car waited ahead on the side of the road, with Zongo inside?

On the expressway driving back down to Detroit he felt more comforatble. He coaxed 80 miles an hour out of the car's speedometer, then more. He'd give Zongo a run. Was he worth Zongo's time?

The rattling car surged ahead. Lights floated in and out of the rearview mirror. Skarzski paid them no attention. He decided he no longer cared. Part of him followed the animal instinct for survival, but he no longer cared. His real life-- any dreams he'd held-- had ended years prior when he went into prison. All that followed was mere existence. Mere breath.

The lights of downtown. Into the lawless city. An exit. The riverfront he knew well. Skarzski parked at the abandoned truck terminal and stepped out, bringing forth the large screwdriver. Normally he'd hear crickets, and the river, but all was muffled by the falling mist. He stood for a minute, keying into the scene, senses alert.

Inside the dark terminal, whose gray ceiling was high, whose lofty windows were broken, with night air rushing through, was a white painted wall made of concrete blocks. The wall had cracks through it. One of the dusty blocks could be removed. Skarzski used the large screwdriver to do this. Inside, wrapped in plastic, was his blood money. He gripped the plastic encased envelope and turned around.

"Hold it!"

Skarzski bristled as he felt the cold muzzle of a steel pistol against his head. Perversely, he hoped the voice came from Detective Rolls. Glancing sideways he saw: Zongo!

"Wait," Skarzski said, realizing he'd dropped the large screwdriver.

"The will to live is strong, isn't it?" Zongo laughed. "My girl knows you well. You went right to it. Don't look at me!"

Zongo's eye remained sickly bruised. To Skarzski he was still a corpse. Whatever Zongo was, the voice dropped in tone and moved closer.

"I told the late Mr. Rolls he should've known who he was fucking with before he fucked around with someone. Why didn't you throw that motherfucker into the river after me, and taken the cash for yourselves? I asked the big guy, Clevis, that also, when I forced him to chug a bottle of Crown Royal. Were you afraid of law and order? An outdated concept, my man; inoperable. There's no law and order in this city. Rolls was proof of that. He was a bad cop! A turncoat; a two-face. Worse than us. He's met his proper fate in this hellish down-beaten place where it's every man for himself, where every man is prey-- it's time my sad stupid friend for you to meet yours. Look at the river and say a prayer."

Skarzski dropped the packet and moved his hands together. Dreams; mist against his face. . . .

The spray of blood from the bullet exiting Skarzski's head made a bright red pattern against the concrete wall.

Coming Attractions

2009-10-22T08:49:00.001-07:00

COMING SOON-- two great new short stories set in Detroit: "The Zeen Writer" and "Death of a Detroit Drug Dealer." Watch this site for release dates.

Lobbying for Detroit

2009-04-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

See my April 16th post, "The New York Problem," at
www.kingwenclas.blogspot.com

New Protest!

2009-03-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

Join the list of petitioners at

www.penpetition.blogspot.com

The goal: to begin to breakdown the literary dominance of the city of New York.

Sister Cities

2009-01-29T06:44:00.000-08:00

Towering new buildings are going up throughout Center City Philadelphia. It's hard to believe that once, Detroit and Philadelphia were comparable in size and prosperity. Philly has no discernible industry. It has problems, but remains one of America's great cities-- and is more beautiful and dynamic than it's ever been. What is it doing right?

COLD!!!

2009-01-15T07:49:00.000-08:00

You can tell in an old apartment building when the temperature hits zero or lower. The building begins to creak, loudly. Pipes through the building begin banging as if they're about to burst. Sometimes they do. As do old pipes in the ground beneath the very streets outside, bursting because of the cold so that water gushes from the concrete ground, freezing across the old city into beautiful white layers of ice.

When it gets very cold, colder still, one can hear outside at night the vast sky itself cracking. In its way, a fantastic, spiritual experience.
*************************************
By the way, isn't Fahrenheit a perfect artistic measurement? 100, the top of the scale, truly feels it-- as does zero on the bottom. When you dip below zero, then you're in dangerous territory.

Celsius, which Canadians use, is what you'd expect from a bureaucratic measuring system-- confusing; unrelated to human beings and to nature itself.

Similarly, bureaucratic literature so everpresent now is unartistic. True art isn't ultrarefined, regulated, and regimented, but discovers and expresses the eternal patterns of nature and God. Art traditionally, historically, was an attempt to express, or commune with, the Great Artist who created the universe. The best art transcendentally does this.

Wake Up!

2009-01-03T09:16:00.000-08:00

I stopped at the coffeeshop at the new Double Tree hotel downtown on Lafayette. Multiple greeters opened doors for me as I entered and exited. The hotel seemed empty. Is there really enough business for two large new restored hotels in Detroit, outside the occasional special event?

Half of downtown Detroit is a ghost town. I'd guess that at least half the businesses which are open are barely hanging on. The trick is to not engage in endless wishful thinking, which this city is very good at, but to take drastic action.

Boldness!-- strong moves which will bring people and attention to Detroit are called for.

0-16

2008-12-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

A jailed mayor; collapsing school system; collapsing industry; and a failed football team. Has any city been hit by so much bad news in one year?

Scoundrels

2008-12-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

Richard Shelby, Mitt Romney, Thomas Friedman, Mike Gallagher, etc. etc etc.

Solidarity

2008-12-08T11:44:00.001-08:00

I was at a public event this Saturday evening, at the heart of the city, when the host mentioned the auto companies, and the large audience broke into strong, spontaneous applause-- myself included.

This is simply because we know this town is being beat-up by the rest of the country right now. This great city, with a tremendous history and legacy of so much value to the nation, is in the biggest crisis it's ever been in-- one not of its making. If the auto companies fold there will be nothing left. But if Detroit survives, it might signal a long-term bottom, from which, with the worst over, it can climb back upward.

Anyone raised here, as I was, has the auto industry in their soul. Cars are in our blood and I've realized since I returned it's not easy to get them out.

Defense?

2008-12-04T11:16:00.000-08:00

There's a huge contradiction in self-described conservatives who claim to be interested in America's defense yet are willing to flush America's industrial base down the tubes. This country's military might has been based on the "Arsenal of Democracy"-- its industrial power.

How to Go on the Offensive

2008-11-25T09:39:00.000-08:00

To get a better shake nationwide, Detroit needs to vastly increase its media noise and leverage. Like Dorothy in Oz with her ruby slippers, Detroit has that power and has always had that power.

Bureaucrats or Pirates?

2008-11-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

AT THE SENATE HEARINGS, Detroit's Big 3 execs should've ripped the Senators hearts out. This would've earned public respect. Instead they said nothing, looking to the world like incompetent stooges. In those hearings, THEY were their brand. Fast? Energetic? Forceful? Dynamic? These adjectives were nowhere to be found.

Detroit's problem is that it's a city not of free-booting entrepreneurs, AS IT ONCE WAS 100 years ago, but of tame ticket-punching office holders. I noticed the defeated attitude when I arrived back here a year ago, and I still smell it in the air. (Not just around Ford Field!) The city needs extreme dynamism, a go-to-war attitude if it's to survive.

Down But Not Out

2008-11-21T10:02:00.001-08:00

Detroit is being kicked by the media and both political parties. Even John Dingell has been overthrown. There remain, however, ways to fight back, as I'll be outlining.

The Phony Liberal

2008-11-21T10:01:00.001-08:00

Jack Lessenberry, defender of unions and workers, has never been so laughable as in trying to explain why he nevers buys a union-made car.

Defending Detroit

2008-11-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

This morning I called in to the Bill Bennett national radio show (www.bennettmornings.com) in order to defend the auto industry against the know-nothing guest host, Kevin Wall. I was on near the end of the second hour of the program. Host Wall had his head handed to him.

More Losses

2008-11-07T09:12:00.001-08:00

THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY

Insanity is Jennifer Granholm, the Rod Marinelli of the nation's governors, being sent to Chicago to advise President-Elect Obama on economic matters.

A Loss

2008-11-07T09:11:00.001-08:00

It's sad to see Beans and Bytes on Woodward Avenue go under. It was the only internet cafe in the city.

Defense or Offense?

2008-11-07T09:09:00.001-08:00

Silicon Valley is now in the race to build the first economically viable electric car, moving hard into Detroit territory. Detroit needs to realize it's competing against other city-states and begin moving hard into their territory.

Dream Cruise

2008-08-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

"I JUST WANT TO CELEBRATE"

Things are heating up downtown Detroit with the coming Jazzfest. Before any comment about that, first a belated story about the recent Woodward Dream Cruise.

I was working on the fourth floor of a downtown building one Thursday afternoon as pre-Dream Cruise activities began on the street below my window. Classic cars were on display, along with some live classic-looking "models" from the Motor City casino. I and a co-worker-- Mr. Jones-- took a fast break to check out the models of both varieties.

The event was being staged by the casino, owned by the all-powerful Ilitch family which also owns the Red Wings and Tigers sports teams as well as the Little Caesar's pizza empire. A stage was set up at which various musical acts-- some from the casino-- began to play.

Back upstairs in the office, I listened to the changing music. At one point the music became louder. A rock band of some kind, playing to about a dozen people. (The organizers of the event must've counted on an audience from the nearby Tigers game at Comerica Park-- but no one of the forty thousand suburban visitors stopped by after-- all presumably anxious to flee Detroit.)

The rock band was pretty good. After a time I realized they were great. They were playing magnificently, with tremendous energy.

The songs sounded familiar to me. Could it be-- ? Naw! No way would they be here at this tacky event playing for a handful of people. But their signature song began-- an awesome extended live version of "Get Ready."

The band was Rare Earth, who'd been known for their live sets as far back as the 1960's. They were legendary as the first and best white act signed by the Motown label. They lived up to their reputation.

When I left for the evening I joined the tiny crowd in front of the stage, as the band kicked into their finale, "I Just Want to Celebrate." Then they were finished and left the stage, as if they'd played to a stadium of people, like dinosaurs come back in a time machine. Timeless sounds and energy. Amazing.

Staggering Ignorance

2008-07-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

THERE ARE many other topics which I should be addressing here, but I have to comment about this week's column in Metro Times by Jack Lessenberry, which shows staggering ignorance about how commodity futures markets operate. (The problem with too many liberals like himself is that they spout off about subjects with which they have no knowledge whatsoever.)

The speculators he knocks, yes, are a way for producers to lessen risk, and therefore make necessary investment to increase supply of a good.

Farmers, for instance, are more likely to expand the amount of acreage devoted to growing corn, if they can sell that future crop far in advance, to ensure proper return; and guard against drought, storms, disease, and so on.

Speculators betting on the future price of corn allow the farmers to do this.

Futures prices move based on the underlying supply-demand fundamentals. Speculators can't go against the real situation without facing ruin.

If anything, their actions usually reflect the actual situation-- how the fundamentals play out. Speculators are individual investors who most often bet AGAINST the producers; against the oil companies, if you will, and are guarantors against price-fixing.

The idea that the "real" price of oil is $65 a barrel, as Lessenberry affirms, is nonsense. No, the real price is the market price-- the spot price; what is actually paid to the suppliers. All speculators have to eventually get in line with the real price, as futures contracts near expiration. They can't fight reality. All they are doing is expressing the actual reality. And so, if four months ago they were betting that $140 barrel oil reflected the actual supply-demand situation, they were absolutely correct. If the price should be $65, the futures price, if anywhere, would show this. Speculators would be pushing the price down.

If speculators are wrong, all the producers need to do is call their bluff-- by selling their oil. As I'm sure they're doing to every extent possible.

What the futures price also allows producers to do is to drill in areas previously unprofitable-- and thereby bring more supply to the table, which is the way (along with decreased demand) to bring down the price of oil.

This is basic stuff.

Yes, the price of oil has exploded far greater than wages, inflation, et.al. The reason for this is the REAL story which Lessenberry misses.

What happened in the interim?

Only a costly war that needs to be paid for. Financing the war has caused the value of the U.S. dollar to plummet. Since foreign oil producers receive payment in U.S. dollars, this means the cost per barrel, for U.S, buyers, has to increase to a corresponding amount. If the dollar drops by half, the price of oil for us doubles. Duh!

This happened once before-- in the 70's when the dollar was greatly devalued by Nixon to pay for the Vietnam War. History has repeated itself, that's all-- with the added factor of increased subsidized demand by countries like China. So the price went up. Markets are self-correcting. As people drive more fuel-efficient cars, and more oil supply is brought on-line, the price will go down. This is certain. Markets are living organisms which have to be allowed to move, to breathe, to fluctuate. Speculators, greasing the machine, allow this. The other option, to allow government or big business to determine the price, free of the markets, will lead only to economic disaster.

This is a very brief explanation of a complex situation. Unfortunately, economics is a complex subject-- and shouldn't be approached from a total lack of knowledge, as in this case.

Many of my ideas could be considered to come "from the Left," but at the same time I loathe most liberals because of their dishonesty and inconsistency. Lessenberry is a good example, and lately he's been blundering to an abnormally high extent-- as in another column where he claimed to be a defender of civil liberties while arguing for the banning of cigarettes and firearms. Uh, liberty is liberty. Either we have Big Brother regulating us or we don't.

(As for the oil companies, what we should be arguing against is the government subsidies they receive, over and above wind, solar, et.al. We should argue AGAINST government intrusion into the marketplace which allows the dominance of big oil, which in fact has an incestuous relationship with government which has nothing whatsoever to do with speculators. We should also be arguing against currency manipulation, the lack of a stable currency-- the ability of the Fed to print money at will, which enables the fighting of foreign wars; is the only way to enable such wars.)

The Missing Ingredient

2008-06-23T07:26:00.000-07:00

I listened to an interesting discussion on a Detroit public affairs radio show this weekend which featured Rick Rogers of the College of Creative Studies. Mr. Rogers made some good points, promoting the idea of a creative corridor in Detroit's old Cass Corridor. Through million-dollar panel studies, Rogers has come to many of the same conclusions I've reached simply by being a bohemian: the need for density of artists in a metro area; artists serving as a magnet for population and investment; and so on.

Missing from his talk was one key ingredient: low rents! Too much low-rent housing stock may have already been allowed to burn down in the Corridor the last twenty years, accidentally or intentionally, for Roger's vision to happen.

History shows that the creation of a bohemia has been the necessary spark for a city; from the Lost Generation in Paris of the 1920's; the Beats in San Francisco in the 50's, and the rock music hippies in the same city in the 60's; and punks in East Village New York in the 80's. In some respects, Fishtown in Philadelphia now. The artists and writers involved in every instance have been of the low-rent underground variety, living the kind of lives which become the basis of legend, of romantic p.r. for a city.

(Recommended about 1920's Paris: the book Geniuses Together by Humphrey Carpenter; the Keith Carradine movie "The Moderns.")

Detroit's Corridor was closer to the ideal fifteen years ago, when it had more population along with the whore houses and dive bars which give a bohemia its artistic character.

Cutting-edge writers, artists, and musicians have always been found living ON the edge.

If anything, Rogers seems opposed to bohemia. In his talk he disdained the idea of "starving artists living in garrets." Yet I'd wager that's how many of Detroit's artists live now, from Maurice Greenia to Yul Tolbert.

Rick Rogers has a tops-down, bureaucratic approach which is badly flawed. He wants his artists to be yuppies living in sterile, newly-built condos while working draining 9-to-5 jobs for the auto companies. To realize this, the Detroit boozhie class has bulldozed, in the form of old apartment buildings and houses, the very history and character that would make the Cass Corridor a magnet and inspiration for artists-- and has simultaneously driven out the lower class population whose stories and lives necessarily broaden the outlook, and deepen the sympathy, of the artistic temperament. It's madness!

Great art doesn't come from robots. It's spawned by merging oneself with the opposite of an antiseptic environment. This is what Detroit truly offers! The artist needs around him the ferment of life; life in all its variety; a city presenting the full scope of humanity. It won't happen by transplanting suburbia into the inner city.

You want art, Mr. Rogers? Then leave your high-status position. Become a Sherwood Anderson or a Paul Cezanne. Move into a Corridor garrett and bring your friends. Make the creation of art your full-time obsession. BE a model for those you want to follow you.

(And get that book and that movie!)

Hockeytown

2008-06-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

Exciting happenings in Detroit last week. A week ago Monday I was at Hockeytown itself late after work with a co-worker watching the game. That night downtown was full of expectation that wasn't realized until Wednesday. Friday I saw the parade, among hundreds of thousands of people, white trash mostly, with a smattering of blacks and boozhies. On the edges of the crowd, vendors and scam artists proliferated. I thought of the crowd, "These are the people we have to get reading somehow, some way." Maybe with hockey zeens! The zeen scene has made inroads into the mass public in tiny ways, but needs more ideas.

These are the people who've never been into a Barnes and Noble in their life. Find a way to connect with them and the growth curve would be as explosive as dynamite.

Saving Detroit II

2008-05-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

DETROIT AREA leaders seem frozen in the face of impending disaster, unwilling to take bold measures, relying on the same old tried-and-failed incremental steps to rescue them. They count on the survival of the auto companies, or on continued sports team success, or window dressing like the Jazz Festival and Hoedown to see them through. Newsflash: The Hoedown will not save Detroit! All economic and psychological arrows remain pointing down.

What's required is a bold move that will put the area on the offensive; new projects that will of themselves signal and enable a sea change in p.r. climate. Projects, moreover, that will be ridiculously affordable and easy to set up. They will work by utilizing leverage this area has RIGHT NOW which it isn't properly using.
***************************************************************
WHY LISTEN TO ME?
Glance at my Wikipedia entry (see link on this page) and you'll see a portion of the noise I made on the east coast, including entries in "Page Six," America's number one gossip column, which many of Manhattan's highest-paid publicists can't get their clients in. I obtained press with a handful of rag-tag writers and a nonexistent budget-- through publicity skill alone.

Publicity: Detroit needs exciting writers and most of all it needs exciting publicity; a new face and new ways to market itself to the world.

Are you paying attention yet?

No? Have you given up? Don't believe I can back up my talk?

Stay tuned.

Saving Detroit

2008-05-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

STAGE ONE

(The Goal: People moving into Detroit from other cities, drawn by the magic of the Detroit name.)

Until the beginning of this year I was Publicity Director for the Underground Literary Alliance, the #1 underground writers group in America. Last year, England's The Guardian, in an overview of literature, "Surfing the New Literary Wave," by Sam Jordison, named the upstart ULA as one of three major literary movements on this side of the Atlantic. Though centered in Philadelphia, the ULA was founded by expat Detroiters.

I returned to Detroit late last year to visit family and take care of personal business. I decided to stick around. My first week back I stayed at the Leland Hotel. The Leland is a metaphor for Detroit: a great seedy beautiful magnificent empty place waiting to be filled.

Compare Detroit's downtown to Philly's. Detroit has the infrastructure to be as vibrant as Philadelphia: the street layout; the buildings (like the Leland); the condos, bars, and restaurants. What it needs is people!

How to accomplish that?

The tops-down approach of stadiums, People Mover, and other big-money projects is fine, but can do only so much. This should be supplemented with activity from the ground-up, which would be quicker and cheaper. The process of gentrification taking place now on a large scale in New York City and Philadelphia begins with writers and artists. (See Williamsburg in Brooklyn; Fishtown in Philly.) If Detroit became NATIONALLY known as the home of a kick-ass underground arts movement, attention and people would follow.

New York City-- including traditional writers havens like the East Village-- has become too expensive for bohemians. Through its success, New York is destroying its roots.

Where are writers and artists going? Where will they go?

Many are moving to Philadelphia. The ULA has a foundation in its hippest neighborhood. Last year I was a guest on the city's #1 public radio show. BUT, the problem with the east coast is competing with extremely well-funded New Yorkers. There are more possibilities here.

(Next-- STAGE TWO: The Boldest Move.)

The Key Quote

2008-05-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

"I lived downtown, in the East Village. . . . It was very funky. New York was going through a recession. It had a bankruptcy crisis that was bad for the city but great for the arts scene. Everything was cheap, and there were a lot of abandoned buildings. The punk independent film scene arose out of that. It was very atmospheric."
-Quote from director Susan Seidelman in the book Madonna by Lucy O'Brien.
**************************************************
This quote is a big part of the reason why I've remained in Detroit upon my visit back. No city so perfectly fits this quote NOW.

Unless we get into a more severe recession, money and artists will continue flowing into Philadelphia and that town will become a mirror image of New York. Rents have been climbing. The New York Times recently did a big profile on hip working class Philly neighborhood Fishtown, where the Underground Literary Alliance has a base of sorts centered around cool bookstore Germ Books. Action is happening-- people, money, and business following.

An even better candidate, however, is Detroit. No American city can match Detroit's atmosphere, its tough rep and street cred-- most crucial of all, its cheap rents.

The trick is not just to spotlight, nationally, this town's artists and writers, but to get the nation's best to move here. Particularly writers.

Why writers? Because, unlike (with exceptions) rock musicians, painters, and actors, WRITERS WRITE about what they're doing. They're walking publicity machines. They bring more artistic p.r. value, which Detroit needs. And, they write not only about themselves, but about other kinds of artists. (See the Lost Generation of Paris in the 1920's.)

Gentrification is sparked by artists-- it's the easiest way to make an area "cool" and get people moving full-time into the city-- making Detroit the coolest place to live., which I assume is a goal.

The objective of course would be not just to get writers here from overpriced Philly and New York, but to convert other artists across the board into writers, as we were doing in Philadelphia-- and thereby spark a full-scale internationally known literary movement.

Does Detroit want this? Let me know.

Why Detroit. . .

2008-05-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

. . . NEEDS ITS OWN PUBLISHING INDUSTRY.

In downtown Detroit, a working class city with a collapsed educational system, at Borders bookstore in the Compuware building has stood for a week near the entrance a large display called "The Clique," for stacks of New York-produced books which celebrate not the values of Detroit, but of caste-based Manhattan, a city of extreme wealth, snobbery, and unprecedented inequality.

The Scapegoat Mayor

2008-04-28T07:55:00.000-07:00

There's a relief and an eagerness about the Kwame Kilpatrick scandals. Things haven't been going well in this city-- for forty years. Suddenly the reason is found. There he is! Fingers pointing; the populace up in arms with pitchforks and torches like in a Frankenstein movie. After him! A culprit has been discovered who can now be blamed for Detroit's many problems. It's all Kwame's fault!

People seem to think we need, and can have, a Mr. Clean mayor on the order of Philadelphia's Michael Nutter, when Detroit's problems are way beyond that. With the city facing even the disintegration of infrastructure, from schools to firehouses, the only requirement now is a person of talent willing and able to turn the city's financial situation around. That's it. Personal corruptions in a crisis situation are irrelevant. The area do-gooders look to the mediocrities of City Council for a replacement, which is no solution at all.
********************************************************
Throughout the discussion about the mayor, the suburban/city, white-black divide in this area remains as subtext. How could it not?

The liberal media feeds into the Subtext with their headlines without context-- with illustrations of the city's failure which fail to mention real causes. The stories sustain the Subtext, this area's gigantic Godzilla monster which overshadows all. On a scale of 1 to 10 of metro area problems, mayoral corruption is a 3, auto company stagnation is a 20, and the racial divide is 100.

An irony is that the conservative business community better understands the importance of the core city. They know you cannot have a hole of devastation existing at the center of your metro area-- a vacuum into which all else will collapse. Or if you do have such a vacuum, and we do, you'd better find a way to "spin" it, to turn devastation-- grittiness; authenticity-- into a strength.

Which is where I come in.

East Coast Follies

2008-04-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

THOSE who look in on my other blogs know I've been busy exposing the aristocratic focus of those who run U.S. print media from their Manhattan island. Entities like the Conde-Nast empire, which cranks out many millions of New Yorker Vogue GQ Vanity Fair et.al. magazines, are dominated by upper class Brits and wealthy east coast Ivy Leaguers. They know NOTHING about the rest of this country-- and don't want to know.

It's incumbent upon leaders in heartland cities like Detroit to redo their strategic thinking. To realize that the nation-- at least its D.C. and NYC power centers-- right now doesn't understand them, or care about them (largely disdains them) and will not grant them anything. In the new reality of the global economy, the thinking has to be in competing city vs. city-- until original American ideals are restored in this country. As long as Detroit is unable to create its own national media image, it's doomed to failure.

New Hot Dog Vendor

2008-04-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

SIGNS OF LIFE IN DOWNTOWN DETROIT

A hot dog stand has appeared downtown at Cass and Michigan, across Cass from the Federal Building. It's an open stand with an umbrella; is run by a black woman. Please frequent so we don't lose this hot dog stand!

Bizarro

2008-04-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

WHEN ONE returns to Detroit after ten years living elsewhere, it's like entering a bizarro universe.

Case in point is the article in yesterday's Detroit Free Press by Dawson Bell, detailing how an already-broke Michigan state government will be paying out-of-state filmmakers huge sums of money to make movies here. On a $100 million flick, the state will pick up $40 million of the cost.

This would make sense only if the filmmakers were building infrastructure here-- such as soundstages-- and relocating lock, stock, and barrel, including offices, including headquarters. No mention of this in the article. Without this, as soon as the massive payoff ceases, the individual movies complete, the moviemakers are gone.

This project will be paid for by a state treasury which right now contains only dustballs.

(See www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080331/NEWS06/803310344&imw=Y)

Opening Day

2008-03-31T07:09:00.000-07:00

IS ANYONE AT WORK?

I've never seen so many people downtown Detroit since I came back as right now. Several bars are already full. It's obvious that the city is being sustained by bad rock bands and by sports.

Mayors Aren't Important

2008-03-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

At least, not all-important.

Who remembers the mayor of Paris during the Lost Generation of the 1920's, at which in that town congregated a host of great writers like Pound, Stein, Joyce, Hemingway?

Who remembers the mayor of San Francisco during the Beat movement there in the late 1950's? The city, if anything, was hostile to writers like Rexroth and Bob Kaufman. But what do we remember now from that place and time?

Writers and artists make a city-- not mayors.

Infrastructure

2008-03-24T07:54:00.000-07:00

Detroit has the infrastructure for a downtown comeback, which is vital for the area as a whole to come back. It hasn't solved the problem of how to get enough people to occupy all those condos, lofts, and office buildings.

Who Wants Change?

2008-03-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

To change, to be at the forefront of change-- the new in business or art-- a city has to want to accept the risks which come with change. It has to want to be the best. It needs a nothing-to-lose attitude.

What I see from the media in Detroit is not the desire to change, but its opposite.

For instance: an article in the Detroit News, February 29. Front page. Headline: "GM, Ford reliability improves."

Look closer and you see that the two companies are still behind foreign automakers in quality and reliability, according to Consumer Reports. The News said, "--Asian automakers continued to dominate the magazine's best-in-class and overall rankings."

In fact, only 64% of Ford vehicles were recommended, as opposed to Honda's 100%. GM was at 30%. GM and Ford ranked ahead of only one foreign automaker, Suzuki. Chrysler, meanwhile, was dead last, tied with Suzuki at 14%.

Improvement, according to some, no matter how incremental, is improvement. The U.S. automakers are closing the quality gap, and have been closing it for thirty years. They're like the greyhounds chasing rabbits at the dog track who never catch up.

Incremental change is no change at all. Yet the Detroit area continues to think in terms of increments, when an entirely different mindset is called for.

The question remains: Who wants change?

The Solution

2008-03-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

WITHIN DAYS of returning to Detroit last fall I saw its solution, while walking downtown. It's why I've stayed around, when my original intent was a visit of a month or two. I'll be explaining the solution, first laying the groundwork for the explanation. The plan is completely do-able. I'm one of the few individuals who can carry it out.

Spring?

2008-03-15T07:10:00.000-07:00

There's something uniquely pleasant about the first hints of spring when one has survived-- been beaten-up but survived-- a real winter, as in Detroit.

Madonna and Detroit

2008-03-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

IT WAS INAPT for Detroit to embrace Madonna so much as one its own. She left Rochester right after high school and never looked behind her. Madonna, in fact, was the quintessential New York artist. She like so many went there to live in poverty, then "made it"-- that early Madonna best captured in the "Desperately Seeking Susan" movie. Of course, that was a different New York City from today's.

It IS apt though that Madonna has been inducted into a white-elephant museum. As an industry and a growth art, pop/rock music peaked at about the time she came on the scene. The market since has been saturated. The move is over.

The overwhelmingly majority of Detroit's artistic energy now-- 95%-- is going into music, a non-growth field. In that sense, another auto industry. Once again this area is behind the times.

Hanging On

2008-03-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

One gets a sense that this city, this area, has the mentality of "just hanging on"-- hoping for a miracle rescue to drop from the sky; in the meantime putting hope in incremental measures such as an uptick in the Big Three. There's no sense of crisis, though the area IS in crisis. Everyone is walking lethargically through their paces or waiting around.

Empty shops in the city and burbs; proprietors behind the counters waiting, waiting. . . .

The shame of it all is that Detroit has potential-- TREMENDOUS potential. To realize it the area will need a total shift in mental outlook. For starters, it needs radical new strategies for marketing itself.

Who here has the imagination to grasp this? Anyone?

Hemingway's Michigan

2008-03-06T12:14:00.000-08:00

The Michigan Humanities Council is sponsoring "The Great Michigan Read 2008," their choice of book being The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest hemingway. (See www.greatmichiganread.org) Many of the stories are set in Michigan.

To celebrate this event, the Detroit Free Press included in one of their issues a supplement with photos of Ernest hemingway, as well as one of the Nick Adams stories, "Big Two-Hearted River."

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT THE STORY
A narrative of a young man on a camping trip, it's not so much a story as a word-painting. Through patient accummulation of impressions and details, hemingway creates a three-dimensional world around the reader. the reader finds himself surrounded by the tent, pine chips, grasshoppers, axe, backpack. In that corner: the boiling pot of coffee. There: the canvas bucket of water hanging on a nail. Nearby: the ice-cold river. The reader experiences what the character experiences. There's pleasure in simplicity.

WHAT'S BAD ABOUT THE STORY
Too many literary writers without Ernest Hemingway's talent and intelligence, and without his commitment to authenticity, have clogged their narratives since with unselective details about everything-- a pathological mass of furniture and furnishings: trivial garbage. There's an inability to get to the point, and the reader snoozes off or tosses the magazine aside in disgust long before he's finished the story of artistic lethargy and dust. The New Yorker in particular with its audience of exclusivity has a fondness for such "fictions." Embracing the inaccessible is an important part of snob appeal.

Today's worst practitioners of literary Detail Disease include lauded names like Alice Munro, Jonathan Lethem, and Jonathan Franzen.

To Writers

2008-03-04T07:35:00.000-08:00

I'll be refocusing on this blog upcoming-- have been busy writing a series on the publishing industry at
www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com
which you may wish to read.

Literature in America today is in the throes of stagnation, not unlike the stagnation of the U.S. auto industry. Its cause is the same: the built-in inertia of the bureaucratic mentality.

Artist

2008-03-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

The Main Detroit library on Woodward Avenue, across from the DIA, has a great exhibit of the paintings of Nigerian artist Timothy Orikri. Fabulous work-- wonderfully colorful. I felt I could lose myself in the paintings when viewing them. His work will be on display there (on one of the upper floors) through March 29. Recommended.

Blizzard!

2008-02-26T07:59:00.001-08:00

Ya gotta love it.

RIP Doug Fraser

2008-02-26T07:54:00.000-08:00

The last of the labor union giants; longtime sidekick to the great Walter Reuther.

Ultimately, for all the successes, the battles, the sweat and blood invested-- which I heard about at the feet of my auto worker father (went into the plants myself for awhile)-- the labor movement of the last century has to be judged an overall failure, in that the condition of working men, women, and children (see illegal sweatshops) in this country has returned to that of 100 years ago. Monopolies, now global, are more powerful than ever.

The big mistake: assuming a static universe.

Masking

2008-02-19T07:52:00.000-08:00

Adage: "The first step toward solving a problem is admitting you have one."

THE WINTER BLAST and similar affairs are fun and bring needed money into downtown, but in the long run they're detrimental because by masking the problem they allow an unreal complacency-- the bizarre forced happy face mentality that is the trademark of this town. You know what I mean-- or should.

The most obvious manifestation is the way the media treats the auto industry. Reading the daily articles one would believe the Big Three are on the rebound, doing things right!; making steady progress and exciting the public. They're the same kind of articles which have been written in this city for the last thirty years. (Who knows-- maybe the exact same ones, recycled from the back room with a few name substitutions.) Meanwhile, the Big Three have consistently-- consistently-- lost market share and no one calls them on it. (Well, occasionally one guy at the News.)

The same thing applies to downtown. I've recently returned from nearly ten years on the east coast and I'm not easily conned about what a healthy downtown looks like. Yes, Detroit has a beautiful downtown, at its core. Along the river, better than Philly. But it's kind of a neutron bomb downtown in that one thing missing is people!

I'd wager there are less people, less cars, less businesses downtown compared to ten, or certainly fifteen, years ago. I don't remember such empty streets, or so many vacant office buildings, which are everyplace. The Free Press is still optimistic, it's good to see, but their building is shuttered! They had a nice little diner on the ground floor. I'd stop there on my way to a job near the riverfront west of downtown.

The media is schizophrenic; on one hand announcing that "the whole world is watching" Detroit because of the auto show. (Uh, not.) On the other they engage in the standard neo-liberal do-gooder cannibalism with blazing headlines day after day after day flagellating the mayor because he had an affair and fired someone. Headlines to delight suburbanites who don't realize that by destroying the mayor they're destroying themselves.

In Philly, ALL the politicians are corrupt. It's how they do business. It's a shame; it shouldn't happen; it's covered daily and politicians are occasionally forced out of office-- like the councilman who threatened to jump from the William Penn statue atop City Hall-- but it's so rampant and known that no one gets hysterical about it and the city continues on. People live and shop downtown.

Where was the Christmas shopping rush downtown Detroit this year? I looked for it and couldn't find it. No mobs to push aside, unless you count pigeons.

The point of this rant: Detroit COULD be as vibrant as Philadelphia. It should be as vibrant. It could be better. I look at them as sister cities-- have since I was a kid and we'd visit family in Philly-- because they're roughly the same size with similar rivers and similar problems.

Detroit now is a happy face mask covering a pessimistic frown. What the city needs is a more realistic attitude; a realistic optimism, and it needs a new strategy. I can provide the second part, and will, on this blog.

Disagree with what I say? Let me know.

Why

2008-02-19T07:51:00.001-08:00

I've figured out why automakers have been so slow to manufacture environmentally-friendly vehicles. It's impossible to live in Detroit and believe in global warming.

Fantastic Detroit

2008-02-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

HIGH CULTURE AND LOW IN THE CASS CORRIDOR

The story behind the creation of Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" is one of the more amazing in the history of art.

Berlioz, a young composer, in 1827 attended a performance of "Hamlet" given in Paris by a traveling English troupe and fell in love with the cast's Ophelia, Harriet Smithson. Though he'd never met her, he bombarded the young actress with insanely passionate love letters. She thought he was nuts. Berlioz had a dream about her, which he turned into the famous symphony. Smithson then married him. (It didn't last.)

The story Berlioz wrote into the symphony is as insane as his passion. It's about an artist; opens with an opium-induced dream; ends with his eventual beheading on the guillotine(!), and closes with a dance of witches. Obviously an amazing piece. When I learned it was coming to Detroit's Orchestra Hall I obtained a ticket in the balcony-- for January 25th, a Friday.

Beforehand I stopped at the Main Library, up Woodward Avenue from the concert hall, then had time to kill before the concert at eight. With the sun disappearing from a bleak, purple-gray sky, I walked into the Cass Corridor to check out a long-ago hangout of mine, the Bronx Bar on Second. I ordered a Pabst and burger from the bartender, Charlene.

I'd been a regular at the Bronx ten years or more prior. None of the regulars remained. It'd been a seedy place then, Detroit-style real. A guy named Steve would bring in his large dog, which would sit at his feet, barking at strangers. Now the place was inhabited by college people-- a suburban young prof telling a colleague he was selling his house. Yet much of the place's seediness remained. Despite redecoration, atmosphere was embedded in the saloon, in the outside streets and the occasionally arriving street person come inside to sit at a table for a few minutes of warmth; asking customers for change before being shooed off by a glance from Charlene.

A local couple stepped into the bar, recognizable as locals by their tough visages. In their way they were an attractive couple. They could've stepped from Berlioz's 19th-century Paris-- been Berlioz and Smithson themselves. He was tall, with black wavy hair and dark moustaches. The woman, in a tight brown jacket, had glowing amber hair. She was quite pretty, despite the veneer of hardness on her round face-- ruddy in the barroom's yellow light-- until she laughed and I saw as with so many city people, here and in Philly, her missing and disarrayed teeth.

I walked then through the Corridor to the concert hall, receiving into my psyche familiar impressions of the neighborhood.

The sky was vast, dark, and frigid. On one of the coldest nights of the year, orange light from windows of stray brownstone apartment buildings reached out to me; the buildings standing as narrow corridors of refuge'd life within the Corridor. They were the remains, along with a warehouse here; or there, a sooted church; of one of the nation's great neighborhoods. To my mind, a fabled place.

In this empty environment, the towers of downtown far away, I came upon the venue as if it were a concert hall on a prairie. All around it looked abandoned. Wind blew, and ice covered everything.

Which made 98 year-old Orchestra Hall more of a special destination. A uniformed man on the sidewalk, ushers within, welcomed me through the doors, scarcely glancing at my ticket. I strolled about the Max Fisher addition; a lobby with bartenders at round tables serving drinks. Warmth returned to my face. Then I walked up stairs, rose through the many-levelled modern atrium-- artworks on all sides-- found the magical old hall itself, its uppermost reaches, and took my seat. I had a great view of the hall's intricate ceiling. Seats filled around me.

But, the concert. The concert! Increasing drama as the symphony warms up, lights dim, and the conductor stides out, slow-paced, upright, and regal, like a king. All is anticipation.

Highlight of the first half was a Ravel piano concerto by French pianist Jean Phillipe Collard. It was a night for the French. I was reminded this was once a French city. For one evening they recaptured it.

I'd never seen Ravel's "Concerto for the Left Hand" and hadn't realized its difficulty. I was frankly amazed at the precision as white-haired Collard's left hand moved about the keyboard. One hand!-- creating a rush of music as the right hand seemed to watch in futility, wanting to help but not allowed. Tom Brady playing quarterback is a grade-school achievement compared to the concerto's demands of accuracy.

Ravel wrote the concerto for a pianist who lost his right hand in World War I. It's a moody work; a lonely piece fitting the loneliness of Orchestra Hall; the loneliness of Detroit. The pianist Collard was alone with his left hand. During pauses in his play, while the orchestra put forth trumpet-blares of melancholy, his right hand touched the tiring left, as if to rub it, or in sympathy. Then the left went back at it. All focus in the hall was on that hand.

It's a difficult piece-- and Collard nailed it! His performance was painful and triumphant, full of accuracy, stamina, power, and tremendous emotion. The notes were light and then dynamically strong as the orchestra's accompaniment welled and Collard's hand shook-- that left hand pounded the final notes. Echoed feeling: the aftermath of war is imbued in the piece. In 2008, very appropriate.

As the last note drifted away; as Collard's perspiring face turned toward the audience: ovation after ovation.

When Collard stood, the conductor made a point of shaking the man's left hand, then raising it.

During intermission I strolled through the lobby. Murmurs of amazement around me. How could this be topped? Next up: the Fantastic Symphony.

With the piano and pianist gone, we watched the conductor, Charles Dutoit; dark-haired, chin up, chest out. The baton raised. . . .

The symphony began slowly. I noticed the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's two acknowledged stars, Concertmaster and First Violinist Emmanuelle Boisvert, at the front toward the left, and First Cellist Robert DeMaine toward the right. If this were a football team, they would be the team's Pro Bowlers. Blond-haired and beautiful, Boisvert carries herself like a star and plays with more intensity than the other string people, always on the edge of her chair. As high-strung as her violin. DeMaine on the other hand, young and squat, is more relaxed, but plays with no less power. Noticeable beneath his black suitcoat are the arms of a bodybuilder, creating sound that, with Orchestra Hall's fabulous acoustics, reaches out to a listener even at the uppermost spot.

From above I saw how the DSO works as a team; Boisvert with her players on one side; DeMaine with his on the other, like opposing lines. Toward the rear, the assorted winds, oboes and the like; backed by an occasionally used brass section, and behind everyone, the timpani player, standing in back of an array of round drums in his jacket and tie like a waiter parked behind empty tables, waiting patiently and stupidly for-- something. Why is he waiting?

At the center of the activity moved Dutoit, the coach and quarterback, directing without a score, pointing this way and that, creating sounds with his fingertips, gesturing angrily then happily, driving the players on toward greater feats as the sound of the music increased.

The first movements of Symphonie Fantastique lull the listener. It's beautiful music. The audience becomes lost in its beauty, including from magical harps coming to the listener in a line of direct clarity. All has merely set the stage for the dramatic final act. Transcendently dramatic.

Sudden bells ring out; then: sharp drums. The timpani man is playing frantically, not alone but with fellows beside him, creating in the hall an alive, thundering sound. The entire symphony has joined in, surrounding them gloriously. Charles Dutoit meanwhile is like a man insane, jumping about the podium, stance like a fencer, sawing with his baton, prodding the team on, and on, compelling more intensity-- demanding it-- facing first on one side then the other, to DeMaine then Boisvert then back again. What sound! Tremendous sound.

It's wonderful music, bouncing and vibrant, a truly fantastic piece. I wondered why the audience wasn't dancing from their seats. THIS is what I came for, what everyone came for. People smiled. The machine that is the orchestra was itself insane, panoplies of instruments moving at once in a vision of clashing armies. Under the mad conductor's demands, playing at absolute peak.

The conductor's baton hovered over the symphony; sudden echoes; the baton still; silence; the musical experience complete.

"BRAVO!" a big-voiced man in one of the boxes yelled immediately. Everyone stood. Released enthusiasm. Endless ovations. The conductor genius faced the audience and bowed his head ever slightly.

I left the warm glow of Orchestra Hall and was back walking swiftly in the cold through Detroit's dark and moody streets.

Free Sandwiches

2008-01-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

AND A SERMON

AS I was walking to a part-time job Sunday in near-zero(F) temperature, through the Cass Corridor, Salvation Army "Harbor Light" vehicles scouted the area for homeless people. Not finding any on the streets-- or anybody at all, except myself-- a small truck pulled up near me. A window rolled down and a middle-aged white woman handed me two sandwiches wrapped in a sheet of paper. She might've had stacks of them in the back. "God bless you," she said, and drove off.

When I arrived where I was going I ate one of the sandwiches, gave another to a co-worker, and read the letter they'd been wrapped in.

Of course, part of the deal of accepting aid is receiving a sermon. The letter contained a sermon, centered around the fact baseball player Ty Cobb, with the highest lifetime batting average, got a hit one out of every three times at bat. The story encouraged the reader to change his definition of success. "This story touches your heart because you'd like to make good all-the-time too." "--you're not a failure! Don't lose hope in yourself-- call on the Name of Jesus. . . ."

The sermon was centered on the ideas of failure and success, and, concerning Jesus, seemed to be missing the point. An itinerant preacher subsisting largely on handouts; crucified between two criminals, his movement at that moment shattered, Jesus was hardly a worldly success in his own lifetime. He strove not for "success," but for Truth.

I examined the flyer. It wasn't from the Salvation Army after all, but a place called "Ja' Noah House" in Livonia. Maybe they were affiliated. Maybe the woman was a Samaritan free-lancer.

Why did Harbor Light Mission shut down in the Cass Corridor anyway? Complaints from the gentry? Homeless are still in the neighborhood. They didn't go anywhere. Harbor Light is gone, but contrary to what you hear, the boozhies are still not moving into the area in droves. "Name it 'Midtown' and they will come," someone proclaimed. They're not coming.

So ends my own sermon.

The Entreprenurial Spirit

2008-01-23T08:02:00.000-08:00

LATELY, as the temperature dropped, I've seen several crude hand-painted signs strategically placed about the lower Cass Corridor advertising "ROOM AND BOARD," and listing a phone number. On one of the signs, extras were mentioned, including free food. Cheap residence for the area's homeless? The other day i finally spotted the advertisied abode: an abandoned building with plywood panels erected from the inside to fill in the structure's holes from its knocked-out windows. An effort I could appreciate-- someone becoming an entrepreneur with no money and few resources.

Global Warming Prematurely Announced

2008-01-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

No signs of it in Detroit right now.

What Is a Growth Art?

2008-01-17T07:32:00.000-08:00

A growth art is an art or sport which is new or has been stagnant for a long period and is positioned to explosively grow.

Arts can be charted, roughly, as one would a commodity, an industry, or a stock. The cycles tend to be long term, analogous to a commodity like gold.

SPORTS
Sports in America first exploded in the 1920's, because of the appearance of charismatic athletes like Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, but also because the times were ready for them.

As pointed out by Roger Kahn in his 1999 book, A Flame of Pure Fire, boxing led the way, when after the Great War many of the prohibitions on the sport were lifted. The Dempsey-Willard crowd in Toledo, Ohio in 1919 of 20,000 was the largest ever. Within ten years crowds for major fights exceeded 100,000.

Golf's first surge occurred in 1960 with the rise of Arnold Palmer, soon accompanied by golfers Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player as talented as he was. A second bounce came ten years ago with the arrival of Tiger Woods. Because comparable golfers have yet to follow, the sport now, for all its success, looks to be a "sell."

ARTS
Arts behave in the same fashion. Popular music became an unstoppable force with the onset of rock n' roll in 1955. It peaked artistically in the late 1960's; in business terms, and its position in society, somewhat after. The periods of innovation are over. (A sure sign that Rock is Dead is that every music critic alive is stuck in the past.) One sees across the landscape thousands and thousands of bands, singers, acts-- a relentless bombardment of recycled sounds and poses.

The field I've been promoting is the essential art of oral and written language known as literature, whose role in the culture has been declining for eight decades, since the Golden Age-- Hemingway Fitzgerald Sinclair Lewis Dreiser Dos Passos Dorothy Parker et.al.-- of the 1920's. It's due for a rebound. One has started. I've positioned myself to be at the forefront of that move. (No one-- NO ONE-- stages and promotes more exciting literary shows than myself.)

Whereas, because of the era, in the 1960's Jim Morrison was persuaded to change from poet to rock star, I advocate the reverse, recognizing that the talent and charisma which will rescue literature will be found not in sterile college writing programs but among young creators of rock n' roll, whose current art is at a dead end and who need to pick up paper and pen instead. Musicians, put down your guitars!

Exciting days are ahead.

Arts Will Save Detroit

2008-01-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

Detroit's business leaders need to quickly get out of a 20th century mindset and realize this is 2008 and we're IN the future. Sustaining the auto industry is fine, but thinking in terms of old-fashioned physical industry is not how this city will survive. Failure to adapt to new realities is why this area is stagnant.

What Detroit needs to do first is stop playing defense and go heavily on offense-- HEAVILY, directly at other cities' strengths in areas where Detroit can compete and win.

I recently returned to Detroit after living and working the previous years of the decade in Philadelphia and New York. I know what those cities are doing right and I see where they're vulnerable.

Where is their industry? Why are they thriving?

The 21st century will be a battleground not of physical industry but of media and mindset; of culture and the arts. Detroit needs to quickly get up to speed and start competing in these areas, which it's not doing at all. Positioning for the future is happening NOW. Cities need not just physical plants but to plant their names in people's heads, which is done through art, media, and culture.

In these areas New York City appears dominant, but I've walked its streets and felt its vibe, seen its changes, and tell you it's vulnerable. It's already peaked, has nowhere to go but down. It has killed its artistic roots, its pools of new artistic ideas and talent. It's become too expensive to live for all but the rich and so original artists are fleeing New York. Artistic stagnation is everpresent; in New York's air. For the first time in 80 years America's capital city of the arts is vulnerable.

Detroit's strength is in the strength of its name; in the world-renowned street-cred and edginess of the Detroit name; a tremendous resource waiting to be exploited.

The city's ability to realize its potential lies in exploiting the Detroit name, in creating and promoting Detroit art, Detroit culture; BUT-- the push has to be in growth arts, undervalued arts, and the arts pushed have to be transformed and transformative. Or: not the same-old same-old. No genteel comfort zones. The future lies in finding and announcing the new; representing, as a city, NEW art, new literature, new culture.

I'll be more specific about this in future posts.

Observation #3: Michigan vs. Detroit

2008-01-12T07:44:00.001-08:00

As the very competent host of the Beaner's event read an essay about searching throughout the state for the perfect cup of coffee, I saw in stark contrast before me the different images of "Michigan" and "Detroit."

"Michigan" is quaint, homespun, and boozhie; a reservoir of safety-- a mild kind of rurality-- no dark Faulknerian characters or Blackolive outlaws-- more a melding of rural and city; a woodsy suburbia. Which is nice and pleasant and safe but hardly saleable.

What sells in the global marketplace isn't "Michigan," but "Detroit." DETROIT! What the world wants from this area in cultural terms is Detroit: uber-tough factory spawned hard-edged and dangerous authenticity. Detroit's hardship is its selling point.

Which is why all attempts to bring "Michigan" into "Detroit," into the great tragic mythic history of Detroit, to make this colorful spot into Anyplace USA, is to kill your greatest asset. THAT will be real failure.

Unless. . . .

Observation #2: Writing Programs

2007-12-28T10:28:00.000-08:00

The Beaner's event included some fairly good readers, notably featured poets Vievee Francis and Matt Olzmann, as well as a humorous character who read from his www.wanderingwilbo.blogspot.com site, and an attractively quirky blonde woman named Laura. Olzmann in particular had a good voice and strong material.

Yet, this kind of reading is light years behind what we were doing in Philly. (Especially the ULA's two "Underground" shows early in 2007.) At Beaner's I put some dramatics and voice behind two short pieces and unsettled the audience.

Writing programs help poets like Francis and Olzmann gain connections and publication, but they also put their talents into a box, so that everything they write and read is predictable and orderly-- even when it tries not to be. Academy-inspired readings have built-in limitations, lacking creativity and innovation, BECAUSE of the way the poets have been trained. I sit at such readings, even the better ones, and SEE the boundaries around the performers, around the entire presentation. Such boundaries are what the Underground Literary Alliance destroyed.

Art-- real art-- is about shattering limitations. If any city should be belching forth crazed artists and performers crazy with the joyful mania of art it's Detroit.

(Next: Observation #3.)

Poetry Reading

2007-12-21T11:12:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 13, I attended a poetry reading at Beaner's Coffee on Woodward Avenue, just south of 13 Mile Road. Three related observations:

1. SPRAWL.
Sprawl is the death of the Detroit area unless quickly corrected. There isn't the population or money to support such a widespread metro area. (It's generated through reasons of class and race, which means there's not necessarily any logic to it.)

Metro Detroit is a thin veneer of life spread over a vast area. Businesses on corridors like Woodward are barely surviving. I walked from 9 Mile to the coffee shop, and was able to gauge the amount of customers present during what is supposed to be the busiest shopping season. In a deeper economic downturn, all that will remain is scattered clusters-- islands of activity such as downtown shopping districts or malls. The rest will be a sea of darkness.

With gas prices climbing; with the need for energy independence as well as less pollution, why has the definition of Metro Detroit been expanding? Even "alternative" papers now consider Ann Arbor part of Detroit. This is insanity-- economic and environmental insanity. One can see boozhie liberals shooting all across the area to attend this event or that one; while lunching in Royal Oak no doubt complaining about global warming..

And why Royal Oak? How has that morphed into the trendy area? It's too far from downtown for there to be real economic and social synergy between the two locations.

Philadelphia has trendy parts of town like Manyunk which are IN the city; indeed, within sight of the core shopping and cultural district. From Manyunk one can see downtown Philly's looming skyscrapers. There are reasons Philadelphia remains a successful city.

Next: Observation #2: Writing Programs.

The Plight of a Hot Dog Vendor

2007-12-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

THE DAY AFTER Thanksgiving a hot dog stand appeared on the streets of downtown Detroit, the first I'd seen since my return. It was situated on Woodward across from Campus Martius Park at the heart of the city; a perfect location, one would figure. Alone, as if on an island, there it sat; downtown's scantly-occupied towers as backdrop.

It was an enclosed kind of stand; a white box with a trailer hitch on front, and a small window which slid open. In truth I thought it was closed, abandoned from the day before. In the time I hung out in the area no one approached it. The person inside made not one sale. I glanced at the price list. Hot dogs were two dollars, more than I wanted to pay.

I noticed the stand again several days later, in exactly the same spot, as if it'd never left. This time there was a mark of occupancy. A hand lettered sign taped below the window announced, "HOT DOGS ONE DOLLAR." On sale.

I bought a couple. The window slid open, allowing in the cold. A heavily-dressed heavy-set woman who spoke with a Slavic accent worked furiously. A customer! Can't let this one go.

As I waited, a short black woman who'd been walking down the street glanced at me and the stand and decided to buy something also. A line. A rush! Things were looking up.

The next time I passed things were back to normal. No line. No customers at all.

An image flashed in my head of the hot dog vendors in downtown Philadelphia-- where I recently lived-- whose hands were filled with cash and who worked fast to keep up with the never-ceasing flow of business. Hot dogs! Cheesesteaks! Kielbasa! Meatball sandwich! Pretzels! With mustard! Soda!

In Detroit there was one hot dog stand and no one ever went up to it.

The next day, a larger sign; a plea; a cry for help: "OPEN."

Maybe with ice skating now at Campus Martius people will stop to buy hot dogs and keep the city's only outside hot dog stand afloat. One can hope.

PLEASE HELP DETROIT'S HOT DOG VENDOR! Thank you.

Detroit Punk City

2007-11-27T07:10:00.000-08:00

Detroit has an awesome reputation in many musical genres, but the feeling absorbed when walking its streets, especially in the lower part of the Cass Corridor-- especially after a couple beers-- is the raw edge of punk.

Or maybe I felt that way last week because I stopped at an infamous punk bar near downtown called the 2500 Club. Small tough place; punk band in black setting up; tough-looking attractive punk girl behind the bar; tough-looking manager telling her how he'd got the scar on his chin in some rumble or other.

Afterward with steam coming from manhole covers and abandoned buildings looming everywhere-- interspersed with occasional open party store or inhabited dark-brick urban hotel; punk music still echoing through my ears-- I felt, as deep as I ever have, the stark aura of punk, its characteristic edge.

I walked through dropping temperature to Lafayette Coney Island for a couple carryout coney dogs, a brief warm moment of populated life, then back to the surreal blackness of urban nightworld, passing a nightclub which a few weeks prior had police department "crime scene" tape across its doors and two chalk body outlines on the sidewalk in front. Now it was open for business with a phalanx of bouncers standing in front of the doors-- all wearing hats and all of them black except one tough-looking white dude. In Detroit people look tougher than in other cities. Everyone looks tough. Maybe because everyone here IS tough. It's a unique aesthetic; real; fascinating; artistically stimulating: what keeps Detroit from the complacent genteel phoniness of so much of America and what it ultimately has to sell.

Detroit Arts

2007-11-26T07:27:00.000-08:00

I received a flurry of outraged response a couple months ago on another blog when I suggested that New York City was dead as an arts city. The famed New York blog "Gawker" reprinted my words and invited attacks. The response was all outrage and no argument, because what I had said was true. Their literary and arts scene is stagnant. The great city has priced any true bohemia out of existence. They've destroyed their artistic roots. Breeding grounds there for original art are gone.

In August I had walked the New York streets-- which were filled with the usual grim-faced office people-- and for the first time in that metropolis felt no excitement; no vibe. Not until later did I realize the cause: no surprises. There was no longer anything in New York City which surprised me-- only the same recycled postures and regurgitated ideas; simulations of independence sold with conglomerate packaging. No "new." No shocks. No innovation.

Artistic energy now resides in of all places Detroit. Amid the broken-down wasteland grittiness, the sense of shattered-glass dog-eat-dog fight to survive, there's a lurking spirit in the ruined place that for the artist and writer is fascinating and invigorating.

For all the stark tragedy of Detroit's streets, it's a great place to write. Maybe because of the tragedy; the city's everpresent SOUL. One tastes something of what the life of Francois Villon must've been like!

Revamping the ULA

2007-11-19T07:51:00.000-08:00

One reason I'm here, before moving on to other locales, is to help revamp the ULA's look, which needs to be more "Detroit," more dangerous, in step with the rep and reality of the Underground Literary Alliance itself.
www.literaryrevolution.com

Promotional Services Available

2007-11-17T13:03:00.000-08:00

WHILE I'm here I'm hanging out my shingle, for Detroit-area writers who wish to be promoted and are worth promoting. Few are better at making noise and getting attention than myself. Please e-mail me for more information if you're interested. (E-mail on my profile.)

Why Talent Leaves Detroit

2007-11-15T07:46:00.000-08:00

I was reminded of that last night at a reading I attended at a Detroit art gallery. The readers were lukewarm at best, the crowd lethargic while the event was going on, yet after it was over there was a pronounced air of self-congratulation. A complacency unneeded in this city, which across the board is not competing well with other cities.

Present were some of the usual suspects, the creme de la creme of Detroit's lit scene, like George and Chris Tysh. When I was co-editing Pop Literary Gazette in 1998, George Tysh mocked our use of ballyhoo in a review he wrote for the local alternative weekly rag. So I went to the east coast and did 100 times the ballyhoo and shook the established literary world there to its foundations.

The ULA has engaged in ballyhoo, yes-- but we've always backed it up. Our writers, like Wred Fright, James Nowlan, and others ARE very good. We DO put on the most exciting lit shows around, which has been remarked upon time and again. After our CBGB's press conference; after our Medusa show; after our "Howl" reading crash; earlier this year at The Underground in Philadelphia, the remarks are the same: "Wow! That was an exciting event." It's not hype if you can back it up.

What's my course in Detroit now? If I use the King Wenclas persona, my voice and my ballyhoo, done here it would be like dropping a jet among a squadron of biplanes. I'd be sure to piss off the locals, and I've already done enough of that time and again, usually with people of higher standing.

If I had sense I'd take the next bus back to Philly, but I don't have bus fare. . . .

Uptick in a Down Trend

2007-11-13T07:26:00.000-08:00

Great local news about a financial company intending to locate in Detroit. Still, much more needs to be done. It's debatable whether or not the city has hit bottom. When I arrived back here recently I experienced culture shock. There is less business activity, less car and foot traffic, downtown now than there was ten years ago, so one can hardly yet call anything a revival.

Will the new employees become simply more captive hostages-- have that attitude-- as they show for their jobs and park in the attached parking garage then flee as soon as worked has ended? This seems to be the pattern now.

What's needed is to change the perception of the name itself. This can be done best through a cultural revival-- one that gives Detroit cachet beyond the local area.

The city has tremendous problems but great potential also.

Welcome!

2007-11-12T07:56:00.000-08:00

Stay tuned for news, fiction, and poetry about Detroit's literary scene.

As with all my blogs, all my zeens, all my writing, no punches will be pulled.