"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.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Staggering Ignorance
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 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.)
Monday, June 23, 2008
The Missing Ingredient
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!)
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!)
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Hockeytown
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Saving Detroit II
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Saving Detroit
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 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.)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The Key Quote
"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.
-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.
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