Where is everybody? (Wait 'til night.)

Looking south toward Hart Plaza, the River, and Canada, none of which you can really see in the picture.

The flag of the state of Michigan on a building in downtown Detroit

John King Books is my favorite bookstore in the whole world, or at least the little bits of the world I've been to.

It's four floors and very deep, crammed full of mostly used, cheap books warehouse-style. You actually have to pull strings to turn on fluorescent light fixtures as you go deeper into its stacks.

There are a few smaller, satellite locations, too - one in Detroit near Wayne State University, and one in Ferndale (suburb just north of Detroit). At least they were there last I was aware of.

It's in a strange spot downtown, hemmed in by freeways and ramps to freeways. Near the wonderful Fort Street Post Office, the city's main branch that is open 24 hours and offers amazingly fast and friendly service all hours of the night and day. I miss that too!

Detroit is full of billboards advertising liquor. Sometimes, abandoned buildings remain apparently for the sole purpose of propping these billboards up. I find it insulting, but couldn't stop laughing at this particular campaign that was EVERYWHERE during my visit home in the summer of 2009. This particular instance is in New Center, home to the Fisher (off-broadway) theatre, state government offices, and the Motown Museum (where Motown Records and the Motown sound were born).

I actually don't know what this building is. It's one of those anonymous buildings where they apparently used to make something. Now it's possibly lofts or about to be converted to lofts. It's not far from Wayne State University, which places it in the Cultural Center, also home to several museums, including the world-class, newly-expanded Detroit Institute of Arts.

One of my "drive-by Detroit" shots, taken while driving (or riding as a passenger). In this case, it was the first time I drove in 4 years! Not that I'm recommending taking photos while driving... in my defense, it was a digital point & shoot camera! :)

The Ambassador Bridge is one of two ways to cross between the US and Canada at Detroit & Windsor. There's also a tunnel. The bridge gets most of the industrial/commercial traffic, while most ordinary folks use the tunnel, although it also depends on what part of Detroit or Windsor you need to land in. The bridge and tunnel cross the Detroit River, which isn't really a river - it's a strait (which is what the French word détroit means) running in the Great Lakes system, between Lake Erie (which is a Great Lake) and Lake St. Clair (which is not, but it is big).

Detroit-Windsor is, last I heard, the busiest crossing between the US and Canada, and also, I believe, the only one where the US is north of Canada. Lots of commercial traffic - big trucks - but also lots of daily commuters going both ways. I've even heard first-hand accounts of people skiing over the bridge during blizzards to get to their vital job (e.g., hospital workers) on the other side!

And, by the way, the guy who owns this bridge (yes, a guy owns it - rather, his company does) is the same guy who owns Detroit's most famous ruin, the Michigan Central Train Station (MCS), an 18-story Beaux-Arts building that's been vacant since 1988 but still stands. You know the one. It's been in national and international media quite a bit in the past couple of years.

Before I turned around, I took a picture. This is in Detroit, not far from Motown and New Center.

One of many urban community gardens springing up all over Detroit.

These are fairly typical houses in a fairly typical neighborhood in Detroit. These are 2-family dwellings: one family in the downstairs flat, one upstairs. Most likely they're rentals. Real working-class housing, built for auto workers' families once upon a time, when having a factory job could actually make you upwardly-mobile. It was a step up from what we normally think of as urban housing (townhouses or "row homes," and apartment buildings or high-rises). And it was the prototype for suburbs.

In the back, you can see the Fisher Building (New Center) rising above the rooftops in the foreground.

Detroit has lots of churches like this. I like the hand-painted sign. This sort of thing can be easily dismissed, but it does reveal a certain kind of beauty: the beauty of the sincerity and commitment of the people who love this church, for example. It represents a certain community, perhaps more tangibly than a sign they could have commissioned had they had more money to buy things.

This was near the general vicinity of the Heidelberg Project, which you should definitely google if you're not familiar with it and you like found art and general creativity.

(In case you don't know, C.O.G.I.C., pronounced "KOW-jik," stands for Church of God in Christ. It's a traditionally Black denomination, pretty well-known and well-established. Many COGIC churches are affluent. This one apparently is not.)

This is right alongside the Ecumenical Theological Seminary (in the old First Presby Church building) in Detroit.

As I explained in a comment on my portrait, I'm interested in the aesthetics of decay.

One explanation why church doors are often red is that it indicates sanctuary (in the sense of a place you can go when in trouble).

Another related explanation is that no one should ever have trouble figuring out how to get into a church.

This used to be a church - First Presbyterian, Detroit - but is now home to a seminary, the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, Detroit. It's a fledgling seminary, and the building is being fixed up little by little, but meanwhile inside, dedicated students and teachers are examining how to minister to people in a place like Detroit, where you can earn an advanced degree inside a building that looks like this. ETS is a great school - I audited several classes there - and specializes in evening classes for people who are answering the call to ministry at a later age, as a second or third or more career.

It's also a cool looking door, I think.

This fountain was originally downtown many, many years ago, but was relocated to Palmer Park, a neighborhood I used to live in (just north of 6 Mile across from enclave city Highland Park). Now it looks like this.

Palmer Park has lots of cool apartment buildings in it, but sadly many of them are becoming derelict. A few have burned "down" but are still standing, 6 or 7 years later. However, when I was there visiting in 2009, I ran into a contractor who was surveying one of the buildings because some federal bailout money was going into its rehabilitation. Yay!!!

Me, I moved away from Palmer Park (to another part of Detroit) the second time someone pulled a gun on me outside my building. First time, well, that can happen anywhere. Twice seemed to be a pattern, particularly since Highland Park, across the street, was bankrupt at the time and had been forced to disband their police force. And fire department. And public libraries. Almost had to close the public schools. They're doing better now; the police and fire departments are back, and people are moving there. Movies and TV shows have been shooting there, which is much better than guns, right?

There are much better pictures of this station on the web.

When I was inside in 1998, I didn't have a camera with me. My 3 companions did, since they were all photographers. I'm a poet. I had a pad and pen. Maybe some time I'll feel comfortable posting my resulting poem here. One of my friends did photograph me inside, twice. The one you couldn't tell was me became my second book cover.

We climbed all the way to the roof, which was very cool. They've tightened security since then. At this particular visit, I think in 2006, we didn't feel like even trying to go in, since we'd done that before. I had my point & shoot digital camera, and this is one of the few pics I took.

Later, I found out my great-grandfather was one of the carpenters who built this Beaux-Arts building in 1918. So there's my Detroit pedigree. ;)

BTW, it was never finished - the top floor or two are unfinished inside, because they never ended up being used. This station was built, intentionally, outside the downtown area, with the intention of being a magnet for businesses and other stuff. It's not far from where the old Tiger Stadium used to stand, on "the corner of Michigan and Trumbell." Because the Depression hit, not much ended up following the train station out there, and then in the 50s, when the city sold off its street cars to Mexico, public transit to the train station was nearly non-existent. Interesting places in the general vicinity: the Gaelic League, for all things Irish (you can take Irish language & step classes there, buy imported goods, see concerts like Black 47 and local Celtic bands, and drink lots and lots of alcohol), and the Zeitgeist theatre, which is actually a small, avant-garde theatre, a small, avant-garde art gallery, and small bar combined (in 3 separate spaces of the building). And, of course, the station itself. It's also midway between downtown and Mexicantown, and essentially in Corktown. Not far away, you can hop on the bridge to Canada.

There's an artist named Shane Gorski, I don't know him or her (Shane could be a girl's name, right?), who has some absolutely fantastic photos of this building, inside and out, on the web. Google it. You won't regret it.

This most famous ruin of Detroit is owned by the guy who owns the international Ambassador Bridge. Yep. I'll refrain from giving his name, or my impressions of him from the one time we briefly met.

This is a really good example how the only thing I can do decently photographically is compose. A real photographer would have done much better with the lighting, color, and focus. But they weren't there, I was, and you're stuck with this. ;)

I took this photo from Trumbell north of Michigan (i.e., just north of where Tiger Stadium still was at the time), but zoomed in.

It fascinates me that you can see right through the windows to the sky on the other side.

This is the Michigan Central Station. In some ways, it's an icon of the preservation and restoration efforts in Detroit.

Michigan Central Station, hiding behind a tree. It's not the only Detroit icon that likes to hide - you can see the Ambassador Bridge ducking behind the depot's shoulder!

This used to be the GM headquarters before they moved to the river front, in the Renaissance Center ("Ren Cen") a few years ago - the image you're probably familiar with since the bailouts and all. This building now houses offices of the State of Michigan. This is New Center. If we were to keep going down W. Grand Blvd ("The Boulevard") about a block, Motown would be on the left (same side of the street).

This building and the Fisher Building were both designed by Detroit architect Albert Kahn, who brought the then-new, German development of poured-concrete structures to the US. San Francisco is full of such structures (e.g., the two major cathedrals), because of their seismic stability. But this building in this photo is not poured concrete. In Detroit, we reserve that for factories and parking garages.

On Trumbell, Detroit. Not the Hoffa you're thinking of; this is for his son.

Pilgrim Church, Detroit

This is either in Detroit or Highland Park, I don't remember. It was a drive-by photo.

I always liked the image of Jesus brooding over a gas station. Now, of course, the fact that it's BP is even better. I was a passenger, but this was taken out of the window of a car driving by.

The church is the Shrine of the Little Flower, Royal Oak (Detroit suburb), Michigan. It's a Roman Catholic church, dedicated to Ste. Thérèse de Liseaux, a.k.a. the "Little Flower." They have a relic of her there, which is what makes it a shrine, I think.

And you're not the first person to think it's phallic.

This is a little church called Grace to Grace Church, located next to the Michigan Central Station, Detroit.

We're looking at it from behind. The rounded portion is known as an "apse".

This is not to mock my beloved Detroit.

However, this photo was taken 6 months after the Super Bowl that was in Detroit a few years back.

I guess I think of it more as an illustration of how clever slogans don't get anything done.

[The billboard reads: "Detroit - Keep the Super Spirit Alive." The image on the billboard is a portion of the "Spirit of Detroit," an iconic sculpture that's in front of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building (city hall).]

Just a couple of houses in Highland Park, Michigan, an enclave town in Detroit.

Detroit Institute of Arts. This is the main entry, the oldest part of the building. The whole thing takes up a city block, and you could spend days in there. If you're a fan of Diego Rivera, you absolutely must go and see his "Detroit Industry" murals - he called them his most important and successful work. And they were full of controversial material, paid for with Ford money. Thanks, Edsel!

Several of the apartment buildings in this historic Detroit neighborhood (6 & Woodward, just north of Highland Park) burned down years ago but (last I was there) still stand.

Art Center Music School, Detroit.

Art Center Music School, Detroit.

The three flags that have flown over Detroit: (pre-revolutionary) French, British, and US.
At the Detroit Historical Museum.

An old mansion in Detroit that is now a law firm's office. On Woodward Avenue just north of Wayne State. Old photos show it used to have quite a large yard, but Woodward's been widened a lot over the years, and a gas station has gone in next to it. Makes you wonder what whoever had it built would think.

I thought it has such a nice castle-like appearance, maybe someone will use it (by removing everything else in the photo, perhaps). Or the idea of building re-use might spark an idea. You never know here! :)

This window is in the Detroit Historical Museum. The stained-glass inset is an early seal of the city (no longer in use). Outside are the three flags which have flown over Detroit: French (pre-Revolution), British, and US.

This is a (digital) photo of a (print) photo, since my scanner no longer works. It was taken from the window of my then apartment, with a slight zoom. It's the place where the event described in 'My "aha" moment' occurred. I'm uploading this to be an icon for that RECord, but if you want to use it for something else (I can't imagine what!), feel free.

The title lies, though - "the spot" is marked by a small boulder on the side of the road, probably meant to mark someone's driveway there, but it also is where my "aha moment" happened.

I posted a door and a window from this building already. It's an old mansion on the campus of Wayne State University, Detroit, but it never seemed to be in use for anything during the 7 years I worked there.

This is one of several statues alongside what seems to have been some kind of reflecting pool or fountain, between the McGregor Memorial Conference Center and Alumni House on the campus of Wayne State University, Detroit.

She looks like a diver to me, but I can't figure out what the hand gesture is all about. Any ideas?

Sorry, I don't know the sculptor's name.

More of the statues by McGregor Memorial Conference Center and Alumni House at Wayne State University, Detroit.

Sorry, I don't know the sculptor's name.

(You can see the School of Education building in the background.)

In this photo, you can see Alumni House in the background.