RIP Madison-Lenox Hotel, 1900-2005

Read the link if you want to know why you should care. Sometimes it just feels like debacle after debacle after debacle.....

I'm half-full on Detroit. I adopted it 6 years ago, a week after college. I worked for the General Motors Tax Staff in the old GM Building on Grand Boulevard and Woodward, on the 14th floor, in the old executive offices. My view was of Popeye's on Woodward, but I smelled the history and loved the building, with its 70s decor, beautiful relief sculpture on the facade and amazing lobby ceiling. I worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers on the 31st floor of the Renaissance Center, Tower 300. I navigated the skywalk there on crutches after a Detroit city bus wrecked my Honda Civic and broke my knee. I saw shows at the Gold Dollar for 2 bucks. I went to the Majestic after work. I went to Eugene V. Debs Memorial Kazoo Night at Tiger Stadium - and I still have the free kazoo! I saved my cans in bags in my trunk for a couple of down-on-their luck guys I knew downtown. Now our new company, foneGEAR, is in Troy and growing, and I hope it will show people that new kinds of businesses can flourish in the Midwest.

Lauren and I live here. Noah will grow up here. So will lots of other little kids. Our house is in the burbs, but don't try to tell me that the future of the region doesn't hinge on pulling the city back together. When Noah grows up, I do not want him to be pissed off at me that he wasn't born in San Francisco. I want him to be proud to be from Detroit, the way that I will always be Strong for Toledo (go Hens!). I want there to be an interesting skyline left for him to look at if he ever works in the RenCen. I want it to be safer for him to go out after work than it was for me. I have plenty of friends who have had 'incidents' in Detroit - a couple of car break-ins, vandalism - and one friend whose parents were robbed at gunpoint. On their own block. I think I might have been naive about the risk when I was 22, but I was excited by the feeling of being out alone in a city, even a sprawling, faded palace like Detroit. I was excited to drive around and explore. I was excited to go places. I had (and still have) great friends.

Now it's different. We have a baby and a lawn to take care of, and my evenings are not free for sitting around the bar at the Majestic. And I don't want them to be - it is infinitely more fun to hang out with Noah. I am taking tremendous joy in my tomatoes (5 types last year!). But I'm looking forward to taking Noah to the Art Museum, and the Motown Museum, and the places I've worked, and to Tigers games so that we can look at the skyline over the outfield fence, and think about what a great place we live in. That's my dream. I hope we'll get to see it happen before they knock down whatever's left.