A Trip to the Motor City: Intro

As most of you know, I'm from the Detroit area, and I travel back there 2-3 times a year.  <Insert obligatory Detroit joke here>.  It seems like I spend most of my time defending Detroit and explaining to people that the Detroit area is not (totally) like the image they have of it. 

So, one of my friends said, "you do a blog about every place you go, why don't you do one about your trips to Detroit?"  So, here it is--most of the pictures are from my most recent trip to the Detroit area, in October of 2013.  I have supplemented it with pictures from previous trips, as well as a few pictures I stole off the web.

Unlike my previous blog posts, this is not going to be a day-by-day summary of where I went.  Instead, I am going to have 4 postings that cover:

• Downtown Detroit
• The Midtown area, surrounding downtown
• The rest of the city of Detroit, mostly residential
• The rest of metropolitan Detroit, outside the city limits

But, first an overview of America's Favorite City.....

A Geographical Introduction to Detroit

Detroit is in the Southeastern part of Michigan, at about the lower joint of the Michigan "thumb".  (You did know that Michigan looks like a mitten, didn't you?)  The city of Detroit is within the red outline on the map.  Here are a few facts that will help you follow the rest of the blog entries:

• Detroit is part of Wayne County.  The rest of the county consists of the Grosse Pointes, east of Detroit, and a bunch of suburbs (Dearborn, Westland, Redford, and others) to the west. 
• On the northwest border of Wayne County is Oakland County (Farmington Hills, Southfield, Royal Oak, etc.), which is one of the wealthiest counties in the country. 
• Northeast of Wayne County is Macomb County (Warren, Eastpointe, St. Clair Shores, etc.), which is mostly middle-class.
• Detroit is separated from Windsor, Ontario, by the Detroit River, and you actually travel south to get from Detroit to Canada.  If you win any bar bets with this information, please send 15% of the proceeds to me. 
• Woodward Avenue, (state highway 1), is the "main drag", bisects the city into the east side and the west side, and extends northwest through the suburbs. You are either an East Sider or a West Sider--you can't be both.  I am a West Sider. 
• The northern border of the city is the (in)famous 8 Mile Road, which shows up as state highway 102 on the map above.   According to the Web, In Detroit, “8 Mile is more than just a street name. It separates Wayne County from its more affluent counties to the north and is the understood divide between the City of Detroit and its white suburbs."
• On the eastern border of Detroit are Grosse Pointe, Grosse Pointe Shores, Grosse Pointe Park, etc.  This is where the old money is.
• North of the top of the map are Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, in Oakland County.  This is where the new money is.
• There are actually a couple of towns within the boundaries of the city of Detroit.  They are Highland Park (purple rectangle) and Hamtramck (orange rectangle). 
• Here are a few other famous locations:

1. Metropolitan Airport--if you have to change planes in Detroit, don't freak out--it's a really nice airport.
    
2. Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield village, IMHO the best museum in the United States outside of the Smithsonian.
3. The house  (in Detroit) I lived in until I was 8 years old.
4. American Jewelry and Pawn (from the show "Hardcore Pawn").
5. The house (in the suburb of Southfield) I lived in from when I was 8 years old until I was 21 years old.
6. Comerica Park and Ford Field (for you sports fans)

OK, here we go......

Next: Downtown