Bright Lights, Big City (Slight Return)

Largely because of industry and commerce, American cities grew immensely in the 20th century. In 1940, the five biggest cities in the US in terms of population were:

New York City, NY . . . . . . . 7.45 million (24,933 per square mile)
Chicago, IL . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.40 million (16,434 per square mile)
Philadelphia, PA . . . . . . . . 1.93 million (15,183 per square mile)
Detroit, MI . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.62 million (11,773 per square mile)
Los Angeles, CA . . . . . . . . 1.50 million (3,356 per square mile)

By 1950, LA had surpassed Detroit, even though Detroit's population was up to 1.85 million. As of the 1960 census, LA also overtook Philadelphia. Detroit still remained the fifth most populous city in the US (same as in 1950), though the now ongoing fifty-year plus exodus had begun -- it was down almost to 1940 levels, at 1.67 million.

Fast forward to 1990, and Detroit's population had ebbed noticeably: almost down to a million, and down to a sparser 7,411 people per square mile.

I've lived in three of four of the (at least formerly) biggest cities in the nation: all but New York City. By the time I moved to Detroit in the late 90s, the wide open rural spaces within its city limits were all-too-evident. Detroit was clearly a city in decline, and dropping below a million for the first time since 1920. (Overall, Detroit is now about the 11th largest city in the USA, and still falling).

New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia: all three have managed to forge ahead. All three utilize highly articulated mass transit systems. All three have managed to bring in more people over the decades. It's well-past time that Detroit, too, be managed in such a way as to bring people back into the city. After fifty years of free fall, perhaps the Detroit Lions will lead the way by example this year.

Main statistical source: Campbell Gibson, POPULATION OF THE 100 LARGEST CITIES AND OTHER URBAN PLACES IN THE UNITED STATES: 1790 TO 1990 (Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C., June 1998; Population Division Working Paper No. 27).

Today's Rune: Possessions.

The Walking Man's Detroit

Why would a country devote so much time and energy and people power in faraway places like Iraq and Afghanistan when it's left so many of its own great cities to crumble? Why so much effort to "win the hearts and minds" of inhabitants of distant lands, and so little effort to help its own struggling inhabitants?

Those are my framing questions as I take up Mark C. Durfee's Stink: Poetry and Prose of Detroit (2009). Mark writes from the heart of Detroit. He is has seen Detroit and many other American places with his own eyes; aside from military service and four years of wandering, he has chosen to remain in Detroit for much of his life, even though the city is down to some 750,000 people -- from a high of 1.9 million in the 1950s ("CAN IT BE SO?").

The mix of prose and poetry in Stink is very effective. This is not a Chamber of Commerce sponsored book by any means. Mark's work bears witness to Detroit realities: pervasive municipal corruption, neglect, abandonment, implosion. Senseless violence, furtive police responses (at best), prejudice cutting in all directions.

Stink: Poetry and Prose of Detroit is the very model of a jeremiad for Detroit, for urban dwellers, for humanity at large. Yet Mark also holds out hope for people power, for those who can topple the corrupt and usher in better things, a more civil kind of status quo, a real civil society.

Stink is a reminder that we have as a society been drifting off course. Toward Iraq and Afghanistan (and to Vietnam before them, and to the ever-sprawling suburbs), and away from our deepest problems.

For more, see:

http://themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com/2009/08/pimpin-stinkdetroit-style.html

Today's Rune: Defense. On Labor Day (Monday), HBO will air The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, a documentary set in Ohio but obviously pertinent to Detroit and the rest of the USA, too. 9 p.m. Detroit time, 9/7/2009.

Two by Herzog

Two upcoming films by Werner Herzog, who turned sixty-seven today: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? Looks like Herzog -- the coolest German-born director of the past fifty years so far as I know -- is finally breaking into a wider American market.

Herzog's Bad Lieutenant looks to be loosely inspired by Abel Ferrara's creepy Bad Lieutenant (1992), but this one stars Nicolas Cage rather than Harvey Keitel, and is set in New Orleans rather than New York City. From what I've seen, it looks considerably different. Incidentally, during a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Herzog says that Cage gives his best performance to date in it, which is certainly plausible.


My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (produced by David Lynch) looks to be a spooky exploration of an unhinged man who kills his mother with a sword. The main character is played by Michael Shannon, who is superb as a supporting actor in Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) and Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road (2008) and as co-star with Ashley Judd in William Friedkin's movie version of Bug (2006). Shannon is intense and edgy like Willem Dafoe, who also happens to be in My Son, My Son, along with weird and intense Brad Dourif -- who is also in Herzog's Bad Lieutenant. There are HBO connections, too: Dourif plays Doc in Deadwood; and from Big Love, check out the wonderful Grace Zabriskie (Bill's mother) and Chloë Sevigny (Bill's wife). In this one, they play the Shannon character's mother and fiancée, respectively.

Today's Rune: Partnership. Happy Birthday, Herzog. And happy fifty-sixth anniversary to my parents, Don and Barb (Shaffer) France!

Heidi Fleiss in Nevada

I first caught Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal (2008) on HBO last year, and it's been showing again. It's fascinating. Fleiss took the fall for her Hollywood business, and after a stint in prison, has been trying to start a brothel for women in Nevada, where prostitution is legal in some counties. Fleiss is a relentless entrepreneur. In this documentary, she describes how she first came up with a business by managing babysitters when she was a babysitter herself. Becoming a madam later in life didn't seem so different. But in Nevada, she faces local resistance. Besides this conflict, she has trouble with her handyman, and befriends a former madam who is fond of exotic birds. It's all strange and touching and weirdly hopeful.

Jamie-Lynn Sigler played Fleiss (while also starring on HBO as Meadow Soprano) in Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss (2004). Fleiss, ever the wheeler-dealer, had already sold the rights to her story for a tidy sum. But she has also been an addict, and will appear on the next season of Celebrity Rehab. In what seems to be a natural business move, Fleiss is also engaged to Dennis Hof, owner of the Bunny Ranch also of HBO fame. (Hof backed Ron Paul for President in 2008, and came up with interesting ways to raise money for his candidate . . .)

Legalized and taxed prostitution: a good idea or a bad idea? I've posted on this in the past; most seemed to favor regulated and legalized prostitution over the mostly underground and dangerous status quo.

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Ray's Back

I always liked talking with Ray Taylor, Sr. He used to hang out at Knight Light Candle & Imports in Detroit, on Gratiot Avenue above its Mack Avenue crossing. From conversations, found out he'd been in the US Army during the Vietnam-American War, that he'd suffered frostbite during a frigid Detroit winter, that he loved dreaming about North Carolina. Seemed he had close relatives near Garner and Wilson. In fact, I thought he was originally from the Tar Heel State. Always seemed so wistful about it.

It's weird how we only fill in some of the gaps of what we think we know about people after they die. Hadn't known, for instance, that Ray had been married and had kids. Hadn't known that he'd worked for Ford. What I did know was, every time he entered Knight Light when I was there, he'd proclaim, "Ray's back!" And then he'd launch into the topics of the day.


Ray died suddenly at the age of fifty-six in 2003. RIP, Raymond Taylor, Sr., 1/11/1947-9/19/2003. Sad to say that Big John, another Knight Lighter, has died, too, in the past year.

Today's Rune: Possessions.

Roadside America

I remember stopping more than once with my family at Roadside America in Shartlesville, Pennsylvania. The area is tinged with Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish signs, sights, and food; the attraction itself houses a miniature America and was first opened in its present location in 1941; the display has been unchanged since the early 1960s.

When I lived in Philadelphia in the 1990s, stopped by a few times in transit, always adding a meal at Haag's Hotel and Family Restaurant. From their website: "Haag's Hotel and Family Restaurant on old U.S. Route 22 (Hex Highway) just off I-78 in the center of Shartlesville, PA, 45 miles East of Harrisburg, PA, has been serving Pennsylvania Dutch Food for six generations under the ownership of the same family." Essentially German food served up country or farmer style, usually including a wide variety of meats and sides and enough to feed a small army. Let's not forget birch beer and shoe-fly pie!

At some point, a little more on Amish country and on the Roadside America books (though not affiliated with the Pennsylvania original), guides to usually offbeat attractions throughout the USA.

Today's Rune: The Self.

Barbarella Must Go Free!

Even as campy and bizarre, Barbarella (1968) is a horrid science fiction movie, and one would do better finding a clip of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood romping through "Some Velvet Morning" from 1967. But still, the music endures, and so do the visuals of Anita Pallenberg (forget her voice -- it's dubbed over) and Jane Fonda. Pallenberg as the Queen of Sogo, Fonda in the lead role, such as it is, such as they are . . .


Today's motto: Give the people what they want.

Today's Rune: Possessions. Lest we forget, 70 years ago today . . .