This Great Dead Town

(Part 4 of my Detroit/Cleveland adventure) Highland Park itself, if possible, managed to be even more desolate and Detroiter than its Detroit surroundings. After a local financial crisis bankrupted the town in the late 90s, Michigan took it over, and consolidated its government functions, leaving what was probably once a proud municipal square to decay: city hall, courthouse, police and fire stations surrounding a deserted square. OK, you got me this time Guilty as charged! (These cells lock. I don't know what we would have done if someone didn't helpfully leave the keys, and a sign, right outside there!) I…

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Everybody’s Doing The Fish

(Part 3 of my Detroit/Cleveland adventure) Following the suggestion of the hobo in the old hotel, we found our way after a few (well, more than a few) wrong turns to the Fisher Body plant. It's no Packard, but still a good taste of the Motor City's abandoned legacy. Fisher was/is the supplier of steel auto bodies to GM, and to a lesser extent some of the European models, and still has a major facility next to GM in Dearborn, even though this one in Highland Park closed in the late 90s. Architecturally, it is a nearly perfect Detroit boxy…

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And You Shall Say, God Did It

(Part 2 of my Detroit/Cleveland adventure) Our next destination, Detroit urbex tourists as we were, had to be the Packard Plant! There is nothing like it around... over a million square feet of giant, dead factory space with nothing in it but some vagrant homes, a precariously perched RV or two, and the best graffiti in the Midwest. Only one thing could stop us: Optimus Prime! Only one thing did stop us: Optimus Prime, surrounded by a film crew and attendent security. Oh well, looks like we got a sneak peek at Transformers 4... soon to be in theaters for…

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Apocalypse: Here

After 32 hours and 1200 miles of trains (yeah about that... Chicago was nice and all but really? You can fall asleep on a train and wake up 3 states too far?) I finally arrived in Detroit. I'm not sure what I was expecting to see, maybe some third world abandonscape right outside of the train station, but it really seemed like any other American city I'd ever been to. There were cars on the road, people in the streets, a crowd gathering at the station to catch the next train to Lansing, 9am and well into their tailgate already…

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