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- Sep 27, 2004
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by J. B. Cash
Detroit Hosts the Super Bowl
The 2006 Super Bowl will be held at Ford Field in Detroit. There is probably no city in America that is less suited to holding a sports extravaganza than Detroit. The whole idea of holding this event, in the middle of the winter, in a dying city like Detroit, is a modern example of the failure to acknowledge reality and instead substitute a preferred fantasy that more befits the ideas of multiculturalism and diversity.
The Super Bowl is the holiest of holidays for the national religion that football has become in America. It is hyped beyond any reasonable measure. It is overrated, overblown and overdone. I have no doubt that, within 10 years the Monday after the Super Bowl will be a National holiday and an off day for government workers, unions, and whoever else is left with a job by then.
The basic idea of celebrating football's championship game at a neutral site, replete with a preceding week of parties and hype is understandable. A mid-winter vacation to a warm weather destination at a popular tourist location makes sense in the concept of football as entertainment. Since most of the teams are located in cold weather cities, the opportunity to travel south for a game is an attractive idea. It's the same rationale for college bowl games and has proven very successful.
Why then Detroit? Detroit cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered a tourist destination, unless you are a fan of arson and fires and want to visit on "Devil's Night," the night before Halloween, when Detroiters en masse set fire to a variety of burnable objects in a city full of kindling. Detroit may be one of the least attractive cities in North America, perhaps the world; it's Mogadishu without the nice weather.
In the middle of the summer Detroit is unattractive, in the middle of the winter, when there are sub-zero temperatures, with knife-like winds howling down deserted urban corridors, blowing trash in tsunami-like waves by piles of dirty muddy snow down salt-stained streets, it is one of the ugliest environments inhabited by man. Yet someone decided that it would be a good idea to invite thousands of people eager to have a vacation, and hundreds of reporters looking for a story, to that place.
Detroit is exhibit A in the annals of American dying cities. The loss of manufacturing in this country especially as it relates to the automobile has hit Detroit like a neutron bomb. Detroit once produced more automobiles annually than any other country in the world. It hardly builds any now. And when the manufacturing base left, it just left.
Detroit appears to the outsider like the ancient Mayan ruins must have appeared to the first Westerners that discovered them. It looks as if everyone just picked up and left. It's not just that there is a deserted factory here and there  the deserted factories stretch over dozens of square miles. Remember the Packard automobile? The last one rolled off the assembly line what, 50 years ago? Well the Packard plant is still there. It sits, like it has sat for the last 50 years, deserted, with crumbling walls and broken windows as if the previous inhabitants had fled in haste. It's a lonely relic of a dying civilization, waiting, perhaps like the ancient Mayan temples, for the return of a people that will never come back.
When Packard went out of business, like Hudson and American Motors, and the local Chrysler, Ford, and GM plants, it just didn't close those factories, it closed the thousands of small shops that fed a manufacturing system. The tool and die makers, the electrical suppliers, the plumbing stores, the fabricators, the machine repairers, the specialty designers. And also the places they eat lunch, go for a drink after work, seek entertainment, and do business. And when the base is gone so is the top of the pyramid, the banks, the business complexes, and the manufacturing headquarters.
Not only does Detroit have miles and miles of deserted factories, shops and stores but the "downtown" area is also deserted. There are huge skyscrapers, once proud highrises and formerly busy hotels that sit empty and barren, abandoned relics of a long ago time. A terrorist could crash a plane into one of them and virtually no one would be hurt.
Detroit was once the fifth largest city in America with a metropolitan population of several million. It had about 1.5 million people at its peak. It has about 750,000 now. Nearly half a million people have virtually vanished from the city. When they left they left quickly, like someone leaving a burning house. Huge tracts of the city feature wholly deserted neighborhoods. The apocalypse is not coming to Detroit, it already has.
Yet Detroit somehow attracts big-time sports venues, and as is typical these days, casinos. The two Detroit area 'royal' families, the Ford family and the Illitch family (Illitch is owner of the Little Caesar pizza empire) continue to pour the last of their families' wealth into investing in the city. The Ford family deserted the perfectly usable "Silverdome" in Pontiac, a suburb a few miles north of Detroit, to build Ford Field for the Detroit Lions in the heart of the city. Ford Field is located a long punt away from Comerica Park, the baseball home of the Detroit Tigers, owned by Illitch.
Across the street from the stadiums is a renovated theater also owned by Illitch and a couple of long homeruns away from all that is "Joe Louis Arena," the hockey home of the Detroit Red Wings and several newly built casinos on newly declared "Indian reservations." Detroit's most prominent (still inhabited) skyscraper, the Renaissance Center, was built 30 years ago by investment from the Ford family, and like everything else in the area soon began to die. Now GM uses it to house their armies of unneeded bureaucrats.
The desire for the white elites to try and "save" urban areas from decline is not so much due to a misguided sense of philanthropy but to the realization that their personal fortunes are tied to urban areas as it is well known that the strength of a nation is reflected in the strength of its institutions. Which is bad news for America but if you haven't gotten the memo yet that our country and civilization is doing poorly then here's your wakeup call.
Detroit is known as a "black" city. It has long had a reputation that associates it with black culture. Blacks filled the city to get manufacturing jobs in the early and mid-20th century and now remain there mostly in poverty. Motown Records, Joe Louis and other famous black athletes also put this stamp on Detroit, which in reality has been more myth then fact. Detroit has had a large variety of ethnic racial success stories from the French settlers to Polish immigrants, to a new influx of Arabs (oh boy!).
Probably because of its reputation as a black city, any major investment into the area centers around two things: sports and gambling. Although that type of thinking should be insulting to blacks, the idea that the key to their economic success lies in playing games and throwing away money at the craps table, there is no getting away from it because the leaders in the black community insist on going in that direction. One may assume their own conclusions about a culture whose leaders see their people's future in sports and gambling. Bling bling anybody??
What it has meant to Detroit is as follows. This year was to be a "special" year for the city. The Major League Baseball All-Star game and now the Super Bowl were to redefine the city, according to the local media spin. How a couple of weeks of soon forgotten hype would in any way change a city with deeply rooted and serious problems escaped me but the media likes to buy into these types of stories because: A) it gives them something to write about; and B) they get invited to really great parties that are hosted, frequently at taxpayer expense, so as to get reporters to write nice things about the city in the hopes that somewhere, someone may be foolish enough to invest in such a monetary black hole.
So the city goes through the charade of trying to appear as presentable as possible, which is impossible. I traveled through the city around the time of the All-Star game and frankly it was embarrassing. The city tried to dress itself up and attempt to cover up the incalculable amount of disrepair visible everywhere in the city. The effect was like a diseased old lady trying to hide the ravages of sickness and age with copious amounts of makeup and rouge. Any route through the city is full of formerly classy buildings now falling down, with awnings dropping off, windows broken, graffiti-covered boards and bars on doors and windows. There are old movie marquees advertising burlesque shows circa 1974, which was the last time the elegant deserted movie houses had paying customers.
In a pathetic attempt to cover up the more egregious scars, curtains were placed over some particularly bad eyesores. The city, which cannot pay its employees or deliver basic services, ponied up money so that they could cover up the windows of once expensive hotels. There is barely enough room to house visitors in the city, in fact most of them have to be bussed in and out from surrounding suburbs. There are huge 60-floor hotels that housed kings and presidents in the city, but now they are empty and cold.
And there are burned-out buildings. The buildings were not burned by recent arsonists. Nor did they catch fire due to inattention. They were burned in the 1967 "race riots." Nearly 40 years ago a large percentage of the black population decided that it would be a good idea to burn and loot the stores and shops that had provided them their goods and livelihoods. The shopkeepers got the message and left. And there they still sit, mute testimony to the pathological problems of the black community. There are no whites who want to rebuild them and no blacks that can.
Forty years later, with the scars still visible, the disease still progressing to a long terminal fate, America, actually the whole world, will be invited in to take a look. The impression they get will help fuel the descent of American culture. The guests may speak well, or cover up the truth in their best PC fashion. But reality has a way of forcing out fantasy. Detroit is the future of America. Enjoy the game.
Detroit Hosts the Super Bowl
The 2006 Super Bowl will be held at Ford Field in Detroit. There is probably no city in America that is less suited to holding a sports extravaganza than Detroit. The whole idea of holding this event, in the middle of the winter, in a dying city like Detroit, is a modern example of the failure to acknowledge reality and instead substitute a preferred fantasy that more befits the ideas of multiculturalism and diversity.
The Super Bowl is the holiest of holidays for the national religion that football has become in America. It is hyped beyond any reasonable measure. It is overrated, overblown and overdone. I have no doubt that, within 10 years the Monday after the Super Bowl will be a National holiday and an off day for government workers, unions, and whoever else is left with a job by then.
The basic idea of celebrating football's championship game at a neutral site, replete with a preceding week of parties and hype is understandable. A mid-winter vacation to a warm weather destination at a popular tourist location makes sense in the concept of football as entertainment. Since most of the teams are located in cold weather cities, the opportunity to travel south for a game is an attractive idea. It's the same rationale for college bowl games and has proven very successful.
Why then Detroit? Detroit cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered a tourist destination, unless you are a fan of arson and fires and want to visit on "Devil's Night," the night before Halloween, when Detroiters en masse set fire to a variety of burnable objects in a city full of kindling. Detroit may be one of the least attractive cities in North America, perhaps the world; it's Mogadishu without the nice weather.
In the middle of the summer Detroit is unattractive, in the middle of the winter, when there are sub-zero temperatures, with knife-like winds howling down deserted urban corridors, blowing trash in tsunami-like waves by piles of dirty muddy snow down salt-stained streets, it is one of the ugliest environments inhabited by man. Yet someone decided that it would be a good idea to invite thousands of people eager to have a vacation, and hundreds of reporters looking for a story, to that place.
Detroit is exhibit A in the annals of American dying cities. The loss of manufacturing in this country especially as it relates to the automobile has hit Detroit like a neutron bomb. Detroit once produced more automobiles annually than any other country in the world. It hardly builds any now. And when the manufacturing base left, it just left.
Detroit appears to the outsider like the ancient Mayan ruins must have appeared to the first Westerners that discovered them. It looks as if everyone just picked up and left. It's not just that there is a deserted factory here and there  the deserted factories stretch over dozens of square miles. Remember the Packard automobile? The last one rolled off the assembly line what, 50 years ago? Well the Packard plant is still there. It sits, like it has sat for the last 50 years, deserted, with crumbling walls and broken windows as if the previous inhabitants had fled in haste. It's a lonely relic of a dying civilization, waiting, perhaps like the ancient Mayan temples, for the return of a people that will never come back.
When Packard went out of business, like Hudson and American Motors, and the local Chrysler, Ford, and GM plants, it just didn't close those factories, it closed the thousands of small shops that fed a manufacturing system. The tool and die makers, the electrical suppliers, the plumbing stores, the fabricators, the machine repairers, the specialty designers. And also the places they eat lunch, go for a drink after work, seek entertainment, and do business. And when the base is gone so is the top of the pyramid, the banks, the business complexes, and the manufacturing headquarters.
Not only does Detroit have miles and miles of deserted factories, shops and stores but the "downtown" area is also deserted. There are huge skyscrapers, once proud highrises and formerly busy hotels that sit empty and barren, abandoned relics of a long ago time. A terrorist could crash a plane into one of them and virtually no one would be hurt.
Detroit was once the fifth largest city in America with a metropolitan population of several million. It had about 1.5 million people at its peak. It has about 750,000 now. Nearly half a million people have virtually vanished from the city. When they left they left quickly, like someone leaving a burning house. Huge tracts of the city feature wholly deserted neighborhoods. The apocalypse is not coming to Detroit, it already has.
Yet Detroit somehow attracts big-time sports venues, and as is typical these days, casinos. The two Detroit area 'royal' families, the Ford family and the Illitch family (Illitch is owner of the Little Caesar pizza empire) continue to pour the last of their families' wealth into investing in the city. The Ford family deserted the perfectly usable "Silverdome" in Pontiac, a suburb a few miles north of Detroit, to build Ford Field for the Detroit Lions in the heart of the city. Ford Field is located a long punt away from Comerica Park, the baseball home of the Detroit Tigers, owned by Illitch.
Across the street from the stadiums is a renovated theater also owned by Illitch and a couple of long homeruns away from all that is "Joe Louis Arena," the hockey home of the Detroit Red Wings and several newly built casinos on newly declared "Indian reservations." Detroit's most prominent (still inhabited) skyscraper, the Renaissance Center, was built 30 years ago by investment from the Ford family, and like everything else in the area soon began to die. Now GM uses it to house their armies of unneeded bureaucrats.
The desire for the white elites to try and "save" urban areas from decline is not so much due to a misguided sense of philanthropy but to the realization that their personal fortunes are tied to urban areas as it is well known that the strength of a nation is reflected in the strength of its institutions. Which is bad news for America but if you haven't gotten the memo yet that our country and civilization is doing poorly then here's your wakeup call.
Detroit is known as a "black" city. It has long had a reputation that associates it with black culture. Blacks filled the city to get manufacturing jobs in the early and mid-20th century and now remain there mostly in poverty. Motown Records, Joe Louis and other famous black athletes also put this stamp on Detroit, which in reality has been more myth then fact. Detroit has had a large variety of ethnic racial success stories from the French settlers to Polish immigrants, to a new influx of Arabs (oh boy!).
Probably because of its reputation as a black city, any major investment into the area centers around two things: sports and gambling. Although that type of thinking should be insulting to blacks, the idea that the key to their economic success lies in playing games and throwing away money at the craps table, there is no getting away from it because the leaders in the black community insist on going in that direction. One may assume their own conclusions about a culture whose leaders see their people's future in sports and gambling. Bling bling anybody??
What it has meant to Detroit is as follows. This year was to be a "special" year for the city. The Major League Baseball All-Star game and now the Super Bowl were to redefine the city, according to the local media spin. How a couple of weeks of soon forgotten hype would in any way change a city with deeply rooted and serious problems escaped me but the media likes to buy into these types of stories because: A) it gives them something to write about; and B) they get invited to really great parties that are hosted, frequently at taxpayer expense, so as to get reporters to write nice things about the city in the hopes that somewhere, someone may be foolish enough to invest in such a monetary black hole.
So the city goes through the charade of trying to appear as presentable as possible, which is impossible. I traveled through the city around the time of the All-Star game and frankly it was embarrassing. The city tried to dress itself up and attempt to cover up the incalculable amount of disrepair visible everywhere in the city. The effect was like a diseased old lady trying to hide the ravages of sickness and age with copious amounts of makeup and rouge. Any route through the city is full of formerly classy buildings now falling down, with awnings dropping off, windows broken, graffiti-covered boards and bars on doors and windows. There are old movie marquees advertising burlesque shows circa 1974, which was the last time the elegant deserted movie houses had paying customers.
In a pathetic attempt to cover up the more egregious scars, curtains were placed over some particularly bad eyesores. The city, which cannot pay its employees or deliver basic services, ponied up money so that they could cover up the windows of once expensive hotels. There is barely enough room to house visitors in the city, in fact most of them have to be bussed in and out from surrounding suburbs. There are huge 60-floor hotels that housed kings and presidents in the city, but now they are empty and cold.
And there are burned-out buildings. The buildings were not burned by recent arsonists. Nor did they catch fire due to inattention. They were burned in the 1967 "race riots." Nearly 40 years ago a large percentage of the black population decided that it would be a good idea to burn and loot the stores and shops that had provided them their goods and livelihoods. The shopkeepers got the message and left. And there they still sit, mute testimony to the pathological problems of the black community. There are no whites who want to rebuild them and no blacks that can.
Forty years later, with the scars still visible, the disease still progressing to a long terminal fate, America, actually the whole world, will be invited in to take a look. The impression they get will help fuel the descent of American culture. The guests may speak well, or cover up the truth in their best PC fashion. But reality has a way of forcing out fantasy. Detroit is the future of America. Enjoy the game.
