This morning, I read an article about Detroit Entrepeneurs from the New York Times out loud to my girlfriend and our dog while she and I consumed avocado-thai-coconut smoothies (recommended by my cousin in chef school). I don't know if it was the healing powers of our breakfast or the article, but I felt a huge jolt of adrenaline. Maybe now is the time to think up a crazy business plan and try it while there's still space! I realize that the politics of gentrification are swimming under the surface here, but somehow Detroit feels different from Brooklyn and Echo Park... Isn't something akin to gentrification what Detroit needs right now? Minus the displacement of local populations? Perhaps because locals are starting these businesses it is different. (Any experts who want to explain this for me?)
Anyway, it's hard not to imagine a booming, artful metropolis coming about sooner rather than later. The article focuses on a creperie, a hair salon, a bookstore and an art-house film theater that pretty young folks have started for sums of money that my eyes and brain can actually compute. The movie theater is in an abandoned schoolhouse called Burton. And I wondered... are there any other classrooms available?
One idea I've been thinking of lately is opening up a Detroit based version of the tutoring centers that Dave Eggars started in New York and San Fransisco. Click here to hear Dave Eggars (whether or not you can stand his books) describe his basic blueprint for this process.
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This is great stuff. I'm thinking of coming if the stars align and the bills get taken care of. Detroit, Detroit. What's the deal with the brainstorming ideas? Do you accept brainstorms from a semi-delusional writer seven or eight blocks down the way?
ReplyDeleteYES!
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