Already There

This one's going to go off the rails, I can feel it. A rant is coming. Just a warning. Best to just let it happen....

I love Urban.

Not Keith Urban. I love urban decay. Perhaps love is the wrong word. Yes, I'm sure it is. Urban decay touches me. It does something to me. It is so utterly sad, such a huge reminder that this is a very hard and unforgiving world. But there is nonetheless a strange beauty in it. Like looking at a broken and dead butterfly. You can't really make yourself look away.


I happen to live in an area that has urban decay to spare. My once-great city has been hit by decades of white-flight, neglect, corruption, depression, abuse, scandal, and the most abject poverty imaginable.

But the heart of old Detroit survives, if only in little pieces and remote places. The rotting remains of a once-glorious mansion. Overgrown train tracks that lead nowhere.


And the small section of Hastings Street that remains today, a deserted swath of concrete only a few hundred feet long, a mere shadow of its old glory as the heart of Black Bottom, a living, breathing part of Detroit's great history.


"When I first came to town people,
I was walkin' down Hastings Street.
Everybody was talkin' about the Henry's Swing Club.
I decided I drop in there that night.
When I got there, I say, "Yes, people"
They was really havin' a ball!
Yes, I know...Boogie Chillin!"

- John Lee Hooker, Boogie Chillin, 1948


The Black Bottom neighborhood was demolished to make way for I-75 and redevelopment, and Detroit died another little death. All those markets and clubs, drug stores and people. All gone now. Duke Ellington played there. Count Basie. Ella. This place was world famous. You can't buy that kind of history for any price. And it's all gone. If you listen hard and use your imagination, you can almost hear the echoes of the final few bars of jazz careening off the dead walls in that last small stretch of Hastings Street.


Then the auto industry pulled out and left behind dozens of hulking fortresses, empty and languishing. Acre upon acre of broken windows and crumbling walls. Today they are hollow mansions for the homeless and expansive mines for the copper harvesters.


I have had life-changing experiences in the urban ruins of Detroit and I am just scratching the surface. I am addicted to this strange beauty. I want to go inside the biggest factories and marvel at the old machines and brick floors. I want to go find that legendary boneyard of old rusting Packard's I have heard about, somewhere near the ruins of Fischer Body. And I want to document in pictures the insides of those old closed down schools and abandoned hospitals because everyone should see this up close.



There are empty homes by the hundreds, if not thousands, left to rot, some burned, some crumbling, some overgrown by the shrubs that once decorated them. Left in haste as their owners fled to the northern suburbs in droves. They are a symbol of giving up, of failure. Yet there is no denying that they are beautiful in their decay.

And many have taken on new residents.



The one thing that strikes me every time I wander the lonely streets of old Detroit is the sheer number of homeless people, decrepit and weak, walking slowly down the streets carrying bags or pushing carts. We laughingly call them "Zombies" because they lumber along like the creatures in "Resident Evil", half blind and slow as molasses. But these aren't zombies, these are people. Lost people. They have no families. They don't show up on any census or welfare roll. They don't have credit cards or driver's licences or medical histories. They are "off the grid". Forgotten. They no longer exist. They are the ghosts of people living inside the ghosts of houses that are also forgotten. They are not dangerous, or evil. They just want to live. They are the survivors of the ugly urban war that they didn't want or see coming, that swept their city out from under them and they have nothing to show for it. And there are thousands of them. A whole city within a city of living ghosts.

They spend their days scavenging rotten food from dumpsters so foul that you would vomit if you came within ten feet of them. And their nights are passed huddled in some old house or building, fighting off the cold and despair. The despair. That alone would steal my sanity. It's no wonder these people are often babbling incoherent sentences to themselves as they walk. I often wonder how any society that calls itself civilized could allow this to happen to "The least of its brothers". But I guess that's easy to do when you don't pay attention. In fact, I wonder if anyone besides us ever goes into these neighborhoods to notice.

I'm not what you would call a very religious person, but it seems to me that these "Zombies" are the exact people Jesus would be spending his days helping, if he was anything at all like they say he was. It's a sad tragedy that this helping of the poor, arguably his most important lesson, has never really caught on with his peeps. I suppose we'd have a whole lot less suffering in the world if it had. Oh, there are a few heroes here and there, but for the most part, we're utterly indifferent. Similar lessons have gone unheeded in all the major religions of course, its not just a local issue. It's one of those things that sounds great, helping the poor, until you realize that its not easy. Hands will get dirty. Its a noble act, but its not pretty. There is death and there is disease. Much easier to throw money at it, or better yet, just not see it at all.

If I had to describe in one word the pervasive feeling I get when walking in these areas, it would be "empty". There is just simply nothing there that matters to anyone. Complete silence in every way. You can hear your heart beat. The whole rotten thing could disappear tomorrow and nobody would care or even notice.

Don't ask me how to fix it. I'm as guilty as anyone I guess. Still, I consider it a fairly big personal achievement to have noticed it. But then, as they say, "That and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee."


You see pictures here of the physical neglect, the buildings and houses left to wither. But I don't have any desire to photograph the people. I think it just cheapens them even more, if that's possible. I would feel like I was making a spectacle out of their poverty, at their expense. I did it once in Key West and I still cringe when I look at that picture. I know many photographers who photograph homeless people and pay them to do it. That way, at least they get something out of it, right? But really, what good is money to these people? They wouldn't be allowed in a store, if they could even find one. They've gone past money.

Perhaps if I could use the pictures to raise awareness that might be a good enough reason to justify it, but I'm not sure I've got the skills to do that just yet. It's a delicate job with a fine line between awareness and exploitation. I just don't know. It's a different place there, with different rules.



It never ceases to stun me when I let myself think about it. There is another world out there, just a few hundred yards from us and the Bluetooth headsets in our ears and the steaming café lattes in our cup holders, as we speed past on I-75 work-bound and oblivious.

All we would have to do is open our eyes. We're already there.