This is pretty cool. I was tooling around online the other day and stumbled across this old picture of the Detroit waterfront before the RiverWalk was built, back when it was just a string of old parking lots, shipyards and other abandoned properties. That's the picture at the top right. It looks like a lovely place to picnic, doesn't it?
I was pretty sure I had taken a picture from just about the same spot during a recent bike ride, so I checked our vast library of original artwork, and presto! The years that separate these two photos are relatively few, which makes seeing them side by side that much more (as the kids would say) amazing.
If you hadn't already heard, the crews that have been busy ripping down the old Lafayette Building inadvertently knocked into a few things underground that would've been better left alone. Apparently one of those things was a water line, which eventually chewed away at the ground beneath the street and sidewalk, which eventually caused both to cave in the other night.
Gawkers (including one who keeps this silly blog) were plenty the next day, as people jockeyed to get an up-close look at the huge hole in the ground right next to the even huger hole in the ground that was already there. Fortunately my Kage credentials earned me a spot in the front row, where some yuckster (who doesn't keep this silly blog) called out to one of the workers, "Hey, did they find Hoffa?"
It's a pretty incredible sight, and no doubt will add a few weeks (and dollars) to the project of cleaning up the Lafayette Building site. Maybe they should've called MISDIG.
Coming off a two-week stretch that saw way too many bullets fly in Detroit, this is what we needed. A reminder that, at its best, Detroit is tough to beat.
During a sunny lunch hour on the river as kids scurried through The Fountain at GM Plaza, I heard the sweet tunes from this guy. Seated just across the sidewalk from the river, he was playing a bluesy-acoustic version of "Sweet Home, Chicago". He ad-libbed the lyrics and tapped his toe on a tambourine pedal. It wasn't easy to get myself back on the bike and return to work, but it was therapeutic all the same.
One of the most popular features of the Detroit RiverWalk, especially among the wee people, remains The Fountains in the GM Plaza and Promenade. I prefer to call it the Water Maze, but who am I?
Located just outside the RenCen, this garden of water sprouts can be mesmorizing. It's like watching Tetris. And the kids definitely love it. If there are plans for another Bring-Your-Cheeky-Red-Head-To-Work Day this summer, I'm packing her bathing suit.
This is pretty cool. I was tooling around online the other day and stumbled across this old picture of the Detroit waterfront before the RiverWalk was built, back when it was just a string of old parking lots, shipyards and other abandoned properties. That's the picture at the top right. It looks like a lovely place to picnic, doesn't it?
