"Before Twitter. Before Facebook. Before mobile apps, Reddit, Google, Instagram, Deadline Detroit, Curbed Detroit, Eater Detroit, Detour Detroit and Motor City Muckraker … there was DetroitYES! and Lowell Boileau.
"More than two decades ago, Boileau was an accomplished local artist when he embarked on a path that would make him one of Southeast Michigan’s leading web entrepreneurs. Combining art, discussion and Detroit, Boileau helped introduce many metro Detroiters to a big new thing, using a computer to communicate about your community".
Bill McGraw
Detroit Free Press Reporter and Editor for 37 years & Co-founder of Deadline Detroit Deadline Detroit, Feb. 16, 2020
Mission
Detroit. What went wrong? How can we heal it? Where are we going? The DetroitYES! Project takes on these questions by providing a cyberspace setting where an audience of those who care about the Detroit-Windsor international family of communities can meet, discuss, and discover ways to uplift all.
You are invited to join the ongoing discussions of the DetroitYES! forums that began in 1999. Click HERE for free registration for the DetroitYES Forums.
Philosophy
Imagine a massive evolving painting of Detroit that hangs in an
art gallery that can easily be visited by anybody in the world.
Imagine an art exhibition opening that never ends, where
throngs of visitors continually stream through its doors to view
an ever changing painting. Imagine the audience picking up
virtual brushes and adding its vision and expression to the
painting through words and images.
You have entered the
DetroitYES! Project and its effort to use the medium of the
Internet as a new 'paint and canvas' to
create the ultimate collective portrait of that Detroit by those who care about it.
Early History
DetroitYES! began with a 1997 website tour entitled "The
Fabulous Ruins of Detroit" by Detroit fine art painter Lowell
Boileau. It was a cyber-continuation of decades of an urban
landscape paintings. It provided visitors with a 300 page guided tour through
the "fabulous and vanishing ruins of my beloved Detroit."
By the 1990's Detroit had become the poster child of American post-industrial decline. In pieces and parcels up to 40 square miles of the city became abandoned and fell into ruin. Decades of economic decline, social and racial divisions, and
population loss had left tens of thousands of structures in
the once fabulously wealthy city abandoned and in ruin.
From massive skyscrapers, to its historic automotive plants,
elegant schools and churches, richly appointed mansions, even to
its humble working class homes and corner stores, silence and decay had fallen
over wide areas of 1997 Detroit. A poignant and disturbing
vision emerged, a portrait of extreme beauty, bearded by nature
and beaten by the elements and man -- a vision that begged
questions.
Detroit. What went wrong? How can we heal it? Where are we going?
Early Evolution
1997 Sep - "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit" website launched
online.
1998 Mar - "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit" featured in the
New York Times.
1998 Oct - "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit" awarded a Yahoo
Pick of the Week, 150,000 visitors overwhelm the site and
server. Thousands of email responses arrive.
1998 Dec - "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit" is featured in
full page article in WIRED magazine.
1999 Jan - "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit" awarded a 1998
Yahoo Pick of the Year.
1999 Oct - The Discuss Detroit forum allowing only topics about the International Metropolis of Detroit launches.
2001 Dec - DetroitYES Project launches to create positive visions for Detroit. Discuss Detroit forum and web tours united under the
DetroitYES.com domain name.
2001 Feb - "Fabulous Ruins Night" at the Cass Cafe brings
together in real life members of the DetroitYES forums. Over 400 attend.
2002 - Members of the DetroitYES forum spontaneously begin
weekly meetings a various pubs in Detroit. Later they informally
dub themselves as the Forum Social Club, then simply as the FSC.
2002 - DetroitYES named as Best Detroit Website - Detroit
MetroTimes, Best of Michigan - Best Culture Website - Detroit
Free Press.
2002 - Annual visitor session rate tops one million per year.
2003 - DetroitYES named as Best Detroit Website by Hour
Magazine and again Best Detroit Website by Detroit MetroTimes.
2004 - DetroitYES forum members spontaneously organize a
picnic gathering on Belle Island which becomes an annual event.
Onward - DetroitYES continues to grow in content and conversation. It is considered a leading independent media voice of the
Detroitblogosphere. Annual visitorship approaches two million and over one million posts have been written over the life of its forums.
