I have an article I found, maybe you've read it before, maybe not. What's in it is stuff we've all read in newspapers, books, on this forum and anywhere else information exists. It is important to me because it is a perspective of the time that I live in Detroit, from my birth to the late 80s.
I think the opinions of the downtown area are most intriguing, I try to tell people who aren't from here how much better it is now than when I was growing up. I remember downtown in the late 70s on, so I missed all the good years when its shopping and entertainment was at its peak. I missed all the trips, all the commerce, all the good times. The downtown area as I remember it was a concrete and mostly abandoned place.
Anyway, all the stuff in the article just makes me remember all the stuff my parents, grandparents, family friends and neighbors were talking about at the time. How the city had fallen so steeply, so quickly, and how it once was. Just think, this was 24 years ago...and how much further the city has fallen since [[sans downtown).
For me I just know that I went to a tough school and that the High School I was going to attend [[but never did) down the road at Cody, had a reputation as one of the city's toughest. I had friends, hi-jinks, good times and got into a lot of fights. Our neighborhood didn't have the murders and aggravated assaults, that was east across the Southfield Freeway. All we had was larceny and some businesses got the wrong end of a robbery now and again.
Now in my old neighborhood all those businesses are gone, a dairy now a liquor store, a meat market now a nail saloon, a local diner now just blight. But for me I still remember 1985 and for me 1985 was a good year, even though it was certainly not a good year for the city. I was around the talk, I remember what was said, but as a kid I just went about my business of being a kid. This is why I love the city even to this day, because you can't take away what Detroit was to me.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/29/ma...m&pagewanted=1
