Rocko's do-gooding in Detroit

I had the opportunity to come back to Metro Detroit from Connecticut for a week last week to attend a friend's wedding and give a presentation at a meeting in Lansing. In between, I spent a few days at my old job in the city....and as a consequence if any of you ride the Diamond Jack tourboat out of Wyandotte this year you'll notice she has a completely new coat of paint! Anyhow, since I was working and playing near Detroit for several days I decided I could set a goal of not only supporting the city and its businesses in some way every day, but also trying to do a "good turn" to help the city that I love in some very small ways. Here's what I came up with:

Friday, May 6- A bunch of construction barrels for the Michigan Ave. repave project closing down lanes on Cass next to the AT&T building were either knocked over by the wind or by somebody who was not in the mood to merge left. I rescued several of them [[including a couple blowing around in the street) and put them back in the nice diagonal to push traffic over to one lane.

Monday, May 10- On my way to the Inside Detroit Welcome Center I cleaned up some trash in one of the planters along Woodward. Yes, I know the downtown Clean Detroit crews do a stellar job, but this stuff was here, and it was windy. I also happened to pick up a #53 Woodward Ave. DDOT route schedule just to have one, then ran into some guy who wanted to know what bus would go up to Midtown. Perfect. I didn't really need one more thing to bring back anyhow.

Tuesday, 11- As I was driving back from downtown I noticed that the plug ends were hanging off a Detroit Standard fire hydrant on W. Lafayette on the south side of Corktown. I pulled over and screwed them back on. Why/how/who does this? I've seen the plugs hanging off the hydrants in other places around the city before, too.

Thursday, May 13- Today was the biggest of my little projects, a friend and I decided to tackle a traffic control relay box on a busy street corner in SW Detroit. It was covered by graffiti and had a lot of stuff stuck on it [[ironically....some with painters tape). We cleaned it up and then gave it a fresh coat of gray all over. We also patronized a local corner blue USPS mailbox by mailing a few things. Then we took a couple spins around downtown on the People Mover, just checking out the city in the early evening light. And I called DDOT to inform them of a bus stop sign on Fort that had been felled.

Each of these days I was in the city, I also bought a copy of the Detroit News from a different paperbox in the downtown area, among them the box in front of Subway on W. Adams across from GCP, the box in front of the old Trolley Square apartments on Washington Blvd., the box on the Lafayette side of the Detroit News building, and the box on Randolph Street just south of Harmonie Park. Trying to support our local print media!

I also grabbed lunch and/or dinner at a couple local Detroit dining establishments, among them Gonella's down on Oakwood and Mudgie's Corktown location.

I write all this not to show off "look at me, I came home and look what I did to help out," but to show that everyone, even if you're just in the city for a short period of time, can do something small to make a difference in and support businesses in the city we love. Next time I'm back in the area I hope to be able to do something similar. Hopefully some of you will consider doing some of the same types of things to make the city a better place. Sometimes, its all about the details! :)

I think you are on to a good idea for a detroit grass roots website, I would love to read others' do goodies, plus do good myself.

Exactly! Just celebrate the kinds of things we do every day to make the world better . It highlights what kinds of things actually do make things better. What if nobody went to Gonella's any more and they closed? What if all the graffiti'd boxes were spiffed up at no cost to the city? What if each and every person, merchant, plant manager, took responsibility for cleaning up the yard, sidewalk and other areas around their property? It makes a difference to have a trash free neighborhood.

This time of year, especially, people are throwing things out their open car windows [[well, not today, for sure, but the past week), and if we just let the junk lay in the street in front of our house, the whole neighborhood looks junky. If we can't get the fools to quit chucking junk out windows, we can at least clean up our yard to keep it nice for us. I was picking up my yard the other day, and the neighbor was out mowing. He just walked around the trash. I had a little chat with him, and next thing I knew, the kids were out picking up the junk. Good call!

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I think you are on to a good idea for a detroit grass roots website

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you're right, that IS a really good idea for a blog or something. It would be an interesting forum where people could post about recent work they've done around the city, and set up events to get public interest and participation in larger clean-up efforts such as the recent work along 8 Mile or the annual clean-ups they have on Belle Isle. I'm sure people do small things every day to make Detroit a better place. And yes, getting people to quite throwing trash out their windows would be a fair place to start in ridding our city of so much trash.

U go rocko... too bad you are no longer a permanent fixture in the city...and kudos to others who do the same.....

i do little things like this around town, not sure how much it helps, but it makes me feel better. one of the things i do is whenever i'm at a cemetery and i see an overrun grave marker for someone that was in the service - i make it a point to clean that grave/marker so people can see the person's name, service/war details... these men/women gave up a part of their lives and in some cases their lives while defending our country and it's the least i can do is make sure their names still shine on!!!

Thank you Rocko.

Might come as a surprise to people but lots of us Detroiters do tons to make this a better place. Did a tour of the East side waterfront for an out of town visitor and pretty soon I thought I should just shut up since it was "I did this or that". BFD I worked with many organizations, did my little bit and met so many wonderful people

I really love my neighbors in EEV and Islandview. I was astounded that on Mother's Day I got so many gifts from neighbors. I was in shock and awe that all these nice people appreciated my little kindnesses to them.

Start a thread on connections, I could probably give up an easy 50 names and stories of stellar people here in the D right off the top of my head.

I still think my funniest donation of labor was at Mariner's Park. The volumn of trash was driving me nuts so I picked it up over a period of a few hours. When I was done, a nice young gentleman handed me some easywipes. He didn't help but didn't want me to have "dirty" hands.

The CITY doesn't take care of business but life goes on. I just still stay amazed at all the wonderful people I meet daily.

I don't want to wax poetic but this is a great city because of the people who stay to fight the fight. Sumas

I pick up trash when I walk my dog in SOuthfield. I used to fill up at least one plastic bag after walking one block. The neighborhood isn't so trashy now. I figure that's because fewer people are buying fast food, candy, soda, etc. at local stores rather than that they are less trashy.

I pick up every street paper I see, especially downtown near my office. I sometimes clean the bus shelter near me. I carry a small garden knife and remove every nightclub poster taped to street light poles at Vernor and Junction but I think Holy Redeemer or Christo Rey School is doing their side of the street). I have a pretty big utility scissors that I use to remove dealership and tow company postings tied on poles with plastic ties. I keep reminding people at St. Hedwig to pry off the plastic "apartments for rent" signs affixed two to every pole in front of the church [[about six poles). Don't leave a posting stuck in the ground on public property near me or it won't be there tomorrow.

My ambition is to bring around a step-ladder and pry off the years-old plastic 'buying gold" signs once posted on nearly every utility pole in SW Detroit by a gold store near the old Starlight Restaurant. There ought to be a law.