* Patterson told me, “I used to say to my kids, ‘First of all, there’s no reason for you to go to Detroit. We’ve got restaurants out here.’ They don’t even have movie theatres in Detroit—not one.” He went on, “I can’t imagine finding something in Detroit that we don’t have in spades here. Except for live sports. We don’t have baseball, football. For that, fine—get in and get out. But park right next to the venue—spend the extra twenty or thirty bucks. And, before you go to Detroit, you get your gas out here. You do not, do not, under any circumstances, stop in Detroit at a gas station! That’s just a call for a carjacking.” . .

Oakland County is an overrated dump. It embodies what was fashionable 30 years ago - cheap, nouveau-riche suburbia. Feeble, geriatric incapacitated, and likely going mad, Brooks is unable to see the writing on the wall. He is Michigan's own George Wallace, and hurrying the state on to being the next Alabama. Now that a national trend has turned to urban living as an alternative to bland, milquetoast places such as Oakland County, Michigan has nothing to offer someone who desires that lifestyle. As a result, and for a myriad of other human mistakes, Michigan's population has flatlined and even dropped for decades. College-educated, urban-oriented professionals continue to earn their educations at illustrious Michigan institutions and take the next plane out of the state. The kind of short-sighted neighbor-hatred that Brooks has dedicated his life to has hurried the mutually-assured destruction of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties.

Detroit, for all its problems, offers incredible architecture, a vibrant arts scene and venerable cultural institutions, and some of the only pockets of urban living in the state. Even movie theatres. I, for one, would never live in Oakland County. It is simply not a desirable place for someone of my upbringing and education.