eight mile monotony

[edgar_rhode]

my wife and i were driving home from the funky ferndale art fairs and we decided to cut down eight mile to make our way back to the east side. driving past all the strip bars, popup BBQ's and food joints, nail salons, oil change / tire places and other struggling businesses - we got to wondering...

was eight mile ALWAYS so commercial and lacking in significant buildings / architecture? was it zoned to be industrial? i mean - other main drags - michigan, gratiot, grand river, et al, at least occasionally have a church, or some landmark buildings [[ GAR, michigan central ) to break the monotony.

just wondering if its a matter of being an east west corridor as opposed to coming out of the core of the city or what?

[313WX]

my wife and i were driving home from the funky ferndale art fairs and we decided to cut down eight mile to make our way back to the east side. driving past all the strip bars, popup BBQ's and food joints, nail salons, oil change / tire places and other struggling businesses - we got to wondering...

was eight mile ALWAYS so commercial and lacking in significant buildings / architecture? was it zoned to be industrial? i mean - other main drags - michigan, gratiot, grand river, et al, at least occasionally have a church, or some landmark buildings [[ GAR, michigan central ) to break the monotony.

just wondering if its a matter of being an east west corridor as opposed to coming out of the core of the city or what?

As far as the bolded, yes.

8 Mile didn't become developed/urbanized land until the post WWII era.

It was the original Hall Road.

[mtburb]

As far as the bolded, yes.

8 Mile didn't become developed/urbanized land until the post WWII era.

It was the original Hall Road.

Plus, 8 Mile is similar to many other commercial thoroughfares in the tri-county area with similar widths and medians [[such as Fort Street and Telegraph Road), though it does feature the famous power line in it's median.

[wilderness]

It's named Base Line Rd farther west.

[DetroitPlanner]

Zoning changes quite a bit along 8 Mile. Sherwood Forest is housing, there is quite a bit of Chrylser properties, office by Southfield, and yes lots of retail. Retail is drawn to corridors with high traffic counts. Perverts are also drawn to it because in most of Macomb and Oakland Counties the type of businesses you find on the S side of the street would be rallied against. It is a bit of a sink [[lowest common denominator stuff).

On the plus side, it is easy to time the lights on 8 Mile so you can sail across the city with hardly ever stopping, unless you get behind some idiot on a cell phone who is not paying attention.

[G-DDT]

Further East, I believe it is Vernier. 8-Mile used to be the area for the State Fair. There was an odd location off of 8-mile called the Earth Community House. It was a huge hippie hang-out and way-station for traveling Deadheads. Imagine aging hippies who haven't washed in a while all sharing hottub action together. It had a firepit, vegan buffet, jam area, a psychedlic art basement, and a smoking room [[where I normally hung out-met a strange Deadhead baby, named Dave who did birdcalls, talked incoherently, and burned G.I.Joe figures just to irritate the smokers). It certainly was out of place for the area, as a lot of the young neighborhood locals didn't care for all of these white, loud hippies filling up the streets with microbuses [[many of which, ended up getting broken into).

[ABetterDetroit]

On the plus side, it is easy to time the lights on 8 Mile so you can sail across the city with hardly ever stopping, unless you get behind some idiot on a cell phone who is not paying attention.

You make it sound like its not happening all the time planner! I get stuck behind cellphones all the time and just hope they are the kind that will stay in their lane instead of using 2

[DetroitPlanner]

You make it sound like its not happening all the time planner! I get stuck behind cellphones all the time and just hope they are the kind that will stay in their lane instead of using 2

There are a lot less of them if you drive it at 4 am. If I had a friend who called me then he would not be a friend for long!

[ABetterDetroit]

There are a lot less of them if you drive it at 4 am. If I had a friend who called me then he would not be a friend for long!

I would never call anyone at four A.M. Who does stupid stuff like that? Emergency only and don't fuck that decision up.

[Lowell]

A DetroitYES 8 Mile tour from 2002. Not much architecturally significant but always interesting.

8 Mile Road Tour

[Lowell]

A DetroitYES 8 Mile tour from 2002. Not much architecturally significant but always interesting and certainly the most symbolically important avenue in the metro.

8 Mile Road Tour

[softailrider]

Zoning changes quite a bit along 8 Mile. Sherwood Forest is housing, there is quite a bit of Chrylser properties, office by Southfield, and yes lots of retail. Retail is drawn to corridors with high traffic counts. Perverts are also drawn to it because in most of Macomb and Oakland Counties the type of businesses you find on the S side of the street would be rallied against. It is a bit of a sink [[lowest common denominator stuff).

On the plus side, it is easy to time the lights on 8 Mile so you can sail across the city with hardly ever stopping, unless you get behind some idiot on a cell phone who is not paying attention.

Unless there's construction, which is the case quite a lot of the time.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

8 Mile must have the most used car lots of virtually any street besides Gratiot, Groesbeck or Van Dyke.

[Hermod]

8 Mile must have the most used car lots of virtually any street besides Gratiot, Groesbeck or Van Dyke.

At one time, Livernois was the "used car lot go-to street" in the Detroit area. It ran for quite a number of blocks and was the place to go if you were looking for a beater.

[animatedmartian]

There's not really any churches on 8 Mile because when it was widened to its current width, it was still mostly rural and considered a super highway. Most church organizations built off of 8 Mile and in the adjacent residential neighborhoods. Most churches [[and other landmarks) on other major thoroughfares [[which were also considered super highways) were usually present before the thoroughfares were widened.

It pretty much is the mid-century equivalent of Hall Road, minus the huge parking lots for the retail establishments.

[Jimaz]

Further East, I believe it is Vernier. 8-Mile used to be the area for the State Fair. There was an odd location off of 8-mile called the Earth Community House....

That's different. Does this place still exist? Exactly where?

[Jason]

imo the extreme low quality of 8 mile's built environment is closer to the rule than the exception.

[DetroitPlanner]

8 Mile must have the most used car lots of virtually any street besides Gratiot, Groesbeck or Van Dyke.

Get out of the East Side much? Plenty of other examples everywhere in the region.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

Get out of the East Side much? Plenty of other examples everywhere in the region.

I realize that, just named a few as a start.

[Brock7]

For me when I was a kid, in the '60s, the Bel-Air Drive In and the Four Winds shop [[which I think was at Schoenner across from Arlan's) were the architectual eye- catchers on 8 Mile.

[poobert]

The trouble is that 8 Mile is the rule for commercial districts in Metro Detroit, not the exception. The exception is just that it is a lot seedier than most, but essentially equally uninteresting.

I took Van Dyke from Detroit up to 30 mile-or-so for a wedding 5 years ago. It was like the background of a Scooby Do cartoon repeating itself over and over. I thought, "How could there be a God that would allow this to happen?" It's all so bland and crappy. Then it makes people think someplace like is Ferndale is cool, just because it isn't that.

[313WX]

I took Van Dyke from Detroit up to 30 mile-or-so for a wedding 5 years ago. It was like the background of a Scooby Do cartoon repeating itself over and over. I thought, "How could there be a God that would allow this to happen?" It's all so bland and crappy. Then it makes people think someplace like is Ferndale is cool, just because it isn't that.

The Detroit side of Van Dyke in its heyday was akin to what Michigan Avenue is like between Livernois and Wyoming...

But of course, you wouldn't be able to tell that now...

[Willi]

Until we go the direction of something like Toronto with the GTA idea [[greater toronto area)
-- it will continue to be Us vs Them, Suburbs vs. City, Black vs White, ad nauseum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater...o_area_map.svg

Until 8 Mile gets ""absorbed"" into a bigger community DMA [[detroit metro area)
for economics of scale , purchasing power, labor pool, etc., etc. --- nothing will change.

[Bham1982]

Until we go the direction of something like Toronto with the GTA idea [[greater toronto area)
-- it will continue to be Us vs Them, Suburbs vs. City, Black vs White, ad nauseum.

More like "until we get millions of immigrants due to being the main gateway city of the country with the most lax immigration laws in the Western world, and until we get all the business from the other main city that happened to go separatist".

Toronto is a very special, unreplicable case. For Detroit, there is nothing to be learned from Toronto. It would be like if Chicago decided to secede from the U.S., and if the U.S. just decided to put 2 million immigrants in Detroit.

[Gpwrangler]

Unless there's construction, which is the case quite a lot of the time.

Everyone in the area seems to drive like shit. Phone or not.