Quote Originally Posted by steve from virginia View Post
Interesting conversation ...


- I'm thinking of moving to Detroit, too.


- Why Detroit? - It's a real city not a small town or 'burb.


- Detroit is in a depression, it's ahead of the rest of the country/world by about 10 years. It really cannot get worse in Detroit than it is now.


- The city government has disintegrated so there is little in the way of petty interference found in almost every other city and town. To start a business in my current place requires as many as 30 permits. I live in a small apartment, I cannot make a mess. Property taxes on a small, ordinary house can be $25k per YEAR.


- Without a big, trajectory altering change in Detroit the technocrat will mark the end of government business as usual with the next step being collapse. This is the trend, being seen in Europe and will be seen in Detroit ... and elsewhere. It's the product of non-functioning economy. The technocrat [[to be unnamed) is simply a thief.


- Detroit is cheap. You need a car [[I hate cars like Jesus hates sin) but houses are so cheap that a car is a bagatelle. Move to Detroit so you can get the 'free' car.


- There is crime in Detroit but he most crime ridden places I have been in were Rome, Milan and Quito, Ecuador. Mexico is far more violent than Detroit and folks think nothing of vacationing in Mexico.


- Suburbs are far more dangerous than big cities as pedestrian, particularly the suburb I live in now [[Northern Virginia). Everyone talks on the phone while driving and run lights and stop signs, drive up on sidewalks, text; they hate bikers and pedestrians etc. The suburb here is ugly and depressing. Going to the store means duck through a hole in a cyclone fence, down a rutted path, across an interstate highway interchange strewn with car parts cross three ramps. Cars go off the road every in this stretch every day. The odds shorten. Driving in the suburbs is dangerous too. My current is one of the wealthiest areas in the country, btw.


- The only time I've ever experienced outright bigotry from blacks was in San Fransisco. Right now I live in a gigantic concrete apartment building filled with Guatemalans. Getting along isn't hard ...


Informative tale: Once upon a time during the 'Angel Dust' era I used to live downtown in Washington, DC, on the top floor of a three-story building over a store. Back then you could count the people living downtown on your fingers. It was a desolate, downtrodden area fit only for winos, artists and punk rockers. DC was the nation's crime capital and peeps were dying like flies on street corners.


Late one night while I was sleeping there was a loud noise: I think someone was breaking in so they could get into the store downstairs. The noise was the burglar pulling off the skylight.


I turned on the lights and ran into the bathroom where the skylight was and I could see the wooly-headed negro hanging from his feet upside down, like a bat from the skylight opening. He looked at me and said, "HEY! It's a naked white dude!"


I took the shotgun from behind my back and pointed at him and said, "Yea, a naked white dude with a shotgun!" I've never seen anyone move backwards upside down faster in my entire life.


Pissed me off, I had to buy some bars for the skylight which spoiled it. Moral to the story: there is crime ... it's what you do with it that matters.

Good post. I think you should move to Detroit. You seem to have yourself together enough to know what to expect and how to deal with it.