 
Scottr
Member
Username: Scottr
Post Number: 685
Registered: 07-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 11:30 pm: |    |
Miss Cleo, out of curiosity, how long have you been up there? I remember before there was even a KMart, back when the theater was actually a theater (what is it now?) and when there was that little 'minimall' downtown, that has been since completely redone as regular storefronts. Back when Hamady's was in Charlevoix, and the Putt-putt by Glen's was brand new (is it still there?) I remember before it was overrun by jetskis and giant boats owned by millionaires. Before all the condos, back when the railroad bridge still hung over the water between Lake Charlevoix and Pine River. When I could look around the lake from our place at the end of Oyster Bay and see a total of 3 other homes, and every boat on the bay belonged to them or one of the homes just out of site. I miss those days, it was much quieter, and slower paced. I remember how it seemed to get worse and worse every year. Although my dad didn't want to sell (long story behind that), it's probably better that we remember it the way it was, not the way it is, which is hardly what i would consider a small town anymore.
In any case, I don't think 16 mile is any kind of dividing line for much of anything. 26 mile, sure, and that's about the furthest south i would describe anything as a small town. Too many people moved to those 'small towns' and now they're 'big suburbs'. I can see the argument that 696 is a dividing line too, but I wouldn't make the generalization of crime-ridden or bad schools in either case.
Mikeg, one thing about the first map - the City of Davison, just east of Flint, has its own wells, which are its only source (currently) of water. Perhaps the city has the ability to hook up to it, but has chosen not to? Whatever the case, I find it strange that there's not even an outline, while other, smaller cities show up fine.
(Message edited by scottr on August 09, 2007) |
Fareastsider
Member
Username: Fareastsider
Post Number: 518
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 12:41 am: | |
Big Beaver, Quarton, Metro Pkwy...whatever true locals call it 16 mile! |
Fareastsider
Member
Username: Fareastsider
Post Number: 520
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 1:04 am: | |
If anyone would reconsider a move because it is south of 16 mile then they have SERIOUS PROBLEMS. just go move into a vault then! I live out north of Hall and used to work down on 9 mile and didnt notice much of a difference from what I did with friends there or out here. I did notice that people were more racist at 9 mile from my experience. They were also more racist south of 8 mile from my experiences as well. |
Hybridy
Member
Username: Hybridy
Post Number: 132
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 10:30 am: | |
http://web.mit.edu/cultureshoc k/fa2006/www/essays/mcmansion. html |
Waz
Member
Username: Waz
Post Number: 149
Registered: 11-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 10:30 am: | |
Lets see. Somerset mall straddles 16 mile.
Maybe Saks and Neiman Marcus should move to the north side and the south side should be reserved for liquor stores, wig shops, check cashing stores etc. |
Oakmangirl
Member
Username: Oakmangirl
Post Number: 24
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 11:02 am: | |
Waz,
It's merely a mall on the South side, but the "Somerset Collection" on the North. |
Iheartthed
Member
Username: Iheartthed
Post Number: 1340
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 11:09 am: | |
Maybe Saks and Neiman Marcus should move to the north side and the south side should be reserved for liquor stores, wig shops, check cashing stores etc.
Good point. I seem to remember the Burberry store, Louis Vuitton store and Tiffany's all being south of 16 Mile... |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 1242
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 11:12 am: | |
^Haha. Very observant of you! Welcome to the forum, Oakmangirl. |
Oakmangirl
Member
Username: Oakmangirl
Post Number: 25
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 11:27 am: | |
I'm going back to Detroitnerd's archived post about the vicious cycle of people wanting "country" living until an Applebee's springs up in town. They then seek refuge further out to another "quasi-country" locale. I made a similar observation in a diff. thread and likened it to a flesh (substitute the word land) eating bacteria.
My point is this has become a national trend, and we're responsible, govt. subsidies and city water, included. The scary thing is that this unfettered sprawl has developed into a symbiotic relationship between economy (it's where the jobs are going) and mindless consumption.
David Brooks observes: "Sprinkler City immigrants are not leaving cities to head out to suburbia. They are leaving older suburbs--which have come to seem as crowded, expensive, and stratified as cities--and heading for newer suburbs, for the suburbia of suburbia."
See the full article "Patio Man and the Sprawl People" for a hilarious social commentary.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/ Content/Public/Articles/000/00 0/001/531wlvng.asp?pg=1
Pardon the cross post. |
Novine
Member
Username: Novine
Post Number: 44
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 12:03 pm: | |
It's not even a US issue. Travel outside the US and you might be surprised where a GAP or similar store pops up, to say nothing of MickeyD's. |
Oakmangirl
Member
Username: Oakmangirl
Post Number: 26
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 12:19 pm: | |
Novine,
I've traveled a bit in Western Europe and was dismayed to see a behemoth Borders in London. Paris has a smattering of Gaps and McDo's (as they call it), but it's not overrun. Paris is a unique place where people WANT to live in the city, the suburbs are for the poor. They actually turn their noses up at you when applying for jobs if you have a suburban address! I've known of people there who "borrowed" a friend's city address when job hunting. Aaah...if only Detroit could once again be known as the Paris of the Midwest! Was that ever really the case, or a myth? |
Iheartthed
Member
Username: Iheartthed
Post Number: 1341
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 12:23 pm: | |
^That sounds like New York. |
Pam
Member
Username: Pam
Post Number: 2268
Registered: 11-2005
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 12:29 pm: | |
quote:if only Detroit could once again be known as the Paris of the Midwest! Was that ever really the case, or a myth?
Seems to be. If you google you can find articles mentioning that. |
Mikeg
Member
Username: Mikeg
Post Number: 1060
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 12:46 pm: | |
In Second Empire Paris, for example, as the boulevards sliced through congested old quarters, the poor were pushed out and the new apartment blocks were marketed to the expanding middle and upper-middle class. The displaced population, for its part, tended to move outward to industrial neighborhoods farther out in the city or to the inner suburbs. By the twentieth century, many of these inner suburbs, with their industrial facilities and cheaply built apartment buildings, had become a "red belt," a set of working-class neighborhoods that regularly voted for the Communist and other leftist political parties. Outside the Red Belt, especially during the 1920's many suburbs saw in explosion of single-family houses for more prosperous working-class families and those of a burgeoning middle class, all happy to trade the noise and congestion of the city for the relative calm of the suburbs.
[source]
Aaah...if only Detroit could be like Paris, a place where the rich want to live in the city and the poor have been displaced to the outskirts.
But wait - what's this about Paris having suburbs with "single-family houses for more prosperous working-class families" located beyond the poor districts? Never mind......
(\sarcasm) |
Fareastsider
Member
Username: Fareastsider
Post Number: 521
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 12:55 pm: | |
When and why did Macomb change all of their road names to the mile roads? such as 23 mile being Whiskey Road etc? |
Oakmangirl
Member
Username: Oakmangirl
Post Number: 27
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 1:06 pm: | |
Mikeg,
I didn't say the poor wanted to be cast to housing developments in the burbs and there ARE working class neighborhoods in Paris proper. I believe they just have the right attitude in for the most part wanting to live in the city. I didn't mean to imply that working classes or the poor of either Detroit or Paris should be marginalized any one place.
Anyway, nice source...it was written by a former professor of mine.
BTW, thanks, but I'm intelligent enough to recognize sarcasm. |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 1243
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 1:21 pm: | |
Oakmangirl for mayor ... |
Mikeg
Member
Username: Mikeg
Post Number: 1061
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 1:25 pm: | |
Oakmangirl, I'm sure you are able to recognize sarcasm but there are many here who read too fast or are incapable of recognizing it and that was for their benefit.
In the distant past, Detroit and Paris would at most have had some commonalities in the appearance of their parks, boulevards and some architecture. The only thing they share in their pattern of growth is an outlying set of suburbs with single-family houses for prosperous working and middle-class families. |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 1245
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 1:38 pm: | |
Paris' Haussman plan inspired the layout of Washington D.C., which inspired Woodward's doomed vision of a radial network of streets and parks. |
Charlottepaul
Member
Username: Charlottepaul
Post Number: 1391
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 5:13 pm: | |
"Paris is a unique place where people WANT to live in the city, the suburbs are for the poor. They actually turn their noses up at you when applying for jobs if you have a suburban address! I've known of people there who "borrowed" a friend's city address when job hunting."
I was kind of surprised when I came down to charlotte that it is that way here as well (for the most part). The million dollar plus condos are in downtown high rise residential buildings and the poor get moved out to new home, cookie cutter subdivisions once gentrification comes in and fixes up their old city neighborhood. Guess the fact that I lived in the Midwest my whole life meant that I had a misconception of cities and suburbs. |
Oakmangirl
Member
Username: Oakmangirl
Post Number: 28
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 6:40 pm: | |
"Oakmangirl for mayor ..."
Detroitnerd, was that sarcasm? ;-)
"Paris' Haussman plan inspired the layout of Washington D.C., which inspired Woodward's doomed vision of a radial network of streets and parks."
True, but we can't blame Haussman or l'Enfant for the dictatorship of Henry Ford and issues Detroit began experiencing large scale in the 60's? The boulevards of DC (though they disorient visitors, ahem- or just me, like hell) and the huge one in Philadelphia, The Ben Franklin Parkway, remain pretty lively thoroughfares for both car and foot traffic. DC has green space at each "spoke" and Philly's Parkway is just what the name suggests.
If anyone has an inkling to send me a list of Detroit parks, please save yourself the trouble. :-) I'm talking in terms of how boulevards should provide some trees; I don't see too many along Woodward.
(Message edited by Oakmangirl on August 11, 2007) |
Patrick
Member
Username: Patrick
Post Number: 4790
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 9:23 am: | |
The “great divide” moves up a few miles every 5 years or so. First when they built/developed Grand Boulevard, anything beyond was considered the moon or farmland. Then it went to 8 Mile and a few years later it went to 11 Mile. In the early 90’s it was 14 Mile because of the Sterling Heights/Warren border. Now it is 16 Mile/Metro Pkwy or whatever the hell you want to call it.
When I think of Shelby Twp, Macomb, Chesterfield, and Washington I think of leased cars, Coach bags, TGI Fridays, mortgages up the ass and everything paid on credit. I think of subdivisions named Ravioli Villas and Mountain Meadows filled with homes encrusted with gaudy columns and sheathed with tan aluminum siding |
Patrick
Member
Username: Patrick
Post Number: 4791
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 9:31 am: | |
I do think the whole north-of-16 Mile thing is a Macomb County thing more than an Oakland County thing. You see, you get a lot of new money in Macomb County and they think they have made it by moving to a “township” north of Metro pkwy. These are simple minded folks so keep that in mind. They think that they are hot shit because they earn 125k a year but in reality, that isn’t all that much.
I attended HS in Warren and played on the golf team and our home course was way the fuck out at Partridge Creek. We played Dakota HS several times and I never encountered a more rude and snotty group of kids in my life. They actually thought they were rich because they lived in Macomb Township.
Some of the kids on my team couldn’t afford the best equipment or the best Taylor Made Titanium clubs like the Dakota kids, so the Dakota kids were generally harsh on them. One day after a match some of the Dakota kids and parents were standing around and having a laugh at one of the kids on our team. They were giggling at his clubs and “poor” shoes and one kid kept saying nasty things about the kid.
Ironically, at the same time of this incident GPS was playing a match out there and a South golfer was getting picked up by his dad in a Bentley. My coach overheard these Dakota assholes talking shit and walked up to them and pointed to the Bentley. He said “look, you guys aren’t rich and nor are your parents. Your dads all drive GMC Suburbans and your mothers are all nurses. You aren’t rich. You don’t live on Lakeshore and you don’t have mansions. You live in a bunch of little McMansions and you buy everything on credit.”
I’ll never forget the look on the faces of the Dakota parents and kids. They were so embarrassed and offended. It was fucking hilarious and they never talked shit again after that. |
Mikeg
Member
Username: Mikeg
Post Number: 1064
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 9:47 am: | |
Patrick,
Regardless of your age, it's obvious that you are still stuck in high school. It's pretty juvenile to make generalizations about entire communities based on the petty rivalries that have always existed between different high schools. But hey, keep posting if you want to, just realize that you're just exposing the shallowness of the thought process behind your opinions. |
Patrick
Member
Username: Patrick
Post Number: 4795
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 9:56 am: | |
Hilarious. Mikeg, you obviously live in Shelby Township. I am going to expose my shallowness even more by adding that I hope some B52s from Selfridge carpet-bomb the whole Hall Road corridor. Start at CJ Barrymore's and work their way to Mound where that Walmart/Texas Roadhouse/Theater complex stands. |
Mikeg
Member
Username: Mikeg
Post Number: 1065
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 10:28 am: | |
I guess I was being overly generous when I said that there were some thought processes behind your opinions.
BTW, Selfridge doesn't have any B-52's, only F-16 fighter jets. |
Johnlodge
Member
Username: Johnlodge
Post Number: 1663
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 10:30 am: | |
Since we're nitpicking, I did want to point out that new homes way out in the burb most likely aren't "sheathed with tan aluminum siding", since aluminum is rarely used these days due to expense. More likely they are sheathed with tan vinyl siding. |
Meaghansdad
Member
Username: Meaghansdad
Post Number: 51
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 11:58 am: | |
It seems to be "en vogue" to nit pick Patrick comments to death, but I say we should look at the basic premise within his comments. Basically, he's telling the truth. I know, (and I think quite a few of you could say the same) several families that live in that area, that live the exact same way.
Everything leased.
Mom and Dad working all the overtime imaginable to continue to afford their "interest only" McMansions.
That isnt wealth, it's a slow death, and no college for the kids. |
Johnlodge
Member
Username: Johnlodge
Post Number: 1669
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 12:01 pm: | |
MD, when I was in college, I delivered pizza out in Northern West Bloomfield. I was amazed at all the McMansions I would go to (all looking exactly the same, of course) where there was a young couple, and absolutely no furniture in the house, save maybe a television and a couch. Purchasing homes beyond their means, and then having no money left to enjoy them. |
Meaghansdad
Member
Username: Meaghansdad
Post Number: 53
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 12:12 pm: | |
Because thats what we're (BLACK AND WHITE) subconsciously trained to do.
1.Go to college
2.get a good job
3.get a new car
4.get a starter house
5.get married,
6.fix up your starter home while learning the responsibilities of home ownership,
7.get some kids,
8.get bigger house,
9.get bigger car,
10.get biggest house
11. Get divorced because we never see one another (or kids) working for all this shit we cant afford! |
Mikeg
Member
Username: Mikeg
Post Number: 1067
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 12:24 pm: | |
Broad generalizations and stereotypes are the stock-in-trade of the intolerant. |
Meaghansdad
Member
Username: Meaghansdad
Post Number: 54
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 12:30 pm: | |
How broad are they? Look at the per capita household earnings in any of the townships north of Hall Road, and compare with that of say GPP/GPW, GP.
Track foreclosure rates? Homes for sale?
Drive through those communities look in the driveways.
Look at census data. |
Mikeg
Member
Username: Mikeg
Post Number: 1068
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 12:36 pm: | |
I'm not the one making broad generalizations - show me the data! I doubt that you could prove that 51% of the households in any community fit the stereotype you folks are pushing.
-------------
"The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong", Evan Thomas, editor, Newsweek magazine |
Digitalvision
Member
Username: Digitalvision
Post Number: 274
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 12:39 pm: | |
It is true though that many, many folks follow a pattern along the lines of Meaghansdad - it's human nature do what you're familiar with, and we have a couple generations severed from Detroit.
I spent my youngest years running around downtown, even when it was much more like what Coffeeboy reporter (which is funny for me to say, as I am a fu-fu coffee junkie) talks about. My dad always worked downtown as a painter (either construction or fine art depending on the person he was working for), my mom was an elevator girl at the Penobscot and had other various downtown jobs.
So to me, downtown is natural. I had to learn that people outside of Detroit view Troy and Rochester as their normal - the things I despise (an hour long commute, for instance) is an accepted price paid for the style of living that others may want.
I recently had a conversation that I refuse to do more than a 25 minute drive to work, and I was looked at like I'm crazy.
"Then you can't live in Clarkston, or other nice areas" I hear.
"What about schools? There aren't any good schools south of Troy." I hear.
"But what's wrong with commuting?" I hear.
And I don't hate them, I don't dislike them, some I like a lot as people. I just try to understand that that is their frame of reference, this is the world they know, and be a maven for alternative ways of thought. |
Elsuperbob
Member
Username: Elsuperbob
Post Number: 25
Registered: 03-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 12:56 pm: | |
I think Digitalvision summarized it all very well. Just as he said I, too, have friends out there who don’t understand how I can live in scary Wayne County right next door to Detroit. But at the same time it’s hard for me to understand how they can stand the commutes, traffic and blandness of living where they do so removed from the city. So removed, in fact, that one friend just in the last couple weeks mentioned this new place he’d heard about in “dead downtown Detroit” called Campus Martius. It’s just difficult to comprehend at times. I guess we all need to get out of our “normal” now and then to try to better understand things.
On another note about things above… Hausmann started carving up Paris 60 years after L’Enfant laid the plan for D.C. and 45 years after Woodward designed the radial plan for Detroit. So we weren’t inspired by Hausmann’s Paris but by a general baroque era thought of design that was seen at the time in places like Rome, Versaille, St. Petersburg and parts of Paris.
You could say we inspired Paris to become the Washington or Detroit of Europe. But that’s not at all accurate either since Hausmann was just following a general European trend that actually came back to the states with the City Beautiful Movement. |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 1249
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 3:12 pm: | |
Oops, astute correction, Elsuperbob. Hausmann's work was in the 1860s. The Woodward Plan came out after the 1803 fire, and I believe you're right about D.C. too.
Anyway, I imagine the whole CBD will just be one big superblock in 50 years, at the rate things are going. |
Oakmangirl
Member
Username: Oakmangirl
Post Number: 30
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 4:49 pm: | |
Elsuperbob,
Thanks for the clarification. Turns out Haussmann's most direct influence was on Burnham in Chicago where the City Beautiful Movement began (I think).
Let's just all be grateful Le Corbusier, who suggested that the boulevard be replaced by expressways, never got anywhere with his harebrained schemes. Oh wait, maybe he did.... |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 1250
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 4:52 pm: | |
According to Ken Kern, Frank Lloyd Wright told the city of Detroit to tear the city down and start over. Looks like they're working on it, too... |
Oakmangirl
Member
Username: Oakmangirl
Post Number: 31
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 5:16 pm: | |
Good Point, FL Wright probably proposed that he design all the new buildings too with the idea in mind of going way over budget. Wow, I'm glad that didn't happen...think of all the leaks. Of course, if we had a well-preserved "Wrightburgh", rich and middle-class white folk would be fighting each other to live in the city. |
Taj920
Member
Username: Taj920
Post Number: 240
Registered: 01-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, August 11, 2007 - 9:15 pm: | |
The line must be below 16 Mile since Regina High School added 60 more freshmen in the incoming class by moving from 8 Mile to 13 and a half mile. |
Waxx
Member
Username: Waxx
Post Number: 233
Registered: 09-2006
| | Posted on Monday, August 13, 2007 - 1:47 pm: | |
http://www.flickr.com/photos/t heblacklightstudio/866984696/
Just thought I'd throw this in. |
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