August 23th - Day 7

Detroit, Mi.

"...I was getting sick of all the easy entries that Detroit was giving me..."

       I awoke this morning to a sound I had become accustomed to, blaring emergency vehicle sirens. After eating a half block of cheese in my room and confirming my meet up with ETMJ I sought out to explore once again.

            Close to my motel was the Continental Motors Plant. Like many good looking women unfortunately, it was all about style and could care less about substance. Its interior was void of anything interesting and did not hold my attention for very long. Disappointed I headed downtown for some exploring delights.

To be honest, I was getting sick of all the easy entries that Detroit was giving me. Unlike Winnipeg’s situation where one must be a skilled climber and social engineer to get into buildings, I did not have to climb a single ladder or conduit or act like I was supposed to be there. Thankfully, that all changed when I went downtown.

There were quite a bit of vacant buildings but one in particular caught my attention due to its architectural prowess. To my blissful delight entry would require a good hearty climb. After catching my breath I headed to the first floor as the majority of interesting architectural features is normally located there. Amid the rampant pieces of plywood to keep people out the building reflected its prosperous past with a beautiful but small mezzanine floor along with a multi-coloured ceiling and tin/plaster mouldings.

One of the interesting features of the upper floors was also one of its smallest. On the second floor was the most intriguing signs’ I have ever seen, a pointing finger leading the former shoppers to the main stairwell to the first floor. Making my way through the old jewelry shops and other business on the various floors made this tower a key indicator of the downtown’s fall as the primary commercial district for the city. Although every downtown in North America has experienced this, the plight of the city of Detroit exacerbates the problem downtown. Other than the pointing finger the only other interesting feature was the vertigo of the elevator shaft from the top floor.

Although the building itself was quite boring the view of the downtown and Comerica Park made the trouble of getting in and climbing stairs more than worth it. Time flew by quickly on the roof and before I knew it, I only had 10 minutes to get out of the building and to Michigan Central Terminal to meet ETMJ. As my luck would have it however my entry point (that I also planned to use as my exit point) was now blocked by a worker in a cherry picker. I tried scaling down the opposite wall but a two story drop wasn’t the exit I would like to take unless the police are down my neck. In vain I attempted to kick some plywood and doors out but nothing would budge so I reluctantly headed back to the second floor.

I looked down at the worker, took a deep breath and stepped out onto the platform. Surprised, the worker immediately asked me if how I was going to get down. In a nonchalant manner I simply said that I was going to climb back down. As I climbed down by hanging onto the individual nuts sticking through the steel I beam the worker was completely dumbfounded as to what just happened. I wished them a good day and continued on my way to meet ETMJ.

ETMJ was going to be late so I simply decided to sit in front of the Terminal and reflect on the trip thus far. However I did not reflect much as Steve came out of the warehouse and began to talk with me. For nearly 20 minutes Steve and I talked about anything that could be talked about, the weather, news, and of course, women. But for the majority of the time we conversed about Detroit’s urban realm and surprisingly, he knew quite a bit of the theory involved in urban planning. One thing that was made clear in my talk with Steve was the high level of racism in Detroit. It suddenly made sense as to why I had only seen three white people outside of the CBD in the previous day.

As we finished up our conversation ETMJ and some fellow from California showed up and after exchanging some small talk we explored the warehouse beside the Terminal.

After the warehouse we all piled into my car and headed off for the elusive Packard Plant. As we drove close to it I simply started laughing in disbelief at the sight of the massive industrial complex. Although there was a guard stationed at the front entrance he was engaged in a conversation with some locals and therefore, was quite useless at protecting the premises. Finding an entry point into the mile long building was not hard but finding a way into the second floor proved much harder. Eventually I found a window to crawl through and helped both ETMJ and the Californian dude through. As we stepped out into the main factory space a long corridor of nothing stretched in either direction. In some of the small rooms abutting the long corridor were some furnishings left by ravers and partiers but other than that, the first four floors were like the plains of Iowa.

The fifth floor by comparison was amazing as its former incarnation had been as a gigantic paintball arena. Brightly coloured splotches stained the walls and anything else in the way of the quick moving paintballs. Some of the obstacles were truly astounding, an old milk truck and some boats made up a small portion of what former paintballers could hide behind. As we traveled further north along the fifth floor the paintball arena abruptly came to an end and the chaos of Detroit took hold. If there was a singular highlight from Packard that made an impression on me it was the huge continuous pile of rotting wood that seemed to stretch for infinity. To make it even more memorable there were boats and snowmobiles sitting in the middle of this calamity.

On the very most eastern portion of the western building were the offices. Although there were no original documents left over much of the woodworking was still intact giving it a quaint feeling. There was not much to see so we headed across the street via a skywalk to the other buildings.

Unfortunately the other buildings only brought more emptiness and randomly abandoned vehicles. The only really exciting part of the eastern portion of the complex occurred when we entered it. I was walking slightly ahead of ETMJ and the Californian Dude and upon looking into an empty room I spotted a flashlight moving towards us. I froze up as ETMJ walked past and to the other side of the doorway to get out of view of the strangers. Initially I had thought that this was a security guard but upon asking them of who they were it turned out to be another explorer showing his friends around the building.

After going into the steam tunnels and exploring for a while we were all getting hungry so we decided to call it a day and head off to find some grub. A hearty meal (which did not solely consist of dairy products and bread) hit the spot and it was decided that ETMJ would stay with me for the night while the Californian Dude headed off to New York City to pick up his girlfriend from the airport. 

I wanted to explore more of Detroit’s downtown so I headed down with MTMJ at my side. After driving around for a while I spotted an abandoned theatre that could be entered if simply climb up to the [insert object]. Unfortunately I continued to come up short so I retrieved an aid and within a short amount of time was able to swing myself up. ETMJ could not make it up as he helped me hold the aid in place so I entered the building in the hopes that I would be able to find a friendlier entrance.

Stepping into the building brought the familiar musty smell but what I was going to see would be something out of the ordinary. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light I was able to make out a huge curtain and an even bigger seating area. The architecture that remained was gorgeous even in its decayed state and it made me long to see what it looked like in its prime. To let something like this fall into decay really set the picture of what kind of mess Detroit is in. I can’t remember much about the exploration as I was so amazed but I do remember that my foot went through the floor in the area behind the curtain and finding an overturned Coke bottle machine in the basement.