Michigan sounds like a state that time forgot. If you told me there were still dinosaurs roaming around I would probably believe you.
Probably.
Still, sounds like a nice weekend.
This is really lovely. My husband is like you, always forcing us to eat, on our road trips, at the small diners, always begging us to stop at the dilapidated stores. And we're better for it.
You guys are so cool. I wish we were friends.
I think St. Louis and Detroit are like twins in many respects. We're also small business owners and we currently live in a small town, which we moved to for the reasons you listed. It has its charms, but wears on you quick. We're moving back to the city soon to an up-and-coming neighborhood. I think the wide open space out here has enough helping hands. Onward north.
Great post.
I love reading about your life. Almost tempts me to move back stateside. Detroit sounds like such an interesting place.
Because I'm Everybody's Mom, my first reaction to your picture was "are those BARE LEGS? With SNOW on the ground!" Now I have to go check the Weather Network to see how cold it is for you!
I totally agree with Dana, that could easily be a description of St. Louis.
It could be a description of Dallas or Houston as well....
You hit a soft spot with me, dude. Being from a small town myself, I love little businesses. Manhattan is also going the way of the chain stores, the mom and pop's can't afford the rent anymore, and it makes me sad. So I'm leaving for Houston, inside the loop, where no one lives anymore. But where it's cheap to live and the Mexican food and BBQ are outstanding.
we do those drives, too. sometimes we choose the country roads for an hour or so on our trips upstate just to enjoy the mental plans of fixing up that old farmhouse or having a big enough yard for a gocart track or how nice it would be to work and live in a college town. then we remember what it was like to spend those years in a smaaaaaaaall college town (and many of the people we knew from towns in the country) and are pretty ok with where we are now. i'm glad my kid gets to see people that don't all look like her and are from all different socio, economic and ethnic backgrounds. as attractive the aesthetics of the country are to us, we are pretty sure the veneer would wear off quickly.
i like it when you talk about detroit. i know nearly nothing about detroit and really enjoy reading your take on it. that whole map on the palm of the hand- i looked at my hand and said, oh, ok. glad you guys continue to post.
My dad was always like that, especially with the restaurants. It's nice to know other people think about that too.
I love that an hour outside of D.C., there are huge communities of Amish selling homegrown produce and handmade quilts, but the Columbia Heights neighborhood of the city is getting a Target this year. I'm slightly horrified--and yet, it's been a struggle for a neighborhood where a vast majority of the residents don't drive or own cars.
Thank you, Dutch, as always, for documenting what time and the rest of the world may soon - and very unfortunately - forget. I love that you share these things with Juniper. I have a nightmarish image in my head of the two of you racing around Michigan, the dark shadow of the suburbs nipping at your heels. I hope she gets to see all of it, barbershops selling tombstones and all, everything, before it's gone.
I would love to see what you bought at the thrift store.
Lovely story, Dutch.
thanks cup. or tea?
I do wonder if it will disappear, or rather if what you see outside of the suburbs (both urban and rural) is actually the future rather than the past. at some point, the current rock-bottom price/ razor-thin profit margin version of retail will become outmoded, either through rising fuel prices or a change in the economy or just a change in people's preference of cheap shit over (or at the expense of) sustainable local economies. I imagine a future of vacant strip malls and adaptive re-use of big box stores, which unfortunately don't seem built to last more than 20 years.
It will be interesting.
There are pockets of struggling neighborhoods in DC (like Molly mentioned), but mostly this whole metropolitan area (including much of the city) is so packed full of people with such a steamroller of an economy that it's all about growth. What's considered 'suburbs' just keeps moving. People commute up to an hour and a half one way to get to their jobs downtown.
But still, there are lots of small businesses coming and going. The first time I tried sushi was at a little Japanese restaurant that I watched a family build near my Metro stop. When the doors opened, the owner stood in the doorway for weeks smiling at passersby. I decided to stop in. Of course, being by myself and never having tried sushi, I ate a giant hunk of wasabi. As I was sitting there with my eyes watering, the patron came over and said, 'How is everything?' I squeaked out a feeble 'Very good' before downing three glasses of water. I'm sure I provided them great entertainment, even if my dollars didn't make a big difference.
you are nice people.
You're at your best with this kind of travel writing, I think. I mean, my opinion means nothing, given its complete lack of context and professional setting, but, still, you look alright, still.
Many credit the land use laws passed in oregon in the 1970s with the way Portland (a small city) has grown into a super vital downtown (the money is here, here) with rural scenes still to be had just JUST on the other side of the urban growth boundary. Portland brags about its proximity to the coast or the mountains or the rivers, but a strong selling point is that in the hour or so it takes to get to any of these wonders, you mostly don't pass through suburbs. For the most part, you hit the border of portland and you're in the country until you hit the next town. It's pretty awesome, but it's also heavily debated.
Also, if I were to discuss you as a character in your own blogging adventures (and thus kind of fix you--sorry), I'd say it's awesome how you're super cheap but have a soft spot to eat in potentially-to-probably failing restaurants. I could see a disconnect between your thriftiness and your generosity (in which eating is an investment and one shouldn't take risks on losing endeavors), but instead I see it (through your narrative, I mean) as precisely connected in a resistance to the awful parts of capitalism.
You said: "I imagine a future of vacant strip malls and adaptive re-use of big box stores, which unfortunately don't seem built to last more than 20 years."
The church we went to in Grand Rapids is in an old abandoned shopping mall.
I loved this post, because it reminded me of when my husband and I lived in Michigan. We'd take those same long weekend drives on the western half of the hand.
I love to read your descriptions of Detroit. The housing boom here has collapsed so resoundingly that we might end up looking like that ourselves, if all goes right.
This weekend we escaped town & drove around in the desert, which is what we have instead of country...
I'm sure we have been to some of the same little out of the way Michigan places. It's one of the hugest reasons I agreed to move back here too.
Awww....wish I would have known you, Junie and Wendell were going to be out my way. I would have loved to meet you and you could have used my place as a "rest area". (I live just south of Almont)
Maybe Juniper's carseat will benefit from having Wendell around. =)
This is favorite thing about Austin, too. You get 20 minutes outside of the city, and you're already in some town that feels like the middle of nowhere, with old-school downtown squares, one-off shops and people that walk really, really slow.
It's awesome.
That's it. I'm visiting Detroit. It sounds exactly how I want it to be.
And I always, always, eat in places where I feel sorry for the struggling owners whose faces light up when a customer actually comes in -- both here in San Francisco and when I was traveling in Asia. I know exactly what you mean.
Hey Wood,
Check out the documentary Burden of Dreams (I watched it just before reading this post). Werner Herzog is standing in a carved-out boat in the Amazon talking about why his film is a debacle and honest to God he's wearing a t-shirt with Detroit in script across his chest! What an analogy to exactly what you're talking about. He talks about what a lie suburbs are at the end - it's brilliant.
I meant Wood, sorry...
s*it! - I actually meant Dutch - well both of you how's that!
Beautifully written. I lived in Chicago for years and remember Detroit well (it was on my way to Toronto where my fiance lived). I miss the bittersweet of those old towns... but I also identify with the heartache of it.
Since you love supporting little struggling businesses, methinks you need to spread the word about mine! 
We are really in the middle of nowhere, our town is only about 50K in size and the nearest metropolitan area is Denver, about 7 hours away.
Small businesses even here struggle to compete with Lowe's, Walmart, Target, Applebees, etc. But, as a small specialty shop owner, I have to say that you simply can't compete. You have to be so totally different that there is no comparison. If someone wants fresh baked Cardamom bread and Swedish coffee they aren't going to go to Denny's or IHOP -- know what I mean? They are going to come to my shop.
We went into opening our store with the realization that we had to be completely different. There is nothing in our store that you can find in any big box store or chain restaurant (except Ikea. If they come here I'm in big trouble).
I love your posts....I moved from Detroit to Knoxville last July. I miss home so much, but reading your posts, and seeing how a new comer to Detroit can find the things that were home to me....it's just amazing. Please take care of my city, and keep finding beauty in what most people would consider ruin.
Thank you!!
Hey, can I do this?
Well then, I guess I can. I've been enjoying your blog for a while now. Liking the similarities that my husbund and Juniper aged daughter Miriam and I share with your life as we hear it on your blog. We too moved from a seemingly utopian city [Madison] to our "hometown" area to be closer to family in Wisconsin. I connected with your travels to the "country" that you posted about. It's awesome that Juniper knows Detroit as well as the real towns around it. Just keep her away from those suburbs...not that I'm concerned. You guys are good parents. I too wish we were friends. Only we true Midwesterners know that the fresh "mild" air feels great on those half leg warmer covered legs. Go BabyLegs.
That PICTURE!!! She's so tiny, and that cow is so big it doesn't even fit in the frame. Aaagh! And it's on *wheels*! Eaaah! Love it, love it.
Thanks. As a small business owner myself, I understand, empathize with, and (most of all) appreciate this post.
Sounds like we are cut from same mold.
I find thrill in finding a hole in the wall, mom & pop restaurant or business to support, especially record stores which are becoming extinct quickly.
Since we just moved to Northern Kentucky from Chicago, we hit the open roads a lot to find hidden gems.
I will be sharing some in the future.
Cheers Dutch!
You two are truly among the good guys. I bet you don't try to haggle the thrift store man down either.
Feel free to put aside one of those McCobb credenzas for me, by the way.
Ever cross the bridge into Canada? I grew up in Buffalo and used to drive through Ontario and over the Ambassador Bridge en route to points Midwest. Always loved that drive. Seems like one could get to the Middle of Nowhere fast that way. Perhaps these days crossing the border is not as easy is it used to be.
Bonjour Dutch, Wood et Juniper,
I just wanted to thank you for sharing slices of your lives with us like this. My boyfriend James and I live in an inuit village of the Canadian Arctic. We are teachers, but this year I'm not teaching: I'm on maternity leave with our 5-month-old baby boy Noah Joanesi. We don't have TV and there isn't much to do around our tiny village. There is also very little daylight right, and there are often blizzards, so we need to find ways to entertain ourselves indoors. Your blog, which we have discovered last week, has made our evenings so much more pleasant. We are completely (pathetically) addicted. We go to bed way too late for already-sleep-deprived parents to read your writing. We feel like we have so much in common with the way we want to educate our children, the way you see beauty where few peope see it, the way you hate Baby Einstein...the list would go on forever but I don't want to bore you or sound like a stupid groupie... It is awesome to read your blog, and I just wanted to take a few minutes to let you know.
Also, in the summer we live in Montreal, very nice city... If you need a place to stay, you are welcome. That's how much we like you guys.
Finally, is it still possible to obtain your alphabet book? I am so sick of barns and smiling animals...
Sophie
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