The Potemkin D

Okay, maybe that's a little unfair title.

Still and all, the city has gussied itself up for the Super Bowl visitors and attention. That's one thing I can't get over in the course of all of this--how clean The D is looking. Out my window onto Washington Blvd., I often see an amazing amount of trash and litter tumbleweeding down the street. Earlier this week, I saw some City guys with brooms sweeping up some cigarette butts and broken glass! It's a world gone mad! Walking around yesterday with Falstaff and ROC, I noticed that a lot of the abandoned storefronts on Monroe heading from Campus Martius to Greektown have been converted into Super Bowl memorabilia shops. The Book-Cadillac and other wrecks are swathed (at street level anyway) with a long banner showing Detroit landmarks that attempts to hide the squalor. And there's people! I just took a few minutes to look out my window at the intersection of Washington and Michigan and there are literally dozens of people walking around. "Dozens" might not sound like a lot, but trust me. It's generally a ghost town around here.

It's still The D, though. They couldn't do much about the fact that, really, as a downtown, it's way more grit than glitz. A packed house at Lafayette Coney Island isn't going to hide the fact that the Lafayette Building has been empty for decades. But maybe it's a start, though. It seems to me that while there are a lot of tourists in town, a good number of the people coming in to the Winter Blast and the NFL Experience and whatever are Detroiters. Suburbanites. Maybe some people who live in the area that haven't been down here for a long time. And maybe they will be impressed with what they see, and hopefully they will come back.

How about some links?

Jenn From IT took a bunch of pics this week (extra props to Jenn From IT for fixing my code problems the other day. Not only did she fix them, but she also managed to explain the problem to me without saying "You put it in the wrong spot, dummy")

I've been reading DetroitBlog for a few weeks, and you should start too.

Deadspin has sent a special correspondent blogger. I think I'd rather run into this guy than any of the other sports personalities in town.