Object Orange

For those of you that live in your happy little suburbanite villas, overlooking some quaint pond,if may come as a shock to you to discover that some of us live in Urban Blight. We can't just sell and move up. I don't actually live in Detroit, but I am less than 1/2 mile away, so what happens there directly effects my life. My neighborhood is a working class, kinda sliding down sort of affair. Grosse Pointe schools are the only upside. I have one of a very few homes on my street that has 3 bedrooms. Most are 2 bedroom pre- WW2 tiny little houses.
I have watched my beloved Detroit through the years go from a hip urban city, to Murder City, to the pitiful crap heap it has become now. There are pockets of beauty. The art center is lovely. Indian Village, so named for the Indian names of the streets, continues to be an upscale showcase.
Nearly all of the Detroit cops I know have left the city. They tell me that hardly any decent folk are there, and if they are, it's only because they can't afford to leave. Murder is on the rise. Drug abuse is massive. Joblessness is at least 12% and possibly more.
A group of Detroit area artists have endeavored to make the city aware, painfully, that this blight of abandoned crack house dwellings has got to go. They are painting such places a color called "Tiggeriffic Orange", to bring attention to this. It is the City's responsibilty to tear down these buildings. They are in deficit as the city has been ill managed for as long as I can remember, hearkening back to the days of Coleman Young and remains a cash cow of cronyism. There is a link to The Detroit Free Press on my site. I heard an interview on NPR this morning about it. So check that out too.
So sad because the city really has some wonderful things going for it. The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Historical Museum, The Science Center, galleries, restaurants,and clubs. I hate to see Detroit slammed, but the city government needs to answer for most of this. They're in my opinion, and many others, corrupt as hell.