>> mark binelli, contributing editor of "rolling stone" magazine who grew up in the detroit city area returns to send a history and the influx of artists, environmentalists and city planners who are we imaging the urban landscape. this is a little under an hour. [applause]

>> well, it's thank you all for coming. i have to say first that i really honored that mark asked me to be part of this as a third world friends from ann arbor are we both went to college and the editors at the newspaper. i knew then that mark was from the area, like icann, but i didn't know of these intense interest in detroit history and the stories here and that leads me to my first question, which is what i do to want to write this book? i remember you calling me when you are starting to work on that you said to write about book about the jewish heard that since it is everybody. this is a different book than this the others are reading right now. >> i sensed that a little tiny bit with her not to lunch the first time. thank you first of all for doing this. i guess i've always been drawn

to detroit as a topic and, you know, i thought for the longest time it would maybe turn out to be a novel. that seems like the way to go. then, you know, when i came back in 2009, for "rolling stone," i was assigned to do a piece on the auto show. this was january 2009 comest you remember, you were here. it was, you know, chrysler and gm were on the brink of bankruptcy. the former mayor was in jail and detroit had become sort of the posters city of the recession basically. so i've seen reporters come from not even all over the country, but all over the world recently to cover this story, but also docked in a weird way, to take a

few photos and use detroit is some sort of metaphor for whatever was happening in the country. that's probably around the time i called you and your lake good luck, buddy. but i did believe, i guess, as someone from the area that could hopefully bring more nuanced insensitivity to the topic. and that kind of nuance and clues, you know, didn't thank you very. so often somebody comes to detroit for a few days, focusing on the bleakest and most tired narratives told again and again and again. again as you know, t-shirt is a city of fascinating characters. he talked to people, don't just take pictures of empty buildings with nobody in the picture.

>> that's one of the things that struck me about the book. it's not to treat the building. is to treat the. in some cases it's the people you happen to cross. it's not talking heads, not public officials, not price people. vicious people you met. one of my favorite stories in the book is the day you go down to the site of the original train from which now has a hotel on it that is sitting there empty and you met a bunch of different people down there, but one of them was this guy, tony. i wanted you to talk about how you met him hemline included him in the boat. >> at least asserted a telling moment. i guess i loved that kind of moment because of the serendipity of it. i'd been reading a lot of detroit history. it wasn't long after i got here.

you know, as people here know, near the plaza is where cadillac, the french explorer, land owners a statue and so i've been reading about that and decided in this an unusually sunny day in the fall, so i decided to make my way down there and sit outside. it was a weekday and it was pretty empty. this guy, tony, approached me. he looked like he might be a street guy, maybe homeless. i thought he was going to sa for money. he saw me reading it said pulled out a couple of paper book packets out of this pocket. he started talking about how we love john urban. and then somehow he started telling me about his experience in the prison system and its

different scars and bullet wins. he eventually starts telling me that people don't want to mess with him and he yanks up his sweatshirt and had a giant machete and unlike in acts in his belt. he just sat totally straight face. you know, i'm a license carpenter, sauna like to carry my tool. [laughter] it was such a great -- great for the purpose of metanarrative detroit moment. his name is tony and antoine cadillac. persius a lot of resonance. >> and you're telling the story of the city through these characters to your meeting, but one of the things that struck me about the book is your not so much making -- are making

observations. you're not making judgments and there's not that much analysis in the book. it really shows the story of what it's like to be here now, what it's like to live here now. you type out a nicely with a history of the place in lots of different instances. >> thank you. we appreciate you saying that. i've been doing interviews last two days and people want analysis. they want kind of a soundbite. is it a bunch of radio interviews of people in other parts of the country. they're like what's next for detroit? just like these ridiculous questions. i didn't write a policy book that i could answer that question and 30 seconds, i would be announcing my candidacy for mayor probably. [laughter] >> you and everybody else. >> i tried really to talk to people and certified detroiters tell their stories.

the history as you said is so rich and so multilayered that i just kind of let that come out. >> another really striking part of the book for me was about the blues concert that happened. actually not far from where i grew up. >> near lafayette park. >> ray. and by live now -- i'm not quite sure i seen anyone else come to detroit and actually pick up on the fact that things like that still go wanted neighborhoods like that. and that's a neighborhood that if you went and drove through, you'd really think almost nobody lives there. >> i found that very interesting. it's right up saying often, you know, a part of the east side of detroit, where you go down some blocks and there's one house last in the grass is up to here

in the summer. you really feel like you're standing in the country or some thing. you know, i found a really fascinating the way people kind of take ownership of that and can sometimes, you know, turn it aside into an asset, at least make something of it. this guy pete aero, who happens to be a cousin of joe louis. >> and related to tom barrett was time for mayor couple times. >> of course, yet. >> so everybody is connected. there is this kind does block renfield basically, that it had once been densely populated with residential houses and now it's all in d. and so he has these blues every sunday during the summer. it's a great kind of people that

comes out and that's another only in detroit thing. you feel like coming in in okamura clarksdale, mississippi, only five minutes from downtown. >> i know you're from this area, like i said. after ann arbor, you left it mostly lived other places and then you come back to detroit to tell this kind of story. tell me about the things that surprised you about the city, things that she found it were different that maybe he didn't expect for things you found over the same that may be shocking. >> the first thing that surprised me was how much i like living here, to be honest. full disclosure, when i decided to do the piece, i moved away and 93 in my family still lives here. so a year never went by where he

didn't come back to visit at least a couple times. the idea of a real extended-stay, planting myself here. i wasn't sure how that would go. i had a life in new york, liked my life there. i kind of thought i would approach it is almost like a regular reporting gig come away with comment, work really hard for legal week, get every time done that needed done and then retreat back to new york for like four weeks. it didn't work out that way. i found myself spending more time in new york and making a lot of great friends and been inspired by things, you know, things like what you just mentioned, like the weekly thing. there's an interesting energy that it's hard to pitch your finger on, but does cooper,

quote through the book, she's not a native, the nature in the 80s and she's a longtime journalist and smart anchor about detroit. she talks about how detroit is the sort of place where people are doing things every day that you're not expected to do anywhere else. people come home from work and patrolling neighborhoods because their site every claiming the think that lots and turning them into gardens are concert venues. they're bored and i it houses. bible chapter in the book and i feel like that surprised me i guess, that the extent of that and how real and kind of inspirational that can be. >> some of the characters in your book are familiar

characters. characters we see written up all the time in reference to detroit. one of them is by rick akin, someone who lives not too far from me and where i grew up. i've read i don't know how many different things about tyree who i've met several times and talked to. this treatment was very different than anything else i have seen and i wanted to read just a couple drafts of how you captured him and talk more about it. at the end of this section it says guyton said he been pondering why he did what he did and how we got to this point in his life, waving his arms skyward again, he believed in a purpose for all of us. this guy didn't look strikingly beautiful this morning. about my silly to argue with her host. but we got to my car, everything was fine. a few blocks earlier, it doesn't have -- in front of our past.

we seem to all cry out at once. one so inclined, might have interpreted the moment is arguing something good. it's a really hopeful set of phrases that you put together around a guy who i'm not sure has ever seen described quite that way. >> is another thing i stumbled upon. he's definitely somebody who's been written about a lot. so i had kind of a list of those people who have wanted to reach out to come especially when i first arrived here, because i wasn't sure what the direction of the book would be. i somehow got an e-mail and his wife responded and said he doesn't do interviews unless he's paid now. i was like alright. i was hanging out these other people, this guy rich feldman, who is a longtime labor at this and works with grace bob, who is

a really interesting as well. really, mark read eastern part of the weather underground in the 60s and 70s happened to be in town doing a reading. so this guy rich was taking brought on a tour and and i tagged along and we ended up at the heidelberg project and tyree just happened to be there. i don't know, everything just seemed very weirdly fortuitous. i'd never talk to him before and he's very devout me kind of just out of the blue started asking us about god. we were standing on the street that was kind of left for dead when he reclaimed it in the 80s and he's turned into coming in now, really you could say an international tourist destination. he further any day during that we can see people all over. i don't know --

>> it's not guyton as celebrity in the book. it is guyton sa guy. >> he happened to pull up in his pickup truck and was checking out this flag he had just detached from one of the houses. i would much rather present a character come especially well-known character like that and that sort of setting, but the camera is slightly off kilter, rather than sit down and do a formal interview. they're going to have talking points to get the same story. >> i'm going to indulge myself here because i work at one of the newspapers. but she read a lot about press coverage of the city in the book and particularly local press coverage. the first-time user to visit this with the headlines about crime in the city. i think one of the tricks of

writing about detroit is not assuming it's one or the other. not assuming it's these things have not those, but that it's all of those things and trying to figure out how they'll coexist and fit together. i sigh you did a good job of something like murder, which we get a lot of coverage for and violence is a real presence in people's lives here. he did a good job of capturing how it is so surreal to you as an outsider, some of the headlines and things you see, but it's a very real presence also for people here. >> yeah, for sure. you're right. there were several aspects of the detroit story that been told so often and can be told in such a caricature way. i struggled with how to do with it myself because you can't just ignore it.

i think it was the detroit news that had to pull a recently, where 40% of detroiters said they wanted to move in the next for years that they could and crime is the number one reason. you can't tell the story honestly without reckoning with that kind of thing. but how to do it was tricky. i think telling the story to characters for me was the way to go. it's the kind of nonfiction writing i like to read. hearing it through carrot dirt rather than through statistics are experts or whatever. along the lines of crime, one example that just came to mind, john is here somewhere, but detroit blogger john -- there he is -- he took me to this weird

place, which is a whole other story called club thunderbolt. >> i want to talk about that a little later. we'll get back to that. >> the crime aspect of the story was this guy who lives in a rough neighborhood in detroit. were chitchatting one of us noticed a hole in his front door that had been crudely covered up with the board, like somebody had hammered a shot. i was like what happened and he said he been upstairs one night watching one no and heard somebody break and come assuming that there's a shotgun. this guy was heavily armed combat against taking out the back of his peers. he had a whole arsenal he showed it. so he runs downstairs, she's the guide to the door, have an infinity intentionally shut up because he didn't want to kill him and called a lease. took them four hours to get there. when they arrived, think they told them was aimed higher.

so it's very dark, but also, you know, a better way of illustrating the severity of what's going on here. >> sure. so let's talk about club thunderbolt. this came up on the web chat you had with us today. i saw that. john carla is one of the first people i met when i initially came here to report on the collapse of the auto industry for rolling stone gate i didn't know at that point is going to be about, but i started poking around and i found some blogs and just loved it. so it e-mailed him and he wrote back right away and ended up showing me around for that

story. but became friends and when i moved here, we would occasionally go out and he say i found this crazy spot. this spot was particularly -- this might've been the craziest. he's probably found something else, but it is the sky who is living at his parents house. they both died in this very rough neighborhood in detroit. he had been shot in the face as a kid, like a teenager may be, so he looked like he had a stroke. it was partially paralyzed, but he was a very strange, intense carrot or, like i said, heavily armed. the club part is that he turned his parents house into a strip club. so you had to call this number and if you went there come you end up in this house that is furnace -- furnished by a couple

in the late 1960s. it's like frozen in time in a creepy what him away, but then their strippers. so that was a weird night. [laughter] >> there was another part of the book, another passage in the book is struck me when you're writing that evangelist murders that have been on the east side an outsider was really interesting how you sort of drew a parallel to those murders and murders that it happened i think 80 years before in the same neighborhood. but then you talk about going to see the trial and i thought i would just read again a short passage to capture how you essentially right about us and how we deal with these things.

when i arrived at the quarterback frank murphy how i was surprised by the absence of any other journalist. i thought i pulled a bouldering turned out unnecessarily early. perhaps never even bothered with the first day. at a single reporter turned out for the duration of the trial. hickerson dismember what it erred in some small entries, but it is a crime was a quite extraordinary enough registry standards. what you have to do around here to get the name? essay make the big local crime story had been tollroad crew try to rob a suburban convenience store with a loaded gun. a real insight into the challenges we have, that anybody has coming here, taking it all in and trying to sort through what is important. >> i was a strange thing. you mentioned the murders and not was at one point i system in light of research on detroit

history and i came across this very sensational crime that happened in the 20th. account my attention because it involved italians and my parents are here. italian immigrants. at that time, this neighborhood very close to it those blues concerts are on the east side was very italian and there was this guy, he called himself any evangelist. his last name is evangelista. it was sort of a cult leader. there is some economic fate that he basically made up his own religion and wrote this really weird book called something like this secret history of the universe as revealed through a cult science in the troy, michigan, which i almost used for my title.

[laughter] so just to tell the story very quickly, he and his entire family were brutally, gruesomely murdered. they were beheaded and his children were killed as well and it was this big sensational story at the time. you can go through the free press archives and plan on this coverage. and it was never solved. at a certain point i realized it was not far from where i was living over in eastern market. so what to check it out for his house was is just a field now. i just kind of filed it away. weirdly enough, probably a year later, there was another murder, almost literally across the street. it was the drug thing and these kids were trying to scare -- two rival drug houses in this zone

and these two teenagers were trying to scare off their rivals and so to do this, i ended up killing them horribly dismembering this guy come in the this random guy and scattering audi parts around literally across the street from the southern murder. so i thought it can, i was like history repeating itself in a way that i found fascinating. as you say, i went to the trial. i don't normally cover murder trials. i don't have the etiquette. idea mike [laughter] i don't know if it's not cool to show up the first day, but i was the only one there to the point where the judge called me out of the china site who are you? he noticed me taking notes. it was very shocking to me that did not rise to the level of daily coverage.

>> i think that's a fair criticism. the reaction to the book has been, at least from my standpoint, just overwhelmingly stark and positive. i mean, you've got a lot of national attention for this book, but i don't see going to some other things people are doing around here. i wondered what you thought. did you expect he would have this kind of resonance nationwide? >> it's been great. i couldn't really hope for -- the coverage has been great so far, so i was really thrilled by that. i do suspect people would be interested, just paste in the totally out whenever i meet people not from detroit, the sort of general interest and be

sure you detroit still has the special mystique for people. i think in a way few other american cities have. a handful of cities, but i can't tell you how many times i tell people about the book were just a turn the area. you get this too because he lived in baltimore and other places. detroit i always meant to go there. what's it like? i don't know. there's a fascination. sometimes it's like a morbid kind of unseemly fascination. but i write in the book, over the course of my reporting and i'd be curious to see if you've agree, it's changed a little bit. the recession ground on and on, there came a point when it seems that people who are not from the short really wanted detroit to succeed. like it became almost like a horatio alger story, where you

want a street urchin to become the president of the bank. it was sick and inspirational story because people are looking at their own cities wherever they are, stockton, scranton, jefferson city. and then i look at detroit, with the reputation of the worst place who they think if detroit can make a comeback, we've got hope, too. the comeback narrative was willing capsule he did in a super bowl ad, really resonated in a way that shocked me. but it kind of makes sense. >> i think locally, like i said, i grew up in the 70s and 80s and left after college like you did and came back in 2007. i was more shocked that people were still talking about a comeback in 2007 because i can remember 1977, when i was in first grade on a field trip to

see them build the renaissance runner and the people leading the field trip telling us this was the beginning of detroit coming back. i was six-time. i am not six now. so that is a really resonant him. for those of us here, it's like all right. we be back. >> , they have there been since then? >> right. that sort of leads me to another passage that was really telling them the boat. for decades a succession of city officials have struggled mightily to rebrand detroit's battered image. the schemes included gambling, new ballparks, hosting a super bowl, even commissioning they are young mayor yemenite tuning fork, records who fled detroit for l.a. in the early 1970s,

taken the entire operation to a theme song for the city modeled after frank smashers theme for new york new york come a half years earlier. a black or member of the rat pack, sammy davis junior was conscripted to handle vocals but other detroit failed to burn up the charts. i do remember that. although we used to play it every morning one of the local radio stations. except in belgium where it reached number one. i didn't know that. but now much attention showered on detroit from the trendiest quarters came in no small measure thanks to the city's play. detroit spring had become authenticity and a key component have to do with the way this city look. fixing the very real problems faced by detroiters i began to wonder inevitably robbing detroit of some part of its essential detroit mess. three or four people in the last couple days have given the book

a read have come back and asked me about a specific last line and they're curious whether what you're saying is that our dysfunction is such a part of us that we can't afford to let it go, that we can't afford to lose it. a couple people were mad when they asked you about that. i said i don't know. so i'm asking you. >> there's actually not dysfunction, but i do think -- i don't know, i don't want to say a word about this because any development to detroit, people welcome mat. but a think about what it -- but the positive developments, especially you see stuff coming up in downtown. but what will that mean exactly? is bulldozing a bunch of those old things and putting up new

models like structures, some people would share that. in a way, why not. you've been driving past the same ratted outbuildings for decades. so you can't fault people for that. at the same time, i don't want detroit to look like houston or every other city basically accept a handful of cities. i guess i'm referring more to what i referred to earlier, the mystique that detroit has a basic new orleans and a handful of other cities as hard to push your finger on what makes that essential. you know, what components planned to that exactly. but it shows something to think about. >> to think of us have been detroit forget her together?

>> now, definitely get our act together, but it's more paving over history may be. i think that's what is he not completely. >> we should probably take some questions from the audience. if there are any. come on, folks. you've got to have questions. >> i write under the name martian music. i noticed that in your dialog with one another just a little bit ago, that you seem to me, both of you, and perhaps you've are based in a relationship with the media here to be trapped in some kind of the crimes were attacks that seem to be a rapid whole that those of you are going down because i have no doubt that this book probably has a great many more stories

other than the crime issue. do you find it to be very high to avoid that -- dotmatrix i've sorted the only interesting thing to say about the city? >> well, certainly i think there's lots of other interesting things about this city. but as someone who's lived here more time than anywhere else, i also say that crime is a very big part of our life here, no matter where you live, no matter who you are. i worry every day because some of you may be to pay for may know that my street lights have been out for a good long time. i worry about my wife and kids walking from garage to building every day because the lights are out and it's dangerous. so you can get too caught up in

it. it doesn't define my life, but it does give contour. it does shape decisions i make every day in the decisions i ask a wife and kids to make every day. but i certainly didn't mean to suggest that's the only thing that's interesting, either about the book, which is not about crime, but does give you a good sense of the role that crime plays here. abby imac >> i thought we did. >> autosave marcia is one of the stars of the book. we actually met funnily enough that a different path -- not a talk i was giving, but someone who is even a lecture on berlin's and we were discussing -- they were discussing the things you and i were just discussing. what do you want to preserve? who do not want to preserve?

and marcia asked a few provocative questions, so i introduced myself afterward and she kindly took me on this great driving to her of the city. as the note that within this weekend's "new york times" magazine with a longer version of the book. so i have plenty of reason the book were just not good people. [inaudible] >> i do the same tree, but i'm now back in detroit. i lived in brooklyn for a while. care to comment on similarities between brooklyn raised in an? >> i feel like an away detroit pistons will version of what they think they're doing.

[laughter] [applause] i mean, i have so many new yorkers tell me i want detroit. about to open a bakery, in our store, whatever. i say have ever been? it's not williamsburg. trust me. come visit first. i feel like i found a lot of fat, that sort of really positive coverage of detroit, particularly of the art scene and young bohemians coming in. it was kind of cool at first, they started grating on me a bit after a while. i feel that some of that was striven to people coming from places like brooklyn and fighting this place they could really romanticize. you know, living in a place like new york communally theo like

you missed the golden era of coming out, bohemian grittiness that people think they are looking for. but the east village in the 80s or whatever. i think detroit and a very superficial way came to represent that for some people. >> do you think that is a distraction from the real story here? are the real trajectory of the? >> all things considered, positive coverage about detroit is good. obviously it is annoying. detailed city story, where lake people under 30 will save detroit and everybody was white. officiously, really? so i think it's distortion were then distraction. all the stuff happening is great and exciting, but it's such a

tiny little pocket. [inaudible] >> by a defense pity that the question you ask me about this city that he could see detroit, that he literally could see detroit and is seeing detroit, what i really meant -- what they mean to say by that is he was able to see the totality of the people who live here because there's many ways in which particularly in this bible as he calls it at the newly developed midtown and downtown areas, there's a tendency to treat detroiters, native detroiters is invisible and i have been on a mission for some time to counter the invisibility of the actual

african-americans who make up the majority of the city. and i was very clear that he was not trying to do a positive story on detroit because just the triteness of that is offensive, too. but he was trying to do an objective and penetrating look at the city and cutting through some of the myths of the city and the new development because that has been mythologized as well. >> again, because you stick to stories, stories about real people who live here and i've been here a long time, the book really has that feeling of just saying what is that supposed to saying good or bad, or even what should the, which i've heard some of the interviewers then they try to lead you to some sort of analysis and where is

the city going, with the city's teacher? the book i thought did a very good job of restraining itself from that, which were getting a lot of from other places. [inaudible] rbi mark >> i just wanted to know how much of your book was really surrounding the music in history in and i'm really sad that she didn't ask me about my error. as a big part of that guy would mansion group, bob seger, hung out there every weekend. i just wanted to know about that. i understood in your blog that no one has hit a book about your next adventure.

[inaudible] >> the most loaded question i've heard. >> i do stand by that. there's a great biography. >> there have been books written about him. they are much more academic. i'm spilling beans that are not mine i suppose, but i know there are projects in the work to either do a biography or documentary. next year will have municipal elections. it will be 20 years since he stepped down. so that's sort of a good time to pitch to people to get money to do it. maybe someday. >> good, good. as for the music stuff, it's partly why i had to leave detroit to actually write the

book because part of me wanted to read every book about detroit. i could've done a whole book about the music, a whole book about coleman young. so sorry to disappoint you, there's not that much music in the boat. there's a little bit about detroit techno music because i ended up living on this block where they basically invented techno music, so that was another story has stumbled onto. i talked to older guys around, talked the last surviving people , but i do a lot of music writing for "rolling stone" and i just wanted to do something different with this one. >> is there a single character in your book does more inspirational than any other?

[inaudible] more inspirational than any other. that's a good question. i thought the firefighters that i spent time with in highland park -- i spent time with these firefighters in highland park who was literally operating on applicable chrysler warehouse. their firehouse had been condemned like five years earlier. some of the guys were sleeping in tents because they spend three days they are at a time. they had so few walkie-talkies that they would communicate with hand signals that the fires. it was insane what they were doing. but they're really dedicated. i would say maybe those guys. >> hi, how are you doing? >> pleasure to meet you -- very honored to meet you.

your son spoke very highly of you. do you think detroit is suffering from what i think this payment is suffering from, this specialness, this need for specialness on the planet earth in the sense that detroit is a claim specialness in an unusual way the mess they grasp to claim that, that's where a lot of a lot of dysfunction happens. in fact, the whole planet has a whole dysfunctional relationship to specialness. like my family claimed that specialness. >> a direct descendent of the same mounting family, one of the original french settlers of detroit. so the streets on that side,

with french sounding names for the original birthing farms owned by the founders, the first settlers of detroit. i just found you on the internet somehow. and weirdly, you knew my brother's wife's family. but i'm not totally following the question i guess. >> i guess what i'm saying is there's a claim to specialness that detroit seems to have. everybody i think that's in a certain way, shape or form. tel aviv thinks they're special. wherever you go, there's a specialness. detroit has a unique relationship in specialness than other cities do. for example, san antonio thinks they're special because this come about or anything. and this city is a unique claim

to specialness in a way that i think no one else can relate to because as we keep getting all these errors had not disrupted student banks, we find a specialness even in that. >> i think that's one of the things that attract me to writing about detroit even before writing this book was this one of the great stories -- american stories of the 20th century. if you think about the epic rise of the city from what came out of it, you know, basically modern life in the 20th century. consumer culture, the middle class, it changed everything. that rise in the fall, the way of so also said so much about the top things of american culture. yeah, i think that is special.

>> the reason i ask is because it was funny to me when i was a kid, when they landed on the moon, when you look at the united states is what thing that stands out is michigander and i can say salt mines that people don't even recognize. we have in our family, boxes and boxes of documents signed by pontiac and all these people. this river is very unique, separating two countries and a very unique way. we talk about the arsenal of democracy. i don't know if this country would've won world war ii without the city. >> talking about the specialness fire, now defaulting in a way that there's a lot more things to be proud about, not to crying, not any of this, but specialness in the wrong areas.

been 61 i grew up in woodstock, the whole thing. it was like wonderful in the city. i haven't read the book. i'm anxious to read it. >> thank you. the only other thing i'll say someone mentioned to me once something about the soul. i'm trying to buy what he said, but because there's so much it created some positive energy your positive and negative energy. this guy was a druggie, strange character. but there might be something special about this all. and it's going to throw it out there. >> temperature more questions. >> i guess i want to follow up in the attached on a couple of these things, but just the idea that detroit may be more than

any other place is a product of the 20th century and responsible for all these things we sort of assume that relate to, whether it's generational or not, we are at this place, it kind of behavior we have other stuff,, the remnants, the baggage and you can talk about that in a lot of ways. but where does that kind of leave us? what do you sort of see in terms of detroit 100 years from now -- [inaudible] i'm not asking for a prescription. it's more like here we are, kind of had this big? i'm not asking you to paint a picture as much a sort of lake wonderware status what it is -- why we are here.

why many of us sort of get up in the morning. >> yeah, i think that's a good question. we talked a little bit about this earlier, the idea of my fear of bulldozing and paving over some of that history. i think you and i might have talked about this once. frances is another person i interviewed at the boat. he's been active in the preservation movement here. the industrial history of detroit is, you know, it is a significant part of 20th century american history. the way that we look back, preserved, you know, some of the ruins in rome and greece. so i don't think we want to lose that.

as far as what it becomes, i have no idea. [inaudible] my question is, you know, i love detroit. and from here he moved back. i'm in love with the city still. everyday i find something about the city that i just fall in love with. i actually live in the city and not outside the city, so i can say a lot about the city. so my question is what neighborhood or area did you find this fascinating? this is either the caller or the bombshell. you have to go there like the next day.

>> our street, you know, this is another weird moment of serendipity. i was looking for a semi-furnished apartment, found an ad on craigslist in a different team basically the single block, service street, not far from where you grew up. [inaudible] >> that names the data service street. totally different story. >> there were some shops back there. my father is retired now, based to make deliveries to the butcher shops there. >> for people living there back then? >> i don't think so. the business owners on the street didn't want me and my friends doing what we were doing there. >> is changed even in the four

years since i went to that place. when i first arrived, it felt like the best possible version of what i thought detroit could be. issue such a vibrant ask of people. you know, a personal chef. there was djs and john sinclair was around a lot. rock history. ron scott, whose degree of local care your found at the local chapter of the black answers back then. so just a wild mix of people in such a tight community. so that is one neighborhood, even though it's just a single block, that i would point to. [inaudible] >> yeah right, there was a fire pit people would hang out at. this is an eastern market.

the other neighborhood i say, which we talked about a bit, the part of the eastside, very populated part of the eastside was still has interesting pockets of people doing things. farnsworth street is just a single block, basically one type up a bunch of the houses that it's almost like this hippie commune do you see other people who kind of nx pr is all the ground that it put up these big fences and put this crazy italian statute area and have like a quadruple sized yard. so i don't know, bad things happen there, too, like these drug mergers. but that is a neighborhood i kept going to again and again. >> i'm going to ask the last question. it's about the title, which i think it's a great title, but i

think when you say detroit companies to detroit. if you say detroit city of detroit city. have you had to explain that to people? >> i don't really know how to explain it, but i say it that way and people always remark. >> so how did you come up with? >> is from a song. vicious about the motor city madhouse, yeah. it just felt appropriate for this moment. we touched on this during the talk, just as camino, and he treats her trendiness right now. postrecession it did seem to become the place to be for all sorts of reasons. people wanting to fix it, people wanting to come up with these urban realignment plans. people wanting to take pictures of the ruins. for whatever reason, it seems

like a special moment. it just felt right. >> lancelot, mark. >> thank you. [applause] >> for more information, visit the author's website, mark binelli.com. >> hopkins could read the president's news unlike anyone else. he came this close to anyone to gaining admittance into what robert sherwood called roosevelts heavily forested interior. unlike mrs. roosevelt, he knew when to be still in the presence of the president, went to price

had, when to back off until the joke. after he won the election, wendell wilkie who he beat us in his office. they remained friends. he said to the president, why do you keep have been so close to? that man being hopkins. wilkie did not like hopkins and roosevelt said, you know, you may be in the south is sunday you'll understand. but he asks for nothing except to serve me. ..