Being From Detroit means...

[FrodosPet]

People will fear you. People will loathe you. Everyone will remind you that their hometown, regardless of how bad, is safer and cleaner than your hometown.

Your life is cold and grey, with minor times of optimism, followed by the long dark cold winter of despair.

You are living in an economic depression that started in 1967 and will end when the earth is a cinder.

If you are from Detroit, your life sucks, and always will.

[ffr]

1. Cold!

[TDale313]

2. I second that...

and add a Happy for my Giants but nothin but love for Detroit.

[RandySF]

3. That's why I moved out.

[limpyhobbler]

4. Is it really that bad?

[tama]

5. If you want good and healthy local organic food

Detroit is the place to live!

In Detroit, 400 or 500 new community gardens have started over the past 10 years. Almost all of them are communal. Ashley Atkinson, director of Urban Agriculture and Open Space for a nonprofit called The Greening of Detroit, says people meet their neighbors at the gardens. "That's really, really, beneficial in a city like Detroit, where neighbors are more and more isolated, as crime goes up and people feel less safe. It's important for people to be outside getting to know each other, particularly elders and young people," she says.

Right outside Detroit, meanwhile, in the city of Grosse Pointe Park, Betsy Fortuna helped start two gardens called Grayton Gardens and Backyard Community Garden, where everyone works together and all the members can pick vegetables pretty much whenever they want.

Despite all the annoyances of community — "You know. It brings up a lot of almost childhood stuff — you know, 'He took more than me!' " — Fortuna says it's completely worth it: "It really was a blighted corner, and now there's action there, there's neighbors helping neighbors, people getting each other jobs, and all kinds of good things."

Just knowing everybody, she says — knowing that if she needs something she can go ask anybody on the street: It changes everything.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/03/20/148999066/at-the-community-garden-its-community-thats-the-hard-part
http://www.motherearthnews.com/city-farming/urban-roots-detroit-zb0z11zkon.aspx

[Festivito]

6. .. you might not have that right.

Downtown is being bought back and undergoing expensive refurbishing.

Shipping and midwest mineral won't be coming back strong. But, we do have water, good water and lots of it, extensive infrastructure, the busiest waterway in the world, and a somewhat entrenched auto industry.

We won't be going back to the height of our past glory, but it will not be the ridiculously dismal review you give.

And, where I live, near the edge of Detroit is where EMS people love to live. Sure, deeper in the city are poor areas where kids go unmonitored by their dissonant parents, but its the same story in the rich areas outside the city. EMS wagons can left open in my area. Not so in the poor areas, not so in the rich areas.

The season is changing. My only complaint is that it doesn't get cold enough anymore.

Have a good winter, wherever you reside.

[upi402]

7. hey, ya beat the Seahawks today

chin up! at least CNN isn't headquartered there. could be worse.