Think that Detroit is a bombed out wasteland of rusting factories, abandoned houses and shiftless youths patrolling the streets wearing football gear bedazzled with feathers? Well according to a New York Times article straight from the Detroit Chamber of Commerce you’re half right.
Recent census figures show that Detroit’s overall population shrank by 25 percent in the last 10 years. But another figure tells a different and more intriguing story: During the same time period, downtown Detroit experienced a 59 percent increase in the number of college-educated residents under the age of 35, nearly 30 percent more than two-thirds of the nation’s 51 largest cities.
Apparently, the ultimate hipster paradise. It’s got it all: cheap housing, abandoned buildings, intractable social problems, a zip code that’ll piss off their parents and buckets of ennui! I haven’t heard of a city with this much potential since Beruit, 1982!
These days the word “movement” is often heard to describe the influx of socially aware hipsters and artists now roaming the streets of Detroit. Not unlike Berlin, which was revitalized in the 1990s by young artists migrating there for the cheap studio space, Detroit may have this new generation of what city leaders are calling “creatives” to thank if it comes through its transition from a one-industry.
What’s not to love? Already the hipsters are moving in and bringing with them all the signs of a neighborhood on the way up to being Silverlake in the midwest. Get some acoustic folk bands in there and some neon green fixed gear bikes and you’re all set!
With these new residents have come the trappings of a thriving youth culture: trendy bars and restaurants that have brought pedestrians back to once-empty streets. Places like the Grand Trunk pub, Raw Cafe, Le Petit Zinc and Avalon Bakery mingle with shops with names like City Bird, Sole Sisters and the Bureau of Urban Living.
The only problem is the hipster’s dilemma: that the very presence of hipsters creates conditions that allows for the natural enemy of the hipster - Gentrification - which allows the unhip element to enter.
Those familiar with past neighborhoods-of-the-moment recognize the mood. “It feels like TriBeCa back in the early days, before double strollers, sidewalk cafes and Whole Foods,” said Amy Moore, 50, a film producer working on three Detroit projects. “There is a buzz here that is real, and the kids drip with talent and commitment, and aren’t spoiled.”
Sure, it feels like Tribeca back in the early days but just wait until all those hip kids start to have hip kids. Then everyone will ring their hands and reminisce about how great it was back when the police wouldn’t come to your neighborhood because it was too dangerous, you know the good old days.
