Detroit Gothic: it must be time to complain about it

Ah, Detroit:

"I don’t know why you’d want to be in China or in Russia, because it’s happening here. We’re in the center of the empire right now, and here’s where you can see the collapse of the empire starting.”

Vice complains about reporters ruin-trawling Detroit.  It's works for a little while, then collapses as it tries to find balance, or even good things.  Like mocking foreign reporters who can't find the bad things they were looking for, but then mentioning

the Dutch crew who decided to go explore the old project tower where Smokey Robinson grew up and promptly got jacked for their thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment.

See?  The city isn't abandoned.  It has enough population to support a healthy level of crime!

Or Vice mocks visitors who think some buildings fell into ruin recently, not knowing they were Gothicized years ago..  For example, the classic Detroit train station "was shut down back in the 80s, not because of any of the recent crap" - ah, that makes it all better.  Say, wasn't that during the big auto crash?

Yes, it's important to see Detroit as something other than ruins.  Social and historical content is crucial.  Which isn't news, Vice.

PS: Detroit unemployment broke 17%.  Which seems low to me.

Comments

[Dave Cushing]

Even before the '67 riots the century-old mansions & lesser dwellings were naturally decaying. July 21st 1967 race relations were lauded as among the best in the country! Every white boy except Ted Nugent realized one was part black, and a liberal in race relations. What's Gothic about Detroit is that it suddenly became haunted, "the shunned house", of murders & Martial Law, by Sunday July 30th 1967. Neat Gothic prehistory of Detroit: the Afghani Wallace Fard's "Secret Rituals of the Nation of Islam" was implicated in a Nov. 1932 ritual murder, & he was run out of town.

[Tanya]

17% is for the Detroit-Warren-Livonia "metropolitan area". City of Detroit unemployment is nearly 29%, per this Detroit Free Press article.

[Steven Kaye]

I refuse to believe it's truly Gothic until there are Nain Rouge sightings.

[Bryan Alexander]

Good points, @Dave Cushing. But that historical reach is crucial for Gothic spaces. Think of castles, abandoned forts in the European tradition; empty houses in the speedy American one.
Got sources for the Fard story?

Sadly all too true, @Tanya. Again, while the country hits recession, Detroit does depression.

That's a call to action, @Steven Kaye.
(And I misread it twice: first as "Jain Rouge", which is very wrong; then as "River Rouge", which is very right).