Observation: The Ruins of Detroit

Many areas within and around Detroit, Michigan are ruins. A century ago, after Henry Ford invented motor vehicle mass production, Detroit, Michigan became one of America's "gold rush" economy cities. Detroit rose to prominence not long after America's so called gilded age. As a result, early twentieth century Detroit, Michigan became home to opulent corporate offices, hotels, theaters, train stations, and architectural grandeur in general. Nearly all of Detroit's opulence is gone now. Nearly all of Detroit's geographical, economic, and architectural, greatness from a century ago appears gone now, even in literal ruins. Is there any other city in the USA where ruins exist on the scale that ruins exist in Detroit, Michigan?

A man named Reggie, who's Youtube channel was originally entitled Reggie Inkognito (sic), gained visibility during the 2020 racial justice protest when Reggie braved the burning streets in some of America's biggest cities, including Los Angeles, Louisville, KY, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia, PA, as he sometimes live streamed the political mayhem and blazing carnage. More recently, Reggie has rename his Youtube channel Regg Life and has turned to creating chronicles of the ruinous states of many Detroit area neighborhoods.

"Highland Park Michigan's Ruins"

Having spent late childhood growing up in affluent southwestern Michigan exurbia, back then driving into the big city on the weekend was a staple aspect of the teenage life there. Among its many memorable aspects were fantastic rock music concert at the gilded age Eastown Theater in east Detroit. The historic Eastown Theater, first opened in 1931 as a grand, 2,500 seat, movie cinema house, with a balcony, was later abandoned and left to become a ruin. As a rock concert venue in the late 1960s and early 1970s, during Eastown Theater's second life as a rock concert hall, the Eastown Theater presented some of the most historic rock music concerts of the classic Rock Band era. Memorable for a lifetime was the night that Emerson Lake and Palmer played for three (3) hours straight, late into the night, as Keith Emerson gave a virtuoso exposition of live performance on the Moog synthesizer, Hammond B3 organ, and Fender Rhodes electric piano. That night was one of many Rock Band era rock music concerts that Eastown Theater audiences of that era will remember vividly throughout their lives. The Eastown Theater is gone now, first left to become a ruin, then nearly destroyed by fire, and finally demolished in 2015. Like much of what was once a grand Detroit, Michigan that even includes a street called Grand Avenue, the Eastown Theater is emblematic of Detroit Michigan's fall from economic and cultural grace. America's current gold rush economy cities, San Francisco and the Bay Area around it, Seattle and its east suburbs, as well as others, may want to take notice that a place experiencing a population surge, real estate price hyper-inflation, and what seems like a socio-economic feeding frenzy, could one day get left behind by the next technological evolution to arrive, abandoned like myspace for facebook and twitter as they arrived to take its place.

In the Youtube video below by Reggie, on his Regg Life channel, drive's regularly through ruined neighborhoods in, near and around Detroit, Michigan, publishing videos of the ruins there. Among the bizarre aspects of the ruins is that some houses, once single family housing for Detroit Motown era unionized motor vehicle manufacturing, remain occupied, even with entire blocks of houses around them torn down, and other houses nearby left standing, decayed, boarded up ruins. What other cities in the United States contain areas that look anything like the ruins of Detroit, Michigan, except for a few small towns in east Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania that remain as remnants of America's long lost steel industry?

The ruins of Detroit extend for miles around Detroit, Michigan, including the small land locked cities trapped inside the geographical boundaries of Detroit, such as Highland Park, MI, Hamtramck, MI, and others.

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