After breakfast at a coffee shop on Woodward Avenue in some suburb, we headed into Detroit. It’d been eight years since my last visit, and I was without a tour guide this trip, so I fear I may have been too nervous to show Mark any of the really heavy-duty decay. It is, however, still there, if a little harder to find because of “gentrification” downtown and demolition elsewhere.

To make things more interesting, we just happened to arrive the day the first game of the World Series was being played in the new Comerica Stadium downtown, so the whole area seemed disorientingly occupied.

The Book-Cadillac Hotel is apparently being converted into condos. I’ll believe it when I see it. While there seems to be a lot of money flowing into downtown Detroit right now, I have my doubts that it will stick, or that it will even continue flowing. It all seems a little forced to me.

   

There’s even a Borders downtown now in the Compuware Center, a new building in the middle of a sea of abandoned skyscrapers dating from the 1920s to the 1970s. It has a nice parking garage where we were able to get some great pictures — and park for free.

 

After downtown, we drove out Michigan Avenue to Dearborn and circled back across the northern border, covering the whole length of 8-Mile Road. I made my annual pilgrimage to whatever A&P-owned store I was near (Farmer Jack in this case) to pick up some Jane Parker fruitcakes for my uncle.

Back in Detroit, we visited what was left of Brush Park, an amazing area of Victorian mansions which was in serious decay ten years ago, and is now almost nonexistant. Apparently, whichever houses can be rehabbed are being rehabbed, but there’s just not much left to work with.

We did some more driving in the evening before having dinner at an Olive Garden in Dearborn.

As luck would have it, the day dawned sunny, which finally allowed me to take some decent photos.

Morning brought a southbound tour of Western Avenue, a stop in The Loop, a northbound tour of Lincoln Avenue, and then a southbound exit from the city just as rush hour was beginning. We departed via Lakeshore Drive and through a relatively safe chunk of the south side. I’d love to see more of the southside, but with a guide who knows his way around.

I realized upon leaving Chicago that most of my best stuff was shot on video as we drove through the never-ending commercial strips and neighborhoods of the city. One of the things I love most about Chicago (and one that’s hard to capture with a still camera) is the very “old meets new” texture of the city, where a hundred-year-old streetcar strip may very well contain a 1970s shopping center with a Kmart (or a Googie coffee shop or a motel) in its midst. The whole city has grown organically rather than by way of a master plan, and it’s urban in a way that most “new urban” complexes can never be.

Anyway, our drive from Chicago to Detroit was pretty uneventful. I’m pretty sure we ate someplace, but I have no idea where.

 

After finding just the right spot for car repairs in Skokie, dropping it off, and navigating the miserable suburban transit back to a El station, we headed south to Standee’s for breakfast. I’d been wanting to eat there since we first saw the place a few days before. It’s a classic “joint” in the purest sense of the world, run-down and home to a rather colorful cast of characters, good food, and cheap prices.

We killed a little more time in our own neighborhood, finding a passably good used bookstore, and finally were able to pick up the car and dispose of several hundred bucks for the new brakes.

  

We drove around the northern suburbs a bit, noting happily that they pretty much all seemed to date from between 1940 and 1960. And then it was off to Superdawg for hot dogs, followed by a Milwaukee Avenue tour, ending in a nighttime drive through The Loop.

  

   

The rain continued, making me wonder if there would be a single day on this trip where I could take photos without a gray sky. Normally, I love rain and gray and gloom, but not when I want to take pictures, dammit.

Anyway, we took the El back to River North this morning in search of Portillo’s. I love the El; it gives a great view of Chicago’s backyard, which is strangely appealing. Portillo’s italian beef was pretty good too. We also stopped into the biggest freaking McDonald’s in the world across the street. It had an escalator. Set your expectations accordingly.

 

At some point this afternoon, the annoying brake chime (the one that alerts you that the emergency brake is on) started going off constantly. It never really got any better. We headed north that night, into Evanston and Skokie and Des Plaines in search of pizza and car repair places.

  

We found our pizza at a bowling alley. It was good. The chime was still going when we got home. I began to suspect there was something amiss.

Breakfast at the Golden Nugget is a good thing. We did Clark Street and parts of Broadway before driving the length of North Avenue to the western suburbs, on the advice of Rae and Rob. It was a good way to get a sort of “big picture” experience. It also allowed us to hit a suburban Target for some necessities.

    

On the way back in, we stopped at the Sears Tower and looked out from the 110th (0r 109th or whatever) floor, which is about as high up as you can get in a building in the United States. It was pretty cool, and I called my mom from up there, since it was her birthday. Predictably, the call was dropped midway through. That seems to happen a lot in Chicago.

  

We circled back to the motel in order to get showered and ready for dinner at Moto.

Moto is definitely an experience. What could be a very pretentious place gets marks for not taking itself too seriously. The food was interesting, based as it was on assorted chemical reactions, etc. In observance of pizza night, there was a pizza soup served. And we got a tour of the kitchen and its lasers, I’ll leave the actual specific review to my hubby, though; I’m better at deconstructing diners.