Big Dee

This post is wildly overdue. I was in Detroit just before Christmas, visiting my best bud, and this is a collection of images from my trip. I ended up working through the whole visit, like a terrible, horrible friend, but we eked out some nice meals and some adventures in between my homework. As the first stop of my three week stint in the Midwest, I still found the freeze and snow a bit romantic, through the window of Jacob's bedroom say, though it made exploring a little painful. So in lieu of walking around the city, we had a few nice drives and some tasty comfort food and some really smooth Polish vodka. These photos are linked in series, only in that I experienced them all over the course of my time in Motor City.

I was pretty self-conscious about taking photos of Detroit's well-publicized blight, though some of these are that. Instead, Detroit reminded me of the other industrious centers I've seen nearby--Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, Indianapolis and I imagine Cincinatti, Pittsburgh even. They are proud, amidst depression; hard but bright; working, if fairly unemployed. Sure, they're frayed and fraying, especially in comparison with the younger, more lovable coastal metropolises, but there is a latent might in their skylines that nods to their devoutly American past, referring without saying, to the memory of what used to be.

Even covered in ice and slushy snow, I'd find Detroit catching the breath up in my throat. It may have been a sort of surprise at finding unexpectedly, an optimism. Five days just wasn't enough.

Twinkle

It may seem funny to talk about Christmas in February, but sometimes, that's just how things have a way of working out. Houston has some funny traditions in the holiday decoration department. The 'Bandage + Snakes', shown here, is a general style of stringing up white lights that seems to be all the rage among the Houston fancy schmancy. The oak trees get covered in a dense wrap, and then sparser strands are left to dangle from branches, as though reptilian predators. For the record, this same technique was applied equally to the huge palm trees out near the mall here too. It's pretty, but bizarre. And this coming from a Christmas junkie.





You shoulda seen my neighborhood around Halloween. We are talking Giant. Glowing. Spiders. Stuck. On. Mansions. Houston is Ridic(ulous).