Lost Detroit

[jmcgliss]

This is hard to look at, but also hard not to look. Being a Realtor has taken me into the "hard times" sections of Chicago, but nothing like this. Along with the demise of Detroit go the fortunes of many small towns where suppliers churned out bearings and components but may have lacked to capital to transform manufacturing methods or even find an offshore partner. 

On the flip side, there must be cities that have found new used for old architecture, alongside newer buildings. Milwaukee comes to mind.

[Barklessdog]

A lot of cities you go to you see where at one point they tried to revitalize them but ultimately failed. Dallas, Indianapolis & Cleveland come to mind. Hopefully this is not a growing trend.

[Lightyear]

A lot of cities you go to you see where at one point they tried to revitalize them but ultimately failed. Dallas, Indianapolis & Cleveland come to mind. Hopefully this is not a growing trend.

Dallas??? 

[eb2]

just in case I run into any unsavory types.

In Detroit?  Never.

Dallas isn't bad.  I would compare it to San Francisco really - a few run-down areas with lots of reprobates wandering around, and lots of money and nice stuff around it.  I think that most of the older US "downtowns" have got the same problem - no one wants or needs to go there anymore to shop or visit doctors like they used to.  The local governments tend to want to soak business for revenue so the smaller and medium sized ones that would have rented office space can and do go to suburban office parks.  The outlying housing tends to get run-down.  The concept is 19th century, and it takes creativity to sell the idea now.  Most do not.  Some do. 

[Denis]

A lot of cities you go to you see where at one point they tried to revitalize them but ultimately failed. Dallas, Indianapolis & Cleveland come to mind. Hopefully this is not a growing trend.

Every year I stay at a friend's house in Indianapolis (near downtown) and am impressed at what I see. Lots of places are getting renovated and sure, there some crappy areas, but overall I would say they are making progress.

[nofi]

if they don't clean it up wolves will move in and eat everyone. old gregory hines movie.

[Barklessdog]

When I went to Indie, Dallas & Cleveland it was not so much turning into ghetto but more like failed new development areas. Although I was just in Dallas (yesterday) and was told that Dallas is actually doing pretty well compared to the rest of the US. Still, our favorite Mexican Resteraunt was gone (The Cadillac on Market Street). I will no longer be going to Dallas now.

[gweimer]

The first time I ever went to San Jose (about 1995), downtown was depressing.  At least half the shops were closed, and there was such a big crime problem that there were cops in the door of every club, and they were doing random street searches.  Six years later, it had come around quite a bit.  Not that I found anything more interesting to do in San Jose than go to the Winchester Mansion and eat at Gordon Biersch.   

[uwe]

Following on from the 1954 book I am Legend Vincent Price starred in 1964 in The last man on earth. Same kind of scennario. Virus escapes, turns ppl into Zombies, Star has to exist is a world of zombies while he works out how to escape or find a cure for said virus........sound familiar? 

Thanks, that is interesting. I had no idea that the Omega Man had a predecessor.




So "I am Legend" (the Will Smith movie), which I was hugely disappointed of as it dumbed down the anit-civilisationist hordes to zombie status and lacked all the political overtones of the Heston version, is perhaps more a remake of the Vincent Price than the Heston movie.


Re Detroit, I was there first and last time in 1981. My first American city at the time. Back then, the American dream in the shape of an autoworker having a house in a nice neighborhood and enough money to afford a boat, four cars (for himself, his wife and the two children) plus the kids' college education at Ann Arbor was coming to an end. The neighborhoods were beginning to deteriorate, the infrastructure began to look shabby, yet people were still desperately holding on to that dream. I have a soft spot for Detroit as a city since then.

But you could still see that it had once been the proud workers neighborhood through which in the fifties and sixties the State Department would deliberately guide Russian diplomats and state visitors in their limos to rub in on them how much better an American auto worker lived than his Russian counterpart.

[Freuds_Cat]

So "I am Legend" (the Will Smith movie), which I was hugely disappointed of as it dumbed down the anit-civilisationist hordes to zombie status and lacked all the political overtones of the Heston version, is perhaps more a remake of the Vincent Price than the Heston movie.

George A. Romero says that  Night of the Living Dead was "basically rippeded off from a Richard Matheson novel called I Am Legend."

[uwe]

In the Omega-Man there is a fine dialogue between the leader of the hooded hordes, Matthias, and Heston, where Matthias explains his ideology which was in essence: "Any type of technological progress is evil as it brought us into this apocalyptic scenario in the first place, we will never ever allow it". He wants to see what remains of humanity locked in a constant dark age and has fundamentalist religious fervour about it, in a way he's a Taliban. And he has a motive that transcends the "kill to eat" mono-mindedness of the zombies in the other films and that is fear of change.

[Pilgrim]

That was a fine role for Anthony Zerbe, an excellent character actor.