Hot Fun in the Summertime in Detroit
Yes Pathing Through the Motor City
A good friend and I realized that after 20 years of friendship, we had never gone on a trip just the two of us. She’s in Cali, I’m in Texas and deciding on a location to meet up felt like picking a meal at a diner with a 10 page menu showing all the photos of the plates – overwhelming.
On a whim I texted her one night “what about Detroit?”. She replied almost immediately that the Midwest was on her mind too and the choice was finally decided. Everyone I told about my upcoming trip (other than my sister who gives me FOMO every year with her trips to the lakes in Detroit) had the same reaction “Detroit?” with a smidge of a side eye.
With only an AirBnB booked and a smile, we headed to the motor city. I like to joke that you could send me to motel in Mexia and I’d get into some noteworthy fun so I had no doubt that this trip was going to be one for the books. That said, the sights and adventures we had over a long weekend in June have me seriously considering this trip an annual pilgrimage.
After we touched down, we did my favorite thing to do on my travels – got lost. I highly recommend wandering around the streets of downtown Detroit and helping yourself to a lobby visit of a stunning historic skyscraper. If you think the cornices, moldings and sculpted figures on the top of the buildings are cool, you won’t believe the surprises you’ll see inside.
One of the buildings that caught my eye was the Detroit Club. Turns out it is the city’s oldest social clubs and has been a place for people to spend hours and hours since 1882. We knew it was meant to be when we found a vintage Scrabble board in the Library Bar. It’s our tradition to play every visit so we found the coziest table and couches and preceded to camp out. Our waiter would come by and check our tiles declaring every visit that we were missing a gamechanger word. Found out later he thought CO was a two word Scrabble play – amateur! But hey, I don’t require my server to be a word expert and his service and patience with us taking up space all morning was greatly appreciated.
After getting my ass handed to me in that game, we headed out and jumped on the People Mover. This free, air-conditioned and above-ground train loops around downtown and is a fun way to see the city. It was sold out but next time I want to go on a tour led by the Detroit Historical Society that talks about all of the art at the different stations. There were some great mosaics, paintings and sculptures to see as you were moving around town.
Another way to wander is by bike and I would say the most unexpected sensory experience in Detroit was feeling like I was on the beach. Riding bikes along the Riverwalk with the sounds of water lapping against the seawall (What is a seawall on a river? Riverwall? Wonderwall? I digress…) and over the bridge to Belle Isle for a swim felt downright coastal. And on a hot summer day, that Detroit River felt like Barton Springs in Austin – glorious. Added bonus is the Detroit Skyline as a backdrop to the swim. I’m grateful my travel compadre is a green thumb and insisted on a visit to the greenhouse and botanical gardens on the island. I saw some of the craziest fauna and flora and love the juxtaposition of the colors and textures vs what my mind had expected for Detroit – dark and industrial.
So after a day of taking in the city above street level, it was time to head underground after dark and boy howdy did it deliver. If you aren’t finding yourself in basement bars and speakeasys on a visit to Detroit, you need to get your priorities straight. I feel like the city makes you work for it and I appreciate that. You want a city to handhold and chaperone your adventure? Best head to Ft. Worth or somewhere with wayfinding and guides. Here you gotta do some digging and talk to randos in alleys who are probably ghosts and will reappear several times over 3 days getting you access to spaces because “you know Christina”.
Speaking of randos, I’m not sure how or why but everyone was stupid nice. When we found ourselves in a neon dance hall in a basement in an alley, they welcomed us like we belonged and let me tell you – we did not. We were not dressed for it (I had sandals on!), not the appropriate age for it nor did we know the line dances everyone danced along to the songs to. Nonetheless, locals tried and failed at teaching us the dances and made me feel cooler than I am beyond belief.
Ability to stay on the yes path isn’t easy. It sometimes required walking down stinky alleys to find a door with an eye on it. Other times, it meant squeezing into a postage-stamp sized room and sharing a barstool to be served. My favorite was going through a bar, continuing down a hall and through a thick velvet curtain to find a guy behind a piano providing music to a gal signing karaoke and leading a full-on crowd sing along to Motown songs at 2am.
The yes path (that feeling when you feel like everything is laying out perfectly for you. I think Matthew McConaughey calls it Green Lights) also lead to some super swank too. On the People Mover we noticed a lot of the signage was in Arabic. While I don’t read Arabic, what those signs meant to me is that Middle Eastern food is what was for dinner. After some Googling, we snagged a table at a super fly place that served noshes of flavors, colors and textures I had never had before. “Fairy floss” on a sundae with pistachios made me like cotton candy for the first time.
Ever walked into a building and for no reason feel like crying? It hasn’t happened many times in my life but it happened to me at the Motown Museum. We weren’t even hell bent on going to the museum but the day and schedule allowed so it became more of a ‘Why Not” outing. In my days working in and for historic buildings, people would talk about structures having energy. Like the experiences and people they have housed left imprints. It's woo woo and I’m not one to give too much symbolism to orbs in photos but it’s the only explanation I have for this moment at Hitsville USA. The tour was quick moving, chock full of anecdotes from the guide and best of all featured a walkthrough of a perfectly kept time capsule. You even have the chance to put a dime on the candy machine as was done by musicians decades ago. Story goes that little Stevie Wonder was a pre-teen when he first started recording there and people would leave him dimes so he could get his favorite candy bar (Baby Ruth). If that wasn’t cool enough, we had the chance encounter to meet Bunny DeBarge of THAT band from the 80’s DeBarge. That woman is pure gold and I flew through her memoir on the flight home.
The people, the celebrities, the food – all of Detroit was delightful. I feel like Detroit has a stereotype of being ‘hard’ but that just wasn’t my experience at all. And if you have a different kind of time, you just weren’t on the Yes Path and that’s your fault.
