Side of building.

More to come with some posts later. I have some things to do for now.

How many shots can you take before it's time to move on.

So I'm rushing back to my car to get the camcorder

This time I look down as I'm walking. I'm more aware of what is not around and threatening. So I'm watching where I'm walking. A bit surprised and wondering if I would have spotted this on my walk toward the building. I didn't remember seeing this and was glad to have avoided walking into this on the way there.

So many angles and not much time to shoot.

I don't think this would pass OSHA now.

Much of the roof gone. The wind whipping through the structure, the faint sound of a fan blade turning in the wind. Where's my video camera?

Here's another wide shot

This one from the street. There was nobody around, except a guy walking down the street with a garbage bag, but I didn't see him until later when I was in this lot.

Stopping at a Former GM facility

Now claimed by gang graphic artists I suppose. There was a big hardly every used parking lot next to it. I didn't realize this was likely part of this same property. Maybe because I was in a hurry to get to Mexican Town to meet up with some guys from LATOC web site. I was kind of tired, running late, but wanted some fresh pictures from 03-29-09 to add to the mix.

A Sample TItle For This Test Goes here

As you can see this has little to do with the Detroit blog here. This is just a test and I"m exporting the XML and comparing this added with the previous. The goal being to figure out if I can do raw manipulation, imports and exports of the blog and what modifications to the XML will allow me to merge and modify posts to bring more than one month under one month. If there is a simple way to manually do this, it might be kind of beneficial. There may be some tools to do this as well, but for now I'm trying the basic hack the raw export data, then reimport it method.

Okay it worked. It even put the inserted the new posting with an earlier publishing date time inserting it between older blog entries.

In my Studying decay2 blog, I'm going to show you some steps which should make it fairly clear how to import this.

Keys are :
1. Exported or downloading blog to hard drive.
2. Open up XML of new blog XML in text editing program.
3. Find TITLE of first post, then look back up for the "1999" label above it in the text file. It should be up not to far from the title, maybe a 3 to 5 lines up depending on your display.
"A Sample TItle For This Test Goes here" - in my case I used this title of this post which is shown in quotes and obviously a title in the newer blog post, which was in Studying Decay2. I simply searched for that TITLE and found the section with the blog post data. THen looked for the publishing date which was above the title after the "1999" section.

4. Look for publsh date, that date needs to be modified to the earlier month. Only that date field needs to be modified.
Each post in your blog after the first titled data area will be in this lower part of the text file and it will start with another 1999 label. Pretty easy to find.

5. For multiple posts just look down in the XML file for each 1999 label and then look for the PUBLISH date after that for each blog entry. Just change all the dates to the last date and time if you want them to appear after your last post. I changed mine to 03-31 as you can see but my time stamp was probably before the posts that are above this, so my new imported blog entries were inserted before some of them.
6. Save the XML perhaps as a new name.
7. You have this new XML file on your hard drive you simply need to open the older blog, and import the entries from your newer blog into it. You can either publish all of them or some of them using the blogging tool. Your new blog entries will be in the older blog with a date that you choose in the publish. With this method you can merge blogs together and reorder them. It's a little tedious but it works if you want all your entries under one blog.

More to come with some screen shots on the Studying decay2 blog.

And another one

Of course there's a lot of open fields in this area as well.

The dog's neighborhood.

Here's her neighborhood.

Life in the midst of ruined neighborhoods.

I didn't have any dog snacks for her, just shot a photo and moved on.

Here's one for you.

Not exactly the home you'd want to come home to.

Now to scurry back down Fort Street and look for more homes

First we'll take another photo of the Ambassador Bridge. Just a shot while I was driving by. Then on to a few neighborhoods where there's more decay.

We drove up past Fort street back a ways and drive near Lodge Freeway

Here's the John King bookstore. A large used bookstore. I remember going there for lunch and being in the Michigan history book room, and a guy asked my friend if we wanted to be in there. We didn't know why another person would question why we were in a certain room of the used book store ignored him and kept looking at books. Then my friend said, "hey let's get out of here." We walked out to another area of the building and there was a large guy looking at books in the room whom I practically ignored and didn't even notice. "Do you know who that was in there?" my friend asked. No I didn't notice. That was Governor John Engler. Apparently Engler liked to visit once in a while and was looking for history books. One of his state trooper security guys was apparently trying to clear the way and check us out and that's why he asked us if we wanted to be there. We continued on out and returned to work from our lunch.

We are going to drive around Cobo Hall

We'll drive down around the city a bit, I'm heading back past the Post Bar, but will look to take a photo of the John King Bookstore, near Lodge Freeway. As you can see we are back near Cass Street.

Cobo up close

Cobo - It's still fun to see the auto show here. There are parts of Detroit that are still enjoyable, it's not all decay.

Cobo Hall is south.

Cobo is south on Jefferson. You'll drive right up to the building and have to drive under it. RIght not there's debate going on between our current mayor and the City council regarding expansion of this. One argument is to expand it to bring in larger conventions, but of course with the economic downturn, there's talk about the auto show going away and maybe not enough conventions to merit the expansion.

We're at Jefferson Avenue. We're going to take a quick shot of the Ren Cen as we take a right and head toward Cobo Hall.

And a few blocks later, your at the Riverfront

The Spirit of Detroit statue, which is obscured in this photo by the light post is near Jefferson and Woodward. We can see the Ren Cen which is the new location for General Motors in the background.

Campus Martius Park

http://www.campusmartiuspark.org/index.htm This is just a quick shot across part of the park area. There's a lot more that can be seen at the web link provided. I was down there wandering around when Obama came to Detroit during his Campaign. I have other photos of some of the buildings from that day around the hard drive here somewhere and may post them later.

Continuing toward the river up Woodward

We are getting closer to the river, there's some really nice buildings to see, but I'm driving so I'll have to search some other photo directories and take other trips to get some nicer photos I'll add later.

Looking left we can see an old library

Kind of hard to see from this vantage point, as you can see the people mover elevated monorail runs right by this building. Taking the people mover in daylight provides tons of photo opportunity. Don't take the people mover at night for photos however because the glass is dark and you won't get any decent ones from it at night.

Continuing toward the river up Woodward

We are getting closer to the area of town that has had a lot of development by Compuware.

Comerica Park

Here's the new stadium. When this first opened and they allowed us to take video cameras in and actually do home video of the games, which was pretty interesting. I don't remember taking a video camera in there however, so I don't think I have video. The stadium is partially sunk down into the ground so you can see more of the Detroit skyline when inside the park. I actually like the design of the park. I find it interesting. It used to be that you could just walk around and sit anywhere, if there were empty seats they'd let you sit almost anywhere as long as the ticket holder wasn't there. Some fans got upset because they were paying for really nice seats, and others who paid for cheap seats would wander into the expensive sections and take seats while paying much less to watch the game. This of course offended the high paying ticket fans. What I really liked about that policy was you could watch part of the game from one area of the park and then sit somewhere else. It wasn't like you had to sit in the best area, but you had a much wider variation of the experience of the game. There's still plenty of good places where you can stand and watch them from different vantage points however. It's not the same as the old stadium, but I never was a big fan of baseball and only attended maybe 6 games when I was a kid at Tiger Stadium. I've actually gone to Comerica park more than Tiger Stadium.

Some Grand old church structures.

Here's a church right next to the new stadium where the Tigers play, Comerica Park.

Crossing I-75 and hanging a left we'll leave Cass for now

Let's go take a look at the more popular areas, sport stadium districts on Woodward Avenue.

Salvation Army Building and Hotel Eddystone

There's plenty of these things in the city. I remember one inner city pastor remarking about someone wanting to give him an inner city apartment building. He said he looked at it and realized he could spend his entire life working on it and never have a chance to restore the thing, it was so huge. He politely declined.

Away from the campus toward I-75 we start to see

Some buildings that are not exactly normal, but abandoned.

Yes there is Barnes and Noble and other normal businesses

As you can see there are regular businesses still alive and well in Detroit, we are still in the campus area.

Wayne State's Radio Tower from Cass

Just past the Detroit Main Library we can see the radio tower that broadcasts Wayne State University's radio program.

Backside of Detroit Library on Cass Avenue

The Detroit Library faces Woodward Avenue. Here's a shot of the back of the Library.

Wayne State University Cass Avenue

Driving up Cass Avenue, actually toward the river we see Wayne State University. This I suppose is a normal university perhaps. We can see some restaurants and bars under the white awning to the left. As we travel further down Cass Avenue toward I-75 we get into Detroit's Cass Corridor. We actually will drive past some abandoned Chinese town buildings as well, but I have no photos of these at this time to post, I skipped taking photos while driving past those.

The Piquette Market Fire Aftermath.

Piquette Market Fire the aftermath. The smoke was still rising after the fire was out. Powdered dust from the bricks lined the streets. Steel is fireproof, but twists in a fire as it's heated and expands at different rates. Some fuel caused the fire to burn, probably all the cars, and other items stored inside. I don't remember reading the stories about the actual cause. This is some photos I took when I could get down there and these were stitched inside a photo stitch software program to create this. Brownfield reclamation project on this site now. They are supposed to rebuild. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI_dhNKEW-o A Youtube video I found doing a search.

As Houses disappear, landscape appears

Lots for reuse or no use at all.

A sound of metal on pavement

I"m turning around, my car is almost silent, windows down. I can hear this grating sound of metal on pavement. Almost like an inner city Amish buggy I suppose, as a metal wheel scrapes along down the street. Here comes a guy on a bike, his rear wheel is missing a tire. I couldn't resist taking a picture of him after he passed. I figure taking a picture without his face will protect his identity. It was one of those magic moments in photographing decay. I wish the focus was a bit better.

Shot from another angle

I turned around in the lot and took this photo.

This school was a foreign language school

The "I Love My School" adds a nice touch doesn't it. Budget won out over "love".

Abandoned school, maybe a few years back this was in use

I remember seeing kids near this school. There is new school renovation or construction happening.

Another abandoned house, near abandoned school.

Of course there's plenty to chose from, this one looks like it's done.

Near New Center Area, north of it

An example of a boarded up abandoned house.

Mostly just closed for Sundays

This place can be hopping during the weekdays, but it was quite on a Sunday on Woodward near New Center area.

Track overpass.

Down the street another train track overpass, time to turn around for more photos.

Creamery yard

North of closed Creamery

Across the Street, don't know what that platform was for

Across from Fairmont Creamery
What is this used for?

Fairmont Creamery

How big is this abandoned Creamery. Apparently fairly large as you can see with a parked semi giving a good scale.

All kinds of businesses come and go

Here we have a building that supposedly is up for lease.

Keeping the hordes of morons at bay

Walls of a fortress type protect the power station and transformers. I heard a story/rumor about one guy who tried to cut a wire that was a power line, when police arrived they just found a severed limb that may have come off from the power line. This sounds like a good urban myth. Supposedly the police never found the guy but thought the live wire severed his hand.

There's a message in that urban artwork

Don't climb the fence, it's not worth it and if you do you may get fried on the inside. This is a power station.

Old business buildings like this are all over the place

Who knows what this building was or did?

Typical old rail track overpass

Railroads will make sure these are safe enough, but can't keep them pretty.