{"id":3899,"date":"2016-05-19T09:52:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T13:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=3899"},"modified":"2016-05-19T09:56:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T13:56:29","slug":"back-in-the-ol-hometown-ctd-56","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=3899","title":{"rendered":"Back in the ol&#8217; hometown <i>ctd<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&quot;For the first time since before Civil War, Detroit fell out of the top 20 largest cities in America, falling to 21&quot; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/4RfZiSE49n\">https:\/\/t.co\/4RfZiSE49n<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nwarikoo\/status\/733275423711191040\">May 19, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/center><\/p>\n<p>The high school I attended in Detroit was analogous to the south&#8217;s &#8220;Governor&#8217;s Schools,&#8221; and located in downtown.  Every day for 3-years, I rode a city bus from a leafy suburb on the western edge of the city, through declining neighborhoods, and then through some of the worst neighborhoods in America.  I saw storefront businesses fail, replaced by other businesses which failed, replaced again &#8212; and then one day the windows would be broken and they would stay that way for months.  I saw the same people sitting and jiving and drinking on abandoned, mouldering furniture in weedy, trash-strewn empty lots day after day &#8230; for years.  Street fights that stopped traffic were a commonplace as you got deeper into the city, and on a couple of occasions I watched near-riots break out.<\/p>\n<p>By the time I got out of high school I knew that the city was going rotten, and doomed, and when I left home to go to college the decision that I would never live in Detroit again was final.  I could not have foreseen the specifics of an epochal bankruptcy, but I knew that the culture was sick and that the city&#8217;s great days were over.<\/p>\n<p>There is talk of revival, and I gather that there are now some gentrifying, habitable, island-like areas near downtown.  Good luck with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&quot;For the first time since before Civil War, Detroit fell out of the top 20 largest cities in America, falling to 21&quot; https:\/\/t.co\/4RfZiSE49n &mdash; Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) May 19, 2016 The high school I attended in Detroit was analogous to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=3899\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3901,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899\/revisions\/3901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}