This weekend on your way to the Final Four, as you wind down I-75 toward Mr. Ford’s glass house, make sure to look out the window.

Look out over the concrete walls that insulate the manmade highway from the manmade housing cemetery.

For those binge drinking college students traveling from Chapel Hill, Villanova, Storrs and East Lansing, I have a sobering game for you:  as you enter the boundary of Detroit crack open a cold one and take a sip for every burned out or abandoned house you see outside your passenger window.*  Trust me, you’ll be drunk before you reach the stadium.

There is a saying, “When the nation’s economy gets a sniffle, Detroit catches the flu.”  Now that the country has a cold, Detroit has meningitis.

As the nation chugged along ignoring oncoming signs of economic disaster, Detroit foreshadowed coming ills.  However, the troubles of the Mitten State weren’t viewed as a microcosm of pending trouble, but merely as the problems of a state in bed with a dying business.

The blue collar workers–who were being marginalized and dismissed from jobs and public conscience long before the white collars on Wall Street began feeling their throats pinched–will admit the failures of the Big Three and the ill-fated voyage that awaits any city whose future is tied to one industry unable or unwilling to adapt over time.

They hear people blame the unions for being the barnacles sucking the life away from the automotive industry.  They wonder when a country supposedly ‘of the people’ turned into ‘yes, but not you people.’

The union employees were not the ones who refused to look ahead, or refused to see a business model beginning to waver on shaky waters.  They are workers, hard workers, shuffling though shift after shift of mind-numbing work to make sure bread is on their table and that their sons and daughters get an opportunity they never had.  The opportunity that in their United States is given to every American willing to put his or her nose to the grind stone.  The opportunity to leave their family tree with a little more fruit on it than when they were born.

So when you look outside your car to see giant two-story houses with massive porch awnings propped up by  decaying two-by-fours and windows plugged with smoke damaged plywood, don’t shudder and press harder on the gas pedal.  Instead stop and think about what those houses used to look like.  Picture a once thriving downtown with its unique architecture and multicultural neighborhoods.

Think about before civil unrest spawned fractious mobs spurred on by social prejudices that hollowed out the city.  Before the massive sprouting of cookie-cutter suburbs whose fictitious picket fences allow them to sleep better at night.  Before all that there was a city with heart and soul that gave us some of music’s greatest singers.  There was a city where middle-class families realized their dreams of stability and success.

Her heart is still there; it just doesn’t pound as fast.

Going to Detroit is like going to your grandparent’s house.  They miss you so much they don’t want you to leave and will do anything to keep you.  “Do you want another piece of cake? How about some cookies? Well something to drink then?”  Unlike other cities that are used to the hustle and bustle of big crowds and important events, Detroit doesn’t have regular opportunities to spread hospitality.  So when you finally make it downtown, you will be treated as a king/queen.

I know you will be treated well because everyone I’ve ever met has had only smiles and good stories from their trip.  Whether it was the group of Minnesotans’ story of arm wrestling in Old Shillelaghs, the Californian tech-guy’s reminiscing of concerts at Pine Knob, the Pennsylvanian’s blurred retelling of a Super Bowl victory, or the memories of midday beer pong on Alfred and John R before the baseball game.

The city is hurting, it has been hurting for as long as I can remember, but regardless how sick she gets, when there is a party to throw she will be the best host.

MSU Fans

I may sound like a cynic, but I question whether Michigan State making it to the Final Four was actually the best thing for Michigan’s economy.  On the one hand everything looks great, Downtown should be a flowing sea of green and white (that’s the team colors, not marijuana and cocaine).  The morale is high, and who can root against a guy like Tom Izzo who hopes his team can be “the bright light in what’s been a little bit of a dim year”?

What it ensures is that the stadium will be filled to the brim for at least one game.  It guarantees one day of mayhem and rockin’ downtown bars.  MSU fans have many faults, but they know how to party hard.

Yet I wonder if their presence will subsist if they are quickly swatted out of the tournament by Hasheem Thabeet’s UConn Huskies.  Will they remain at the party or will they slink quietly back to East Lansing?  Would it have been better to lure fans from Louisville who might have needed to book a hotel room for the weekend and spent Kentucky dollars in Detroit?

Most MSU fans would have spent Michigan dollars in Michigan, regardless of who was playing in the Final Four.  Perhaps more will buy Pabst Blue Ribbon from the Detroiter downtown than Crunchy’s in East Lansing, but unless the fans stay downtown how much more will it matter?  In addition, it’s always good when you can show off your city to other fans.  Show them a good time and convince them they might want to come back again. Or who knows maybe even take all the tax incentives and start a business here (OK now I am getting crazy).

So to all the Michigan State fans: make downtown your home for the weekend.  Make Brush Street your frat row.  Make the Greektown and Motorcity casinos your gambling pit.  Have your house party in a hotel lobby (you can bring the green solo cups).  For one week skip the bucket of beer at Crunchy’s, the random grinding at Rick’s, and shots at the Post.  Instead find a girl from North Carolina, a guy from Villanova or a new friend from Connecticut and show them just how MSU parties.  Show them the hospitality everyone gets when they forget everything they’ve heard on the news about our city and our state and actually experience it for themselves.

Oh, and when you get a chance head down to the Detroiter, ask for Debbie Garrett, the tall blond waitress, tell her I sent you, and  maybe they’ll still have some green beer lying around.

* The Sports Union does not condone drinking and driving

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Kevin Patra lives by the adage: Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t do or teach, write.  Currently, he is a graduate student at the University of Southern California studying Online Journalism, after spending four years at the University of Michigan obtaining a bachelors degree from the school of Language, Science, & Fun.  Patra hates the looks people give him when he says, “I’m from Detroit.”  He also claims that it is possible to drink a whole keg in a week; we have yet to see it.

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