Second of two parts. Day 1 has an interview with the author.
This selection from the closing chapter of "Detroit Hustle," being published May 3, is presented with the publisher's permission.
By Amy Haimerl
How different the West Village is in just two years. The people are the same, the energy is the same, but there are new businesses opening and thriving, just like we’d always hoped.
Craft Work, owned by our friend Hugh [Yaro], is a regular stop for fish tacos and Old Fashioneds during happy hour—our new Fort Defiance. You never know whom you will run into here, as the bar has built a reputation as a welcoming place for the city’s power brokers and everyday folk to share cocktails elbow-to-elbow.
"We’ve landed in exactly the perfect place," writes the co-owner of this restored 1914 home.
(Photos by Amy Haimerl)
The Red Hook, the café our friend from Red Hook had been trying to open since Karl and I first visited friends in the West Village, is finally open. I’m guaranteed to run into a half-dozen people I know each morning as I stand there chatting about life, the universe and everything with the owner Sandi [Heaselgrave], her husband, Andy, and my favorite baristas.
There is Detroit Vegan Soul, whose co-owners, Erika [Boyd] and Kirsten [Ussery], have catered some of our parties and serve the most delicious southern-fried tofu bites. The restaurant is always hopping on evenings when it does spoken-word poetry jams, and it’s nice to see so much vibrancy.
Tarot & Tea is a calm oasis on the block. I pop my head in on occasion, always finding center in Nefertiti’s shop. A few blocks away is the Parker Street Market, where I find the Dave’s Sweet Tooth almond toffee I’m addicted to. David [Kirby] carries all of the basics in his organic bodega as well as a curated selection of Detroit-made brands, giving many small producers their first shot at retail.
'A good omen' above Kercheval
And now, across the street, there’s Sister Pie, opened by another new friend, Lisa [Ludwinski]. On the night of Sister Pie’s [2015] grand opening, Karl and I drive over, having just finished a long walk on Belle Isle. The spring evening is crisp and stormy, more like October than May. It starts to pour just as we pull up, and we race to the storefront that until just recently had brown butcher’s paper hanging in the windows. The inside renovations are finally revealed. We can see people standing everywhere, something that hasn’t happened in this space in a very long time. We know almost everyone inside and are greeted with hugs and enthusiasm. It feels good to feel like we belong, to be a part of this celebratory event in our neighborhood, and to look out the window and see the city that is our home.
When the rain lets up and the sun reappears, the party spills out the front door, everyone with glasses of champagne or Lisa’s famous buckwheat chocolate chip cookies in hand. We look down Kercheval Street to the east and see a giant double rainbow that appears to dead end right at the block. I’ve never been so close to the end of the rainbow, and it is brilliant, like we can almost touch the pot of gold. It seems like a good omen for Lisa and her new business and for our neighborhood and the next phase of its life. The chatter at the party is that a new French bistro will be opening as well as another restaurant and more retail. All of these new establishments will be sprouting in buildings that had been more derelict than Matilda when we first saw her. Everything is changing.
The book goes on sale May 3. A launch party with the author is May 7 at the Detroit Institute of Arts. (Details below.)
But standing in this party, filled with beautiful people I love, all of whom have the best of hearts and intentions for their lives and this city, I can’t help but notice that we are a gaggle of all-white faces.
People keep saying how great it is for the neighborhood to develop into what they envisioned and dreamed it would be. Some people in the conversations are neighbors who have been here for years; others have arrived more recently than Karl and me.
'Unsettling' lack of diversity
I don’t know what I had hoped for this neighborhood. I wanted change to come, certainly. I wanted to see the vacant buildings teeming with life again. I want our friends’ children to be able to ride their bikes up to Sister Pie or Red Hook for a treat. I like that our neighborhood is rebuilding its retail core, the small business owners becoming the fabric of our lives.
But I didn’t expect so much development quite so quickly. It feels a little unsettling. I thought we’d have time to work together and to ensure as a community that the spaces were filled by a diverse group of business owners.
I am thrilled for everyone who has opened. I count them among my friends and patronize their businesses frequently. But I want to make sure that the old-time businesses, like the black barber Karl goes to, Heavy Weight Cuts, isn’t forgotten about. Few men in the neighborhood patronize Dave [Hardin]; most don’t even know he exists. When they hear Karl goes there, they are all curious, interested, but not sure they could go in. But Karl made it a point to start going as soon as we moved into Matilda.
It’s nothing fancy, but it’s Dave’s shop, a place he loves, and we want to ensure it has a place in this community. We don’t want it pushed out in favor of a luxury handbag store or one of the fancy barbershops with $40 cuts that have opened recently in downtown and Midtown. I want his voice to be heard, for him to be as important a part of the conversation about the future as some of us here at the Sister Pie grand opening. I don’t want him to be a casualty of the future.
'Forgotten people and places'
I want that rainbow, that omen, to be for all of Detroit. I feel like things are improving, but I know they may only be improving for people who look like me or who have means like me. I don’t know what the answers are, but I’m insisting on having the hard, sometimes uncomfortable conversations.
How as a city do we take the lessons of Brooklyn, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver—all those booming “winner” cities—and apply what works and jettison the things that bring inequality? How do we make sure we do not continue to be one of the centers of America’s forgotten people and places? . . .
Two pages later in the chapter:
Nobody wants to hear the alternative to the popular narrative that the city is rebounding. When people are still new and excited, they don’t want to hear that they likely won’t get a loan to fix up the cheap house they just bought. They think I’m making it up or am just being negative. But I’m not. This is a very real battle we must solve.
The light-splashed kitchen has new appliances and a funky table.
Ownership is key to this city’s future. Who can—and cannot—buy now may rechart Detroit’s course. It is imperative that we get housing policy right this time and not repeat the mistakes of our exclusionary past. We must all focus on the work of justice and inequality as much as entrepreneurship and new opportunities. These are not easy problems to solve, but if they were, Detroiters would have solved them long ago. This is a place just oozing with passionate, committed, and talented people.
'It's amazing how life works out'
Karl and I aren’t here to change or save Detroit. We love it for what it is, not what it might be. We want city services, yes. But we want them for everyone. We want to be here and demand better for this city and all its residents because we all deserve that. Karl and I want a thriving Detroit with businesses opening and investment happening. We want there to be jobs for everyone, not just newcomers like us with college degrees.
After all, we’re betting on the Motor City; we’ve tied our futures to its future. We don’t want those who have never left to be pushed out of the way by us and our dreams. We are choosing to live in a place where privilege can be defined as having a job, and I believe that our choice comes with deep responsibilities. . . .
It is amazing how life works out sometimes. Karl and I ended up here in the West Village by chance—it wasn’t even on our short list of neighborhoods—and yet we’ve landed in exactly the perfect place. It’s not a new Red Hook, but it’s our Detroit. It is more than just a place where people live. It is a community.
Let there be light, distinctively, above the dining table.
People help one another here. Residents care for their properties, sweeping porches and planting flowers, even when the abandoned property next door is fire ravaged and teetering dangerously close to collapsing on their own roof. They mow the vacant lots the city has forsaken. They plant community gardens and invite neighbors to eat from the harvest.
Here in the West Village, neighbors wave and greet each other. We call to each other across neat lawns and past freshly painted fences, across the scorched remains of abandoned houses and past alleyways filled with trash, tires, mattresses, and even boats. Over porches bursting with pots of flowering geraniums and past driveways lined with flaming-orange day lilies. Good evening, we say, whether we face beauty or decay. Good morning, we call. Ever watchful of who and what is walking down our block.
© 2016, Running Press
► Pre-order the book: Publisher has links to sellers.
► Launch party: May 7, 4-6 p.m. at the Detroit Institute of Arts' Kresge Court. Author reading, 5 p.m.
View from the dining room to a side den that serves as a music room. "Karl mentally places his Baldwin grand piano i that room and imagines it bathed in late-summer twilight," Haimerl writes in Chapter One.
