I live in Windsor right across the river from Detroit and I've had a few interesting experiences there now if you want to hear them.
I can see the GM building from my bedroom window (Looking at it now) and sometimes it fascinates me how worlds apart our two cities are, separated by nothing but a small body of water. Detroit is a pretty weird place. There is still plenty of good in the city but it is definitely dominated by the negatives, especially from an outside point of view. I can't help but wonder how or why politicians and residents allowed it to get so bad and out of control. A lot of it is bad usage of funds, allowing poor people to go uneducated and become poorer and eventually people that had the money started to leave. I've been through there several times and each time it's a new experience.
My first time really going into the city and sticking around was for a Metal concert, and like a fucking retard I had an almost totally bald head at the time. Myself and my other friend got drunk and shaved our heads as something "funny" to do, but little did we know we would be heading to a Black Dahlia Murder show not long after that.
We got lost. Yup, two skinhead looking white dudes in Death metal shirts got lost in fucking Detroit. We pretty much refused to stop at any point. As bad as this sounds, we waited until we saw some white guys in business suits before we stopped so we could ask for directions. It's not a prejudice thing, but we didn't know the city or what area's were bad. We looked like fucking skinheads after all. Luckily we managed to find the concert, and it was pretty awesome. That was a crazy ass moshpit but everyone there was very cool and down to earth. Overall a pretty decent trip.
The next time we were not so lucky (or luckier maybe). A few friends and myself were just visiting a couple buddies and picking them up for a road trip. We parked our car on the street, the neighborhood didn't look that bad so we thought it would be fine for a short time. Well as we got out of the car we noticed a bunch of guys (I'll call them Thugs to keep the story simpler
) about 100 meters away sitting on their car hood just hanging out. We got a little nervous about it but we thought we were being paranoid and left.
We went in our buddies place and came back and at this point things still seemed fine, but the Thugs were all standing up now and seemed to be looking over at us sometimes. Well my one friend forgot his bag in the house so him and the owner of the house with the keys had to run back and grab it with the rest of us sitting outside our car. It was a decent walk so they were gone for a good 5-10 minutes.
Then something weird happened, by a stroke of luck or divine intervention. A couple more black guys were walking by from behind us and they stopped a couple feet away and looked at us. At this point I'm starting to get pretty nervous, we have two groups of strange black dudes looking at us and we don't know if something is about to go down.
Suddenly, one of the guys that just stopped just a few feet away speaks up, he recognizes my friend who's dad used to coach him in Boxing. He said "hey man, I know you, I Boxed with your old man". He told us we picked a stupid place to hang out, and they stood with us until our other friends returned. Told us that the group of Thugs that were sitting on their car were probably about to mug us and possible even strip the car right there on the street.
It was awesome to have that kind of backup show up out of the blue, but after that I am very careful about parking my car in Detroit.
At the same time there are still plenty of good areas, and most of the people are good folks. It's just a crazy place man.
Living here in Windsor just across the river, I just don't get how things are so insanely different. We have our bad spots here too for sure, and drug users and crime, but actual homicides are rare and almost everyone is courteous. Unless you go downtown on a party night, then the idiots tend to come out.
Just thought I'd share my experiences.