Wasn't born here. Didn't go to school here. Ten years ago I still called pop soda, had never heard of a coney dog and was an hardcore Washington Redskins fan that had enjoyed multiple Super Bowl and playoff victories. I thought the party store must have sold balloons or something. I had no clue how to pronounce Ypsilanti, Meijer or Gratiot (which turns out is our answer to Norfolk, VA). I didn't put an "s" on the the end of Ford. My feelings on the state of Ohio were completely neutral. I had driven foreign cars my entire life. I was a Virginian.
But not just any Virginian. I was from Newport News. Grew up there. Went to school there. My life revolved around crab season, hurricane season and tourist season. We didn't have party stores on every corner, we had churches (the houses of worship, not the chicken place). It was a great place to raise a family and a terrible place to grow up.
That's not to say that Detroit was completely foreign to me when I got here. Back in Newport News, we built things for a living. Ships to be exact. Not pleasure crafts, but aircraft carriers. Submarines. The things that kept America strong. It was our only industry really. The Cold War kept demand for warships high so you didn't need a degree to earn an honest wage. Just a strong back and a lack of options. Generations had moved to the end Virginia's lower peninsula seeking that opportunity, and as a kid I had no doubt it would be that way for generations to come.
Then the Cold War came to an abrupt end. Watching the Berlin Wall fall in 1990 I had now idea how profound of an impact it would have on my hometown. It seemed like it was a good thing. The threat of Mutually Assured Destruction was ending. Talks of an enduring World Peace didn't seem so far-fetched. The future was so bright I wanted a pair of Blu Blockers. Then the base closures started. Soon the Navy funding dried up. Without warning came the announcements that America didn't need us to build ships anymore. The future became a very scary place. That was 15 years ago.
Fifteen years later, I've watched that same pattern play out here in Michigan, my new home and one of the few remaining places in this country that still makes things for a living. The story of Detroit's decline was eerily similar to the one back in Newport News. At the time, America wanted SUVs so we gave them SUVs. Then Climate Change happened. And suddenly our SUVs weren't needed. Plants were closing. Banks weren't lending. The Big Three, already suffering the indignity of being called The Detroit Three due to declining market share were on the ropes and on the brink of a once unthinkable collapse. The future was a scary place. That was three years ago.
But that wasn't the only thing that happened here three years ago. Not only did we elect some black guy President of the United States, you may have heard the urban legend that Detroit had an NFL football team at the time. I'm here to tell you it's not just a rumor, it's a fact. Another fact? The same year that the automotive industry imploded into massive bankruptcy and job losses just so happened to coincide with the single worst season in the 48 year of the National Football League. Watching football was something that became an escape to many other struggling American communities at that time. Watching the Detroit Lions clusterfuck their way to an 0-16 record just made everything even worse here. To call our collective mood somber would be a massive understatement. Suicidal would be an understatement. I quit blogging and logged off Facebook because it seemed mostly pointless. There was no future.
Until eight months ago. Ironically for Detroit, things began to turn around during the Super Bowl of all things; a game that the Lions had never even come close to playing in. Throughout the game I waited to see The Big Three run ads for various new models that they desperately needed to public to buy. The Ford spot was forgettable. The GM spot for the Chevy Volt was a little uninspired. Then came the Chrysler ad.
In the days and hours leading up to kickoff, it's become routine to see advertisers leak their spots on You Tube and morning shows with an eye towards creating some buzz. Chrysler raised eyebrows by taking the opposite tact: they kept their commercial completely under wraps. The rumors were that it was two minutes long, making it the longest spot in Super Bowl history if true. The word was that is had cost anywhere from $2M-$9M, making it the most expensive spot in Super Bowl history for a company fresh off of a taxpayer funded bailout. It seemed ill-conceived and doomed to failure. I was expecting the worst. What I got two minutes later was anything but.
I praised it instantly. It was genius. It was breathtaking. It was more than I could have ever imagined a commercial could be in terms of its impact and ability to definitively capture the soul of a city. Not everyone agreed. Some people who know better than me told me it didn't make sense. That it wouldn't sell cars. That it wasn't even an ad for a car, it was more like of an ad for what was certainly the worst city on on the planet. That Detroit was a hopeless shithole incapable of making a relevant automobile and would always be a hopeless shithole incapable of making a relevant automobile because people that know better than me said so.
One of these people was from Newport News just like me. He had gotten as far away from the impending doom of the collapsing local hometown economy as he could as soon as he could, just like me. He was glad that he did, just like me. But unlike me, when he left he went someplace that wasn't anything like where we were from. Someplace where the people don't make things for a living. Someplace that made it easy to forget where we were from. Someplace far from home.
The Chrysler ad hit close to home. I stayed up until 4AM after the game was over watching it, breaking it down, trying to figure out what about it moved me. I wasn't the only Detroiter doing so, and I eventually did find a blog post that summed it up well through an apt comparison to the works Ezra Pound: image, music and meaning. Three elements that fit us perfectly. What city is more synonymous with all three than Motown? What other city in America has a modern story to tell like we do? What more unlikely place to tell the story of where we're from than during a game we've never been to? What better time to tell the world where we're going than from place we couldn't possibly dream of going at that time, at that moment? It was more than an ad, it was a two-minute warning of the coming renaissance. It was inspired. And boy did it inspire.
In the days following the ad, I spent more time talking about Chrysler and Detroit with everyone I knew than I ever had. Every time anyone asked me about, I said the same thing: That two minutes gave us our swagger back. That had to sound stupid to my out-of-town buddies who were only seeing more of the same from afar. But truthfully, things had started to change months before that commercial ever aired. The University of Michigan broke a two year bowl drought and posted a winning season. Small thing. Kwame Kilpatrick, our disgraced Mayor, was released from jail and quietly left town mercifully ending a long drawn out scandal. Small thing. The Michigan State Spartans won their first Big Ten title since 1990. Small thing. But most importantly, the Detroit Lions won their last four games of the season, including back-to-back road wins and a victory over the eventual World Champion Green Bay Packers. No small thing.
In the months following the airing of the ad, things have gone more than reasonably well here. Housing prices are up. The Big Three are adding jobs and shifts and reopening plants. The Tigers are in the playoffs. The Lions are undefeated. I'm blogging again. The UAW is negotiating new contracts without a hint of acromony. Well, maybe a hint but nothing like what we're used to. Small things. The mood is cautiously optimistic, which is better than it is in most places. Everywhere else in America seems to be slumping. Things here in Detroit seems to be clicking. We're not perfect, and yes we have work to do. A shitload of work. More work than I will ever be able to see through in my lifetime. But it's work we're willing to do. It's work we want to do. It's work we are going to do and do better than anyone suspects we can do. Not because we have a chip on our shoulder or because we've got something to prove. It's nothing like that. It's because going to hell and back is only the halfway point on this journey. Because tall tasks are no match for a tough town. Because it's what we do, what we've always done. It's because we were born to do this, and we've been reborn to do it better than it's ever been done anywhere.
We're Detroiters. And if you're anything like us, you're back.
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