Comments

Welcome to Mt. Palmer: A look inside Detroit’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood

Welcome to Mt. Palmer

NeighborhoodScout.com is a fantastic resource for people looking to move. It as all kinds of fun stats on where want to live, how far your “neighborhood” goes, crime rates, school information, etc. No doubt it saves a Realtor a ton of time every year as they work to convince people to buy homes all over the country. Of course with this data, you can see where the safest and most dangerous neighborhoods are in the country.

Walletpop.com did a story recently analyzing the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation. Only one Detroit hood made the list, coming in at #23: The Mount Elliott / Palmer neighborhood. Within this small scope of streets there are a little over 150 projected violent crimes every year (or one every 2-3 days), the violent crime rate per thousand is almost 100, and the odds of you becoming a victim of such a crime if you live there is 11%, which is quite a bit by most standards (even the most dangerous neigborhood in America has odds of 25%).

The thing that makes the Mt. Palmer neighborhood interesting is that it’s a mix of residential dilapidation and an industrial wasteland: the neighborhood houses the Motor City Industrial Park, a massive complex that was once home to Packard Motors and now sits abandoned, with no clear owner, and is set on fire seemingly every couple of weeks now. As a Realtor, the only convincing point I could make to sell a home here is the price. There is nothing else that is even remotely inviting.

Mt. Palmer is located on the east side of the city, between Gratiot Avenue and I-94 to the east and west, as well as East Grand Blvd. and Mount Elliott to the north and south. You can view a map over at the Neighborhood Scout Website. It’s common knowledge that the east side of the city is more problematic than the west side, however while the residential parts don’t appear as bad on the outside, it looks as though this really is the place where anything can happen.

Here come the pictures. The sepia tone gives it a nice eerie feeling to it all, but of course you can see the full roll of pictures in full color over in the photos section. Click on any photo to view a larger resolution.
Continue Reading

Comments

Extreme Makeover: Depot Edition

***NOTE***
To all that are finding this page through a link, there is an update on what’s happened with more information and insight here. So once you’re done, check it out.
***********

There’s something brewing over at the Michigan Central Station train depot in southwest Detroit. The depot sits as a gateway in between Corktown and Mexicantown. While Mexicantown is picking up somewhat, Corktown is still experiencing the economic hit of the Tiger Stadium loss when the team moved to Comerica Park in 2000. The station is one of the first things you notice when you cross the Ambassador Bridge from Canada into the United States, and there’s no question that while it’s an architectural masterpiece, it remains a tremendous eye sore and a black mark for the city.

On April 7th, the City of Detroit decided it was time for the building to come down, and entirely too many people disagree with that decision. So with the help of Wayne State student John Mohyi, state Senator Cameron Brown, Dan Stamper and the Detroit International Bridge Company (who owns not just the Ambassador bridge but the Train Station as well), an effort was put underway to try and find a use for this iconic relic of Detroit’s past.

Numerous times since Amtrak moved out in the late 1980s, there have been proposed solutions for what to do with the building.

• Before the Casinos opened in Detroit (Greektown, the MGM Grand, and Motor City Casino), MCS was a possible location for a casino / hotel.
• There were talks of it being an IT hub for the massive cables that connect the internet between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit.
• The Kwame Kilpatrick Administration pitched the idea of using it as a police headquarters or FBI regional hub for the area.

All of these project ideas and more have fallen through, and the depot sits idle, with the exception of the urban exploration and the occasional movie shoot (such as the first Transformers film) or photo op. The razor wire around the front perimeter does little to deter visitors, and the cement rises up ever so as if to dare people to try and jump over it. This all despite the fact that the back of the building is completely and entirely wide open.
Continue Reading

Comments

The “Up In Smoke” Version of Obama’s Tobacco Bill

Just what we need: More government control over another aspect of our lives. As a former smoker (still a hookah smoker), I can tell you up front that this bill is a complete joke and abuse of power.

How you ask? Well lets just look at the “findings” by congress right from the bill itself.

1) The use of tobacco products by the Nation’s children is a pediatric disease of considerable proportions that results in new generations of tobacco-dependent children and adults.

That’s all well and good. However Childhood Obesity (up to 33% of kids) is much more rampant than the number of high school seniors that smoke (up to 24%). Not to mention that studies are showing that teens are smoking at substantially lesser rates than in years past, and this figure continues to fall yearly. Other problems facing kids, such as childhood obesity, all the nonsense on the television and in the media, and the glorification of anti-culture culture is on the rise, and much more dangerous.
Continue Reading

Comments

Danger Danger!

Well, this sure isn’t a grand feeling. My T-Mobile sidekick is synced with Danger, Inc. for all of my contacts, notes, etc. Now, this is cool because if I lose my phone, get a new one, etc all my stuff is still there. No Facebook groups for “I lost my phone I need numbers!” for me. But today, I’m paying the price for that. The constant sync with Danger means that if www.sidekick.dngr.com fails to work, as it is today, I can’t get at any of my data. Including phone book entries. After messing around with my phone to no avail, I tried using my online desktop interface through my.tmobile.com and it won’t load either, so Danger has crashed and taken down who knows how many sidekicks with it. But this is highly upsetting. Things like txt and picture messages started to come back, as well as did the clock, but this is just plain a pain in the ass.

Danger, get your stuff together. I know that M$FT aquired you earlier in the year, but this is no excuse. With Google’s Android right around the corner and MS doing who knows what with the sidekicks, I might be going a different route next time I get a new phone anyways. But things like this definately do not help.

EDIT: Literally, as soon as I hit submit, my phone went nuts and I got my emails back. Maybe things are getting fixed!

In other news, I applied for a position at Twitter. It’s working from home doing support staff, basically answering emails for customers quickly and efficiently. Nothing that’s beyond my capabilities, but let’s see how stiff the competition is for something like this. I would love to work for twitter, it’s something I’m quite familiar with and besides, who wouldn’t want that on their resume?

Ooh, and after screwing up my new camera, I’ve sent it to an authorized Samsung repair center in New York. So much for the good price I got for it