Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Flint Artifacts: 1986 G.M. Poster



15 comments:

  1. I would love to have one of them.

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  2. Who was the artist? Did GM in fact publish this, or the Flint Convention and Visitors Bureau?

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    1. Don't have much info on this one. My mom had it framed so I can't get a look at the back to see if there's any extra info. It's out of the photo crop above, but under the graphic "Flint Michigan/Home of Buick & GM" there's a line that reads "1986 Announcement Meeting." So I assumed it was GM related but it definitely could have another source. My mom doesn't remember how we got it, but it must have been shortly before the entire family left Flint.

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  3. If this spry, cheery vision of Flint circa 1986 contains even a single, solitary shred of truth then I DON'T want to go home again. Get real... where is the teal and rust?

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  4. No more Autoworld, no more Buick City, no more AC, no more Sheraton, no more Planetarium Fountain, no more Water Street... well at least in name, no more beret-donning artistes, no more wind surfers, no more Buick Open, no more Citizens Bank, no more Hyatt, no more GMI, no more Genesee Towers, most of those houses are no more... heck, even the wearily smiling sun now frowns on Flint.

    Shoot, some artistic type need to update this with the tinfoil house, Back on the Bricks beer bellies, outdated hipsters circa 2005, assorted out-of-place fancy eateries, fewer houses, blue tarp roofs, and dreams... yeah baby, dreams...

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  5. ...and another thing, if this dull magic-markered version of days yore is to be taken as a 100% accurate portrayal of Flint in the mid-80s then one has to ask... where are all the black people?

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    1. Just checked the poster to be sure...25 cartoon people and every one is white. There's a reason Flint was rated one of the most segregated cities in America.

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    2. Even the birds in the poster are white.

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    3. ...even the sun is Caucasian. I'm pretty sure if you took the poster out of the frame and looked on the back side you'd find where all of the black people are.

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  6. I'm pretty sure there weren't any black people in Flint until 1987.

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  7. There were artistic cityscape posters like this for many Michigan cities, and I suspect other states, back during that era. I have one of a Northern Michigan community. They all are spatially distorted and inaccurate, but interesting nevertheless. Sometimes, businesses were sold a stake in the poster, and appear when other similar businesses do not. Radio station call letters quickly change, and those are glaring examples which date many of the posters I have seen.

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  8. The Weather Ball looks like a hungry onion.

    When the Weather Ball looks like an Onion,
    Time to go to Halo Burger for a luncheon.

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  9. The only thing more absurd than the sexy Mott Lake wind surfer is the visual suggestion that Autoworld actually had people milling about.


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  10. ...and another thing. That GMI/Kettering Bell Tower thing is a totally third-tier Flint landmark. Where is the IMA? Farahs? Capitol? MSD? Angelos? Hurley? Boot Hill? LL-T?

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  11. ...and another thing, when the battery on my iPhone died I tried to use this map for navigation. It is totally inaccurate. I was trying to get to the 501 to nosh on some sauteed eggplant and ended up in front of Brother's Party Store... clutching a 40 of Mickey's.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.