Flint Writers Unite: An Afternoon with Author Connor Coyne in San Francisco

Despite my less-than-stellar organizational skills these days and my two-year-old daughter Larkin's idiosyncratic napping schedule, the book party for Connor Coyne's compelling Urbantasm: The Dying City actually happened on Saturday. 

It started at 3pm, at which time I was wandering the aisles of the Mission Safeway buying beer, forgetting that any trip to that Safeway — once labeled "the worst Safeway on planet Earth" by an internet wag — involves a 20-minute wait in line. So no booze, no host at start time. But Connor was there, entertaining the early guests with tales of Coneys and what happens late night at the corner of Dort and Lippincott. 

Then my brilliant plan to push the shopping cart filled with beer, ice, and paper plates across the street to the party was thwarted by the security thingy on the wheel to stop people like me from walking off with the carts. Connor was called and he had to enlist a few guests to come and ferry the supplies over. Never let it be said I don't know how to show people a good time.

In the end, it was a great chance to connect Flintoids, Flint Expats, and San Franciscans who have grown to know Vehicle City because I never stop talking about it. And a reminder that Flint, despite its problems, is a place that people love and have not forgotten. And a chance to celebrate Connor Coyne's great writing.

Books by Connor Coyne, which were sold. Quickly. And efficiently.

Ruth, my friend and neighbor, with Dennis Brownfield's old license plate, which tells a big part of Flint's history in just six characters.

Chuck Siegel, formerly of Eldorado Drive in Flint and the man behind Charles Chocolates in San Francisco, with Shabana Siegel. (That's me in the Flint Lumber Company apron.)

Michael G, featured prominently in Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City, mocks a remnant of one of the worst jobs I ever had.

How Flint Became a Punchline

If you are going to read one story about the Flint Water Crisis, it should be local writer Connor Coyne's heartfelt, comprehensive and, ultimately, devastating take on what has happened to the Vehicle City in Vox. Part personal essay, part media criticism, and part political analysis, it describes the forces that have battered the city for decades, and the resilience of Flintoids as they battle seemingly overwhelming odds.

I was still skeptical about the extent of the problem, though, because the seeming diabolism of my friends' worries just sounded too ludicrous to be true, even for Flint. Even for a city in which one mayor had suggested we cut down all of the trees and put them up for sale and another had commissioned a massive bronze statue of himself, poisoning children with tap water just sounded too cartoonish to be real. 

The idea of the massive conspiracy involving collusion between local, state, and federal authorities that must have been involved in such a situation was too absurd to consider. Wasn't evil supposed to be banal instead of burlesque? 

After a parade of discolored water, E. coli boil notices, and total trihalomethanes violations, I finally had to concede the burlesquishness of evil. 

In October 2015, the state finally confirmed the worst of our fears: There was lead in the water after all. The city switched back to Detroit water, but the damage had already been done. We, and our children, were being poisoned.

Read the rest here.

Field Research with Connor Coyne

Flint author Connor Coyne is conducting research for his latest writing project — a Flint-based mystery. This morning he explored "the confusing maze of estuaries at the upstream mouth of Thread Lake" with his friend, the graphic designer Sam Perkins-Harbin, and came back with this report:

I've been curious about this area for years. On Google Maps, it looks completely overgrown and wild, like the woods surrounding the Pierce Golf Course or the Happy Hollow Nature Area, but there are also some curious signs of a human touch; particularly what looks like the grid of residential neighborhood streets of a bygone era. I was also curious because local historians have not been able to enlighten me as to what this area was all about. The amusement park was situated further west of the area, and it is not connected to McKinley Park or the Thread Lake Dam. Much of it is also inaccessible and choked with undergrowth, which is part of the reason it took me so much time to actually go and check out. 

Sam and I explored two areas. First, we followed a service drive south from Lippincott Blvd. and came upon a creepy-looking area of small mounds. It was just after dawn, and since I've got an overly-fertile imagination, I was imagining something like this:

A scene from The Killing, season 3, episode 3.

More likely, this was dirt moved and dumped from sites as they were developed along Dort Highway a quarter mile to the east. And this would have happened decades ago because trees were covering everything. While there were signs of dumping, it wasn't anything extensive or recent. For anyone curious about whether or not we saw squatters, there weren't any signs of anyone living in this part of the woods anytime recently.

Further back, past the mounds, the undergrowth became almost impenetrable, with raspberry bushes and cattails choking everything out. We had originally planned on crossing Thread Creek, but when we finally found it, it was more than twenty feet across, deep, and fast-moving, and it would have been very dangerous (and wet, cold, and muddy) to attempt. The grid would have been right on the other side. We returned to the car and were able to enter the woods again, this time from the south, and underbrush here was much less obtrusive (although the ever present raspberry bushes were a real pain). 

We managed to break through to the gridded area, which I've been curious about for many years. It seems that the simplest explanation — which is still intriguing — is most likely the correct one: this had been intended as an extension of the residential neighborhood to the south, and was abandoned. The neighborhood in question is far more recent than most in the city, and follows a suburban layout. This is consistent with the size and density of the trees in the gridded area. It does not appear to have ever been paved; perhaps graveled though. At the easternmost extent, a wide, narrow, deep pit has been dug (clearly by machines), which could have been the beginnings of a foundation or an attempt to link up with the city sewers, but this is the only other sign of serious development. I had wondered if the project was suspended due to high water tables (the whole area is very swampy) or if Flint's declining housing values simply made it a poor investment. At any rate, it has thoroughly gone to seed.

Flint Photos: The Golden Leaf

The legendary Golden Leaf on a recent Wednesday night. Thanks to author Connor Coyne for the photo. For a little background on the club, go here.

Flint Photos: Connor Coyne

Flint writer Connor Coyne arrives in Chicago via his minivan/chariot/objet d'art for the publication of his latest novel, Shattering Glass.

Shattering Glass: A Flint Writer Draws on the Vehicle City for Inspiration

My friend Connor Coyne is one of those rare birds who left our hometown of Flint for not one, but two big cites, before returning to buy a home in the place where General Motors was born. Connor graciously offered invaluable feedback and support while I was writing and editing Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City. His friendship was a reminder that Flintoids help out other Flintoids.

 

As a writer, Flint is a recurring theme in Connor's work. Given the vicissitudes of book publishing these days, Connor has started a kickstarter campaign to fund the digital and print publication of his compelling experimental novel Shattering Glass. I've already made a donation. It's a great way to support an artist, husband, and father who returned to Flint to raise a family with his wife, who is a nurse at Hurley Hospital. I hope Flint Expatriate readers can help as well.

Here's some more information on Connor from the kickstarter page:

By the time 2011 rolled around I had written several novels and was just settling into a beautiful new house in my hometown of Flint, Michigan, to which I had returned after fourteen years in the Big Apple and the City of Big Shoulders. I was also coming off of publishing Hungry Rats, a grim and gritty noir novel that had taken seven years to develop and which was also the subject of my MFA thesis and self-published via Kickstarter.  These adventures had been successful, but I was looking for something fun and easy and a little bit stupid, and Shattering Glass was supposed to be the answer.

 

Shattering Glass was intended to be a short, pulpy novella in which I could indulge in allusion, rhythms, and thematic sledge hammers.  The setting would be the fictitious Arkaic University, based upon the University of Chicago where I had gone to college. If you don't know, the U of C is a cult of learning afflicted with both insularity and a fever of intensity. Everyone there is -- admirably, perversely -- obsessed with something.To paraphrase the first chapter of Shattering Glass, "visitors are novitiates; here tread experts."  The city of Arkaic, Michigan has featured in other stories I've written and it, itself, is a much exaggerated version of Flint, which is an odd town, poor but inventive, cold but romantic, religious but radicalized, frustrated and frustrating.  

And here's an excerpt from Shattering Glass:

Faced with the prospect of walking back to [her dorm] and having to either ignore or make up with Ezzie, Dunya shakes her head. She puts on her coat and heads out into the feral October. Tonight the wind tumbles through the leaves making the branches gape wide, like fanged jaws. She stares them down all the way to South Street, gets on the bus and rides it downtown. Then, still not knowing Arkaic very well but wanting to get as far as she can from campus, she gets onto another bus that takes her deep into the North Side. She gets off the bus at Ash Highway. Vacant lots and ragged signs shivering in the chill range away to the west. To the east, things look a bit more promising and she sets off along the highway. Even here, most of the buildings are vacant, with huge, stone-scattered parking lots. But then again... Dunya sees the traces of secret life among the desolations. Hidden treasures that have ridden out the blizzard. She passes a used bookstore, a hole-in-the-wall bakery, a laundromat, a trophy factory, a used car dealership, a Tiki-themed bar. They all hum with life, even though it’s well past business hours. It warms her heart to know that some of Arkaic is alive, even on the edge of oblivion. It reminds her of home, of Richmond. Okay, so the differences are huge: culture, climate, health, and appearance. Michigan is no California. But two down-and-out towns can share a common conversation across a few thousand miles, and Dunya hears it. She hears Richmond in the air. She recognizes its gravelly-staccato rusted language.

 Go here to support Shattering Glass.

Crimes of Creative Passion in Flint, Michigan

Connor Coyne: Guilty of writing and living in Flint

Designer, photographer and man about town Shane Gramling has cooked up another intriguing and compelling project in Flint. It's called Facing Flint and it takes the Vehicle City's reputation for crime and lawlessness and uses it to reveal the creativity flourishing in the town that G.M. forgot:

"This is Flint, Michigan — where serial entrepreneurs lurk around historic storefronts, and you can hear shots of dangerously good espresso being fired off in the streets, a city where students help pioneer next-generation vehicle energy sources and every artist carries a concealed brush. Watch your back world, we're coming for you."

The project's just getting started, but the rogue's gallery already includes mug shots of writer Connor Coyne; Jan Worth-Nelson, guilty of "committing wordslaughter and literary crimes of passion as a poet, novelist, and essayist for longer than you’ve been alive; and Ted Nelson, a "flinty-eyed miscreant from the hedonistic hellhole of Hollywood."