Flint Expat Classics: Ode to the Ghetto Palm (Ailanthus Altissima)

Originally published on Friday, June 19, 2009

I mentioned the ghetto palm in my story on house hunting in Flint, and it seems some readers are not familiar with the charms of this invasive species, also known as the Tree-of-Heaven. I'll let the Plant Conservation Alliance, which describes the tree on its "Alien Plant Working Group Least Wanted" list, sing its praises:

"Tree-of-heaven is a prolific seed producer, grows rapidly, and can overrun native vegetation. Once established, it can quickly take over a site and form an impenetrable thicket. Ailanthus trees also produces toxins that prevent the establishment of other plant species. The root system is aggressive enough to cause damage to sewers and foundations."

It also has a nice stank about it and is very difficult to eradicate.

"You have to cut them down and keep cutting them down for three years to get rid of them," exclaimed Tim Monahan, the president of the Carriage Town Historic Neighborhood Association, over coffee yesterday. Needless to say, he's not a big fan.

But I can't be too hard on the much-maligned trees. After all, I've got a ghetto palm forest in my temporary backyard. I'm trying to blend in and not provoke these aggressive predators, especially after learning "each leaflet has one to several glandular teeth near the base."

Brockmire and Flint: An endless parade of suffering with no one offering any help

 

Flint Artifacts: Flint Voice Press Card

Doug Sanders, who just might have shorter hair now, provided this gem.

Flint Artifacts: Flint Album Cover

The Economics of Community Space

While Flint continues to transform its struggling downtown into a place where residents can gather in community spaces, tech companies in San Francisco are taking a different approach that's reminiscent of the bunker mentality that defined projects like the original Renaissance Center in Detroit.

Allison Arieff of The New York Times writes:

Tech companies are scrambling to move into cities — there are rumors that Google is going to move here, to San Francisco, from Mountain View. VISA and Akamai have ditched the suburbs to come here. Tech tenants now fill 22 percent of all occupied office space in San Francisco — and represented a whopping 61 percent of all office leasing in the city last year. But they might as well have stayed in their suburban corporate settings for all the interacting they do with the outside world. The oft-referred-to “serendipitous encounters” that supposedly drive the engine of innovation tend to happen only with others who work for the same company. Which is weird.

The "Shrinking City" Concept Made Simple

Rust Belt Reductionism

There's a lot more happening in Rust Belt cities than decline or revival. Much of the coverage fails to capture the nuance and subtlety of cities like Flint and Detroit. Richey Piiparinen and Anne Trubek of The Atlantic Cities report:

Many dispatches from the industrial north are written by writers who fly to report what they saw during a day or a weekend, and almost invariably, the memes get in the way, or more likely, were in the writer's head before she arrived. Looking around cities like Cleveland, it's easy to draw hasty conclusions, to either sentimentalize the old, gritty working class blocks now abandoned, or be all gobsmacked to find signs of modernity and life. The resulting picture looks too black and white: "this is where the good stuff is—the rebirth!—and this is where the bad stuff is--the ruin!" Truth is, the Rust Belt is a very gray place: it is both in ruins and reviving. It’s a fascinating time and place for the region, particularly for urbanists. But the ruin and revival memes flatten out complexity.

After the Factory

A Model Memory

Many Flint Expatriates have an ongoing relationship with nostalgia, often struggling to reconcile the Flint of their youth with the Flint of today. Then there's the inevitable moment when you realize you may be burnishing the memory of Vehicle City a bit too much, turning it into a place that never existed in the first place. It's not always an easy process to work through.

So why not simply recreate a scale model of the Flint you remember — or the Flint you want to remember? Michael Paul Smith is not from Flint, but he did build a scale model of his hometown.

"What started out as an exercise in model building and photography, ended up as a dream-like reconstruction of the town I grew up in. It's not an exact recreation, but it does capture the mood of my memories," he writes on his Flickr page.

"And like a dream, many of the buildings show up in different configurations throughout the photos. Or sometimes, the buildings stay put and the backgrounds change.

"Visually, this is heading towards the realm of ART. NO PHOTOSHOP WAS USED IN THESE PICTURES. IT'S ALL STRAIGHT FROM THE CAMERA.

"It's the oldest trick in the special effects book:line up a model with an appropriate background and shoot. The buildings are 1/24th scale [or 1/2 inch equals a foot]. They are constructed of Gator board, styrene plastic, Sintra [a light flexible plastic that can be carved, and painted] plus numerous found objects; such as jewelery pieces, finishing washers and printed material."

Learn more about Smith from this interview at Man on the Move.

Touch Boutique Remembered

The scene at the Touch Boutique in September 1972 From far left : unknown, Tom Coy, unknown, David J. Boyd, Bill "Woody" Woods, unknown, and unknown. Seated left: Sandy Rosen, unknown. Seated right: Jim Kitchen

This ode to the Touch Boutique has been updated several times as more info and photos have rolled in. It's worth another look. And if anyone has more photos or memories, feel free to send them my way.

Here's the original posts...

More photos of The Touch Boutique at 804 Detroit Street keep magically appearing. These are all courtesy of Flint Expatriate David J. Boyd. I've added these new shots to the original posts so we can keep the comment section intact. Feel free to give us your memories of The Touch.

Bare Naked Clothing

Co-Owner Ron Watson

Ron Watson and David J. Boyd

Middle Earth Books

Doug Boyd

Dick Dehlin "sells incense, rolling papers, specialty pipes, India imports, hippie gear, and all at a nice hip capitalist mark-up," remembers David J. Boyd.

More Bare Naked Clothing.

David J. Boyd, a Psychedelic Ranger at the 1972 Ann Arbor Jazz and Blues Festival

And now back to the original posts...

Readers have sent a few great photos and artifacts related to The Touch Boutique, so I'm adding them to the original post about this long lost Flint icon.

Mary Fisher and friends near the corner of Detroit and Fifth in 1940. The gas station and what was to become The Touch Boutique are in the background.

A more recent shot of the abandoned gas station turned pool hall by jar with most, complete with campaign advertising. To the right is the corner of the old St. Michael's School, which became Daniel O'Sullivan Model School and, eventually, Flint Schools of Choice.

Here is an ad for The Touch Boutique taken from the September 1, 1972 issue of the Flint Freedom Reader, an alternative publication created at The Touch. Thanks to jbing for passing along this great artifact.

And now back to the original post...

For the kids at St. Michael's in the seventies, The Touch Boutique was a mysterious place that most of us saw only from the outside. Here's how it looked then. It was right across Detroit Street from Merlin's Retreat. It eventually became a home to band members of Jesus Christ and the Superstars and Pincusion in the late 1980s. (Check out Aaron Stengel's Take No Prisoners for an archive of the Flint music scene.) Photo is by Jeff Holbrook and courtesy of Flintstoner80, who offers up some amazing Flint memories on his Flickr page.

A 1979 ad for The Touch Boutique courtesy of Jar With Most, who keeps the memory of old Flint alive with his photos and artifacts.

Jar With Most provides a more recent shot of what was once The Touch Boutique. The sign on the left near the roof reads: "Absolutely no God but Allah. Muhammad is His Messenger" in Arabic. You can see the edge of St. Mike's school peaking out between the trees in the middle of the frame.

Rustbelt Demographics: Population Decline in Mid-Sized Cities

Speaking of population decline, let's see how Flint matches up with some other rustbelt cities.

Flint, Michigan

1860	2,950		—
1870	5,386		82.6%
1880	8,409		56.1%
1890	9,803		16.6%
1900	13,103		33.7%
1910	38,550		194.2%
1920	91,599		137.6%
1930	156,492		70.8%
1940	151,543		−3.2%
1950	163,413		7.8%
1960	196,940		20.5%
1970	193,317		−1.8%
1980	159,611		−17.4%
1990	140,761		−11.8%
2000	124,943		−11.2%
2010	102,434		−18.0%

Toledo, Ohio

1840	1,222		—
1850	3,829		213.3%
1860	13,768		259.6%
1870	31,584		129.4%
1880	50,137		58.7%
1890	81,434		62.4%
1900	131,822		61.9%
1910	168,497		27.8%
1920	243,164		44.3%
1930	290,718		19.6%
1940	282,349		−2.9%
1950	303,616		7.5%
1960	318,003		4.7%
1970	383,818		20.7%
1980	354,635		−7.6%
1990	332,943		−6.1%
2000	313,619		−5.8%
2010	287,208		−8.4%T

Akron, Ohio

1850	3,266		—
1860	3,477		6.5%
1870	10,006		187.8%
1880	16,512		65.0%
1890	27,601		67.2%
1900	42,728		54.8%
1910	69,067		61.6%
1920	208,435		201.8%
1930	255,040		22.4%
1940	244,791		−4.0%
1950	274,605		12.2%
1960	290,351		5.7%
1970	275,425		−5.1%
1980	237,177		−13.9%
1990	223,019		−6.0%
2000	217,074		−2.7%
2010	199,110		−8.3%

Youngstown, Ohio

1850	2,802		—
1860	2,759		−1.5%
1870	8,075		192.7%
1880	15,435		91.1%
1890	33,220		115.2%
1900	44,885		35.1%
1910	79,066		76.2%
1920	132,358		67.4%
1930	170,002		28.4%
1940	167,720		−1.3%
1950	168,330		0.4%
1960	166,688		−1.0%
1970	139,788		−16.1%
1980	115,427		−17.4%
1990	95,787		−17.0%
2000	82,026		−14.4%
2010	66,982		−18.3%

Gary, Indiana

1910	16,802		—
1920	55,378		229.6%
1930	100,666		81.8%
1940	111,719		11.0%
1950	133,911		19.9%
1960	178,320		33.2%
1970	175,415		−1.6%
1980	144,953		−17.4%
1990	116,646		−19.5%
2000	102,746		−11.9%
2010	80,294		−21.9%
Est. 2011	80,221		−0.1%

Vintage Flint Expatriates: The Bikers of Flint

This was originally posted on 6/15/2009. I just ran across it while updating the site and figured it was worth another round for anyone who missed it the first time. Here's the original post:

Monday was one of those beautiful Michigan days in the low seventies with no humidity and a light breeze blowing white Cotton Wood puffs through the air like summer snow flurries. For some reason, I drove over to the massive acreage of cement and weeds that was once Buick City at dusk. I was just about to take some photos when a crew of Eastside kids who live near Lewis and Delaware Streets rolled by on their bikes, apparently having the time of their lives. They were a much more inspiring sight than the ultimate symbol of deindustrialization in America. For someone who covered most of Flint on his bike, it brought back a lot of memories.

Flint Photos: View from the Durant

Two shots of downtown Flint taken from the roof of the Durant Hotel in August 2009 courtesy of Grumkin.

A Bar By Any Other Name...

Okay, this may just be a fellow Flint Expatriate messing with me, but does anyone remember a bar on Dort Highway called...The Toilet?

What Do Flint and Grand Rapids Have in Common?

Why can't Flint get its act together? The budget deficits, the bad streets, the talk of increased taxes and, of course, the layoffs really make the place look bad compared to other cities. Why can't Flint be more like, say, Grand Rapids? I mean there's a city that knows how to live within its means without begging for cash from the state and federal government! With hard work and thrift, Grand Rapids has managed to...oh, wait. Never mind.

Jim Harger of The Grand Rapids Press reports:

Faced with yet another year of budget cutting, the City Commission vowed Tuesday to renew efforts to pry more money out of Lansing.

But as City Manager Greg Sundstrom laid out his latest budget request, no commissioner offered a solution to the pension and health-care costs that are expected to continue rising in the future.

"This remains a fundamental structural problem that we simply have to find a way to get around," Mayor George Heartwell said.

Sundstrom told commissioners the budget he is proposing for the fiscal year starting July 1 assumes voters will approve a city income tax increase May 4 that will raise $7.5 million.

The spending plan also assumes commissioners will create a street lighting fee, reduce the personal income tax exemption from $750 to $600, and tighten enforcement of overdue parking tickets.

The Hero Experiment

Where does the psychologist behind the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment turn when he needs subjects for his latest project? Genesee County, of course.

Questi Sono Tempi Duri

You may not realize that Flint Expatriates has a sizable Italian readership, including my friends Max and Carlo. To show them I care, here's a slice of Roger & Me with Italian subtitles.