Flint Artifacts: Chevy Employee Badge

Cadillac Style in San Francisco

Photo by Bhautik Joshi via sfist.com.

Flint Artifacts: Chevrolet and Fisher Body Employee Badges

Thanks to David Ladd, a 28 year veteran of GM and 10 different plants, for the Flint Artifacts.

Kiva and Flint Combine to Help Local Businesses

Looking for a way to help Flint businesses prosper? Consider a Kiva loan. Jeremy Allen of The Flint Journal describes how it works:

Kiva is the world’s first online lending platform which enables members of the community to act as a business' collective lender through the use of microloans. The microloans allow community members to make loans ranging from $25- $5,000 to business owners, with hopes that it leads to the building of vibrant communities.

Michigan Corps recently launched Kiva Flint to specifically target businesses in the Vehicle City. 

Three Flint small businesses are currently raising funds for their expansion and growth, and we would greatly appreciate your help in building a community around these businesses.

There are generally two things we are looking for from people:
1 -  Lend directly to one of these great Flint businesses.
2 -  Spread the word and share these pages widely. Online mediums are best (email, social media, etc), but anything helps!

Here are the borrower's respective links:

https://zip.kiva.org/loans/1255/i/pey
https://zip.kiva.org/loans/1254/i/e4p
https://zip.kiva.org/loans/1246/i/0db

Turn Your Photos into Art to Help Flint

Here's your chance to help out Jerome Chou and the Flint Public Art Project:

This past March, Flint Public Art Project and the American Institute of Architects - Flint chapter announced the winner of the Flat Lot International Design Competition to build a temporary summer pavilion. The winning team, a London-based architecture firm called Two Islands, is now pulling together their team to build their proposal for a "floating house" covered in reflective material. We think the pavilion will be a beautiful and striking symbol of Flint's rebirth, as well as a destination for residents and visitors throughout the summer.

As part of the proposal, the team will install a series of light boxes that contain printed images (photos, company logos, illustrations, etc.) submitted from Flint residents and supporters around the world. They've started a Kickstarter campaign to help crowdsource images, spread the word, and cover the costs of producing the boxes using small donations from individuals and businesses.

Please join us in supporting the installation, and add your image to this collective monument to Flint. Just click on the Kickstarter link below, and thank you!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/418463629/marks-house-a-ceiling-installation-made-possible-b

Flint Profiles: Don Richards

I was saddened to learn today that Flint Expatriate Don Richards died in February. I met Don through this blog, and he passed along many great stories about Flint. He graciously helped fill me in on the history of Civic Park and a host of other topics when I was researching and writing Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City. There were times when I was left wondering "Who the hell would know the answer to this?" And it was often Don who came up with the information, passing it along in phone conversations and long email exchanges. He extended a lot of kindness to me over the past few years. Even though we never actually met in person, I consider him a friend. He will be missed.

Here is a portion of Don's obituary, written by his daughter, Tara:

Don, the brother of five, was a 1966 graduate of Flint Northern High School. After high school, Don enlisted in the U.S. Army where he became an ammunition specialist, and was honorably discharged in 1969. In civilian life, he became a Registered Land Surveyor (a trade he learned while in the Army), working at several of the large firms in Genesee, Oakland, and Wayne counties; he also had a brief stint with owning his own surveying company

Throughout his life, he actively worked on projects of an historical nature. He enjoyed researching, and re-telling, history through Surveying. In particular, he loved to write about Genesee County, and was an accomplished writer on various blogs, local publications, and was working on a book.

Don was also a self-taught guitar player, with a vast appreciation for music, and enjoyed tuning out the rest of the world in favor of a great song and a nice buzz. He ran the Crim 10-mile road race for twelve consecutive years, and dabbled in ballroom dancing, where he met his future wife, Jan. 

An Interview with the Author of "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City"

Scott Atkinson of The Flint Journal profiles Teardown: Memoir of a Shrinking City and interviews me in a story that came out today. He writes:

Readers are introduced to a variety of characters who show that Flint can't be defined by just one person or neighborhood. Early on, we meet a shirtless panhandler claiming it's his birthday before screaming obscenities. Throughout the book there several people trying to save their neighborhoods from blight and crime, others just wondering if it will ever stop.

Through all the people, he offers these contrasting views of the city — the evidence of its decline as well as its hope for its future. The most telling example might be when a well-to-do couple hosts a fancy dinner party in their Carriage Town home and has to close their curtains to block the guests' view of their next-door neighbor holding a knife to a man's throat and screaming, "Don't you know I love you?"

Yes, I'm now blogging about myself being interviewed by someone else. Seems weird. Soon I'll be referring to myself in the third person. Since I've already gone this far, I might as well quote myself: 

FJ: One thing that stood out to me throughout the book was the way you balanced the different sides of Flint. You wrote about some of the humorous and charming aspect of Flint, but those always seemed counterbalanced by some of the very real problems here. Was that a conscious effort?

GY: Flint requires the ability to compartmentalize. You have to be able to evaluate the good and the bad and keep it all in perspective. I don't think it does anyone any good to sugarcoat what's happened to the city. It's in a socioeconomic freefall, and things could still get worse. At the same time, there are a lot of positive things happening in the city. And I met so many people who have not given up. They love Flint. They're still fighting to make it a better place. It's important to remember that the city is more than a collection of economic stats. It's a collection of people, and I wanted to tell a story about those people. Life in Flint can be sad and funny and heartbreaking and inspiring. I tried to capture all of that. It's the opposite of the kind of shoddy slideshow journalism that Forbes does when it produces those endless lists of America's most miserable cities and all of that. I think that's a complete waste of time. I don't think it's journalism. I don't think it's informing anybody of anything. So what I tried to do was provide something that was accurate yet heartfelt.

Flint Artifacts: 1985 Buick LeSabre

How many people left Flint in this car, never to return?

Our Increasingly Poor Suburbs

The Brookings Institution confirms that the suburbs are now experiencing conditions that Flint and other cities have been facing for decades:

"The poor have typically been concentrated in big cities and rural America. Increasing poverty in the New York metropolitan area’s historically affluent suburbs mirrored a national trend detailed in the analysis, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America” by Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program, and Alan Berube, a deputy director of the program.

"The first decade of the 21st century was a tipping point, the authors wrote. Suburbia, they said, is now home to the 'fastest-growing poor population in the country.'"

Flint Artifacts: Sharp Hardware 1950 Catalog