Flint Postcards: Eileen's Restaurant at 3147 S. Dort Highway

Wayne Fontes...Please Come Back

James O'Dea on the Flint Label

 James O'Dea in Flint. (Photo courtesy of UM-Flint)

UM-Flint student James O'Dea, whose great grandfather was a Sit-Down striker, reflects on what loyalty to Flint really means in a compelling essay entitled "Hyphen Flint."

When I told my high school teachers my plan to revive Flint, the usual response was a grin and a chuckle—like how you’d respond to a little boy who promises to grow up to be an astronaut and a cowboy. But most of them at least seemed to admire my passion and optimism—the same lack of apathy that alienated me from so many of my peers. The good teachers were the one redeeming factor of a high school (and town) well known for being spoiled, snobbish and fake. In Grand Blanc, your GPA wasn’t as much an indicator of your future university as was the label on your clothes.

 Read the rest here. You'll be glad you did.

Flint Photos: Buick Car Carrier

 Remember these car carriers roaring around Flint? Dan Doser passed along this photo. His dad hauled new Buicks out of Flint from 1950-1985.

Flint Artifacts: Buick City Paint Team Patch

Working together...with a paint robot. Thanks to Shawn Chittle for the Flint Artifact.

Staying Put

It may be hard for Flint Expatriates and the other refugees from shrinking cities to believe, but Americans are moving less.

Annie Lowrey of The New York Times Magazine reports:

This is in part a result of the decline of manufacturing and the rise of the service economy. Heavy industries like steel making tend to cluster in certain parts of the country, whereas services like fast-food sales, pool cleaning and day care tend to blanket it. Even in the heyday of American steel making, a smelter operator’s job search was rather limited geographically. Today, a day care worker can look for a job anywhere — and she would probably be able to find one close to home. 

Jobs by the Numbers

"In 1955 General Motors employed nearly 600,000 people. Today, in a much larger economy, Google employs fewer than 50,000; eBay employs about 20,000 people in the United States; Facebook fewer than 6,000."
— Jeff Madrick, Harper's Magazine.

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.

Signed Teardown Bookplates for the Holidays

UPDATE: I have five signed bookplates left. Get 'em while they last.

I have a limited number of bookplates that I'd be happy to sign and mail to you if you'd like to personalize your copy of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City. The plates are 4 by 3 inches and can be affixed to the title page of the book. Or your car bumper if that's what you're into. It's a nice touch if you plan to give Teardown as a holiday gift. (Hint, hint.) Just email me (gyoung(at)flintexpats(dot)com) with your address, and I'll drop one in the mail for you. Thanks.

Flint Artifacts: McDonald Dairy Milk Bottle