Devil's Night: It's All Relative

Devil's night in Flint is considered "pleasantly quiet" by the fire department because there were only 8 fires.

At long last, the secret of why anyone would root for the Detroit Lions is revealed!

I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't post at least one of the hilarious Pure Michigan spoofs on Flint Expatriates. Warning: Very Strong Language. And if you're a Detroit Lions fan, I just wouldn't watch this.

Flint Artifacts: Flint Journal, August 14, 1945

Thanks again to Tom Pohrt for the artifact.

Flint High Schools Struggle on the Gridiron

Last August I lamented the decline of Flint's public high school football programs — see the stats below — and things actually seem to be getting worse. As the 2010 season wraps up, Flint schools were a combined 5-22, with the Northern Vikings accounting for all the wins:

Northwestern 0-9
Southwestern 0-9
Northern 5-4

Even Powers Catholic, which has a .677 winning percentage dating back to 1970, only managed to eke out a single win against Northwestern.

I've said this before, but it would be nice if Flint consolidated into a single public high school. The demographics will force it to happen sooner or later. (Flint is expected to have fewer than 2,500 high school students by 2013.) It would be cheaper and provide a better education to Flint high school students. And it would probably produce a competitive football team as an added bonus.

Here's the post from August 2009:

With the start of the high school football season yesterday, it's hard not to notice that one of the casualties of Flint's shrinking population and economic malaise has been the success of the city's public school teams.

Flint Northwestern: By going 5-4 last year, the Wildcats posted their first winning season since 1984. During that run, the team had five 0-9 seasons. Northwestern beat Southwestern in this year's season opener, 32-6.

Flint Southwestern: In the last twenty years, the Colts haven't had a single winning season and have a combined 39-150 record.

Flint Northern: The Vikings last winning season was in 2001. The school has an 8-55 record over the last eight seasons.

Flint Central: After an impressive 11-1 season in 1993, the Indians/Phoenix had 10 losing seasons out of 15 with a combined record of 53-75. In their final season last year, Central went 3-6.

I can't help thinking what a great team the city would have if Flint had a single Class A high school for its approximately 2,700 students. An enrollment, by the way, that's getting smaller every year. But this isn't just about sports. Studies show that students have more academic resources in bigger schools, which are cheaper to run. And there are plenty of good high schools around the country with much larger enrollments. As painful as it was to lose Central, the city should probably close two more schools.

Chevy and the Zen of Advertising Slogans

Is "Chevy Runs Deep" the worst ad slogan ever?

Jalopnik.com, the car site that may have the worst name ever, thinks so.

UPDATE: It appears that Chevy has traveled a long and winding path to come up with this water-logged slogan. (With mixed metaphors like that, maybe I should go into advertising for Chevy.)

Chrissie Thompson of The Detroit Free Press reports:

The new work is GM’s first attempt at brand-wide advertising for Chevrolet since Ewanick’s arrival in May from his weeks-old job at Nissan. It uses the nostalgic “Chevy” label after the brand’s top U.S. sales and marketing executives in June asked employees to stop referring to the brand by its nickname, then reneged after widespread complaints.

The new Chevy strategy comes after a year of marketing turmoil, which started last summer, when the brand began publicly looking to replace its 5-year-old “American Revolution” tag line. After deciding to remain tagless, Chevrolet in April broke off a 91-year relationship with Warren-based ad agency Campbell-Ewald and said it would give its advertising contract to Publicis Worldwide.

The result of that relationship was the tag line “Excellence for All, ” which appeared only in print ads before Ewanick arrived in May and promptly canned the slogan. Days after arriving, he dismissed Publicis and chose San Francisco-based Goodby as Chevrolet’s agency.

In August, Ewanick replaced Chevrolet marketing head Jim Campbell with, Chris Perry, Ewanick’s former colleague from his three years at Hyundai. Perry is Chevrolet’s fourth top marketer since GM exited its bankruptcy in July 2009.

The Fire This Time

So who, in your opinion, is responsible for the Flint fires?

A G.M. Ghost in San Francisco

Flint Photos: Downtown in the Sixties

Flint Expatriate Shawn Chittle has an amazing collection of Flint photos from the late sixties — a time when trains ran through downtown and buildings covered parts of the river — on his Facebook page.

Flint Artifacts: Property of General Motors T-Shirt

For a guy from Texas, my friend Carlo has a great sense of Flint fashion. Maybe it's the result of spending a lot of time at AstroWorld — the cousin of AutoWorld — as a kid.

Tested by Fire

An anonymous reader struggles to keep the faith after the Jackson Hardy House fire:

"This is a turning point for me and looking at Flint's future.

"I didn't grow up in Flint, but moved here from a smaller berg about 10 years ago after finding a house that cost a third of what it would cost anywhere else in the county. Growing up I heard horror stories about the city of Flint. However, after moving here I found that much of what I had heard didn't really line up with what I was seeing in my neighborhood. I was amazed to have sixty or seventy kids come to my house the first year I gave out candy for Halloween and was happy to see kids as young as seven or eight walking past my house by themselves to go to school in the morning. I love the library, the College/Cultural area, the folk music festival at Kearsley Park, Carriage Town and going to the Mott estate whenever they open it up for garden tours.

"Lately things have changed though. About a year ago I awoke to find a man trying to break into my back door and have since noticed the screens on some of the windows have been moved after returning from work. I've really enjoyed learning more about the great history of Flint and am sickened to see that the Jackson Hardy house was burned down and anyone who cares about Flint and Genesee County should be sick as well. Sadly, I've found that most people don't care. In almost any other city historic structures like this would be cherished and protected but not here.

"I think this area has some sort of screwed-up defeatist psychological mindset that makes it difficult for me to want to stay. I mean if someone can burn down a house like that then they don't have respect for anything."

UPDATE: A follow-up comment from a reader via Facebook:

"This breaks my heart and I understand. Thanks for sharing, Gordon. This writer is correct. Whoever lit this match and (most likely) watched that amazing structure burn, not only has a lack of respect, they has no soul. Whoever is burning Flint obviously, for whatever reason, does not want Flint's renaissance to continue. This structure was not an eye-sore, was not boarded, and was in the 11th hour of completion. This is pure strategic sabotage. And even though the devastation I witnessed on Sunday still has be sullen and continuously teary eyed- the anger has stirred something in me that makes me want to fight harder... The wind, that the senseless demolition of Manning Court took out of my sails, is back. I only hope others will shake off their overwhelming dismay and join me. We're so close... we can't give up now and let the inmates run this asylum."