1970s Flint Fashion: Purple Satin St. Mary's Jacket

1970s Fashion: Purple Satin Jacket

Distance Pain

"In Wales, for example, Welsh is spoken by barely 20 percent of the population, so we can only hope that the evocative Welsh word hiraeth will somehow be preserved. It means 'distance pain,' accompanied in extreme cases by tuneful lamentation (mine never got quite that bad). But, and this is important, it always refers to a near-umbilical attachment to a place, not just free-floating nostalgia or a droopy houndlike wistfulness or the longing we associate with romantic love. No, this is a word about the pain of loving a place."

— Sally Mann, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs

Flint on Film: 1940 Parade

Flint Photos: Ben's Barber Shop, Pierson Road

 

Flint Photos: North Land Drive-In, Dort Highway

 

Order the updated paperback edition of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City

The revised and updated paperback edition of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City is available now at Amazon and other booksellers. Or order directly from the University of California Press here and get a 30% discount. Just use coupon code 17M6662 at checkout.

PRAISE FOR TEARDOWN

“One can read Teardown and go 'My, my, my! What a horrid town! Thank God I don't live there!' Oh, but you do. Just as the 'Roger & Me Flint' of the 1980s was the precursor to a wave of downsizing that eventually hit every American community, Gordon Young's Flint of 2013, as so profoundly depicted in this book, is your latest warning of what's in store for you — all of you, no matter where you live — in the next decade. The only difference between your town and Flint is that the Grim Reaper just likes to visit us first. It's all here in Teardown, a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once great American city.”
– MICHAEL MOORE, FILMMAKER, AUTHOR, ACTIVIST

“A poignant, often funny look at an iconic Rust Belt city struggling to recover.”
– VANESSA BUSH, BOOKLIST

“Young shines a spotlight on a broken city and the efforts of those desperate to save it, but this is also the story of a man confronting a crisis of identity and finding hope where there seemed to be none.”
– PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Armed with an aluminum baseball bat and a truth-seeking pen, Gordon Young returns to the post-industrial wasteland of his hometown — Vehicle City, aka Flint, Michigan — in search of a derelict house to buy and restore. At least that's his cover story. Young's true mission is to reclaim his past in order to make sense of his present. If you're bewitched by the place where you grew up, you'll find comfort and a sense of home in the pages of Teardown.”
– JACK SHAFER, POLITICO

Hillside Chevy Nova

An iconic Chevy Nova, hillside in the smoke and fog, on Dalewood Way near Mt. Davidson in San Francisco.

Sky Blue Buick Electra

Buick Electra 225, complete with gold spoke rims on Terry Francois Blvd. in San Francisco.

Black Lives Matter

Photographer Jake May of MLive.com highlights local artists and volunteers who painted a Black Lives Matter mural on a block of Martin Luther King Avenue near downtown Flint on June 14. See the series of photos here.

Come what may, this is where we'll remain, in this world with one moon

Just finished Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, which I guess is my official coronavirus novel. Started it when things were normal, chopped up into three volumes to lighten my commute on Caltrain. Finished it in the midst of shelter-in-place, its ending seeming all too prescient.

“I still don't know what sort of world this is, she thought. But whatever world we're in now, I'm sure this is where I will stay. Where we will stay. This world must have its own threats, its own dangers, must be filled with its own type of riddles and contradictions. We may have to travel down many dark paths, leading who knows where. But that's okay. It's not a problem. I'll just have to accept it. I'm not going anywhere. Come what may, this is where we'll remain, in this world with one moon.”

― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84