- Barbara Ehrenreich recently started a blog, which will be required reading in my honors seminar this fall.
- Pitchfork Magazine this past week ran a feature on the Top 200 Songs of the 60s.
- Today the Woodward Dream Cruise turns suburban Detroit into a nostalgic mess. Every August, car enthusiasts spend an entire day driving vintage cars up and down Woodward Avenue and roughly a six-mile stretch of the drag is literally lined with on-lookers in lawn chairs. I've never been a car guy (yet I love Detroit--isn't it ironic?) and the event has no appeal to me. Fair enough. But some things that bug me about the day:
- the event has sprawled into a weeklong affair, clogging traffic and damaging small businesses (bars are the only businesses that benefit from the Cruise)
- did I mention the insane traffic situation?
- the trinket shops--Dream Cruise beer cozys, ball caps, etc.--that have set up, among other places, on the lawn of the cemetery (!) at 12-Mile
- the waste of three-dollar-per-gallon gas involved in the event, as eight- and twelve-cyllinder vehicles spend hours and hours cruising the street
- the pollution
- the bleach people pour in the street to accentuate the spinning tires
- the sound of spinning tires
- the port-o-potties: seems like there must be one per customer...they're everywhere, right there next to people's lawn chairs. yuk. the day involves lots of drinking so I guess this is better than peeing in the cemetery
8/19/2006
miscelaneous saturday
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3 comments:
On Thursday, we have the brilliant idea to go get some fish and chips at the Red Coat Tavern - up Woodward in north Royal Oak.
Right. On Thursday, before the cruise has started, it took forty minutes to drive up Woodward (smart thinking on my part) only to find the entire parking lot taken up by cruisers and their lawn chairs. That idea went down the drain.
I've never been a fan of the cruise.
UPDATES:
*Got stuck behind vehicle emptying portable toilets this a.m.
*Inflattable jumping machine for the kids is now on the cemetery lawn.
*Police everywhere. Nicole tells me that prosecutors don't offer deals for tickets given during dream cruise. A real cash cow, like Thursday night ad revenue on network tv. They've probably got pads of "open container," "five over speed limit," and "reckless driving" tickets pre-printed.
(got here from a link in Randy's LJ-- I'm Christina, formerly of the Writing Program/Honors Office where I guest starred as The Fake Michele on Fridays in the summer)
In true suburban fashion, the Downriver area has its own little dream cruise, which is called Crusin Downriver or something silly like that. Lots of old cars driving down Fort Street with more cars in the parking lots of Super K and Meijer. A very strange sight, and it makes for impossible traffic. I moved recently and was back in Southgate and feeling incredibly nostalgic. Then I hit Downriver cruise traffic and decided that I was glad to be gone.
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