Line for the Bus

DSC_0105, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Miles traveled today – 35

7:24 p.m. – Detroit

We are in Motown, home of the big three automakers, some of the most crippling poverty in the nation as well as some of the most beautiful buildings.

This morning over one hundred voters pledged to get out to the polls on Election day at Wayne State University. This evening we are headed to a concert with DJ extraordinaire Diplo.

Our hotel here is a bizarre monstrosity of a building. It’s painted pink outside and has a small wooden gnome in the lobby. The facade reveals nothing of the interior though. Going through the front door is like walking through a portal to some alternate universe. There is a courtyard with a gazebo. The hallways are covered with paintings and photographs from an earlier era and are filled with antique furniture. The building is a labyrinth: it took my sister and I a full five minutes to walk from our room in the far recesses of the third floor to the lobby. It’s an extraordinarily comfortable place, but you can feel the ghosts and faeries of an earlier time wandering past.

I joked with my sister that every night the Erlkonig captures guests and forces them to dance with his ghastly hordes in an all-night ball and then found myself tossing about in a fitful sleep, too old for nightmares, but still hunted by this inherently spooky place.

In all, it’s not a bad fit for the city. Downtown Detroit can feel like a ghost town. The vast American industries that once anchored this city’s economy have downsized and you can walk past the skyscrapers downtown and feel the spirits of the working men and women who once bustled through streets that are now largely empty. The lone exception to this sense of antiquity is the GM building, which rises like Oz from the shores of the Detroit river. But GM too is facing difficulties as the economy nosedives.

Detroit is a city that emphasizes the challenges facing the millennial generation. The American market has taken a fall and we will have to face the burden of finding our first or second jobs in an economy that stubbornly refuses to produce them. The policies of the next president, not to mention those of the next congress, the next city councils, and the hundreds of other newly elected officials that will come into office after November 4th will determine how hard our job search is going to be. We’d be foolish to ignore our chance to make some difference in those policies.

--Nick Brown