PITTSBURGH TO DETROIT

Stewart here:

Okay, we left Pittsburgh at like noon after eating at a hippie owned breakfast joint. Belly filled with a strange mixture of fat and starch, and after having had a night full of insomnia, I left the driving up to Stefan in order that we get to Detroit in one piece.

Anybody who has driven the stretch of toll road(s) known as the PA/OH turnpike knows that this drive it a drive where one might just as easily see humanity or a UFO, an approaching tornado or aperson fixing their tractor road-side. Just boring enough that it will lull you to sleep, and just interesting enough that you might take a look and decide that they never want to make this fucking boring drive again. I am of the latter category. I just don't want to do it. Never again. But something tells me that I will have to for some unknown reason.

Detroit gets a pretty bad rap overall, and especially from its surrounding neighbors in Michigan and Ohio. Admittedly, if you don't know anybody in Detroit it can be a rather heavy experience rolling into town and seeing nothing, nobody, not a soul for very long distances. The tracts of bombed out cottages and mansion surrounded by green space are pretty common features of the landscape as well. However, if you do know somebody in Detroit, especially in the punk community, you will find that Detroit is an awesome place to start new social experiments and watch them grow without the fear of developers or city planners coming along, coopting, and then gentrifying. Luckily for Detroiters, there will be no gentrification any time soon. In defense of a lot of my weird preconceptions, isn't this where the mighty MC5 came from...?

The Trumbull Plex is a compound of three buildings (one show space and two houses); an Anarchist collective that has thrived here for 15 years based on a revolving door policy of willing members and consensus governing. There are such entities in West Philadelphia to be sure, but this one has it all; a show space, lots of living space, lots of green space, and lots of really cool people. Oh, yeah, and chickens.

We arrived here and were summarily put up and fed. After a few hours of getting to know Jon, one of the organizers here, we waited for "barred" folk to show up to be photographed; and they never came. Zero, our worst night yet. To despair would have been premature because we got wind that the band Drunken Ship was playing at the Old Miami (MIA Michigan), and that the drummer had the bars. And, off we went. The show was fun, the club was awesome, we made some Portland, OR connections.

So, now, as I write this we are packing up and taking off to Cincinnati, Ohio, my former grad school alma matter, where I will be tattooed by connsumate tattooer, Mike Dorsey, and will be shooting tomorrow at one of my favorite pubs in the US, The Comet.