Top Honors

      So, Camden, New Jersey has taken our only first place title. Detroit has always rated low in virtually every survey that I have ever observed. We did, however, hold top honors on one very ominous list.  We were unlucky enough to enjoy the abysmal distinction of The Most Dangerous City in the United States last year.  True, it is an appalling commendation to have earned and exhibited, but it was sadly, a first place position, which is something Detroit has not enjoyed since the Pistons netted NBA first place honors in back in 2004.

      Once, a city of champions and the industrial hub of the United States, Detroit has crumbled and fallen down around us.  The scorched and blackened buildings which cower in the shadows of the magnificent Renaissance Center are but a sad reminder of what “used to be”.  The empty streets are reminiscent of the old ghost towns that dotted the landscape of the so called, Wild, Wild West. If it weren’t for the rich suburbanites who tailgate their way into town for the occasional hockey or baseball game, the streets would remain empty but for the insignificant homeless veteran, pushing a rusted shopping cart down the broken, shattered sidewalks.  The only other real nightlife can be found in the oasis of casinos that together form a fortress of sorts, keeping the vermin out and the professed privileged in. The gamblers who lose substantial amounts of money to the one armed bandits, have no idea just how close they are to trading in their BMW’s for a shopping cart of their own…..ahhhh so goes the circle of life, liberty and the pursuit of poverty.