Shortly after I moved to the Detroit area the building was demolished. A week later a friend visited from out of town and he wanted to go see the old site, with the demolished building. It was halloween night and we had been imbibing at a local adult beverage establishment.
We headed downtown and arrived at the site. We were illegally parked and standing outside of the fenced off area just gazing at the sheer volume of bricks! Then we decided to get a momento and we were both trying to work a brick through the fence. We were interrupted with a stern, “Hey, what are you two up too?”
It was a Detroit Metro Police officer making his patrol rounds still on foot. So, there we were on halloween night, a couple of white guys dressed in business casual clothes at 2 am and suddenly faced with a very tough looking Detroit cop!
Needless to say, I was very nervous but I just stated, “well, we were hoping to get a momento of the greatness of Detroit. We are sorry if we broke a law.”
He replied, “Oh, in that case, you wait right here and don’t move!” Then he proceeded to unlock the gate and he went into the work area and picked out a couple of nearly perfect bricks. He brought them back and gave one to each of us!
Now that I think of that story, I realize the stark dicotomy as compared to Baltimore last week. Here we were in downtown Detroit, and a black cop handed a couple of bricks to young 20-somthing white guys!
After such a neat experience, we decided to drive over to Tiger stadium. They had just closed that stadium after the final season. We were just circling the building and admiring it for a last time, when all of a sudden a couple of people exited from a door! We noticed that this door was glass and that there was a full time security guard on duty.
We decided to take a shot and see if we could get into the stadium, so there it was at 3 am on halloween night in Detroit and I decide to knock on the door. The security guard looked up, came over to the door, and asked what we wanted. I just said that we were out and about visiting the icons of Detroit and we were wondering if we could come in. To my surprise, he opened the door and let us in. He spent the next hour giving us a tour of the entire facility.
We got to see the general offices, the free standing walkway, the locker rooms and walk one last time in the stands. The one thing he would not let us do is to run on the field. I thought for a moment about doing it anyway, but decided that he was so nice that I did not want to taint the experience. I am glad that I decided to respect that particular person, because a week later I went to a Redwings game and he was the one that took my ticket at the entrance!
OK, that’s enough reminiscing for now. Thank you for posting the pic so that I could tell this story of a great night in Detroit!
Yeah. If things were reversed the brick would likely have wound up going through some Balt store's window in order to get in and loot the place.
Nice story, btw. Thanks for sharing.