MAYOR DAVE BING TODAY
Posted on 11/12/2009 5:42:06 PM PST by SeekAndFind
DETROIT -- The key to survival in tough times is to surround yourself with as many comforts as possible. That's why the office is decorated with basketball memories. They soothe and give the warmth and energy needed to deal with yet another round of social and political uppercuts.
There's a leather Wilson basketball on the shelf behind the desk, commemorating the 18,000th point scored in a wonderful career. A framed Pistons jersey hangs on a wall. A group picture with fellow members of the NBA's 50th Anniversary Team is on another wall. Crystal trophies and awards are tucked away neatly in corners, providing a gentle touch of elegance and nostalgia without overwhelming the room.
They're all subtle reminders of what Dave Bing used to do and, by extension, of what the city he represents used to be.
Beyond the cherry oak doors of his office, the office of the Mayor of Detroit, lies a whole different city and career. Bing played for Detroit. Now he works for Detroit. Back in the day, he was a tenacious point guard for nine seasons in the city. He averaged 20 points a game and overcame a serious eye injury that nearly left him blind, and yet he couldn't quite elevate the Pistons from the murk of mediocrity. As mayor of Detroit ... well, Bing really doesn't have a choice this time, does he? He must help pull a suffering city from despair. Because if an NBA legend who also built a local business empire and spent 43 years of his life being loyal to the city can't lead Detroit from darkness, who can? Better yet, who'd want to?
Bing is the right man for the job because Bing is free of agendas or hidden interests. Basically, Bing doesn't need the job. Doesn't need the money, the prestige, the validation that comes with holding high office in a major city. He has all that. He doesn't need the migraine that comes with the job. He pursued this office because he loves Detroit. He could be on a beach somewhere, chillaxing.
"You're telling me," he said, smiling.
He turns 66 this month but the only giveaway of senior citizenship is the salt-and-pepper mustache. He shows no stress from the last several whirlwind months, when he willingly entered a chaotic world. He is trim, healthy, still scholarly looking, impeccably groomed with a Wall Street wardrobe. He is still the big-picture thinker who began building his second career before he was halfway done with his first. That second career became Bing Steel, a supplier to the automakers. Made him a millionaire many times over. Once done with that, Bing, already a Detroit icon, settled into the comfy life. And seethed at what he saw.
Detroit was in flames -- not literally as in the late 1960s, but still. The city was sent to its knees by a stream of social, economic and political ills that were decades in the making. The population fell. Crime, illiteracy and unemployment soared. The auto industry, after churning out one too many Pintos, raced to Washington, cupholder in hand.
The get-off-your-sofa moment for Bing arrived when Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced former mayor, stumbled through a string of embarrassing personal airballs, throwing another cream pie into the face of a city plastered with many. Whereas Detroit was once the butt of jokes, that became too easy. Nobody laughed at Detroit anymore. Detroit was suddenly a place for pity, scorn and, worse yet, abandonment.
Bing couldn't be a spectator anymore. Four elections later (yes, four; don't ask), he is sitting in the big chair, discussing why he left the good life for a thankless job and how basketball, no surprise, factored into his thinking.
"It is a challenge, and that's where the competitive juices from basketball came back to the forefront," he said. "Probably more important is the need for leadership here. I care about the city and the people in this city, and both are hurting right now. Because of the lack of leadership, it affected all of us and we didn't deserve it."
Pause.
"There was no one else with the leadership skills to take the city where it needed to go. I can make a difference."
For Bing, fixing Detroit is like guarding Oscar, the Pearl and Jerry, not on consecutive nights, but on the same night. Yet Bing does not look at Detroit the way you look at Detroit. He doesn't see hopelessness, a dead end or, as Time magazine recently called it, "Notown." He's not that pessimistic. At the same time, he's rather blunt about the status quo.
"We're broke," he said.
Detroit is $300 million in the hole and at the mercy of the crippled auto industry because the city never embraced a diversified economy. To begin to fix the broke and broken city, Bing first must get the differing parts of the local government, still mending from the previous administration, to work together. Then he must rally the community into seeing his vision for a better Detroit. That's hard to do when morale is lower than the Lions on Sundays.
"Change has got to come from the bowels of our community," he said. "As a community, we're not there yet. If people want change they have to be part of it. If things don't go right, it's going to impact all of us. If things do go right, it's going to impact us as well. Everybody's impacted.
"That's why I go back to my sports background. You have to understand how important the team is. You can be a star on the team, and guess what? Big deal. That's not what it's all about."
The timing for Bing is eerie. He's taking over the city right when Detroit can't possibly sink much further. And yet, when he first arrived in the Motor City as a rookie in 1967, all hell broke loose and a troubling image began to crystallize, making way for what we now see in Detroit.
"Unfortunately for me," he said, "my first summer here was the summer of the riots. The city fell off a cliff. People were angry. We wound up taking the city down. We burned our homes, our neighborhoods, our communities, our businesses. We're still paying for that today. That's over 40 years ago. We haven't come back from that yet."
Detroit didn't reinvent itself, unlike other factory-belching cities in the Midwest, and it's reeling from being a one-trick town. There is no affluent white section or any large rich section, just small pockets of prosperity. Downtown is slowly coming back, having been reawakened by new ballparks for the Tigers and Lions and the careful suburbanites who tip-toe in on gamedays. But the main streets still tend to be creepy some nights and empty on others. The waterfront makes for a beautiful stroll on sunny days, yet it's just a sliver of land in a city with large swaths of poverty.
Still, Detroit qualifies as a major city. An important city. A vital city. Nearly one million people live within its boundaries. America still leans on Detroit for domestic cars. Detroit can reverse the trend, or so the thinking goes, if it has the proper leadership, and if that leadership can sell the people who live here, and the businesses that operate here (and those that don't) on the notion that Detroit can build a better tomorrow.
Bing has the business smarts and the competitive dive and a big enough identity to steer Detroit in the right direction. The city voters agreed two weeks ago when they gave Bing a full term.
"That's what this administration is charged with," he said. "How do you put a plan together?"
Detroit has started by giving the ball to one of the best point guards ever and letting him run the play.
Good luck Bing, you will need it.
He is working his butt off and is tackling it like the Business man he is....
He might be a Dem, but I would trade Him for Obozo in a heartbeat......
Yeah, he’s a pretty respectable guy who doesn’t appear to be owned by anybody.
I loved the way he dealt with the bus drivers who called an informal strike.
This man is everything Obozo is not.
At age 22 with an NBA contract worth $15,000 in the rarly 1960’s, Bing was rebuffed by the National Bank of Detroit on getting a mortgage to finance a home. This led Bing to work at the bank during the offseason, holding jobs in the teller, customer relations and mortgage departments ( no ACORN or Al Sharpton then to help him out).
Immediately after retiring from the NBA, he worked at a warehouse of the steel processing company Paragon Steel and was paid $35,000. He left after two years, after stints in the company’s shipping and sales operations.
In 1980, Bing opened Bing Steel with four employees in a rented warehouse from $250,000 in loans and $80,000 of his own money. Losing all his money in six months, the company shied away from manufacturing to focus on being a middleman. With General Motors as their first major client, the company turned a profit in its second year on revenues of $4.2 million. By 1984, Bing was awarded by President Ronald Reagan the National Minority Small Business Person Of The Year. By 1985, Bing Steel had expanded to two plants with 63 employees posting revenues of $40 million.
Bing Steel would transform itself to the Bing Group, a conglomerate with headquarters located in Detroit’s North End. The company, among other things, supplies metal stampings to the automobile industry.
THAT’s A SELF-MADE MAN RIGHT THERE. An athlete and a businessman who does not whine about what life has dealt to him.
Dennis Archer, the mayor before King Kwame, was (and is) also a good man. However, the Coleman Young mob in the city prevented him from doing all that was needed to help the city.
May Mayor Bing find ways to conquer the hoards of the corrupt.
A while back I read some comments he made to the city council that were really more admonishment than anything. Basically said that they played a big part in driving the city into the ground and told them that no one can get rich by honest means as a councilman.
Good luck to Dave Bing I remember watching him as a kid.
I spent 10 years in Dearborn, which is also finding itself in a Mohammedan flavoured version of hell. The best view of Detroit then was in the rear view mirror crossing the Ambassador Bridge. It still is.
Mayor Bing notwithstanding, the problem with Detroit is that Coleman Young proved that a black man could become just as corrupt as any white man, and do it as quickly. The Young administration did, even after Young came in, keep feeding off the carcass. Kwame was the last hurrah of the Young gang. Perhaps Mayor Bing can do it; perhaps it will simply take a battalion of the National Guard in support and perhaps the thousands of blocks of burned out buildings and crack houses will finally be bulldozed flat. Perhaps. I wish them luck; the Granholm administration is doing to Michigan what Coleman Young did to Detroit, though.
The people there must jettison their Democratic masters before there is nothing left to master.
The people of Detroit got the leadership they voted for, therefore the leadership they deserve.
Detroit can reverse the trend, or so the thinking goes, if it has the proper leadership, and if that leadership can sell the people who live here, and the businesses that operate here (and those that don't) on the notion that Detroit can build a better tomorrow.
They have to sell the people of Detroit that the purpose of the Government is to protect their rights, period. It's not there to provide a job, an education, a bus ride, a park, a community center, a ball park or any other social program.
They have to sell the people of Detroit that if they produce a child they will be the child's mother or father.
They have to sell the people of Detroit that if they break the law, they will be prosecuted to its fullest extent.
I pray that Mr. Bing is successful, but liberals don't learn from their mistakes, and Detroit is full of liberals.
I think the adults are finally in charge in Detroit. Dave Bing is setting up to be a good mayor. Warren Evans resigned as Wayne County Sheriff to be Detroit Police Chief. Robert Bobb has stepped in to remove corruption and jail the criminals in the schools. We’ll see how the new City Council does but they have 5 new members since last week.
Dave Bing can’t save Detroit, cash out Dave and get the Hell of of Dodge while you can!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nobody can turn Detroit around. We will have to destroy Detroit in order to save Detroit.
Dave Bing had a sweet jump shot.
There he is driving around Walt (Clyde) Frazier, who was a great defensive player but had problems guarding Bing.
Tonight’s trivia question is who is the Knick player on the right?
(I dont know- I’m drawing a blank.)
“Change has got to come from the bowels of our community,”
That doesn’t sound good at all.
lol
Is that Neal Walk?
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