Haloween, Detroit, MI

In the midst of the crumbling buildings, the fear gripping the auto industry, and the general decay of Detroit, I happened upon a rave.

I was in Detroit on Halloween and ended up in an old factory building that used to make car parts and bodies and then B-17 wings for the bomber known as the flying fortress. The building, like many others in more alive cities, has been converted into lofts for artists, but on outskirts of Detroit it felt like an island onto itself, totally removed from the city and its ills, filled with children who where from the suburbs, educated and for the most part had someone to support them, unlike the vast majority who struggle for another day in the city proper.

That Halloween evening became a metaphor for me as to where we are at this point in history. Not long ago the building was used to actually produce something and employ people. On the night I was there it was nothing more than an empty space filled with a kind of grotesque decadence where young kids (I'd say the median age was 16) got drunk, flipped trough porn, danced alone in the corners and consumed consumed consumed with nowhere to go, nothing to do and not much of a way to pay for it.

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