The Impulsive Traveler: In Detroit, ruin porn and an incipient renaissance

In Detroit, there’s room to ride.

I spent my last day in the city on two wheels. The light traffic on downtown roads makes the Motor City surprisingly accommodating to visiting cyclists who don’t really know where they’re going. (Okay, there were a few times when somebody yelled “Get the [expletive] off the road!” from a passing car, but those were the only exceptions to the cheerful welcome we got from most locals.)

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• The Impulsive Traveler: In Detroit, ruin porn and an incipient renaissance
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Had I known about the show the city would put on, I would have gotten on a bike much sooner. I rode Grand Boulevard into the city’s eastern neighborhoods, turned north into Hamtramck (a two-square-mile municipality that’s technically separate from Detroit but sits smack in the middle of it), then traveled back west through the tree-lined streets of the historic districts of Arden Park and Boston-Edison.

The city is a visual feast: urban farms, derelict houses, art deco skyscrapers, 19th-century churches, industrial ruins and vibrant murals declaring, “Detroit Lives!” Above all, there’s a lot of space.

It’s a more eclectic picture than I’d imagined. After years of stories about population loss, bad government and auto industry bailouts, it’s a safe bet that the overwhelming view of Detroit among those who’ve never visited is one of decline. Yet as of late, the city is undergoing a revival, however nascent, led by creative types and entrepreneurs attracted to the low cost of living — and all that space to do stuff with.

More encouragement came in April when the Hostel Detroit opened its doors. There hadn’t been a youth hostel in the city for 15 years. The ribbon-cutting drew hundreds who saw it as proof that the city that gave the world the Model T, Motown and techno is on the verge of becoming cool again. I checked in with two friends one month after the party. We wanted to see the city we’d heard so much about for ourselves.

Hostel Detroit is in the North Corktown neighborhood, an area on the western fringe of downtown that has reawakened in recent years but retains a wild, deserted look. In some sections you see more open fields than houses — and many of those have been emptied and left to crumble. In what some have referred to derisively as “ruin porn,” the more egregious examples of urban blight have even become tourist destinations. Go ahead, shake your head, but I admit, we were curious.

Just a short walk south of the hostel is the city’s most infamous ruin, the Michigan Central Station. When it opened in 1913, it was the tallest rail station in the world. After the last Amtrak train pulled out in 1988 it was left to waste away. The ghostly structure gave us the heebie-jeebies when we visited it at twilight. Two days later, stopping by with the sun overhead, we were tempted to venture in. Yet even though many urban explorers have conquered the barbed-wire fence that surrounds the building, the safety risks of wandering around a semi-collapsed building held us back. And the threat, however unlikely, of being charged with criminal trespassing was also a factor in our chickening out. While we were there, a Homeland Security SUV circled the property.