In Motown, Stop in the Name of Hope

Dawn broke from the east over the cerulean Detroit River, while my buddy Chris drove in from the west.

I had an itinerary I was sure we couldn't complete, and it began with breakfast at a classic dive in the city's Irish enclave, Corktown.

"It looks like a nuclear bomb went off," Chris assessed, after picking me up from my downtown hotel.

The streets were idle and empty. So many of the buildings that were hauntingly handsome at night were sad in daylight; windowless, hollow and crumbling. Lot after lot laid bare, covered with slabs of broken concrete or half-dead weeds. Warehouses, storefronts, office buildings left to rot, sealed with plywood, disfigured by graffiti.

The restaurant, when we found it, was closed for the day. The nearby coffee shop lauded in our guidebook? Closed. The barbecue place was in business, but not open. An Irish pub up the way would serve us something from the fryer, but it seemed too early to sit in a dingy, smoke-filled room.

My stomach ached, and not with hunger.

Finally, we saw a diner with its fluorescent lights on: the Brooklyn Street Grill.

"Good. I'm getting bacon," Chris sighed as we pulled in.

"Hey, guys," our waitress said, as a garbage-bag-robed dishwasher squeezed past her through the narrow aisle. "Just want to let you know we're out of bacon."

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