Years ago, Spouse got offered a promotion. It was a great opportunity: career advancement, a raise, upskilling... Only problem: it would require us to move to Detroit.
At the time we had been in Chicago for a little over a year and we were both in love (still are! we're simps for this city). It's just a perfect match for our values and our lifestyle: it's beautiful, it's comfortable, it's easy to move around without a car, we have good friends here.
We really didn't want to move. So Spouse rejected the promotion. The company still pushed for it, offered different incentives, Spouse explained moving out of Chicago was a dealbreaker.
So the company invited both of us to Detroit. We would spend a couple of days there, being wined and dined, exploring the city. They would show us around so we could see that Detroit was very similar to Chicago and that we would surely be as happy there as we were here. They arranged for our accommodation and a car rental.
In which they accidentally let the riff-raff into their exclusive club
We are staying at the Detroit Athletic Club, a "private social club" that requires all members to pay hundreds of dollars a month in membership, on top of the thousands of dollars in initiation fees. Also you need to be recommended by existing members. The clubhouse is right in the middle of the "entertainment" district and also the kind of place that only the most boring specimens find aspirational. Lots of fancy rooms with fancy art cordoned off because what if they get ruined. Bland "classical" music heard at a very low level, coming from hidden speakers. We stayed at one of the guest rooms, but, since we're not members and a member vouched for us, we needed to follow the rules. Lots of rules.
Lots of rules about what is or isn't allowed based exclusively on "propriety": what kind of clothes you can wear (dresses below the knees, slacks and blazers), can you talk on the phone (no), can you eat a snack (also no, unless in designated areas), can you speak Spanish (not explicitly forbidden but we got disapproving looks), can you be Black (apparently only if you're one of the people holding the doors open for members to walk through).
I understand the company wanted to impress us with this choice of lodging. We were not impressed.
Yeah but where did you go?
Anyway, our first full day there, while Spouse was doing Work Things and visiting Work Places and schmoozing with Work People, I was left to explore on my own.
I walked around downtown Detroit and honestly, had a good time! It's a nice area, cute shops, beautiful architecture (the Guardian Building is an Art Deco dream), good food, etc.
But I could only walk around the downtown area. Detroit is a car city (historically! cars are a big deal there!) and I am not a car person.
That night we had dinner at the rooftop bar/restaurant of the DAC, overlooking the baseball field. Spouse's boss and prospective peers invited us there to chat about the job and the city and try to talk us into moving there.
At some point the boss' wife asked me what I spent the day doing, so I told her I had a good time walking around downtown. So she asks:
"Where did you go?"
"I just walked around"
"But where?"
"Like, around downtown, ended up at the Guardian Building..."
"I'm sure the company would comp your Uber ride next time"
We kind of talked around each other for a few minutes because I did not understand that she thought I walked because I didn't know how else to reach my destination, and she didn't understand that "walking" was my destination all along.
Detroit is the same as Chicago
When it came to them "pitching" Detroit to us so we would move there, the table listed entertainment venues: theaters, the baseball field, etc (all very nice). They pointed out that the city was being "revitalized" with all the new construction everywhere (true). They told us how much they enjoyed living there by describing the restaurants they went to and the casinos they gambled in (there is one just a few blocks from the DAC!).
They also mentioned property values. It would be affordable for us to get a good place and it would actually increase in value, see? The city is making a comeback so a home in a desirable area would be a good investment.
Truly, there's nothing Chicago has that Detroit lacks, they are the same.
We acknowledged Detroit's many charms and repeated that the problem was mobility. It's so easy for us to get around in Chicago, it really wouldn't be as easy if we lived in Detroit. That's where we were wrong, according to these business people. You see, this guy lives in that suburb and he can just hop on the highway and be downtown in thirty minutes, tops. That guy and his wife live in a different suburb and even at peak hours they don't need to drive more than forty minutes to work. And there's so much parking everywhere!
Where do you live?
And that's the thing, isn't it? We were having two different conversations and I hadn't realized until that point. For us, living in a specific city means living in the city, not a suburb of the city. But it also means spending time in said city. It means knowing our neighbors and our neighborhood. It means frequenting a specific corner shop and an art studio. It means going to the park or the beach or out for a walk. It means seeing a flyer for a cool event while drinking coffee and then taking the train to said event.
For everyone else at that table, living in a specific city means nothing. They could move to Chicagoland tomorrow and their lives wouldn't be much different. They will live in a tolerable suburb, get into their car, curse at traffic, park somewhere, get out of the car and into whatever venue they went to, back to the car, back home. None of these people knew their neighbors. None had an interest in knowing them. The main difference between cities, for them, was "property values" and whether they could turn housing into a lucrative investment and if so, how fast. Regardless of where they live, they will spend time in the same places: their car. Their home. The name of the fancy "Athletic Club" they drank at would change. Not much else.
Ew, people.
At some point, while talking about how great our living situation was in Chicago, I mentioned that we were like two blocks from an Aldi and how convenient it was to walk there for groceries.
One of the ladies at the table laughed nervously and said she could never shop at Aldi because "all kinds of people shop there, you never know!"
Look, I was trying my hardest not to cause conflict that would jeopardize Spouse's job, but this lady made it so difficult for me. So I asked "You never know what?"
"You never know who else may be shopping there"
"Well, I shop there"
I think she realized I was not going to share her disgust of Aldi shoppers, because she said something about them not carrying her favorite brand of whatever and changed the topic.
At a different point in conversation, someone started talking about how cool self driving cars were and how they were almost here and how they would revolutionize transportation. Someone else agreed and they started imagining a bright self-driving future, which involved... Paying a subscription to like, Uber or someone, and have a self driving car pick you up and drop you off whenever you needed a ride.
Spouse laughed and said that sounded exactly like Uber right now, it didn't seem so revolutionary (clearly, by then Spouse was not interested in impressing any of these people). The suit in question replied that, because the self driving cars can "talk to each other," it would be more efficient and there wouldn't be traffic.
I said that trains and busses sounded more efficient and I've never been stuck in traffic while riding the Red Line, but maybe I spoke too softly because nobody acknowledged it.
Another executive said that he would never use a service like described. A car picking you up and dropping you off and then driving away to pick someone else up? Horrible. You never know who was in the car before you! It could have been anyone.
I thought he and the Aldi lady had a lot in common but didn't say anything, in case that ruined their respective marriages.
I also thought a train system would have been a hard sell for them.
That dinner made it very clear the trip had been wasted. Even if we could have been persuaded to move away from Chicago, these people would not be the ones to do it. They simply could not tell different cities apart from behind their windshield. They just couldn't see people from the rooftop bar.
They didn't want to, either.
btw if you like what I wrote here you can buy me a coffee
