hotfudgedetroit.com

meme wrote:

Mud Bug wrote:

He should make it a franchise. Next up: a brick tudor on Robinwood Street.

Is there anything left on w. Robinwood Street? Street view is a little out of date...
I read about that fireweed city on w goldengate......there's another topic for this thread...

There's one occupied home between Woodward and John R. There once were sixty occupied homes on that stretch.

That would be the magic of an Air BnB vacation home there... the solitude, the freedom, the adventure of being on your own in a bomb zone.

meme wrote:

Mud Bug wrote:

He should make it a franchise. Next up: a brick tudor on Robinwood Street.

Is there anything left on w. Robinwood Street? Street view is a little out of date...
I read about that fireweed city on w goldengate......there's another topic for this thread...

Oh dear god;I'll have you know it's called Fireweed UNIVERSE City.
This is from their blog; it's entitled "A Day on Goldengate":



They have a bike co-op too.

middle aged female wrote:

meme wrote:

Mud Bug wrote:

He should make it a franchise. Next up: a brick tudor on Robinwood Street.

Is there anything left on w. Robinwood Street? Street view is a little out of date...
I read about that fireweed city on w goldengate......there's another topic for this thread...

Oh dear god;I'll have you know it's called Fireweed UNIVERSE City.
This is from their blog; it's entitled "A Day on Goldengate":



They have a bike co-op too.

I actually follow that blog(feedreader)....wouldn't want to miss a post! Usually good for a laugh/snicker. Got lazy typing. Remember when one of them got shot thru the door? They ever fix the sinkhole on Robinwood?

In an Instagram mini-bio, McLeskey says he's an "urban farmer, real estate developer/agent, general yuppie . . . trying to create the world I wish to live in, beginning with Detroit."

By being a slum lord............................

D-Day wrote:

In an Instagram mini-bio, McLeskey says he's an "urban farmer, real estate developer/agent, general yuppie . . . trying to create the world I wish to live in, beginning with Detroit."

By being a slum lord............................

It's easy to make fun of what folks like McLeskey think of themselves, but it's also comforting to know they're coming up with more creative ways to mask their greed. God bless 'em.

WHAT? Universe-City is a grassroots, not-for-profit movement to transform a devastated, burned-out Detroit city neighborhood into a sustainable, eco-friendly, intentional community that will be the grounds for urban farming, residential and creative space for artists, healers, musicians, and like-minded, forward-thinking, progressive individuals

WHERE? We are working on the area just South of 7 Mile and Woodward, across from Palmer Park, in Detroit, Michigan.
http://www.fireweeduniversecity.org/

A show on NatGeo channel called "Live Free or Die" follows the daily routines of various frontiersmen living off the land. There's Colburn, once a business executive who now lives in treehouse above a Georgia swamp and eats wild boar and varmints. A young married couple, he in dreadlocks, she in a yellow flower dress, raise rabbits and recycle the poop to fertilizer their organic garden. Then there's Thorn, the primitive hunter/gatherer who lives in a twig yurt he built on a North Carolina mountainside.

Every week is a new adventure in having food and shelter, or something happens that temporarily derails their little Utopia (i.e.- chickens are eating the neo-hippies love garden, time to use the rabbit poop to raise worms to feed the chickens). After a few episodes, you can't but help pull for these people as they eke out the most basic of existences, eschewing almost all modern conveniences and refusing to bow to the societal norm of work, paycheck, mortgage, work, paycheck, mortgage, etc. At times I'm envious about their freedom but then nothing looks enviable about constantly being dirty and hungry.

Someone should tell NatGeo that we have modern pioneers too, with an urban twist.

Hate to derail our general yuppie's quest to rent that building on St. Aubin for $150 a night ... a Kayak search for hotels in downtown Detroit for a Friday/Saturday night stay (Nov. 13-15) yields most any property (save the casino hotels) for $189 to $140 a night, and the $140 is the Book-Cadillac.

I love bullet-proof ground floors as much as the next guy, but I think I'll spring for the taxes and such to stay in civilization.

What was said by the original owner in 2008, when the Cranbrook students built it:

"2126 Pierce Street is the first new single-family house built in this Detroit neighborhood in almost 80 years, with a gross habitable area of approximately 900 square feet. The project is intended as a framework for thinking about urban re-settlement and domesticity, and, in a modest but significant way, for attending to the needs of the citizens and the neighborhood. The work is independent, minor and vernacular, standing apart and yet contributing to the collective life of the place."

Heralded as a model of urban rejuvenation by the builders, the charming little cinderblock home was given to a single mom with kids, who understandably moved out not long after moving in. The hard work of the Cranbrook students was destroyed in a matter of weeks- I remember driving by in the winter of 2009 and seeing the front door wide open and thinking, uh oh, the Cranbrook kids' urban renewal dream that they were so proud of and worked so hard on is now another scrapped out shell.

Fast forward to 2015, after a second rebuilding, to what the new owner is saying:

“2126 Pierce can be a great entry point for people interested in the city. This home is a very minor contribution me and my partner have made to the City, but we certainly hope it serves as a portal in which everyone can realize the low barrier to entry and contemplate their own impact.”

The reality is unless someone is there all the time, with a couple of snarling guard dogs and a shotgun above the front door, the house will soon again be ransacked and scrapped. That neighborhood is a No Man's Land, and anyone who values their presence on Earth would figure that out as soon as they drive off Gratriot. I hate to be the buzzkill to this amusing endeavor, but how many times do you have to see history repeat itself?

vlad the impaler wrote:At times I'm envious about their freedom but then nothing looks enviable about constantly being dirty and hungry.

Add to that cold, as in forever wet and chilled, wondering if there is enough firewood on hand and if the fire will go out in the night. I spent first grade in a DPS "portable" classroom situated on the playground of our local school. The building had it's own coal furnace and boiler, and the damn thing evidently didn't like to stay lit. There were times where we could see our breath in the air during class, and wearing our winter coats all day wasn't unheard of. The experience left an impression, and when I come across these shows featuring folk who have unplugged from the grid I have to wonder if they're really unplugged or is there a propane tank hidden by the bushes.

frank - up in grand blanc wrote:Add to that cold, as in forever wet and chilled, wondering if there is enough firewood on hand and if the fire will go out in the night. I spent first grade in a DPS "portable" classroom situated on the playground of our local school. The building had it's own coal furnace and boiler, and the damn thing evidently didn't like to stay lit. There were times where we could see our breath in the air during class, and wearing our winter coats all day wasn't unheard of. The experience left an impression, and when I come across these shows featuring folk who have unplugged from the grid I have to wonder if they're really unplugged or is there a propane tank hidden by the bushes.

On the Live Free and Die show, the Thorn dude often emerges from his wickiup coughing up a lung before he washes in campfire smoke. Sleeping on the ground will do that.

The Colburn guy seems impervious in his Georgia swamp treehouse, his skin is as thick as cowhide from all the bugs.

The young hippies look snug as a bug in a rug in their 400 square foot cabin.

As far as this adorable bed n' breakfast on Pierce Street, we should rent it for a weekend and have a HFD party. The six of us who still frequent this site could buy a pig at Eastern Market and roast it over a burning woodpile that was once a neighboring home, shoot skeet off the little deck, take a trip down HFD memory lane and pour out a forty for all the posters no longer with us.

^ done properly the bill for the facility could be buried in a training budget. "Team building exercise" is one possibility, and "client entertainment" is another.

Funny thing is that my MOS at work has been experiencing a huge die-off as staff is resigning or just plain stomping off in anger. The boss, my boss that is, is convinced that the problem is that "millennials" don't want to work hard. The narrative holds that youngsters leave biz school and expect to be consultants after a few months, slinging shit, telling people what to do, and spending their big coin. The reality is very different and so the younger cohort does experience a shot of anomie, but the real reality is that the big boss is at heart a hard-ass and this kind of work isn't that interesting to the kind of autism-spectrum/aspergers-types who gravitate toward it. Here's the cool part, though: word has come down from on high that we're to entertain our troops lest they quit and make the big boss look even worse. My little crew is OK, but as a joke I've been threatening to make them go to rock-climbing wall or some other such shit. Maybe the block house would be a good alternative?

frank - up in grand blanc wrote: Maybe the block house would be a good alternative?

My guess is some would appreciate the absurdity and enjoy the Little House on the Urban Prairie but others would drive away 95 mph as soon as they saw dogs carting body parts out one of the abandoned structures (remember when this happened in St. Aubin three or four years ago?) and telephone in their resignations first thing Monday morning.

Looks like some serious coin was spent commissioning an artist to create its murals. What's the line in Vegas on how quickly it gets pissed with a water cannon filled with paint?

Frank I regulary operate my gide services in that area. I offer multiple options such as wildlife vewing, varmint hunts, armed hikes down the Dequinder Cut, and chuckwagon dinners catered by Burts. We also do a midnight coyote howl on ful moons and can even get the Booty Bus rented if thats what the cleints want. If a Teamwork makes the Dreamwork theme is what you want I can customise and set up a paintball course were y'all take on teams of zombie enemies. It wuld be cool!

How about we squat in the joint like the Fireweed people do? We can even invite
some of them over to join in the party.
I might even take a ride for that...