Often, when you read about all the “moving to Detroit” hype, the optimism flows like hot butter down a biscuit. People will stress and emphasize how amazing, how wonderful, how beautiful Detroit is.

While all of that is true, there is also the elephant in the room: People try to overcompensate for Detroit’s downfalls in their writing. It’s almost as if by pushing how wonderful everything is, they can hide the negativity.

It’s only natural. How else are we to be expected to make the best of a bad situation? We’re fighting a war of perception with people who desperately, for one reason or another, want us to fail.

It was very easy to be a part of the “Positive Detroit” crowd when I was comfortably ensconced in my suburban enclave. I could drive to all the best areas of Detroit, do cool stuff, take cool pictures, meet cool people, and drive back home to write about how awesome everything was.

I never got mugged. I never got carjacked. I never got shot. Nobody I know has ever had any of those things happen to them.

It’s not fair to hide the bad side, though. It needs to be talked about and we need to stop hiding it because we’re afraid that people will use it to jump all over us and shoot us down and say, “You see! I told you so! Detroit is a piece of shit!”

Detroit is not the only city in the world

City life is different from suburban life. This is true whether you’re talking about Detroit, Michigan or Tokyo, Japan. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin… no matter what big city you’re in you need to have a different level of expectations for security on your personal property, and your own personal safety. Why should we be so defensive about Detroit, which has the same problems as any other big city?

The first big city experience came when Lincoln nearly ran into an intruder. We’ve now had to think about security, fixing broken windows, jamming doors—things we’ve never really had to worry about in the suburbs (although to be fair, we’ve never had a vacant home in the suburbs). Even this minor intrusion has altered our perception of security. Lincoln carries a knife. I have the Wayne State Police on speed dial.

Our house has been stripped by copper thieves. We’re discovering more and more of how this is impacting us as we get deeper into the renovation. The water got turned on yesterday, and water was pouring out all over the basement—wherever copper pipes got stolen. The entire run from the basement to the top floor of the house is gone (all copper). The kitchen radiator’s pipes have been removed as well. The plumbing project just grew significantly more involved (and expensive). The city Water Department worker turned to look at me and said, “Well, enjoy your project.”

We purchased a Bagster from Waste Management; these are cool little canvas bags that you buy for $30. You fill it with up to 3000 pounds of trash and then pay $100 to have them pick it up. We bought two, and began filling the first one with trash on Friday. When we got there Saturday morning, the trash was all over the lawn and the Bagster was stolen.

It’s almost comical, because the bag is almost useless on its own. I can just imagine the thieves using the bag and then calling Waste Management to pick it up, thinking it’s free. Still, $30 is $30. That’s just gone, and even though in the scope of a big-city level petty crime this is not a big deal, it has to be said that this is not something I would have worried about in Warren.

Detroit is Detroit. We do have to worry about securing the premises. We do have to worry that someone will come by at night and scope the joint out, sizing it up for a potential robbery. We do have to consider that leaving tools behind is a bad idea. As one of my new neighbors said when she found out the Bagster got stolen, “Heh. Welcome to Detroit.”

So what do you do? Do you throw your hands up and say, “Yeah, I’m not dealing with this”, and move away? To the suburbs where everything is safe and predictable and mind-numbingly similar? Where they’ll tear down an old arcade to pave over and build another big-box store? Where they’ll tear your garden down just because someone with more clout wants to store garbage there?

No, that’s not what you do. That’s exactly what happened in the 1960’s and 1970’s. People abandoned Detroit. They left it to rot. And rot it did.

All we can do is exactly what we’re doing. Buy a house. Fix it up. Live there. Raise our kids there. Let thieves know that this is no longer their playground.

The situation is far more complicated than I am capable of covering here, but the big issue is that we’re done talking about Detroit. We moved in. Now we’re making our own tiny corner of this great city just a little bit better.

The same day the Bagster was stolen, four new neighbors introduced themselves. One of them asked if maybe this summer we could start a porch band since our new front porch was so cool. Another asked if they could help. A third couldn’t wait to meet our dogs. Another said she’d keep an eye on the place for us while we were gone. We are surrounded by good people. Detroit is filled with good people. If this is the good, we’ll take the bad.

We do have to talk about the bad; most often it’s glossed over by the Detroit apologists who do nothing but concentrate on how amazing Woodbridge and Midtown, Corktown and Indian Village are. After all, you don’t exactly see anyone blogging about how amazing Davison and Mound is, or what a cool neighborhood Brightmoor is, or how much fun they had at 6 and Gratiot the other night. But this is all Detroit. The good and the bad. If we don’t talk about the bad stuff, it’ll never change.