Like a pair of polar bears emerging from our winter burrow, we finally nosed our way outside this weekend to spend the afternoon in Corktown. Corktown is Detroit's oldest neighborhood and one of my favorites. It is home to the famous and delicious Slow's Bar BQ and rickety cobbled streets, which--let's be real--is just a nice way of saying the streets are covered with potholes. The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s forced tons of Irish folks to immigrate to the United States, many of whom settled in Detroit. There are still a few Irish bars holding strong but our main destination was lunch at Mercury Burger.
Everything is so wrong and so right about the burger above. Named "The Local," it heaps a generous portion of BBQ pulled pork on top of a thick hamburger patty. It is surprisingly good. As are the fries. I got the California turkey burger mostly because I cannot physically bring myself to say no to something that has avocados. Mercury's burgers are ginormous, tasty, and reasonably priced. Can't go wrong.
Right across the way is one of Detroit's iconic buildings, the majestic if crumbling Michigan Central Station. You might recognize it from hit moves such as Michael Bay's ridonculous Transformers 3. They were getting ready to film (we were told) an X-Games movie there today, which is pretty awesome.
Right next door to Mercury Burger is Detroit's Urban Put-Put where you can play a round of mini golf should you be looking for some post-lunch entertainment. Urban Put Put's mission is pretty cool--just like amazing (and kind of creepy) community art projects like The Heidelberg Project, it "supports the rebirth of Detroit, embraces urban culture and provides a shared space to play by revitalizing a vacant lot with sculpture and recycled materials for the betterment of the community." Bring your own clubs.
Detroit definitely gets a bad name in the press--and sometimes for good reason--but I love how it supports these little pockets of creative growth amidst so much decay. Grit, for me, is the word that best defines Detroit--both in the sense that much of it is covered in film of gritty dust, and because everyday it illustrates true grit: perseverance in spite of hardship, over a long period of time.
0 comments:
Post a Comment