I spent a few hours walking around the Palmer Park neighborhood, a large collection of extraordinary Moorish art deco and Bauhaus apartment buildings that were inhabited by a large gay population until the 1980s when most of them fled north of 8 Mile for the lovely bungalows of Ferndale. That's how bad the situation in Detroit is: even the gays live in the suburbs. The park itself straddles Woodward Avenue and the old neighborhood, and is apparently still a hangout for gay and transsexual prostitutes ("there was a lot of "Stay away fags!" graffiti). I spent a couple hours in the neighborhood without seeing any other white people, and most passerby looked at me like I had three heads. One little boy on a bike yelled at me that what I was doing (taking pictures of apartment buildings) was "illegal."
When I was taking pictures of the plants growing in the non-functioning Merrill Fountain, these girls asked if I would take their picture. I agreed and within 2 seconds they had positioned themselves in this wonderful pose on the fountain.
I promised to e-mail them a copy, but only one of them (the girl in the pink jacket) had an e-mail address. But nobody had a pen. "It's okay," she said. "You keep it. Someday it will be worth MONEY."
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