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Friday, June 18, 2004

Home, Sweet Home

Ever since leaving the suburbs of the Motor City, I've dealt with Anti-Detroit disgust. People ask where I'm from, I tell them Detroit, they sneer.

Okay, technically, I'm not from Detroit. I'm from Rochester Hills. But nobody knows where that is, and I got tired of explaining. So I'm from Detroit. Hey, nobody's perfect.

Yes, Detroit has "Devil's Night." It's the night before Halloween when all the punks come out and cause general mayhem. For 99% of the delinquents in the area, it means you egg your teacher's house and throw toilet paper in their trees. You know, the stuff that kids everywhere else do on Halloween night. (of course, the other one percent douses their teacher's house and lights it on fire. There's always one bad apple).

To me, the whole Devil's night concept makes sense, in a way: Some enterprising kid said "Wait a minute... If we vandalize things on the 30th, we have the whole night to get candy on the 31st!"

Makes sense to me.

Yes, in the 70s and 80s, Detroit was often the "murder capitol" of the U.S. But Washington DC and New Orleans have been battling for that title for the last decade. As far as overall violent crime goes, St. Louis and Atlanta usually take the cake.

Then there's the Jimmy Kimmell philosophy: If a Detroit team wins a championship, the villagers riot.

Yes, it happened in 1984 when the Tigers won. It happened again in 1990, when the Pistons won the second of their back-to-back titles. Guess what? It hasn't happened since... at least not in Detroit.

So get off my back. Yeah, Detroit isn't perfect. But at least it's interesting.

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