Flint Expatriates

Flint Artifacts: Sharp Hardware 1950 Catalog

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:10:00 +0000

Craig Ferguson, Flint, and Murders

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:29:00 +0000

Whoever's in charge of PR for Flint should be in crisis mode after an appearance last night on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson by two local nurses named Christy and Rachel who were vacationing in Los Angeles. Feguson brought the pair up on stage. After complimenting their wardrobes, Ferguson asked a simple question: "What goes on in Flint, Michigan?" Christy's response: "Murders."

The crowd seemed to love it, prompting Ferguson to dole out a mild rebuke: "Excuse me, I just have to talk to the audience...That's not funny. What the hell's wrong with you? Murders? Yeah!"

You can see the episode here. It's at the very beginning of the show.

Last Christmas: Flint Sends Santa Packing

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:21:00 +0000

In Flint, even Santa Claus and his reindeer can lose their jobs. Scott Atkinson of The Flint Journal reports:

The jolly (plastic) old fellow got the ax from the city and will be up for auction along with four of his reindeer. (No word on where the other four, or Rudolph, have flown to.) Like all items up for bid in an online auction on repocast.com for city property on Tuesday, Santa's starting price is $5.

Flint Photos: Still Life with JWilly and Teardown

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Sun, 12 May 2013 02:58:00 +0000

How to Understand Flint Expatriates Stationed in San Francisco

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Sun, 12 May 2013 02:52:00 +0000

This is just a joke. Sort of.

Flint Poems: Cheese Lines, Flint, Michigan by Danny Rendleman

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:37:00 +0000

Cheese Lines, Flint, Michigan

Gray lines of women at the North Flint Plaza
Waiting their due, surplus cheese and butter
We can't use, the lines that shuffle
Down the weed-split sidewalks,
Past the boarded-up display windows
Of the Fair, United Shirt, Nobil Shoes,
While at the curb monstrous green Buicks
Idle and rust. The day is overcast,
Threatening drizzle, feinting autumn
And further calamity. I drive by, this,
My old neighborhood, this shopping center
Our hangout, a pack of Luckies secreted
Behind a loose brick, our leather jackets
With The Royals on the back,
Our pointed Flagg Bros. shoes, and duck ass hair.
We the pioneers. These the women we went
To school with who never moved away,
Whom we never spoke to, let alone dated,
Or whom we desired, but never let on.

Flint, a city as hard and abrupt as its
Quick-bitten name. Home of Chevy-in-the-Hole,
Where men like my father got used to days
Etched thin and gritty as Mohawk vodka
And steel shavings in their aching hands
And little wretched patches of back-yards
Where they maybe played catch
With their kids before the noon whistle.
See how easily those women are forgotten?
Even in poems devoted to their bad luck.

— Danny Rendleman

Flint Photos: Shawn Chittle with "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City"

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:48:00 +0000

Flint Expatriate Shawn Chittle in New York with his advance copy of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City.

"Found Michigan" Finds Flint Mayor Dayne Walling

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:14:00 +0000

Dayne Walling at City Hall in Flint. (Photo by Emily Bingham/Found Michigan)

There's an indepth and compelling portrait of Flint Mayor Dayne Walling by Lou Blouin on Found Michigan, a site that focuses on longform journalism about the Great Lake State. It describes Walling's work to revive Flint, despite the imposition of an emergency financial manager and an array of daunting obstacles.

"In a cash-strapped city, that means Walling can only do a fraction of what he no doubt wants to do. Understanding that things move slowly in city government, lately he’s dedicated himself to making sure future city leaders have things a little better—he’s now leading the charge for a new master plan in Flint, which will guide the city’s redevelopment over the coming decades. It’ll be Flint’s first such vision in more than 50 years—since the plan in 1960, which optimistically projected nothing but explosive growth in the auto industry and corollary fortunes for Flint."

Flint Artifacts: Flint Junior Fire Inspector Badge

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Sat, 04 May 2013 15:01:00 +0000

Thanks to Toprat1 for this Flint Artifact, presented to him at Cook Elementary in 1956.

Flint Postcards: Buick Factory from the Mott Foundation Building

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Sat, 04 May 2013 02:04:00 +0000

The Magical Stranger by Stephen Rodrick

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Fri, 03 May 2013 01:47:00 +0000

Longtime Flint Expats readers are already familiar with the amazing writing of Stephen Rodrick, my partner in crime at Powers Catholic High School. We had the improbable bond in Flint of having fathers who were Navy pilots. Steve wrote two of the greatest posts on the blog. L'Affair de Moofla chronicled the high school prank that went a long way toward consigning both of us to mediocre colleges. And William F. Buckley Comes to Flint recounts our night on the town with the conservative icon. (Thank God we weren't born 20 years later; we might have had to hang out with Rush Limbaugh.)

The Magical Stranger is Steve's first book. It will be released on May 14, and it's a powerful story of a son's efforts to come to terms with the loss of his father.

On November 28, 1979, Commander Peter Rodrick died when his plane crashed in the Indian Ocean. He was just thirty-six and had been the commanding officer of his squadron for 127 days. Eight thousand miles away on Whidbey Island, near Seattle, he left behind a wife who never recovered, two daughters, and a thirteen-year-old son who would grow up to be a writer—one who was drawn to write about his father, his family, and the devastating consequences of military service.

In The Magical Stranger, Rodrick explores the life and death of the man who indelibly shaped his life, even as he remained a mystery: brilliant but unknowable, sacred but absent—an apparition gone 200 days of the year for much of his young son’s life—a born leader who gave his son little direction. Through adolescence and into adulthood, Rodrick struggled to fully grasp the reality of his father’s death and its permanence. Peter’s picture and memory haunted the family home, but his name was rarely mentioned.

To better understand his father and his own experience growing up without him, Rodrick turned to today’s members of his father's former squadron, spending nearly two years with VAQ-135, “The World-Famous Black Ravens.” His travels take him around the world, from Okinawa and Hawaii to Bahrain and the Persian Gulf —but always back to Whidbey Island, the setting of his family’s own story. As he learns more about his father, he also uncovers the layers of these sailors’ lives: their brides and girlfriends, friendships, dreams, disappointments—and the consequences of their choices on those they leave behind.

For more information, visit www.themagicalstranger.com.

Flint Photos: Civic Park in 1919?

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Thu, 02 May 2013 12:01:00 +0000

I'm having trouble identifying the exact location in Civic Park for this photo. Note the older, larger house in the center. It looks very unfamilar. Any ideas? Is this a mislabled photo from The Flint Journal?

Free City Public Art Festival at Chevy in the Hole

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:04:00 +0000

Chevy in the Hole is the place to be this weekend...

"The Flint Public Art Project will temporarily reclaim Chevy-in-the-Hole, a mile-long stretch along the Flint River once occupied by a series of now-razed Chevrolet plants for Free City, a large-scale, open-air art festival taking place Friday, May 3 through Sunday, May 5, 2013. With this year’s theme—“Reclaim | Transform” —Free City will demonstrate that a critical mass of temporary activities can turn abandoned industrial properties into active public spaces, and will highlight the ongoing transformation of Flint. More than 40 artists from Flint, southeast Michigan, and the Great Lakes region will be joined by dozens of artists from across the country and Europe."

The Chevy Chevette Lives in San Francisco

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 16:42:00 +0000

Full venting to feed that powerful Engine!

How often to you get the chance to behold a near-mint Chevy Chevette basking in the California sun? This dent- and rust-free example of G.M.'s ~~pathetic~~ inspired approach to small cars was spotted on Mission Street near Cesar Chavez.

Ah, such sleek lines!

Rear bumper? Standard! No expense was spared.

Citizens Bank Mascot Out of Work

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:32:00 +0000

Is this little guy out of a job now that Citizens Bank has been sold to FirstMerit? At least he appears to have his interview suit on.

Consider Donating to Flint Expatriates

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:46:00 +0000

This little experiment in blogging about Flint has been unexpectedly fun. I no longer annoy non-Flint people with stories about The Vehicle City because I funnel all my lame recollections about the Dupont Street bus or Sam Isaac's motivational techniques into Flint Expatriates; I've connected with dozens of Flintoids; and I've discovered the identity of a shadowy figure from my past known as Gypsy Jack.

Even better, a surprising number of readers have discovered the blog. Since January 1, 2008, when I started tracking interest on Google Analytics, 268,020 unique visitors have racked up more than 1 million pageviews. And visitors have come from 150 different countries and every state in the union. (Granted, quite a few probably landed on the site accidentally while Googling Semi-Pro t-shirts or a bizarre hobby called flint knapping, but let's not get picky.)

I'd like to blog more, but in order to do that I need to free myself from my less enjoyable — but marginally more profitable — freelance work.Basically, the only blogs that make money off ads involve porn, electronic gizmos, celebrity gossip, or partisan political commentary. Even though some car enthusiasts get turned on by my posts about the Buick Electra 225, my blog doesn't fall into any of those profitable categories.

So like some bloggers, I'm taking the bold step of asking for donations from readers. (I resisted using the term "begging" because I have my pride.) I'm obviously not in this for the money. I just happen to love the town where I grew up, despite all its flaws, and I really enjoy attacking GM executives. But I would welcome the chance to spend more time on Flint Expatriates and do more actual reporting — like my profile of artist Eric Koziol — instead of simply aggregating material on Flint and making occasionally witty/stupid/annoying comments. After all, I am a journalist, even if many of my editors don't always think so.

So if you'd like to help out, just click on the "Donation" tab in the top right corner of the blog. You can donate via credit card or your Paypal account, if you have one. It's all safe and secure. Any amount is welcome, however small. Consider it a voluntary subscription to a free online publication dedicated to keeping the memory of Flint alive.

And if you choose not to donate, don't worry! It's okay. I'll survive. Just keep reading and sending your ideas.

Flint Artifacts: Winners, Losers and Shuffleboard Gamblers

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:57:00 +0000

Flint Photos: Dance Marathon Contestants, July 1934

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:02:00 +0000

A press photo of Alice Holmes of Sioux City, Iowa and Mario Alessandro of Argentina dated July 10, 1934.

Flint Postcards: Kearsley Park

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:18:00 +0000

Flint Photos: Buckingham's Department Store Fire

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:06:00 +0000

Firefighters respond to a fire at Buckingham's Department Store in downtown Flint in the 1940s.

A Prayer for Michigan

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:43:00 +0000

An invocation delivered at the Michigan House of Representatives by The Rev. Bill Freeman, minister at All Spirits Church in Holland.

Spirit of Love, known by many names: God and Goddess, Yahweh and Allah, Dios and Divine, Nature and Nothing.

May we be grateful for the cities and towns of Michigan: From Detroit to Decatur, from Lansing to Ludington, from Grand Rapids to Grand Blanc, from Holland to Howell, from Muskegon to Munising, from Flint to Farmington Hills, from Benton Harbor to Harbor Springs.

May we be grateful for the beauty of Michigan and may it always be preserved and protected: From the Southern border to the Northern expanse, from the West Coast to the East, from Sleeping Bear Dunes to Boyne Mountain, from cherry trees to blueberry bushes.

May we be grateful for the sports teams of Michigan and may they always exhibit good sportsmanship: From the Tigers to the Lions, from the Pistons to the Red Wings, from the Spartans to the Wolverines.

And may we be grateful for all the people of Michigan: Young and old, male and female, workers and retirees, police officers and firefighters, artists and artisans, those with various abilities and capabilities, native-born and immigrants, believers and doubters, married and single, straight and gay, people of color and those of us who wish we were.

Some of us may come here today having faith in freedom and democracy. Some of us may come here today having faith in truth and goodness. Some of us may come here today having faith in liberty and justice for all. We pray that our faith is fortified in this magnificent place, today and every day.

Perhaps it’s providential rather than coincidental that our state is shaped like a hand. May it act as a divine reminder to us all, especially our elected leaders, to lend a hand to those in need, particularly the most vulnerable among us: The children, the elderly, and the poor. May we always treat the Have-Nots with at least as much dignity and respect as we treat the Have-Lots.

Now and forevermore. Let it be. Blessed be. So be it. And: Amen.

Flint Artifacts: Wayne Johnson's Buffet Matchbook

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:53:00 +0000

Was there a time in Flint's glory years when caterers boasted complicated facial hair and offered up their own airports?

Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:32:00 +0000

Now Available for Pre-Order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones in Great Britain, and Indigo.

Praise for Teardown:Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young

"One can read Teardown and go 'My, my, my! What a horrid town! Thank God I don't live there!' Oh, but you do. Just as the 'Roger & Me Flint' of the 1980s was the precursor to a wave of downsizing that eventually hit every American community, Gordon Young's Flint of 2013, as so profoundly depicted in this book, is your latest warning of what's in store for you — all of you, no matter where you live — in the next decade. The only difference between your town and Flint is that the Grim Reaper just likes to visit us first. It's all here in Teardown, a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once great American city."
— Michael Moore

"There must be a thousand good reasons to flee Flint. I can't assume there are many reasons to return. Gordon Young's Teardown supplies a few of these answers. A humorous, heartfelt and often haunting tale of a town not many could love. Fortunately for us, a few still do."

— Ben Hamper, author of Rivethead: Tales From the Assembly Line

“Teardown is the tragic and somehow hilarious tale of one man's attempt to return to his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Gordon Young is a Flintoid at heart, and his candid observations about both the shrinking city and his own economic woes read heartbreakingly true.”

— Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

“Armed with an aluminum baseball bat and a truth-seeking pen, Gordon Young returns to the post-industrial wasteland of his hometown — Vehicle City, aka Flint, Michigan — in search of a derelict house to buy and restore. At least that's his cover story. Young's true mission is to reclaim his past in order to make sense of his present. If you're bewitched by the place where you grew up, you'll find comfort and a sense of home in the pages of Teardown.

— Jack Shafer, Reuters columnist and a former Michigander

“Like so many other Flintites, I visit my hometown with a mix of sadness, repugnance, and anger. Flint is too easy to criticize, but I look back in gratitude for the values Flint instilled and the bonds I made that remain with me to this day. You can take the boy out of Flint, but you can’t take Flint out of the boy.”

— Howard Bragman, author of Where’s My Fifteen Minutes?

“Teardown is a funny and ultimately heartbreaking memoir. The travails of house hunting are skillfully interwoven with Gordon Young’s attempt to reconcile life in his adopted city of San Francisco with his allegiance to Flint, Michigan, the troubled city of his childhood. The result is an all too contemporary American story of loyalty, loss, and finding your way home.”

— Tom Pohrt, artist and author of Careless Rambles by John Clare, Having a Wonderful Time, and Coyote Goes Walking.

For more information, including excerpts, photos, and events, visit www.teardownbook.com.

Kildee Seeks Funds for Demolitions

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:20:00 +0000

U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, who was instrumental in creating land banks in Michigan, has introduced legislation that would free up $1 billion in federal funds to demolish abandoned property in Michigan and several other states. Todd Spangler of The Detroit Free Press reports:

Kildee's legislation, which he plans to introduce today, would give the 18 states and Washington, D.C., that were promised funding under a foreclosure mitigation program the ability to spend up to 25% of that money on demolitions. Under the original interpretation of the program, which dates to 2010, the $7.6 billion in funding could not be used for razing buildings.

The legislation, which Kildee is sponsoring along with Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Dayton, Ohio, wouldn't change any of the existing allocations or spend more, it would only give states the flexibility to move up to 25% of their total awards into demolitions if they chose. The original program was intended to target programs that helped homeowners pay back taxes, make mortgage payments, or otherwise avoid foreclosures.

Kildee and his approach to "shrinking cities" like Flint and Detroit is profiled extensively in Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young. The book is forthcoming from the University of California Press in June.

Flint Postcards: 1955 Gold-Plated Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Coupe

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Young) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:38:00 +0000