Grosse Pointe vs the De-Troit: A User's Guide

People ask me where I’m from. And I proudly say Detroit. Oh yes, I do.

In the olden (pre-1997) days, they would stop at that, slightly apologetic, and look away or change the subject. Nowadays, after yet another decade of a populace vacating the core of that geographical thing which is truly called Detroit, people (rather intelligently) cock their eyebrow and say “Uh, are you really from Detroit?”

I’m convinced that this new awareness is mostly because of 1997's Grosse Pointe Blank. After all, who in the hay would be aware of a Michigan suburb? Suddenly, people know that place, and expect a certain trustafarian essence, forgetting that this is the Midwest, and that Management moved away half a lifetime ago. Okay fine-- so it is also embarrassing to admit we are from this place of ultra-right wing money hoarding, not to mention being associated with its whale-print corduroy white Christian “who’s that brown person in our church?” vibe.

But let’s put it this way—I’m less than a five minute bike ride from where 8 Mile begins. And it would take me about a ten minute drive to get to that area of which Eminem speaks. My fair suburban Detroit loves boundaries and has its lines drawn in the asphalt between the B and W. The tall green elms and manicured lawns stop abruptly where Detroit begins. That, indeed, is what gives Grosse Pointe its special status; unlike Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham, we not only are a suburb of Detroit, we are right there, bordering it. A sign and some trees are all that separate the two.

In high school I swore I would come back and make a movie about it but a one Michael Moore beat me to it, and how!

In 1999 East Detroit changed its name and shed its bad connotation to become “Eastpointe”. It is white, part of the new, the hoarding—not the old rotting core of that forgotten place down the freeway. I mean, right next to the elm trees.