Detroit thread. Post Kwame, Monica, and $1 houses here.

[The Brain]

Kwame??!?

[Syt]

Kwame??!?

[Savonarola]

Detroit used to have this really sleazy city clerk named Jackie Currie.  The city clerk is responsible for running elections.  She'd do things like keep voters on the register long after they had moved out of the city or had died; mass mailed absentee ballots to people who hadn't requested them; or had workers in her department suggest candidates to seniors they were assisting.  All those violated Michigan's voting laws.  She even defied a judges orders to stop the mass mailings and remove the dead people from the voter registry claiming that it was racist (the Judge was black) and was a ploy by Republicans to disenfranchise Detroiters.

These stories became so persistent and so high profile that even she couldn't make enough ballots to stay in office and got thrown out in 2005.  She was replaced by the current City Clerk, Janice Winfrey.  There has still been some shenanigans during her tenure (like the time a truck carrying ballots was discovered in an abandoned warehouse after the election was certified), but for the most part the elections seemed to be honest (or at least honest by Detroit standards.)

With the recount, though, it was found that almost 60% of precincts reported ballot discrepancies.  At first this was blamed aging voting machines.  That wasn't implausible, since Detroit has had other priorities than buying new election machines in the past decade; but the story has started to change and now its a mixture of old voting machines and incompetent poll workers.  Again that isn't at all implausible; regular city workers aren't usually overly competent, much less a group hired for the day; but when the official story starts changing that's not usually a good sign in Detroit. 

[KRonn]

  These stories became so persistent and so high profile that even she couldn't make enough ballots to stay in office and got thrown out in 2005. 

Lol.   

[MadImmortalMan]

So much Detroit in this story.

DETROIT — A man interested in purchasing a property in the city about three blocks south of its border with Warren, Mich., discovered a car with a decomposed and mummified body inside the garage.

Officers, who were called around 1 p.m. ET Thursday to the 19900 block of Spencer Avenue, said the body was inside a 1990 or 1991 Plymouth Acclaim, said Officer Dan Donakowski, a  Detroit police spokesman.

Tenants who lived at a home on the property told police that the owner said they couldn't use the garage, so they never went inside, Donakowski said.

One three-bedroom, one-bath house on the block lined with Cape Code, bungalow and Tudor-inspired brick homes that were built in the early 1950s is listed for sale at $27,000. Many have detached garages.

No one knew mummified woman was dead 5 years

It's unclear how and when the person in the car died, but Donakowski said the body had been there "for quite some time."

At this point, medical examiners don't know whether the body is male or female, said Lloyd Jackson, Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office spokesman.

"It's badly decomposed," he said. "And it's mummified."

Police: Woman left mom's body in bed since 2010

The body has been inspected, but an autopsy won't to be performed until next week when an anthropologist comes in, Jackson said.

Earlier this year, a partially mummified body of a Donald Smith, 78, was discovered in July in his Hazel Park, Mich., home. And in 2014, a repairman found the mummified body of Pia Farrenkopf, 44, in her Pontiac, Mich., home when he was hired to do work after a bank foreclosed on it.

1990 Plymouth Acclaim, 27k house, mummified corpses in foreclosed homes, dead people just left in bed.


For all your burial needs.

DETROIT — A University of Michigan anthropologist is to perform an autopsy Tuesday on the mummified and unidentified remains discovered last week in the garage of a Detroit house.

The body is so decayed that a specialist is needed to discern its gender and age as well as the cause of death, said Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office spokesman Lloyd Jackson.

"They don't know the sex or approximate age, so that's why they need an anthropologist," Jackson said Monday.

Prospective homebuyer finds mummified body in garage

The decomposed body was found Thursday face down in the backseat of an early 1990s Plymouth Acclaim inside the garage. Authorities have described the finding as a skeleton of brown, leathery bones dressed in pants, shirt and a sweater.

The discovery was made by a man interested in buying the residential property who was checking out its detached garage. The garage is behind the two-story bungalow on the 19900 block of Spencer.

Tenants who lived at the home told police that the property's owner said they couldn't use the garage, so they never went inside.

A woman who answered the front door of the house on Monday declined to comment for this story.

A nearby resident said she was shocked to hear of the discovery and has no idea whose body it could be. The resident, who only gave her name as Cookie, said that until last week she had never seen the garage open or noticed any sort of odd behaviors or smells emanating from inside.

The neighbor recalled how her dogs did inexplicably start barking for a period of time, but she isn't certain whether the barking was related to the body decomposing in the nearby garage. The neighbor described the house's previous occupants before the current tenants as a mother and son who moved out about four or five years ago.

Property records show the house and garage on Spencer last sold for $21,000 in 1986 and is in the name of Emanuel Martinez, who also is listed with an address in Warren. Attempts by the Free Press to reach Martinez were unsuccessful.

[CountDeMoney]

Plymouth Acclaim.  Last of the K-car influenced models.  A fitting frame for old people found dead.

[11B4V]

Plymouth Acclaim.  Last of the K-car influenced models.  A fitting frame for old people found dead.

When I was married to the Wicked Witch of the Southeast, my mother in law had a '74 olds delta 88 with the 455 that we borrowed a couple of times. That was a car.

[CountDeMoney]

my mother in law had a '74 olds delta 88 with the 455 that we borrowed a couple of times. That was a car.

Yes, yes it was.  Always loved those.  I believe it qualified as its own frigate class.

[Syt]

Coming soon for PS4, written by David Cage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit:_Become_Human

[Savonarola]

Detroit has changed a great deal in the post-bankruptcy world.  There are food co-ops, grocery stores and even a Whole Foods in the city; while there weren't even grocery stores between the riots and just before bankruptcy.  When I was last in Detroit I got groceries in the city.  I could tell the effects of the former food desert; I had to tell the cashier (who was my age, but new on the job) what my produce was.  He had never seen fresh peas or fresh sweet potatoes before.

[Savonarola]

Today CB and I went to a lecture at the Foosaner Art Museum here in Melbourne, Florida.  The current exhibition is women artists from the permanent collection.  It's not a great exhibition, their permanent collection isn't all that good (usually they use the museum space displays traveling exhibitions.)  The woman delivering the lecture was Vera Sattler, a local artist who makes glass fish.

As it turns out she emigrated to the United States from West Germany in the 1950s and worked for the Detroit Stained Glass Company until it closed in 1970.  After it closed she continued to make stained glass with her partner, Leo Weeg.  They didn't have a kiln, so they would break into the closed Detroit Stained Glass Company, climb up the elevator shaft with bundles of newspaper and fire the glass (wrapping it in newspaper after it had come out of the kiln so it didn't cool down too quickly.)

That wasn't the most Detroit thing I have ever heard (Kwame running the city government from jail takes that honor) but it's pretty close.

[Savonarola]

The Mayor of Detroit from 1974 to 1994 was Coleman Young.  His son, Coleman Young Jr. is running for mayor this year against The White Man Michael Duggan.  His motto:



So, when I was last in Detroit, I opened a crack house.  Everyone is talking about gentrification; I'm doing something about it. 

[Admiral Yi]

Don't fix up the crack house too much or you'll be part of the problem.

[Malthus]

Don't fix up the crack house too much or you'll be part of the problem.

It will look like more of a cocaine house.

[Savonarola]

I was back at Detroit's Eastern Market last week.  As always there were empty liquor bottles strewn along the sidewalks; only this time they were Patron.  Gentrification has really gotten out of hand.