Detroit Immersion Weekend
So, I wanted to see some old factories. I do that sometimes. I signed up for a little Detroit history tour, hoping to get inside the old Ford plant on Piquette. Well... we saw it from a bus. But I did get inside the Guardian Building and saw a lot of other neat stuff from the bus. The tour was more geared to out-of-towners, and it was a little bit too far in the "Detroit Yes!" camp ("Oh, it's great living here, yeah your car might get broken into, but that happens everywhere, right?"), but it did provide a real sense of how grand a city this was fifty years ago. The degradation of Detroit is something almost beyond comprehension, even if you've lived there.
The place that hosted the tour was right next to this cafe that was on my to-do list on account of its Red Velvet Pancakes and variations on a theme of Eggs Benedict. Take a wild guess as to what I ordered. It wasn't cheap and the place was kind of noisy, but the food was goooood.
Then we (the most excellent spouse was with me) took the People Mover, Detroit's risible excuse for a public transportation system, to Cobo for the NAIAS. I'd never been before, and this was a great year to go-- more than 700,000 visitors overall and a real feeling of optimism, instead of the deathwatch/wake feeling of the last decade. It was the happiest crush of people I'd seen in... a very long time! GM and Scion had some interesting stuff, like the cute little Chevy Spark and a sweet Chevy concept car, but the most memorable thing in the exhibition was the Lincoln MKZ concept. One look at it, and my husband and I knew instantly they were aiming for Edsel Ford's classic Zephyr. And then we went upstairs and, presto-- Edsel's own roadster on display, so nobody could possibly miss the comparison. It was beautifully displayed, too; leaving the colorful and noisy Ford displays and going into the Lincoln display was breathtaking. You pass through a curtain into a softly-lit room with hypnotic music and these buckyball-flower things dangling from the ceiling, and there in the center of the room (like a single truffle on presented a china saucer) is the most beautiful car of 2013. With one of the most beautiful cars EVER tucked just out of sight.
And then we went out to the observatory and froze our butts off the rest of the night. That was Saturday.
-x-
Today, we back to the DIA for the Rembrandt exhibit and actually got in to see the special exhibition this time. It was a very nice display with a lot of interesting takeaways about the artist and his times... implicit and explicit. Frex, it's impossible not to get the impression that Rembrandt was an asshole anti-Semite until he moved into the Jewish quarter and actually met Jews. Then the howling Semitic mobs in his early religious work get replaced by a distinctly Jewish Christ. This, by the way, is one of the most beautiful paintings of the Christ that I've ever seen. I'd display this in my house and I'm not even Christian. I was sorry they didn't have copies on sale.
-x-
I now have all kinds of plotbunnies regarding artist!Forde jumping around in my head. Stay tuned.
I guess I also need to work on revising a certain NaNoWriMo effort...
And finish something I promised Ammie.
This entry was originally posted at http://mark-asphodel.dreamwidth.org/144459.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
The place that hosted the tour was right next to this cafe that was on my to-do list on account of its Red Velvet Pancakes and variations on a theme of Eggs Benedict. Take a wild guess as to what I ordered. It wasn't cheap and the place was kind of noisy, but the food was goooood.
Then we (the most excellent spouse was with me) took the People Mover, Detroit's risible excuse for a public transportation system, to Cobo for the NAIAS. I'd never been before, and this was a great year to go-- more than 700,000 visitors overall and a real feeling of optimism, instead of the deathwatch/wake feeling of the last decade. It was the happiest crush of people I'd seen in... a very long time! GM and Scion had some interesting stuff, like the cute little Chevy Spark and a sweet Chevy concept car, but the most memorable thing in the exhibition was the Lincoln MKZ concept. One look at it, and my husband and I knew instantly they were aiming for Edsel Ford's classic Zephyr. And then we went upstairs and, presto-- Edsel's own roadster on display, so nobody could possibly miss the comparison. It was beautifully displayed, too; leaving the colorful and noisy Ford displays and going into the Lincoln display was breathtaking. You pass through a curtain into a softly-lit room with hypnotic music and these buckyball-flower things dangling from the ceiling, and there in the center of the room (like a single truffle on presented a china saucer) is the most beautiful car of 2013. With one of the most beautiful cars EVER tucked just out of sight.
And then we went out to the observatory and froze our butts off the rest of the night. That was Saturday.
-x-
Today, we back to the DIA for the Rembrandt exhibit and actually got in to see the special exhibition this time. It was a very nice display with a lot of interesting takeaways about the artist and his times... implicit and explicit. Frex, it's impossible not to get the impression that Rembrandt was an asshole anti-Semite until he moved into the Jewish quarter and actually met Jews. Then the howling Semitic mobs in his early religious work get replaced by a distinctly Jewish Christ. This, by the way, is one of the most beautiful paintings of the Christ that I've ever seen. I'd display this in my house and I'm not even Christian. I was sorry they didn't have copies on sale.
-x-
I now have all kinds of plotbunnies regarding artist!Forde jumping around in my head. Stay tuned.
I guess I also need to work on revising a certain NaNoWriMo effort...
And finish something I promised Ammie.
This entry was originally posted at http://mark-asphodel.dreamwidth.org/144459.html. Please comment there using OpenID.