The wonderful, kindhearted and sober members of the Friends of the Nain Rouge came out Sunday in force to protest the efforts of a bunch of costumed hooligans to drive our beloved dwarf from the straits. It was a much better showing than last year, and if these miscreants continue their unholy campaign in 2012, I am sure the representation of Friends will be even bigger.

My daughter is pretty damn serious about her opposition to the parade. As I wrote last year, I've been telling her stories about the dwarf since we first moved here, and she believes he is kind and misunderstood, not sinister. One of the new members of the Friends of the Nain Rouge told us that her father, too, told her stories about the beloved imp when she was a little girl. This year we put together an elaborate Nain Rouge costume (more on that later) and pulled the dog wagon out for the season. She made her own double-sided protest sign: "I AM NICE." My son didn't want to wear anything but his Robocop costume, and I was pretty sure having Robocop on the side of the Nain Rouge would make the hipsters' heads explode (If our beloved Robocop loves the Nain. . .).

The parade was huge, but I feel we made an impact, shouting, "Ho Ho, Hey Hey, The Nain Rouge Has Got to Stay." Our friend Dessa (the Nain from last year) had her full costume on and glared at the passing crowd.

Thankfully, the march to drive out the dwarf was totally unsuccessful. More on that later.

 

Previous Fun

 

This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

General Motors' corporate headquarters is an iconic skyscraper with a disorienting brutalist interior that's just a few blocks from where we live. Although thousands of people work there, the public areas feel kind of like a ghost mall with all the empty storefronts. But on the ground floor there's this round area where the top new GM models are displayed and you are allowed to climb inside some of them and look under the hoods of others. I have seen families down there doing posed photo shoots inside Cadillac Escalades. In the winter, we always make a few trips here because (1) it's one of the few places in Detroit where you can see Santa mall-style; and (2) it's a great place to burn off energy when it's too cold to play outside. And trust me, this is the closest my kids are going to get to a 4-door Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD until they are old enough to buy one for themselves.

It is also, apparently, a great place to hatch a few conspiracies:

The boy instantly remembers this as "the place I was Robocop" (some of my favorite shots were the ones we did just a few steps away from the new cars against the concrete backdrops). Like the tunnels under New Center, it's a great place for kids to explore. The beautifully-lit elevated walkways are all a circle, so we can burn off a lot of energy in there without really going anywhere. But if they do get sick of it, we can always ride the escalators or take the People Mover for a loop or two.

 

Previous Fun

 

This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

I've got two kids who are not scared of scary things. That is not to say they aren't intrigued by ghosts, vampires, skeletons, and monsters. They love them. But we are able to talk about ghosts and monsters and even death and we tell elaborate "scary" stories without any of it turning into nightmare fuel. I have always been fascinated with the Mexican festivities surrounding November 2, the Day of the Dead, and how supposedly-frightening images and ideas are spoken about openly and even celebrated as part of life. So last week we visited Detroit's Mexicantown (don't worry, my dear PC-coastal readers, I was as mortified as you when I first heard it called "Mexicantown," but it's even on the signs here) to walk around and learn what we could about the holiday. The neighborhood was all decked out with skulls:

 Our first stop was La Gloria Bakery for sugar ones:

We love stopping by the bakery all year for Mexican baked goods (the churros are especially popular with the backseat crowd) and starting in mid-October they start selling these awesome little sugar skulls.

We bought a handful and some ghost cookies and walked over to Xochi's gift shop on Bagley, which as far as I can tell has the largest selection of Día de los Muertos decorations in town. The storeowner had stepped out for an hour, so we crossed the street and enjoyed a big bowl of menudo at Evie's while we waited for her to return. That's a lie: I enjoyed the tripe and the kids split a burrito. When we were done, Xochi's was open for business:

The kids' eyes widened with each step further into the store, trying to take it all in. Despite my near-constant entreaties not to touch anything, I've seen them less excited in a candy store.

[note to wife: wouldn't that fabric on the far right make a great dress for next year?]

Xochi's doesn't just have its own goods for sale, but hosts offerings and exhibitions made by local artists. Last year there was Diana Alva's offering for Frida Kahlo. This year the offerings were also very beautiful.

If I was a better blogger, I would have written down who this one was intended to honor.

The lady at Xochi's did a good job explaining the significance of everything and teaching us about the traditions. I let the kids each pick out a little statue to bring home and put on display for the Day of the Dead, next to the candy skulls and some candles. My son picked out these two little figurines (he liked the woman with the snake around her neck).

My daughter picked out this larger Catrina:

Yesterday, on Día de los Muertos, I had the kids at home all day and we sat together on the chair in front of our "offering" looking at pictures from when they were babies. This wasn't intentional, but in that chair we looked at pictures of my infant daughter in the arms of my grandmother who died five years ago. And we looked at pictures of my daughter with her Grandpa Doug, who died after a battle with cancer in 2007. We saw him in pictures from the first day he met her (just hours after she was born) to the days when she sat on his lap in the hospital during the worst of his chemotherapy. And I told Gram about him, how he never got to meet him, but how his Grandpa Doug knew he was coming. They had many questions of course, the sort of questions adults are squeamish to answer. But I tried.

And they weren't scared at all to talk about it.

 

Previous Fun

This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

It had been a few months since we'd biked over to the Heidelberg Project, and on a recent balmy afternoon we headed over. This is one of the best places to bring kids. I can remember wandering around some ornate Renaissance cathedral many years ago, wanting to point out every cool detail that I saw to my (now) wife. Being a kid at the Heidelberg Project is like that times a thousand.


At one point I was talking about how one guy did all of it himself over twenty some years, and my daughter couldn't believe it. "Well, he might have had some help from some kids."

My daughter looked around at all the stuff and said, "Well they must have been some pretty rich kids. Look at all the toys they gave him!"

Knowing the truth, my heart broke a bit.

 

Previous Fun

This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

I've lived up to the promise I made to my daughter and kept up with the weekly horseback riding lessons. She can now ride alone and guide the horse herself, as well as trot and gallop and do all kinds of other fun stuff like ride sidesaddle. But the boy and I are stuck watching her on the farm and last week I could tell he was a little bit jealous. I told him the next day we would do whatever he wanted, and when I asked him what he wanted to do he said, "Ride on a BOAT."

Having let our membership to the Yacht Club lapse, I was left scratching my head (I'm not serious about the yacht club, people). Then I remembered there was a company that did daily tours of the Detroit River on an old ferry. The girl put on her sailor dress, the boy his high-waisted sailor pants, and we hopped on the popscycle and a few minutes later we were crossing the gangplank and looking for a seat on the crowded ferry.

When we passed the Detroit Yacht Club on Belle Isle, the girl asked me what a "yacht" was. I said, "Yacht is what rich people call boats."

The views of the skyline were pretty great from the water.

We even got a view of the underside of the privately-owned Ambassador Bridge, something that Matty Moroun's shotgun-toting goons don't allow from city property they've fenced off under the bridge. This photo could be used by terrorists! It must be destroyed!

The tour lasted two hours, and I was so glad I brought snacks because there might have been a mutiny if I hadn't sated the swabbies with juice boxes and raisins. The kids' favorite part of the tour was looking for trolls under the Belle Isle Bridge and mine was seeing the Hiram Walker/Canadian Club Distillery up close as well as getting unique views of Zug Island and the abandoned train station:

The tours run at 1:00 and 3:00 Thurs-Sunday and children are free. I used a coupon the the website for a $13.00 adult ticket.  

 

Previous Fun

 

This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

This year we continued one of our favorite new Easter traditions and headed over to the Georgia Street Community Collective's annual Easter Egg Hunt. This is a project that started with a few vacant lots that were turned into gardens, and because of the energy of a few amazing volunteers and its inspiring leader (Mark "Cub" Covington) the garden has crept across the road into a burgeoning orchard, and across the corner into a boarded up corner store where the collective plans to run a neighborhood store where residents can buy staples that they can't get from the garden; it was great to see how much work has gone into the community center the collective also plans to run in what was an abandoned house.

Here Mark is explaining the rules for the under six crowd, and my daughter is explaining to her brother that she'll help him:

She quickly abandoned him, however, when he proved much more interested in the contents of each egg rather than accumulating more:


The big kids were really fun to watch:

The grand prize winners left with some pretty awesome cavity---I mean---candy baskets.

The hunt ended inside the future corner store with a lunch of mashed potatoes, biscuits & gravy, chicken wings, and (most importantly on that HOT morning) cold cans of Faygo.

Previous Photo

This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

The Heidelberg Project is sort of like a tourist attraction around here, mostly hipsters and Europeans, but it's a great place for kids too. I've been bringing them here regularly since we moved to Detroit, and now my son is old enough to really get into it. Tyree Guyton gets most of the attention for the project, but there's a guy who also lives there named Tim Burke who makes his own stuff there, and that's actually what my son prefers. I've talked with Burke and he's quite a character who's obviously battled some demons in his day. He welds some mean "robots" and collects a lot of interesting stuff out abandoned buildings (including a few hundred dental molds that he uses to give his robots mouths). The kid LOVES them. 

Previous Fun

These images are copyrighted.