Detroit City Is the Place to Be by Mark Binelli

when people who’d visited the Heidelberg Project died—one lady was murdered in a crime and another guy, an aspiring artist, hung himself, and afterwards this aspiring artist’s father hung himself as well—sometimes the families would bring a pair of the dead person’s shoes to Guyton and ask him to add the shoes to the tree.
    Guyton had just returned from a show in Berlin. He talked about wanting to unite all peoples, and how, when he first started the project, his neighbors despised it. Some of them didn’t appreciate the fact that it was bringing white visitors to the block. Guyton spoke with a very precise, slightly nasal diction. He said some tourists from China had recently stopped by. He said that when he was in the army he’d been ordered to get rid of a bunch of the marijuana the government had been growing as part of an experiment about the effect of pot on soldiers during times of stress. He said he’d sampled some first. He said he was not surprised by anything the government might do.
    Then he said, “I know you guys are in a hurry, but let me ask you,” and he gestured toward the sky. “Do you believe in a Divine Creator who made everything?” Earlier, he’d made reference to a Creator’s having put him here for a purpose, but no one had said anything. The topic of religion had not come up during our car ride. We all shifted around uncomfortably. I muttered something unsatisfying about being a nonpracticing Catholic. The college professor said he believed in more of a “source,” something that we could all tap into, but not so much a divine being. Mark Rudd said that he believed in something but didn’t like to talk about it and didn’t really know how and that talking about God at all was a form of blasphemy, and for good reason, because once you started naming God, you got into religious wars. Feldman said he was into the cultural traditions of Judaism but not the idea of a divine being looking over us. Micah said he was God, at least that’s what his sister always said, because he was always smiling and that struck her as godlike.
    Guyton said he’d been pondering why he did what he did, and how he got to this point in his life. Waving his arms skyward again, he said he believed in a purpose for all of us. The sky did look strikingly beautiful this morning. It felt miserly, somehow, to argue with our host.
    When we got back to my car, everything was fine. I’d worried all morning for nothing. A few blocks earlier, a pheasant had dashed in front of our path. We seemed to all cry out at once, delighted. One so inclined might have interpreted the moment as auguring something good.
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    On Sunday afternoons during the summer, if you drive up St. Aubin, passing a few grim-looking light industrial buildings (one called Elevator Technology), several fields threatening to overtake dilapidated wooden houses, and a boxing gym for kids run by a former gangbanger, you will eventually notice cars tightly lining either side of the street, a highly unusual sight for this part of town. If you happen to have a window cracked, you will also hear amplified blues chords echoing over the prairie. Finally, you will arrive at the corner of St. Aubin and Frederick, where, in a field taking up nearly the entire block, a man named Pete Barrow has erected a crude stage and begun hosting weekly blues concerts.
    Actually, the stage is just a bunch of pallets nailed together and covered in carpet. A sizable crowd gathers by late afternoon, with spectators forming a U around the field’s perimeter, leaving a large, open expanse of grass between themselves and the stage. The standing room, kibitzing portion of the crowd mingles behind the seated folk and spills all the way down Frederick—it being pretty much all field around here, so no private homeowners to bother. A couple of early arrivers set up tents to protect themselves from the sun and Pete Barrow has constructed a wooden outhouse. Other people