Caught my first ever episode of “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown - Detroit” Sunday night. Wanted to quickly weigh in with my thoughts...
As a former citizen of Detroit, I feel the need to be over-protective of anyone making a critique of the Motor City. I moved to Detroit (UDM) in 1996 and returned to Texas in November of 2005 to be closer to my parents. My father turns 80 in April of 2014… I didn’t want to live in a city where I could only catch one connecting flight to Texas in his advance age.
A day never goes by, where I don’t think about Detroit. I follow their local news with greater frequency than I follow San Antonio’s… Up until this summer, I still had listened to Drew and Mike on my morning commute to work.
When I heard that Bourdain was going to feature it on his new CNN show… I prepared myself for the worst.
I had seen his previous show, ”No Reservations” on the Travel Channel. A show that showcased his smug outlook on all things worldly - because he hails from Manhattan and nothing can possibly blow a new part in your hair because you’re from fucking Manhattan…
My presumption was that the CNN show would be a little more ‘investigative’ in respect to culture/local flavor/politics… I don’t know if Bourdain is the best travel corespondent for said topics, but I tuned in nonetheless.
In short… the show sorta seemed to scratch the surface on said topics. Detroit however is too big of a topic to cover in one hour tho’. I felt that the show went out of its way to genuinely champion the spirit of Detroit tho’.
It was nice to not see Michigan Central Station… it was also nice to see someone spend sometime with the Detroit Fire Department. When you spend time looking at the number of fires and the resource limitations the DFD face, you can’t help but wonder how they go about doing their work day after day…
Then there was Charlie… I’m going to opt out of shitting on Charlie. He did a fine job of doing that himself.