Noses of the Greats: Detroit Iron in Havana

Almost no one can fail to be impressed with the monstrous 1950s American cars trundling around Havana. We forget what exuberant styling, chrome, and just plain mass was built in these examples of the American post-war economic boom. (Of course, many of the bulbous contemporary SUVs that clog American cities and gated McMansion communities have almost as much mass, but they totally lack creative styling and paint schemes; black, gray, and white seem to do it for the contemporary suburban poseur.)

Oops, a Morris. A rare example of old English iron instead.

The majority of older cars we saw in Cuba were Chevrolets and Fords. There were a scattering of Buicks, Edsels, and Chryslers. I was surprised to see almost no Volkswagen Beetles and maybe one Mercedes. Also, I only saw 2 or 3 Peugeots in three weeks. Russian (or Polish?) Ladas were just about the only "modern" cars we saw. By far the worst polluters were old Soviet trucks. Recently, the Cuban government has imported Chinese minibuses for tourist transport, and some of the recent taxis are from Korea.

Her are some of the Fords. Considering Havana is a seaside city, the preservation of the chrome is impressive.

Aha, an Edsel. What a styled machine with its odd vertical radiator grill clashing with the horizontal bezels for the twin headlights. A friend in Massachusetts owned one, and I recall the push-button transmission buttons in the middle of the steering wheel, where most drivers are used to seeing a horn button. Ford had to install a safety interlock system.

A Chrysler 300. I hope it retained its original engine. The blue headlights are a bit odd.

Some of these cars have their original engines. That has become a tourist draw. But because of the 60-year embargo of trade from the USA, Cuban drivers have been innovative about parts and mechanical components. One of those "innovations" was installing 4-cylinder Lada engines in place of the original Detroit engines. From what I could see (and smell), the Lada power plants spewed more emissions than the US engines.

The Buick Eight. These were big bruisers. They would have been perfect for cruising Ike Eisenhower's new Interstate system.

Here are the handsome and roomy 1950s Chevrolets. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, they offered a lot of transportation to young families. That was the brilliance of the General Motors marketing machine: sell them a nice but basic car when they are young, then offer increasingly upscale cars such as Oldsmobile and Buck when they get more prosperous. And ultimately, move them into a Cadillac so that they can demonstrate that they "have made it." The model still works: the grotesque luxury SUV is the contemporary "made it" demonstration device for the pretentious poseur set.

Dear Readers, we have finished our tour of western Cuba and Havana. If any of you are interested in visiting, do it soon, before the commercial interests start building vacation condominiums, erecting nasty fast food restaurants, and pillaging the environment. Maybe the Cuban government can balance development with retention of the best aspects of their nature and culture - I truly hope so. And what if the embargo ends? As Joe Klein wrote in Time Magazine, Dec. 1, 2016:

"The Castros needed the American Satan and its embargo as an excuse for their socialism-induced poverty and martial law. They would never be able to withstand the tide of freedom--and commerce--that would wash over the island." 

Well, that tide may be about to overwhelm.

As of 2017, the Cuban people are gracious and welcoming, travel is easy, food is OK, accommodations variable, and toilets terrible. Don't let any of that scare you, just go and have fun.

These are digital images from my Fuji X-E1 digital camera.

On the Waterfront: the Detroit River

The city of Detroit is situated on the west side of the Detroit River. This river has great hydrologic, commercial, and ecological importance to the Lakes and the Upper Midwest.

First, the river connects the upper Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, and Huron) with Lake Erie to the south. This means that almost all the water from the upper lakes passes through this channel on its way to the lower lakes and, eventually, to the Atlantic Ocean.  The water flows southwest from Lake Huron via the St. Clair River to Lake St. Clair and thence through the Detroit River southwest and south past the city on the way to Lake Erie. (It is confusing, but one major water passage has two names.)

Second, the Detroit River today forms part of the most extensive inland deep-draft waterway in the world. The Great Lakes Waterway is also known as the St. Lawrence Seaway.  Ocean-going ships can penetrate from saltwater deep into the continent (all the way to Duluth at the west end of Lake Superior) and carry cargo without having to offload to smaller vessels. This is an immense economic benefit to reduce the cost of rehandling. Most other extensive inland waterways, such as China's canals, the Rhine, the Danube, the Volga, and the Mississippi north of Baton Rouge, are shallow-draft, meaning designed for barges and inland vessels. They typically only have draft of 6-9 ft. But, the Federal Navigation Project in the Detroit River has a project depth of 27 ft, which is maintained by dredging.  Therefore, much larger cargo vessels can ply the Great Lakes and carry bulk materials such as coal, iron ore, gravel, cement, corn, wheat, and bulky manufactured goods. Panamax-class container vessels cannot enter the Lakes, but lesser-draft lake and ocean vessels have passage most of the year (depending on ice cover). There have been proposals to enlarge the locks along the St. Lawrence Seaway and deepen the channels sufficiently to allow Panamax vessels to carry cargo all the way into the Lakes, but such a project would cost billions and takes decades. It is unlikely this will ever happen.

As far as I know, there are five deep-draft inland waterways in the world:

1. The St. Lawrence Seaway as far as Duluth, Minnesota
2. Congo River as far as Matadi
3. Rio Orinoco as far as the Caroní River (approx. 225 miles)
4. Rio Amazonas as far as Manaus, Brazil
5. The Yangtze in China as far as Wuhan (approx. 600 miles)

Possibly you could include the Thames, lower Mekong, and the Port of Rotterdam to this list, but I think of these as dredged river mouths rather than an improved system with locks and/or major dredging to allow ships deep into a land mass.

Third, the Detroit River is of major biological importance because its fishery resources move freely across the boundary between two nations (Canada and USA), and represent millions or billions of dollars in revenue each year to each nation.

The Detroit riverfront was formerly an industrial area of warehouses and factories, but has been converted to recreational use in the last decade or so.  It is really pleasant on a warm sunny evening to walk along the embankment and watch ships pass and people enjoy themselves.

Interesting people hang out on a summer evening.

This view shows the International Riverfront and Rivard Plaza Merry-Go-Round. The cluster of glass towers in the distance is the Renaissance Center, also known as the General Motors Renaissance Center. The four 39-story corner buildings are office towers, while the 73-story unit in the middle is the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center. With 1298 rooms, it is a large hotel on any standard.

The complex was originally conceived by Henry Ford II and other businessmen in 1970 as a way to forge a Renaissance in downtown Detroit. We think of Detroit's calamitous decay as being a recent phenomenon, but deep trouble was obvious as early as the infamous 1968 summer riots, when many blocks of tenements burned. Businesses moved out from downtown, and serious decay set in. The hotel opened in 1977, and Ford originally occupied some of the office space. 

General Motors bought the complex to use as its world headquarters in 1996 and completed a 500-million renovation in 2004. Somewhere in the towers is the now-infamous private elevator for use by top-level executives so that they could emerge from their cars in their private parking garage and get whisked up to the executive suites without having to mix with lowly GM engineers and mid-level managers. Imagine having to mix with engineers and hear technical details about your product. Even worse, marketers might tell you that your cars were not selling.

Fireworks over the river are awesome if you have access to an upper floor in the Marriott. As I recall, I was invited to a suite rented by a dredging company. Most of the guys drank, but I took photographs.

The view inland is not as interesting as the view over the river. The terrain is flat, and you see office buildings and warehouses. This area looks reasonably prosperous and is well-policed because of the tourist trade - you have to drive inland and north to see the blocks with burned-out homes and empty lots reverting to prairie.

Just a few blocks to the west is Greektown, a block of restaurants and stores with a Greek theme. As I recall, downtown Detroit used to be a food desert, but in Greektown, you could get a good meal and finish off the evening with a pastry - or two - or three.

I took these photographs with my Fujifilm F31fd compact digital camera. 

A Pocket of Hope in Detroit, the Heidelberg Project

Detroit, Michigan, This once-great industrial city is situated on the Detroit River and was the birthplace of the American automobile industry. It was also the industrial powerhouse that turned out vast amounts of munitions, airplanes, and military vehicles that helped us win World War II. But since the 1960s, it has also become an infamous example of urban decay taken to such an extreme extent, it boggles the mind. This was not a war zone, like Stalingrad in 1942; it was self-imposed decay caused by decades of racial strife, corruption, incompetence, theft, greed, and stupidity. Are there any more terms we can apply? Several former mayors were jailed for corruption. As of 2014, the city is in bankruptcy. But there are pockets of hope. One of these is the Heidelberg Project, a neighborhood of art projects that attracts tourists and shows that something creative can be extracted from the mess. The Project even has a web page.

Walk around, and you see houses covered with teddy bears, signs, balls, puffy things, and bits of plumbing. Even the street has dots. Some of the houses are occupied; some are only used during the day for classes or projects.

If you want, you can also have little lions, ducks, dragons, and monkeys.

Stop to look at the details. There are plenty of non-subtle comments on the American consumer society, the gun mystique, poisonous foods, and legal drugs.

The famous buried Hummer. These people really, really did not like Hummers. Or maybe they liked them because they were such an extreme example of modern American consumer society and its cult of self-gratification via gross material possessions.

The pink bicycle is just in front of the pink Hummer.

Unfortunately, all you need to do is walk a block or two to either side of Heidelberg, and you see stark evidence of what has befallen much of Detroit: abandoned houses, fields, tatty signs, and closed stores.

Not all is well even here. Arson is cheap entertainment in Detroit, and even the Heidelberg Project was not immune. From their web page:

Just before 3:00AM on March 7th, the colorful Party Animal House (a favorite of children) located on Mt. Elliot (between Heidelberg and Elba Streets) was destroyed by arson, the 9th fire over an 11-month period. Though DFD responded within five minutes of the first call, their focus quickly shifted from the already destroyed Art Installation, to protecting the adjacent home of longtime residents. Though the neighboring structure suffered significant water and fire damage, its residents were unharmed and remain in surprisingly good spirits. This is the ninth fire set at the internationally renowned art environment since May, 2013, when The Obstruction of Justice house was first set ablaze.

Another essay on the arson at the Heidelberg is from David Uberti.

We will look at more Detroit photographs in future articles. Click for photographs of the International Waterfront. Heidelberg photographs were taken in 2010 with an Olympus E-330 digital camera and the Olympus 14-54mm lens. I reprocessed the RAW files with PhotoNinja software.

Update June 6, 2017: Some powerful black and white film photographs from south Detroit:
https://www.35mmc.com/04/06/2017/35mm-large-format-detroit/