Most Dangerous City?

Kids, I think we sort of accidentally moved to the nation's most dangerous city. Well, that's what the rankings say and the rankings must be right. Here is the link to an NPR story that discusses it in a little more detail. The gist of the story is that these rankings are particularly flawed for cities in the East because the true metro area is much larger than the confines of the actual city, and so if you added the much safer suburbs, the rankings would change. I don't know what all of this means, because Lisa & I lived in New York for many years and the worst that happened was that somebody smashed Lisa's car window (but didn't take anything). Since we moved to Boston, our cars have been broken into 3 times and Lisa was mugged at knifepoint. Here is a link to Detroit Public Radio's show about the report. Crime rates certainly mean something, but I go to the West Bank once a year and I always feel safe there. I wonder how they did in the rankings.

Smoking Necropolis?

Before we get to the why, we thought we should explain the whole 'smoking necropolis' thing lest our new neighbors get offended. When we finally decided to make the move in late summer, we discovered that we had developed an uncanny ability to see and hear things about this city that we had previously overlooked. One such thing was an article in Boston magazine (crediting Boston's bulletproof awesomeness to its high number of students - when they're not puking in front of your house, that is) which referred to Detroit as a 'smoking necropolis.' We ordinarily would have just shrugged, but this time we pointed and laughed. Sure, we knew that moving to a city with the nation's highest crime rate in a state with the nation's (almost) worst economy was counterintuitive, but a smoking necropolis? Now that's positively iconoclastic! Not that we've ever shrunk from that moniker, but the more we saw, the more we liked Detroit (and its environs). So we are off to the Smoking Necropolis just before Christmas, and we're really looking forward to it!

FAQs

This is a compilation of the questions we've been fielding over the past few months:

Question: Do either of you have family in Detroit?

Answer: No.

Question: Where are you moving again, Chicago?

Answer: No, we're moving to Detroit.

Question: Where are you moving again, Minnesota?

Answer: No, we're moving to Detroit.

Question/Comment: Detroit - You better get a winter coat!

Answer: Good idea. We live in Boston and all we have is a closet full of tropical wear.

Question: Did you buy a gun yet?

Answer: We would buy a gun if we lived in your neighborhood.

Why?

I wish the reasons were more exciting or more intriguing (well - I don't really wish that), but the truth, as with most things in life, is really quite boring. No lottery tickets, no get-rich-quick schemes, no suspicous life insurance payouts. Nope, just a job. I remember the letter crossing my impossibly messy and heaped up desk touting a job in Detroit. I almost tossed it (along with the ones advertising 'Sportsman's Paradise' and 'Only 3 hours to Major Metro - lots of Cultural Activities Nearby'). Instead, I sent off an email 'just to see what was out there' and ended up really liking (and wanting) the job and the rest is history. It wasn't that simple - we took a trip in the summer and had a great time. The kids made up a new song called "that building is definitely abandoned." We found a neighborhood we liked, and then Lisa interviewed for a job that promised something elusive in Academia - some hard money! We took inventory and found that our life basically happened within a few miles of our house (surprise) and involved school, work, the kids' activities, time with friends, the occasional dinner out, TV and the internet. Does that sound familiar? Although we were going to miss our friends and community here desperately, we confirmed that most of those things were available in the Smoking Necropolis, along with higher salaries, a lower cost of living, lower home prices, and really good schools. Let us know if you want us to hook you up with our broker. She's awesome.