Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss(60)
“Just surreal,” I said, staring out the window. “I mean . . . I can’t believe we still own an office building down here.”
Bobby kept his eyes on the road. “John’s trying to get government leases now.” He turned down the volume on the radio. “But the city can’t even afford the infrastructure upgrade to keep the stoplights running—Did you know they’re trying to sell the entire stoplight grid to a private contractor?”
I knew our delayed response to Detroit’s downfall was born of attachment, a resistance to change that was similar to my grandfather’s refusal to water down the beer formula after the war, and to Uncle Peter’s late entry into the light-beer market. All this principled resistance, while in some ways admirable, had ultimately led to the family’s unraveling. Much like the automobile manufacturers here, we simply weren’t nimble enough; we’d waited too long even to close our flagship brewery. And so, twenty-four years later, still stubbornly anchored in the city where we’d made our name, we were subject to the vicissitudes of every economic contraction and political scandal. Our recently resigned mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick—convicted of obstruction of justice, assault of a police officer, racketeering, tax evasion, extortion, and mail fraud—had been the final leveling blow.
Bobby turned up the car heater. We passed more snow-covered fields mixed in with houses, some of them torched. Burning down abandoned dwellings was entertainment in Detroit, like going to the movies. The arsonists would barbecue over the embers, swigging forty-ounce bottles of St. Ides or Schlitz Malt Liquor while sirens raged through the night.
Bobby turned right onto Jefferson Avenue, and heading toward downtown, we passed the site where Uniroyal had stood, its steel-lined walls built during World War II to withstand aerial bombardment. Once it had been a place of wonder as much as danger, the badlands of Detroit, capturing my imagination as a young artist. I’d wanted to make something lasting out of all this waste; I still did. Only I needed an ending, I felt, before I could begin. Perhaps this was it.
Lately I’d been reading articles about other artists who were finding inspiration in Detroit. “I hear a lot of artists are moving here,” I told Bobby and Whitney.
“Can’t argue with the rental rates,” said Bobby.
“I hear the DIA is being renovated,” Whitney chimed in from the backseat.
“And expanded,” I said. “They’re spending, like, a hundred and fifty-eight million or something.”
Funded in its heyday by automotive and newspaper money, the Detroit Institute of Arts housed one of the most expansive collections in the world, ranging from ancient Egyptian works to contemporary art. The new Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit had recently been written up in the New York Times, putting Detroit back on the map, artwise. The city seemed overrun with artists setting up studios in abandoned buildings, showing their work in makeshift galleries, and sipping fair-trade coffee in what looked like domestic war zones. They, too, believed in the redemptive power of danger, these gutsy people, forging a life with no certainties—the kind of life Bernhard Stroh had opted for back in 1850, when the water in Detroit tasted so fresh.
Turning left onto Joseph Campau, Bobby continued down to Stroh River Place and parked next to the river in the same lot where Coleman Young and Uncle Peter had once made their deal. The fact that we still owned and parked in this lot was proof that things had not gone as planned along the riverfront. In every other American city, waterfront lots were prime real estate developed into high-end residential and commercial areas. Not so in Detroit. Our waterfront parcel had actually plunged in value since that fateful day, twenty-five years ago, when those two city fathers shook hands on a future that was never to be.
I looked around at the handful of parked cars studding our acreage of buckling concrete, trying to picture a field of corn in its place. The idea was kind of hopeful. Anybody could see it was time to start over.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have unerringly supported me in the writing and publishing of this book. My agent, Rob McQuilkin, is the greatest champion a writer could ever hope for. I am very grateful to my editor at Harper, Jennifer Barth, for her keen eye and bright inquisitiveness, and for her belief in this book; I thank Zoe Rosenfeld for always seeing the forest for the trees and, without fail, the outline of each tree, in the early editing work we did together.
My early readers nurtured this project at its most critical stages: Maria Massie, Katie Fleischer, Claire Sanders Swift, Tony Meier, Marnie Burke de Guzman, Alan Black, Heather Cappiello, Rachel Howard, Pam Bohner, D’Arcy McGrath, Dave Dederer, Elsa Dixon, Lindsey Crittenden, Audrey Ferber, Monica Wesolowska, and Arkady Shirin. I am deeply grateful for your support, and for your friendship.
I feel immense gratitude for my teachers, Tom Barbash and Julie Orringer, for initiating the spark; for my late father Eric Stroh and late brother Charlie Stroh, whose lives left deep welts, only to open channels much deeper yet; for my living brothers, Bobby Stroh and Whitney Stroh, whose early support came with characteristic humor and grace; for my mother, Gail Marentette, who not only warmed to the idea but embraced it with all her magnificence; for the rest of the Stroh family, whose tolerance knows no bounds; for Arkady Shirin, who shouted from the mountaintops that I could—and would—write this book; and most of all, for Mishka Shirin-Stroh, my son and great inspiration, who made such colossal sacrifices along the way.