i took a walk through this beautiful world felt the cool rain on my shoulder found something good in this beautiful world i felt the rain getting colder sha la la la la sha la la la la la la sha la la la la sha la la la la la la it s where nearly everything american and great came from. the things the whole world wanted made here. the heart, the soul, the beat of an industrial, cultural superpower. a magnet for everyone with a dream of a better future, from eastern europe to the deep south. american dream, you came here. the one straight ahead with the green roof? yep, the big rococo building, completely empty. empty. unbelievable. the white one is being rehabbed. there s some money coming in. the one next to it on the right is completely empty. the gray pyramid with the spire on top sold for $5 million. $5 million for that? you can t buy a garage in the hamptons for that basically. $5 million for a skyscraper. it is post-apocalyptic. i mean,
there s guys that were storing cars. so how long has it been like this though? most of this damage happenend within five years. within the last five years? yeah. wow. china had this olympia effort. scrap metal went to a high price, so people would come in here and scrap it. they took the windows out, they just destroyed everything. the place is pretty much open to anybody who wants to come in. sure. a lot of urban explorers. people shooting music videos, taking pictures. oftentimes you see a wedding party come here. and they use this as a backdrop for their wedding, and take pictures, videos. wow. you want to take pictures here. the place, like so much of detroit, invites it. urban exploring, as they call it, sifting through the remains of detroit s great american ongoing tragedy, photographing them, posing in front of them, is something of an iiresistable impulse. detroiters hate it. all the visitors like us, i should point out, wallowing in ruin porn.