if they don t, they catch hell. really? i mean, in detroit, yeah. it s almost a perfect society in that sense. because in a perfect society, i believe, everybody should be able to feed themself and their friends or their family, at least reasonably well. and, if they re not able to do that, they should be shunned and demonized and marginalized. well agreed. most of the firemen are known for their cooking. we cook some outstanding meals. we learn to shop. we learn to shop with less to feed more. you don t want to be a belly robber. you better bring some food back for the boys. firefighters, in my experience, are a lot like the marines i ve met over the years. no matter how badly led, ridiculously underequipped, underappreciated, no matter how doomed their mission, they take a bizarre and quite beautiful pride in at least being screwed more than anybody else, and doing it with style. they seem to do what they do for themselves. it s not a job. it s a calling. this is wher
Chicago, boston, machine politics, they wrote the book. but detroit differs in that its scandal seems so comically lurid, so surrealistically squalid. the last mayor, kwame kilpatrick, is currently serving time in the jug for some of his less hiliariously bent behaviors. through all of it, one man seems to have known what s going on. adolph mongo, political strategist, oracle, survivor. he s seen it all. i know what i m having, but i d love a beer. miller, miller high life man this ain t this kinda place man, i thought you drank, man. you drinking beer? uh, what are you drinking? i m drinking vodka. i ll have what he. i ll fold under pressure. okay. then i ll think about a burger down the way. you having something to eat? i may. uh, all right, i ll hold back. i will stick with this i ll get you your drink, and then you can decide. thank you.
Leduff scarves his like he s at ruby tuesday s. you got all these kids flooding into detriot, which is good, right? how is that going to play out? will there be political leadership in place. .to manage that fairly? it will be fine. everybody likes a nice thing in an egg shell with caviar on top. everybody. it s just all about keeping cool. no, it won t be fine, dude. it will not be fine if, if, if there s not political leadership. it will not. well, sometimes political leadership grows up out of what s happening. and we don t have any political leadership, and this is happening. are you an optimist? i m an optimist. i m here in this, i m here in this garage with you. chilled summer soup with melon, tomato, lemon verbena broth. so we have summer soup. all the melons from the market. the coriander blossoms we actually picked from a farm right here in detroit. beautiful. thank you. thank you. it s good, isn t it?
It takes an entire world to support one city. one city is suffering or one community is suffering, the entire world should pitch in and help elevate it instead of sit there and stare at it. people have lost faith in a lot of things. probably had to do with the faith they had in detroit. once the industrial leader of the entire world. it s enormous. yeah, it is. it s about a mile long, maybe a quarter of a mile wide. i ve got a pretty good view from up here. yeah. how many people worked here at its peak? ah, well, during the war, there were like 33,000 people working here. it went out of business in 56. ya know, they brought studebaker in. .as a partner and studebaker pulled them down. this has been abandoned since the 50s? well, actually, what happened, in 1956, they rent it out to various entrepreneurs. ah, a shoe warehouse, there s a trucking company,
maybe the worm started to turn here. the packard automotive plant. opened in 1903, it was considered the most advanced facility of its kind anywhere in the world. huge, epically proportioned. i mean, 3.35 million square feet. now, one man lives here. al hill. my name is alan hill. welcome to my home. this room right here was a forage room. it was a former packard motor car company. i started living here about seven years ago. at that time, i was semiapprehensive about the place and the going ons around here. but turns out it s about as peaceful as the north woods. and ah, not having a credit card or mortgage payment or car payment is a real blessing. there s a few nails here so. yeah. what s happened here in detroit is unfortunate, but it s a sign of the times. we find out that not only does it take a village to raise an individual,