The Suburbs vs. The City

I spent the majority of my last few hours at Dally in the Alley last Saturday soaking in beats from the festival's techno/electronic stage (addicts need their fix). As the last DJ's set stretched closer to the mandatory shut-down time of midnight, he was accompanied by a dude on a microphone who might have been a DJ himself, or a promoter, I have no idea. For the purposes of this article, however, I will affectionately refer to the dude with the mic as Dillhole-idiot-boy.

Dillhole-idiot-boy talked over the beats and told the crowd about the after parties, and thanked everyone for coming out to support the city. Oh, how cordial, thank you Dillhole-idiot-boy. It wasn't long, however, until he started taking cuts at everyone who was "going back the suburbs." He mentioned the suburbs in a mildly-humorous yet derogatory manner about 9 times (I lost count after 5).

Ha ha, OK, I get it, how original. The suburbs are boring, and the city is exciting. The suburbs are uptight, and the city is open-minded. The city has culture, arts, and music, and the suburbs have Wal-Mart. People in the city are real, and people in the suburbs are fake. I get it, I get it.

When I first started spending more of my free time in the city, I found this perpetual and underlying battle of words and attitudes to be quite amusing. My friends in the city would swear to never cross 8 mile. Can you imagine catching a city-dweller at the Starbucks in Royal Oak? Yeah, I can't either. As for my friends who lived in the suburbs... well, most of them don't even know how to get downtown without their dad driving them, and have no idea what happens in the city outside of Lions, Tigers and Red Wings games.

I'm finding this battle of words and attitudes between The Suburbs and The City to be less amusing now, the more I hear of it. I could list countless examples, but I'm not getting paid for writing this article and research is annoying... so for now, I've just decided to declare a truce and offer a bit of advice to each side of the battle line.

City dwellers, you weren't all immaculately conceived and born in the Heart Plaza fountain, you shop at IKEA, and your grandma lives in Rochester, so get over yourself. It's OK if you're seen in the suburbs on occassion. The culture and style that drew you into city is not exclusive to the city, it's just a bit harder to find in the 'burbs. Suburbanites, try something new for once and pick up a Metro Times, or a Real Detroit, or... gosh, I dunno, Google the word "detroit" and then make plans to do something interesting and outside of your comfort zone this weekend. Trust me, you won't regret it.

Ok, I lied... I did do some research. I couldn't resist. Let us get really serious for a moment. Great care has been fused into the following list of reasons why The City and The Suburbs need one another:

Why city dwellers need the suburbs:

1. Abercrombie and Fitch - If the suburbs didn't have malls, and those malls didn't have stores like Abercrombie and Fitch in them, picking out the weakest suburbanites would be slightly more difficult for the city dwellers as they prepared to administer beat downs. Sure, the city dwellers can smell fear, especially as the suburbanites stumble out of Chelli's Chili and Hockeytown Cafe, but AE and Hollister markings just make things a little easier.
   
2. White People - Let's face it, white people have their uses, and the suburbs are teaming with them. Who else would pay $20 to a guy with a cardboard sign, just to park their car in an abandoned parking lot near the Fox? White people bring money to the city.
3. Trader Joe's and Target - Even the city dwellers need cheap (yet healthy) food, and cheap (yet stylish) home furninshings. I know for a fact that all city dwellers have at least one picture frame on their wall from Target, and at least one frozen pizza in their freezer from Trader Joe's.
4. The Internet - Everyone knows that homes in the city do not yet have access to this new Internet-thing. Fortunately, though, most city dweller's mothers reside in the suburbs, where the Internet is plentiful and readily available.
   

Why the suburbs need the city:

1. Street cred - When suburbanites travel to other lands, it makes them look and feel tough to say they're "from Detroit," even if they're not, exactly.
2. The casinos - Suburbanites love themselves some slot machines, Texas Hold 'em, neon lights and endless lines of "free" buffets. If it weren't for the city and its law allowing the money-sucking enterprises to be built, they would be stuck sitting at home playing against a 9yr-old from Cleveland on SuperStars.net.
   
3. Black people - If suburbanites weren't able to secretly fear black people from the city, they would be forced to fear themselves and their own closed-mindedness, and that would be just too damn inconvenient for any true suburbanite.
4. Crack whores - We all enjoy the wonder and delight that a good crack whore can bring to a Friday night, and they are just too difficult to find on the mean streets of Old Woodward in B'ham. For $5 and a bag of Doritos, any self-respecting, married man from Roseville can take a short drive down Gratiot to get himself a top-of-the-line crack whore for an evening of fun and adventure.
   

And so, just remember, without one, there is no other. The city needs the suburbs, and the suburbs need the city. So why don't you all just meet in the middle of 8mile on Satuday night, hold hands, exchange phone numbers, make-out for a little while, and then make plans together for the following weekend?

(What do you think?)