Here’s another fascinating and sometimes cringeworthy trip back in time, courtesy of the Detroit Historical Society’s excellent YouTube channel. It’s a digitized version of an old promotion video produced by the Metropolitan Detroit Convention and Visitors Bureau to promote Detroit during the 1980s, a dismal time for the city.
“Greater Detroit, SuperCity U.S.A.” was made in 1983, using a tagline and logo that was likely cooked up by the Convention and Visitors Bureau (now known as Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau, or simply Visit Detroit). I don’t remember it myself — I grew up a world away in Ann Arbor and was 12 at the time — and could find no mention of it online. But my memories of reading about and visiting the ailing, violent city during that era suggest it was far from being an actual super city.
“Welcome home! / Welcome home! / Welcome to SuperCity, U.S.A. / Greater Detroit is a super city / SuperCity, U.S.A.!” goes the made-for-celluloid jingle, decidedly of its era. A narrator tells us the region has “a variety of special qualities and a rare chemistry that creates this one-of-a-kind metropolitan area that is by any measure, one of the world’s great communities.”
Yeah. Well, for some perspective, 1983 was the year J.L. Hudson’s closed its 25-story flagship store on Woodward Avenue and one year before the Tigers would start the baseball season 35-5 and go on to win the World Series. The city’s population was still above 1 million but plummeting fast as white people were fleeing in droves. Crime was rampant. Downtown was moribund, as the WXYZ news segment from below shows.
The video whitewashes all of that to show the usual selection of attractions from that era: the riverfront, Hart Plaza festivals, Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills and the Pontiac Silverdome, the charmless domed arena that then hosted both the Lions and the Pistons.
Novelties include glimpses of the old Cobo Center facade, before it underwent its butt-ugly Q*Bert renovation, the old Jefferson Avenue trolley, the Bob-Lo ferry boats and footage of Greektown when it was still actually Greek (oh, such fond memories have I of the place and its food). Greek town was one of few actually vibrant pockets of downtown back then, maybe the only one after 5 p.m.).
Enjoy your 12-minute time warp to 35 years ago.
Cringeworthy is right. I remember everything in the video, but if I were from somewhere else, this uninspiring video would not make me want to visit Detroit as either a tourist or for business. Someone thought this was a good idea?
Heh.