Every package of Detroit Ruin Porn should include Detroit Central Station.

People come from around the world to take pictures of Detroit.

The city has been dying for generations and there are lots of rubberneckers riding around one of the largest cities in the US snapping off pics of the decay. It’s like going through the cancer ward at your local hospital and taking portraits.

It’s the latest craze: Ruin Porn. Snap a photo of some of the destruction and then talk to your friends about how awful things really are there. If people visit you in Detroit, you can also give them a guided tour of some of it — just leave the windows of your car rolled up — you wouldn’t want to breathe any of the city air without a filter.

Now the key to taking good Ruin Porn is to disregard all of the life and real culture in the city. Refuse to notice parts of the city that are vibrant and full of life. If there’s a building falling apart, snap it’s picture — it may not be around much longer.

Also, if you’re viewing ruin porn, disregard the car’s mirror in the picture, or the fact every photo is taken from street level.

Ruins can become art. Look at Egypt or Rome, those are full of ancient buildings that are, technically, abandoned. Though those buildings have fewer crack addicted squatters.

Check out some of the photos we took Saturday and what pics make good Ruin Porn and what pics don’t. All photos are by HTG and shot by Vikki Stenstream. Stunt driving, which included running a couple of lights because your car should act like a shark in Detroit, if you stop, you could die.

HTG is actually on vacation: This story is from our best of files. This story originally ran May 20, 2010. 

That’s probably what Robert Frost meant when chewed through that road less traveled with 40-inch mudders.

There’s still a month left of sand spitting fun in Western Michigan, but it’s not a trip for the light at heart. Behind the wheel of a 2009 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, there was pretty much nothing my stock vehicle couldn’t do that many customized jeeps, handmade dune buggies and the swarm of buzzing quads couldn’t do. Of course, most of those drivers froze in the rain, while I turned the heat on high, turned on the stereo and blasted through hood high water. Yeeeee Hah MoFos!

That smell of exhaust, the whine of motorcycles and the heart thumping, sand digging, confederate flag flying 4×4 are all part of a weekend at Sand Lake State Park in Western Michigan. This place has more crackers than a box or Ritz.

It may not be an ideal trip of car camping and off roading, but you might be surprised how much fun it really is. A weekend outside, car camping requires as much organization as you care to give it. If every thing goes totally wrong, you can still hop into your car and leave. If it goes right, you’ll never want to leave.

As for Silver Lake, climbing a steep dune takes a little more skill then you think — as told by all of the trucks, Jeeps and homemade dune buggies seen backing back down the hill after failing attempt after attempt. Losers.

Hill No. 1 is the toughest. After that it’s all gravy. And the sights are fantastic — looking out over the blustery Lake Michigan.

As for the car camping, we stayed in Silver Lake State Park where we were crammed in with lots of yahoo beer swilling, mullet sporting, fist fight hustling, towing their off road pick up with their regular pickup driving, red necks. They were awesome, piles of beer cans aside. Personally, I would have liked to have a little more space than the 20×20 space — but in the morning as the world slept off their hangovers, I managed to walk along Lake Michigan through the birch tree as the sun rose over a few fishing boats scattered out on the still waters. It was perfect.

Really, everyone deserves or needs a weekend of camping along Lake Michigan. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor or just bored, it’s fun and its cheap. Jack tastes better when its sipped from the bottle and chased with some Coke out of a liter bottle over a roaring campfire stoked with white gasoline. It just does.

It’s not camping, it’s an experience and for $32 a night — it’s easy money. Pack four people in your Subaru and you’ve still got space for cases of beer, two tents, sleeping bags and some firewood.

If automotive mayhem isn’t your cup of tea, there are plenty of campsites along the way that may not have 50 rednecks per 100 square feet, but they still offer a fantastic time. Check out this site for campsite info.

Now go forth and camp.

HTG is actually on vacation: This story is from our best of files. It originally ran Sept. 29, 2009. 

We completely disregarded this sign and exercised our right to walk along the beach along Lake Michigan. We hope more people do the same. Photo by HipsterTravelGuide.com

know about the private beaches in Michigan. You can’t be here, it’s private.”

But that’s not entirely true. The beaches in Michigan are kind of private and kind of public.

See, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that people have the right to walk along all beaches between the water and the high water mark. That part is public, no matter what the leathery skinned lady says. However, from there, from all of the extensive research we’ve done (meaning typing different phrases into Google), the rules start to get as murky as the Great Lakes during a storm.

What’s not clear appears to be if someone can sit down in that open area zoned public. That’s exactly what we did, as the two public areas which were about two miles apart, were so packed with people, we didn’t see much point of sitting there. No, we decided to just walk along the beach until we found a nice comfortable spot.

or you can sit here... it's the same beach, though some nearby land owners might have you think differently.

You can sit here ...

So  we walked along the beach until we decided to sit down. It’s there, leather face approached us. So instead of causing a hassle or fighting with her, we sat there for a few minutes and then got up and walked about another half mile and sat down again. This time, we weren’t sitting in front of any house or even entrance, just a big span of trees.

It was beautiful, not a person within a quarter mile of either direction. And the fine sandy beaches along Lake Michigan are stunning. The waves crashing on the shoreline, the wind pushing in from the West. Just breath taking, really.

So were we breaking the law? We still don’t know. Leather face stayed away from us, but it felt like we were doing something wrong.

And we understand both sides of this particular predicament.  Property owners want to use their little section

An empty beach along Lake Michigan.

of the beach when they want to. And if they’re taking care of the beach, cleaning it up and generally being a good custodian and paying taxes on the waterfront, why shouldn’t they have exclusive access? Then again, the beach should be open to everyone, not just a few tiny sections of it, where other spots are completely empty. Additionally, it should be perfectly legal to walk along the shoreline every where.

There’s also the fact that some people are absolute pigs. We found evidence of that on our walk along the beach. Beer cans, pieces of plastic, bags of trash, all of the junk in the world can be found along the shoreline of Lake Michigan. However, we also saw that many of the property owners, the ones who think they have a claim on the entire beach, were the worst offenders, leaving piles of junk in front of their property. Kids’ toys, broken boats and gas leaking jet skies all lined the beach as well.

Fortunately, we don’t live on the Western Michigan Coastline — as our Google searches did reveal lots of people fight over this particular thing a lot.

In the end, we don’t give a shit what leather woman said — we’re going to walk along the beach as much as we want. According to the Michigan Supreme Court, we were within our rights. We may sit down along the way too, respectful of the people who might live nearby, leaving only footprints, taking only photos.

We simply wish the people who have staked their claim to the shoreline of Lake Michigan would treat the beach with the same respect we do.

Narrow streets and wide sidewalks doesn't leave much room for people on bikes in Saugatuck. Photo by HipsterTravelGuide.com

Steep cliffs drop off to Lake Michigan and its sandy beaches or huge dunes stretch for miles along the blue water.

Then there are the little cities that are nestled along the way — between birch tree forests sprinkled with pine — places like Saugatuck and Douglas, which rest on both sides of the Kalamazoo River.

Saugatuck (and its smaller sibling Douglas) have long been the places people from Chicago run off to summer and enjoy the winds and water of Lake Michigan. It’s also known as the Art Coast for its collection of galleries that include everything from original paintings, pottery and metal work. Some of the work is astonishing, some of it is not.

Anyway, this week, we spent three days in Douglas, doing a whole lot of nothing — going to beach, eating some nice meals and drinking wine by fire fly light on the deck of the house we rented. We also planned on riding our bikes around.

After all, the West Coast is all about being healthy and who wants the hassle of trying to find a place to park when you could just coast up to the coast. But we quickly learned that Saugatuck is strictly a walking city. It hates bikes and people on bikes.

Why are we being so severe? Well, because after riding over to Saugatuck (about a 1/2 mile away from where we were staying) we quickly learned that cars always have the right away. There is no bike path, which we don’t always expect, but there wasn’t even a wide space to safely cruise along.

No, on a bike, you’re on your own in Saugatuck, and when you finally decided to get off the bike and do a little exploring on foot, good luck finding a place to lock up your bike. We selected a chain link fence near the

Saugatuck Town Hall should consider putting in a few bike racks around its city. Photo by HipsterTravelGuide.com

boats in the Kalamazoo River.

It’s only when you’re walking around that you start to notice that no one is on a bike in this quaint summer town. Cars fill the streets and people bustle about carrying pieces of fudge and ice cream. But there’s just no room for bikes.

The next day, we rode through Douglas, which if you go too fast, you’ll miss. So we were a little more forgiving, though still, there’s never a bike rack to be found anywhere and we were pretty sure we weren’t allowed to lock up the bikes on some of sculptures on the sidewalks.

In fact, the only place we did find the simplest of bike racks was at Douglas Beach. Not a one at any of the other locations we visited, including the local grocery store, restaurants and galleries.

We know bikers can be assholes, especially on the road, where they think they own it — and they can easily be

No one knows why every little Michigan town has a Christmas store on a corner. Saugatuck is no different. We have no idea what's inside, probably Christmas stuff. Photo by HipsterTravelGuide.com

pushed into a ditch with a car. Often, I’ve wanted to do just that, leaving a pile of lycra and plastic on the side of the road.

So we try not to act that way, instead, following traffic rules and riding conservatively. Any summer resort would be served better by catering a little to bikers. Every person on a bike is not in a car — and thus doesn’t need a parking space or more room on the road. Bikes don’t make any noise and are a great way to see the places around you, as you peddle by, covering more space than walking and a great view of everything. Breaking a sweat along the way isn’t bad for you either.

But there’s a balance that can be easily found — providing places to lock up bikes is a start.

Boats abound in Saugatuck, as the city has always been a harbor from the cruel waters of Lake Michigan. So there are certainly more boat slips than places to park a bike. Photo by HipsterTravelGuide.com

It’s the same, but it’s different. A few houses are abandoned, a few lots cleared, a couple of homes occupied. It’s the Detroit story.

Right along the street bearing the same name is the Heidelberg Project. A piece of living art that has been evolving for the past 25 years.

One house abandoned house, it’s door now a sheet of plywood, most of the windows busted out, hundreds of stuffed animals are nailed to the walls. Another livable house has nothing on it, but then next to it is one covered in polka-dots. Clocks nailed to the trees along the street provide the right time, twice a day, and shopping carts sit atop trees.

Shoes are turned into political statements, abandoned cars are carefully placed, signs and cutouts abound throughout the one block proving the point that one’s man’s trash is another man’s art.

Tyree Guyton created the Heidelberg Project 25 years ago and continues it today. When HTG meandered down the street, he was there, offering answers to anyone’s questions, waving to a few of the suburbanites too afraid to get out of their car as they drive down the street and fire off a few pictures.

It’s certainly unique, nothing else looks like it. And if ever there’s going to be a revival of Motor City, it’s the artists who will lead it.

“I strive to be part of the solution,” Tyree says on his website.

And maybe he is, though a few of his projects — debilitated homes — have been torn down by the city through the years.

So is it art? Art is not something the creator of it gets to decide. It’s the people who view it, the people who take a deeper meaning from it, it’s the collective that determines whether someone else’s work is, indeed, art.

No one else is visiting any of the other abandoned streets in Detroit. And Tyree has created something bigger than himself with the abandoned pieces of a city that has never recovered.

So is it art? You decide.

If you want to see the Heidelberg Project while you’re in Detroit, it’s absolutely free and it’s located right here and you can even do a Google Street View if you want.

Oh lots of reasons it appears — mostly, though, it wasn’t their idea and it wasn’t what they would do with more than $50,000 raised in just over a week through kickstarter — though none of the people complaining have raised $50,000 for whatever cause they how they want someone else’s money spent.

The people steaming over the idea that a group that turned a joke into 50 grand to make a statue for Robocop, the 1987 movie set in a futuristic crime ridden Detroit, have threatened to deface the statue, pray it fails or is stolen, created anti Robocop in Detroit facebook pages, and incessently whined how this is all such a waste of money because a statue of movie character that portrays Detroit in such a bad light could not possibly be art.

Well, we’ll have to respectfully disagree. It’s high art. Read this rebuttal by the man behind the plan to bring Robocop to Detroit, correctly pointing out that before the idea of Robocop arrived, few of these people opposing the statue were talking about improving Detroit’s schools, helping the homeless or cleaning up the city. Now, they are — and hopefully, they’ll move past their feigned outrage and do something. Spite can be a great motivator.

Robocop provokes emotion — it causes people to think — it is pushing people into action. That is the greatest kind of art around and worth every penny raised.

Classic Ruin Porn: Detroit's Central Station was abandoned decades ago.

It embraces the hard times Motor City has faced and provides a real edge that nothing else Sunday night provided. And we live in Detroit, so it was a little personal as well. It also just feels more real than all of those douchie coffee table books set to come out on Detroit that only focus their lenses on the city’s decay.

But other than an occasional urban explorer from Ann Arbor coming to trespass on a few abandoned buildings and the occasional hipster running around to shoot some ruin porn, we don’t see tourism picking up in the only city in America where you have to go south to get to Canada. (It’s true.)

We would, however, encourage people to check out some truly beautiful pictures turned postcards of the city at Unexpected Detroit. (There’s no point in some homeless person stealing your camera and tripod during your day of shooting.)

We do see a jump in ruin porn coming and are considering putting together a map of the city for people looking to shoot grit instead of glitz — as more people will drive through Detroit in hopes of capturing a little of that passion Eminem found south of 8 Mile.

Beaches of Lake Huron, Michigan

Every state has a tourism board and some sort of advertising campaign. States realize that tourism brings in money and creates jobs. Of course, not all of the campaigns work, think Washington state’s “Say WA” campaign, but a lot of them do.

Michigan recently launched the “Pure Michigan” campaign that promoted the wonders of the mitten state. From snow skiing to Mackinac Island to the beaches of the four Great Lakes that the state touches, there’s a lot more than just auto factories in Michigan.

Snowmobiling in the UP

Pure Michigan was finally the advertising campaign that showed off the beauty of the state to those outside the mitten. Awards were won, tourism was actually up and then the campaign (and the state) reached the bottom of the budget.

In a move to save money but keep the campaign alive, the state cut back the funding and at times you wondered if the campaign still existed. It was finally something that shed a good light on Michigan but it was withering away on life support and we were all wondering if someone was gong to pull the plug.

Off Roading at Silver Lake Dunes

But no more. Enter the newly elected Michigan governor, Rick Snyder, who in his Wednesday “State of the State” address vowed to fund the budget. That funding: $25M. That should get the word out again.

Look for the Pure Michigan ads on a television near you and come for a visit.

All pictures from Pure Michigan travel site at www.michigan.org

Time at the Flat Rock Speedway is as Americana as you can get. That smell of exhaust wafting over the stands, the foot stomping crowd getting the bleachers to echo aluminum thunder and that throat closing diesel spewing from eight school buses. The there are all of the fireworks attached to the roofs of some of these full-sized school buses that are doing laps in a a Figure 8 race.

Yes, Hipster Travel Guide is not above an evening of Figure 8 racing on a quarter mile track. In fact, it’s an annual event at Flat Rock and we go every year. The reason: It is frickin’ awesome.

The people watching alone is worth the price of admission and the $4 ice cold Buds just taste like summer in a plastic cup.

These races are serious and hysterical. The one 50 lap figure eight modified car race included one car dragging its muffler the entire race, while, during the grand finale, a school bus dragged its battery for all dozen laps. But there’s paint trading and full head on, into the wall kind of crashes.

But no one leaves the bus races unhappy — you just can’t.

Check out this video we’ve put together from the most recent night of Flat Rock debauchery.

And here are some more photos:

Anyway: Welcome to the Gratiot Central Market. Inside this little market is a collection of butchers and meat dealers that offer the best deals and best meat in Michigan.

$8.95 for a pound of beef tenderloin (which when cut up creates Filet Mignon.) And that’s the pricey stuff. You can grab Prime Rib for a mere $6.95 per pound. Or pork chops, ribs and just about anything else that was once on an animal and will be on your plate. If God didn’t want you to eat it, he wouldn’t have made it so tasty.

Now everyone has a favorite in the building, as these vendors are all side by side. Our’s is RJ’s, which is all the way at the end on the right. The people behind the counter are helpful and will give you all of the advice you might need for a BBQ.

However, this is definitely a place that you can go broke saving money. There are lots of deals, and if you have a big freezer, you can certainly stock up for lazy day grilling on weekends.

If anything, RJ has taught us that Beef Tenderloin can be used for anything that requires beef. Tacos, salads, Philly Cheese steaks, all of them taste better if you’re using one of the finest cuts of meat known to man kind. (A typical tenderloin weighs about 7 pounds, and you have to buy the whole thing, so be prepared to shell out up to $60 for the loin, which RJ will cut for you.)

We’d also recommend the Center Cut Pork Chops, the bacon, the stewing beef, the Delmonicos and Ribeyes, as well as the flank steak and brats. Oh, and the hamburger is to die for — well, at least a cow died for us.

The only thing that can be difficult at the market when it’s busy is finding someone to start up your order. You have to be quick. There’s no number to take or any kind of line — just people shouting over the counter and other people taking orders. So speak up or go hungry.

Now if you’re visiting Detroit, you may not have a need for 10 pounds of meat, but there’s still plenty of good eats all around the market place. And there’s a real city feel to the market. It’s worth a stop, if just for the people watching.

The busiest times are Saturday from about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. During the summer, well, it smells like a butcher’s shop, and that’s not all that great.