The day started quite well for my birthday. We have gone to fencing in Troy and to celebrate that special moment, the children have planned some activities at Summerset Mall for me. With the excuse of my birthday, there were the necessary visit to the Lego Store, one to Starbuck cafe, and probably a short visit to Claire, and if time was available, one stop to their all-time favorite store Apple Computers.
The morning started with excitement because my son had a coupon for the Lego store and my daughter knowing how much I like coffee had decided to buy me a coffee cup at Starbuck café as a present.
Simple and ordinary isn’t it? Well, what I did not know is that even in the most expensive mall in Michigan I was about to learn a profound lesson in human behavior and value, and that it was related to Mott Park.
We parked in front of Macy’s and walked the main aisle toward the center of the mall. I have already asked my children which Starbuck café they wanted to go, and they told me off course the one next to the skylights, at the center of the mall. Yet, when we approached the stairs of the first floor of Macy’s I changed my mind and told the children that I wanted to go upstairs. Macy’s has a set of white plates (STAKK) that we use at home, and I wanted to buy the small coffee cups.
As we took the mechanical escalator, we were received to a well manicure place full of beautiful artifacts. Arranged in the way that only Macys know how to, it made your eyes jump from place to place with delight. My children and I wondered from here to there admiring everything.
The first floor of Macy is where affluent housewives and well-to-do girls do their wedding Registry, and so, with big business everything is classy and in the right place meticulously arranged. Diligent employees keep things pristine to encourage good sales. The affluent clients demand beauty, and great customer service. They have power and you can see that Macy’s make everything possible to make them happy.
I love to go to places that appreciate beauty and so going to Summerset is a treat for the architect eye. Macys is one of my favorite stores (probably because when I was in Atlanta the first department store I visited with frequency was Macy’s on Peachtree street in downtown Atlanta). And I love Macy’s because it tries to maintain something of another time that is to slow down and enjoy your experience of shopping one good thing of quality- that is very much the old European education I have from my father.
As we moved from aisle to aisle looking for the plates (we ended-up buying ice cream bowls), and admiring the chocolates and every possible gadget and toy ready for Easter, I saw something unusual that looked out of place. It was a clearance area of Christmas gift out of place and abandoned or in another words rejected. The perfect order of Macys made the exhibit more grotesque.
The set of toys, i-phone gadgets combined with chocolates boxes that had the Christmas colors and newly married black-shirts and umbrellas piled in no order looked messy and out-of-place. It bothered me for some reason that I could not ping-point. The items had the same quality as when they were made, and yet something profound has happened.
The kids went around touching every possible toy and because the prices were less expensive, they asked for everything to buy. After all, these were cheap things, good deals. For a moment, I have the notion that the rules have relaxed around us and that the children we allowed to play and touch everything at please, even destroy them. Why did I notice that? Because on the first floor of Macys where the Fine China, stemware, cocktail and whiskey glasses are, the children have to walk carefully, and do not touch things. As a matter of fact, one of those old retired ladies that seem to have been librarians in another life approached my son when he wanted to open a porcelain ceramic tea pot, and in a very controlled soft voice told him NO.
However, in the Clearance section, a place where those “old precise ladies were looking but not looking,” everything counted. Why? The answer was because the objects have lost their value.
Yes, they were cute and attractive, but they were discarded and so, even in Macy’s at Summerset, we humans were behaving badly different. We would take things, look at them, and put them in wherever place with complete disregard of the items, just because those objects, in our mind, have lost appeal.
Just like us, the Summerset mommies that are very proper were as careless as we. And so, the toys or Ipad gadgets, or umbrellas which in their prime time costs between 50 or 60 dollars where just garbage waiting to be discarded.
And so, I decided to do a quick experiment and organized everything in their place, to see if people would behave differently (while I was doing that, I was thinking that the security looking thru the hanging cameras would make of my behavior). And viola, things calmed down. Everybody was more careful. I have restored order and in doing that, I sent the message that the objects were on discount, but have not been abandoned. Somebody was taking care of them. Somebody was telling them that this object have some value.
And that it is exactly what a changing neighborhood is. We have moved to the clearance section in Genesee County, and everything, our streets, our homes, our neighborhood stores have lost the value. On top of that when everything lost value, we humans, behave accordingly with complete disregard of neatness, other neighbors, the park, the houses.
See, Mott Park, in essence is the same, the wonderful houses that are solid and beautiful inside, the park that would be an envy of people in Chicago or Atlanta, the river, and the golf course, the curve streets that give a wonderful appeal have lost value. Everything has changed. Why?
Because in a clearance or change neighborhood, we excuse us to do things that we would not do on other places. If a shirt is on the floor, we do not take the time to put it back on the rack, beside nobody is there to tell us how to behave. And that is us in Mott Park.
And so, when a week or two has passed and the prices have gone done Macys’ will take everything in a bundle and sell it to a discount store for nothing…. Exactly what is happening in Flint. People from California are buying houses in a bundle for nothing, and rent them, to poor people with complete disregard or respect.
I have passed countless times in front of clearance racks, and never thought this way, but the contrast of everything so beautiful while we behaving to our best, and then coming to that corner and became distasteful rude customers with nobody to say a thing. It was incredible!
Our neighborhoods, and Glendale Hills, and every neighborhood North of Flushing and now Mott Park have gone to the same change of behavior.
And when the process is nearly complete, and your value has gone to nothing, you have lost all your rights. Your dignity is out of the door. That is how we treat poor people in Flint and some of them, the angry ones turn around and rob us and kill us.
Poor people in Flint are considered ignorant, incapable, dangerous, something that we mistrust for even in Macys there is a clearance rack of the unfortunate objects that did not find owners, and are treated like second class citizens.
When the changing neighborhood started, and the devaluation became, little things deteriorating and losing ownership, it was subtle. The landscape outside Tim Horton’s store located on Flushing and Ballenger became dirtier (I wrote letters to the main company asking to treat all of us customers, the ones on Flint like the ones in Flint Township, and Fenton the same, but nothing was done).
Then, came the new pawnshop that replaced the old leather store on Ballenger, and we went one notch down- the neighborhood was free market for crime. Simultaneously, The Orchand Lane Manor that were beautiful brick townhomes became an abandoned looking property exactly the same as the clearance rack. There were not maintenance available and because the rental were poor people, nobody care (I was distributing the route of Orchand Lane street and I would talk to the renters and they would tell me how bad they we treated. Now, that I want to share more information with you about Orchand Lane Manors, I can’t. There is not much information on the city taxes nor on the Piper Management Group, so I could not tell you if the apartment belong to them- the Pipper company).
As the neighborhood deteriorated because more poor people came, the behavior of the rest of the people deteriorated too. Like the clearance rack the rental owners (because the fleeing of the neighborhood created a market for flippers) treated rentals very bad (and it is doing it now), including Orchand Lane Manor owners. The porches were not repaired, or the lights were not changes, or the roofs were not cleaned, and another notched went down in quality. Then, the Golf course closed and the windows of the main house were broken and vandalism started spreading in the neighborhood. And graffiti started to appear on walls.
Now, that we are at the end of the rope, even respectable business like Diplomat Pharmacy treat us like second class citizens. In the Flint store, on Ballenger, there are more cameras and security personnel that vitamins- the environment is of mistrust and negative, and all the things that made that pharmacy a community place has become a dispenser of pills for poor people or chronic ill. But the worst keep coming because the new pharmacy that is in front of Diplomat treat as like poor liquor store customers, and give us the medication thru a protected top to bottom bullet proof glass walls. I went last week and could not believe my eyes!
Are we trash already?
See, I have been fighting the destructive changing neighborhood trends since I became the president of the neighborhood long time ago, and I am out of pleasantries.
I need everybody that care to clean, to put order, to send the message that we are not the clearance rack for Genesee County. Yes, we have African Americans in our neighborhood, and yes, we have a valuable neighborhood because we care to stand the trends, the prejudices, the market, the flippers, the old traditions that die old.
If not, what is left is the cold angry mob of disposed young 18-25 poor most of them males that will kill us for a penny. We will be the conduct of all their brutality turn to us.
I am ready to do whatever it takes to change Genesee County. Did I offend you? I am sorry. This is the future of my children.
Thanks,
Want to work for change? Stop and collect trash and in doing so, you are sending to the world the message that you are more than your circumstances.
Thanks,
Marta
FlintMichiganchangingneighborhoodspovertyandcrime 