Wherever I go, the first thing I do is read the local news. On a January Monday in Detroit, where I’m covering the grand-sounding North American International Auto Show, the (not unexpected) news is that the city is running out of money. A panel of experts says funds will run out in May if spending isn’t curbed or taxes raised. The latter seems to be an especially far-fetched idea: Detroit is already a wasteland. Those who still live there are in no position to pay. The city has a little over 700,000 people, more than one in three under the federal poverty line, according to the Census Bureau. You’d never know it from inside the auto show bubble, where the BMWs and the Porsches gleam – but getting there from my hotel requires a 10-minute taxi ride through sheer emptiness. There’s nobody there, nobody walking, nobody going into the deserted buildings. Talking to the cabbies, you realize that no one – not the government, not private companies, not the few people slumped at the bus stops in baggy dirty denim – has any idea of what to do with Detroit. The voices on the radio sound normal, cheerful even, and inside the huge convention center the loudspeakers play Motown soul from the Sixties. But outside, the city that spawned those songs is a silent desert under an icy blue sky, crossed by dozens of contrails left by jets going somewhere else.   

Just two minutes’ walk from the auto show, the bulidings are boarded up.  

Inside, it’s a different story. The cars shine, the German tv reporters tape their segments inside red Porsches, and the classic pairing of gorgeous cars and gorgeous girls goes on. But after two days of immersion in this bizarro world, I want to go outside. 

So, on the second-to-last day of the press preview, I decide to walk back to my hotel. Just five miles, says my Android, a little more than one hour. I leave before dark to photograph in the fading light, plotting an easy course north along Cass Avenue: a straight shot, no turns, just keep the setting sun to your left. 

After just a few minutes, I realize that I wasn’t quite ready for the level of desolation I’m seeing. Nothing, truly nothing, is open. It’s a ghost town.  

An attempt at beauty: the Rosa Parks Transit Center. The buses coming and going from here are half empty. What people there are look anything but friendly. I’m glad I just brought a small digital camera I can just put in my pocket and run, if it comes to that.

An abandoned building, black holes where the air conditioners used to be.  

Yet the houses can be beautiful. This angled, half-magical chateau up Cass Avenue, abandoned long ago, must have been a sight to behold back in its day. Now, all it does is send a shiver down my spine. 

In front of this house, two women approach. “Hey, baby”, says the younger. “What you takin’ pictures of?” says the other, hostile and half toothless.      

They’re hovering near a bar, the only light around. But I don’t stop in, although a drink would be welcome. Being a tall stranger in a nice coat doesn’t seem to be a bright idea here. North of the bar, more nothing.

There must have been someone in this house, recently, someone with children. The touch of red in a palette of cold dead colors is a weird punch, and it’s the last I can take. I flag down a cab, give the address of my hotel, and explain to the cabbie who I am and what I’m doing. “You’re a New Yorker”, he says, “you should be used to this kind of thing!” Yes, I am a New Yorker, and I’ve never seen anything like this in an American city. But I don’t tell him that. I listen to what he’s saying about kids moving into the lofts downtown, about revitalization, and about how it used to be worse.