Culture is hard to define, especially in Detroit, which seems to me to have many cultures. There’s the young, up-and-coming, bougie culture of Midtown where we live. There’s the strong Mexican culture in Southwest. There’s the business culture in Downtown, where everyone is in a suit and leaving Detroit to go home to their suburban neighborhood. Culture is distinctly tied to food, so working at FoodLab I have been able to experience a lot of the different cultures, even though I haven’t been to all the different neighborhoods in Detroit. When walking through Eastern Market, you’re able to see what I mean. All the vendors are selling their products, each with their own cultural flair and stories behind them. Although the mix of culture in the city is great, I think that it has also caused there to be unresolved problems and the Two Detroits. So far to me, the most apparent cultural divide in the city is that of community members working to improve the city, such as April from Good Cakes and Bakes, and those who are coming in to “fix” the city and just contributing to gentrification without the input of the community.
Through FoodLab, I’ve met many business owners such as April that exemplify the positive Detroit, people that are trying to hire from within the community and bring good food to neighborhoods that are not Downtown. But to me, seeing the good businesses has made it even more apparent how problematic the bad ones are. Although I am definitely simplifying it, and it is much easier said than done, the large corporations Downtown have a LOT to learn from some of the small FoodLab businesses. Yet, it is almost impossible for them to, because the nature of their companies are so different. What is Quicken Loans’ culture, and how can that be properly infused into Detroit? Hard to say, because it seems like just the culture of Corporate America.
