Raise your hand if you're tired of seeing this picture. Photo by senor miller

The WSJ had a story last weekend about some Detroit urban explorers who pushed a  dump truck from the fourth floor of the 50-year-old ruins of the Detroit Packard plant and made a video out of it. Then the Free Press followed the story, pairing it with an earlier column by Mark W. Smith, that asked: “Are we obsessed with ruin porn?”

NPR’s On the Media had covered the issue last month, quoting Thomas Morton from Vice magazine, who noted that media stories often use photos of Michigan Central Station (6,900 photos on Flickr), which closed in the 1980s, and the Packard plant, which closed in the ’50s (4,300 photos on Flickr), to illustrate Detroit’s current economic troubles:

“It’s disingenuous, it’s like going to the base of Roosevelt Island and taking pictures of the old mental hospital from the ’50s to underscore some point about Obamacare.”

In fact, the folks at Dyspathy and their readers made a drinking game out of Assignment Detroit, Time Magazine’s yearlong project chronicling — what else? — the Detroit Depression. (Rule #2: “For every mention of landmarks demolished or soon to be demolished, drink. If the landmark is the Michigan Central Station, drink a boxcar.”)

Here are some greatest hits in the ruin porn genre:

• Time Magazine: Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline
• Flickr set by DetroitDerek and photographers using the tag detroitdecay
• The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit photo site
• Slate: Exploring Detroit’s Beautiful Ruins
• Jalopnik: The feral factories of Detroit

Please, send your own favorites.

Starting at Mayor, No. 21, Dave Bing

Here are the mayors of Detroit since we moved to Michigan in 1987:

1. Coleman Young: served from 1974-94. Detroit’s first black mayor, and mayor for life, almost. He was a pioneer in creating the racial politics that still pits Detroit against the suburbs, the mayor against the governor, and the sheriff against the police chief.
2. Dennis Archer: 1994-2002. Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice and president of the American Bar Association, a scholar and a dignified, honest man. But unfortunately, he was unable to enact any major change in his eight years in office.
3. Kwame Kilpatrick: 2002-2008. A dynamic public speaker, he brought new development downtown but was widely suspected of corruption and flagrant philandering. He resigned before his second term was over, after an incredibly juicy texting scandal with his chief of staff that won the Detroit Free Press a Pulitzer. He spent four months in jail and is supposed to repay $1 million in restitution to the city.
4. Kenneth Cockrel, Jr.: for eight months from 2008 to 2009: He brought composure and honesty to an embarrassed city but couldn’t overcome the ungovernable City Council. He is the son of the late Detroit City Council member and activist Ken Cockrel, whose second wife Sheila Cockrel also served on the City Council with Ken Jr. Story was they didn’t really get along.
5. Dave Bing: May 2009, just re-elected to a full four-year term as mayor. A successful NBA player and businessman: Are you the one we have been waiting for, Dave? Can you bring sanity back to city government, fix the schools, and make us solvent again? AFSCME campaigned against him, so that’s a good sign. Detroit so needs a strong, capable, unflappable leader.

Note that there have been three mayors in the last year, thanks to Kilpatrick’s resignation, after which he was replaced by the City Council president, who was then replaced in a special election. Now Bing has been re-elected to a full term. Is it too much to ask for four years of progress?

DND Index:

• Top Freep headline: Bing wins; Pugh, Brown lead council field
• Top WaPo headline: GOP, McDonnell soar in Virginia
• Top DetNews headline: Bing: I can’t do this alone
• Top Washington Times headline: GOP takes Va., N.J. governorships
• Boxes left to unpack: 32

Pumpkin with H1N1

Answer: They both make movies and they both love Halloween. Frank lives in Birmingham, Mich., where he has been creating Halloween sets in his front yard for decades. Frank described this year’s display in an exclusive interview with DnD:

What did you do this year?
In my main set up is the Cemetery, with a couple of toe pincher coffins that hide fog machines, and a boombox for sound effects. This year I made a flying crank ghost with red LED eyes. Over the drive is an 8-foot bat, again with red LED eyes. Between our house and the neighbors there’s a 15-foot flying ghoul. Just before the front porch on a cement bench is the pumpkin display. I had eight jack-o’-lanterns. My favorite is the puking pumpkin. I pull out the seeds and gunk out of the mouth on top of pumpkin below it. On the porch is a crate of skulls and decaying heads, which moans when the little beggars get near it.

How long does all this take you to set up?
I try to start putting every thing out around the first of October, but I don’t stop until Halloween night.

Is it true you have the best display in Oakland County?
I belong to the Motor City Haunt Club and there are several members who make my display look small-time. The membership comes from the tri-county area. So, yes, there are better displays in Oakland.

What kind of treats do you hand out?
I learned early that the better the display, the better the treats have to be. We give out give out full-size candy bars and M&M bags. No fun size at our house.

What do you like best about Halloween?
The best part is the smiles on the kids faces and the thanks from their parents. But, don’t tell my wife, I do like to scare the crap out of the little beggars!

More photos on Lish Dorset’s Flickr photostream