"motor city" | thursday | may 17, 2007 | 8:09 pm

HAT DO I KNOW ABOUT DETROIT? Very little, actually. I know it's in Michigan. I know it's an industrial city. I know it is called "Motor City." And I know it is the home of Motown. I might be able to dig up a few more fun facts, but I really don't know a whole lot about the place. But in a couple of hours, I'll be getting on a jet plane to head there with three friends to attend a conference at Wayne State University. It's called "Computers and Writing 2007: Virtual Urbanism." We have a panel on the virtual university, and I co-wrote a paper with my friend Jentery on virtual office hours using instant messaging. (We include a bit about MyCyberTwin and the Cingular "IDK, my BFF, Jill?" commercial. It's going to be four days, three nights of fun and interesting talks and more fun. We're hoping to get a little exploring done while we're there. Wish me luck.

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"motor city recap" | thursday | may 31, 2007 | 11:01 am

EGIN LINE. Detroit was amazing. And exhausting. From May 17 through May 20, three friends of mine from the department and I went to "Computers and Writing 2007" at Wayne State University, which is a pretty nice city campus. (I hazard to use the word "urban" since we learned at the conference that "urban" is often a euphemism for "black" in Detroit and not always in a good way.) This year's conference theme was "Virtual Urbanism." C&W is first and foremost a composition conference, meaning it caters to scholars, teachers, and folks interested in the teaching of writing, rhetoric, and such at the college level. It's not really my academic "scene" as it were. People are nice. The theory is a little soft. But overall it was an awesome experience (and one worth repeating next year I think).

Going to a conference with friends, with a group is one of the best ways to tackle the whole academic dog and pony show thing. You're with people you already know. You're familiar with each other's work. The buddy system works out really well. And you have a pre-made party ready to go. Megan, Curtis, Jentery, and I left on Thursday morning (not too early). Our friend Jason drove us to SEATAC. We all had seats on the aisle in a square, so we could jibber-jabber and bug one another. The flight to Detroit was fine. Planes are definitely more doable when you're with friends. We got into Detroit around 8 PM, took a shuttle to campus, and checked into our four-person suite in the dorms at WSU. Since I never did the dorm thing, it was kind of fun. We each had our own tiny little cell of a room, which was awesome. We decided to go out our first night.

Jentery had gathered intel about Detroit, and we decided to head to Corktown, which is supposed to be a cool, happening part of town. According to the front desk guy at the dorm, Corktown wasn't too far to walk. Since none of us had actually been prepared with a map or anything (so unlike me), we totally got turned around. We asked a guy on the street (he was roller-blading and totally looked like a professor with long, grey ponytail) and he said that Corktown was in fact really far away. He suggested a different area that was closer. Of course, we couldn't find what he suggested (he seemed iffy on the directions himself). So we asked a guy at a gas station, who told us that Corktown was really easy to get to and gave us very clear directions. Ten minutes away, he said. Little did we know that ten minutes meant by car. We should've know. It is called Motor City for a reason. Little did we know that this ten minute jaunt would take us from campus all the way downtown, past Tiger Stadium (I refuse to call it Comerica Park), then kind of back the way we came. We must've walked for a couple of hours. The accidental tour was neat, though.

Finally, after much grumbling, we decided to hail a cab to take us directly to Corktown. The cabbie that picked us up was a total hippie burnout (imagine that in the middle of the Midwest), who was very chatty. He liked my mohawk and proceeded to tell us a story about how he and a friend in the 70s used to fuck up their hair, get dressed up like aliens in outrageous outfits with capes, and go to Detroit airport to greet people getting off planes: "Welcome to the planet!" he drawled. "We're now in control. Do what we tell you or we'll kill you." True story. Imagine that happening now? I don't think security would like that very much. Anyway, the cab literally drops us off five blocks from where we decided to grab one; we were so close to our destination.

We stopped off at a bar and restaurant called Slows. It was kind of bourgie. And we missed the kitchen closing by like five minutes. So we decided to just drink through our hunger. After our mighty adventure wandering aimlessly around Detroit, we needed to relax, hang out, and get off our feet. Of course, knowing us, we ended up drunk. When the bar closed, we walked from Slows down to Whitecastle. I had never been to a Whitecastle. It was exactly what we needed to close the night. We had our own "Harold and Kumar" adventure. We got like sixteen sliders, fries, mozzarella sticks, and sodas and just chowed down out in front of the building. I'm not really sure if Whitecastle is actually food. Maybe food product. But it was tasty. And then the Detroit S.W.A.T. team pulled up and six huge, beefy black men jumped out of a black van. Luckily, they just wanted burgers, too. We caught a cab back to the university district. We had wanted to go to a late night place, but the cab driver had no idea where it was. He actually dropped us off right near where our whole night of misdirection began. We decided to cut our losses and just go back to the dorms and go to sleep. Somewhere around four in the morning.

Friday morning was rough. But we all got up at 8 AM. Jentery had to get up to moderate a panel, which he didn't know he had to do till recently. We told him to skip, but he wanted to make a good impression. The conference was all right. We went to a few panels. All of our meals were provided, which was awesome. But it was a slow, sluggish day. I managed to go to four panels that day (compared to Jentery and Curtis, who went to 2 and then went to nap for the rest of the afternoon, and Megan, who tricked us by going back to sleep after we had left the room but she went to 3 panels). Dinner's plenary talk was by Geoffrey Sirc, who was an excellent speaker and who is a bigwig in composition circles. Megan and Jentery were really keen on hearing Sirc speak.

Friday night, we joined a number of the other conferencees at a local bar (which was literally a block from campus) called the Circa 1890 Saloon, which is sort of wild west bar slash cafeteria diner. It was a cool place. People were worried that it was going to be too "grungy" or "divey" for us. Hello, we're from Seattle! Actually, people were totally surprised by our previous night's travels and travails through Detroit. They were scared for us, mainly, because of all of the "urban" areas we walked through. It wasn't too bad. Some areas were shady. I probably wouldn't have walked all over by myself. But it wasn't that bad. (Again, a driving city opposed to a walking city. The attitudes about navigating city spaces and peoples and issues is really different.) We only stayed at Circa for a little while. Joyce Walker, our mentor and bright star of the composition cosmos, bought us a pitcher. Then, feeling tired from the night before, we retired to the dorms to work on final touches to our papers. We still didn't get to bed till well after one o'clock (after I made people go to sleep because they were keeping me up).

Saturday was more of the same. I went to two more sessions, which were okay. We went to lunch to hear another plenary speaker, Helen Liggett, who specializes in theories of urban spaces and visual culture, who Curtis really, really wanted to see. I felt bad for her, actually, because she was speaking at the tail end of lunch, in the dorm's dining hall cafeteria, without a sound system. It was a really interesting talk, nonetheless. We joked around how it would be awesome to get all of these really smart and famous people to come to our panel. We had asked Joyce earlier to put in a good word for us. But, feeling brazen, I said I would go talk to them. Curtis, too. We knew that Joyce was coming to our panel as our mentor and all. I went up when Geoffrey Sirc was talking to Helen Liggett. I thanked Liggett for her talk and then thanked Sirc, too. Then I suggested to both that they should come to our panel since we invoked their work in ours.

Our panel, entitled "V.U.: Spaces, Articulations, and Interfaces of the Virtual University," was at the 3:30 PM time slot. Last slot of the day. Not too bad. We actually had a few people show up to our panel. In fact, by whatever graces, all of the people we asked to come actually came. It was awesome. There was good panel-audience rapport. Jentery and Curtis went first with their paper about using moblogging in the writing classroom. It went really well. They quote Sirc and his "encounter possibilities." Then Megan gave her paper about libraries, student researching methods, and technology. She quoted a study called "Digital Breadcrumbs" by Joyce Walker and Jim Purdy (who was also in the audience). Then Jentery and I gave our paper about virtual office hours. Jentery made a joke about expecting people we quoted in our paper to be in the audience as well. Overall, our panel was a rousing success. Even the major technological glitch in the middle of Jentery's and my presentation. We needed the Internet in order to show some websites and the now famous "IDK, my BFF, Jill?" Cingular commercial. Of course, we couldn't connect to the Internet. All of the computers in the room crashed simultaneously. But like troopers we kept going. And, chagrin aside, proceeded to do a dramatic reenactment of the commercial. It was really funny, actually. "Theatrical and theoretical" is what I said to much approval. We had a great time. And everyone asked some good questions and gave us great feedback.

Saturday night was destined for more debauchery. We went to dinner and the last plenary speaker, the headliner for the conference, Richard Doyle, who was lively, funny, but completely all over the place. There were people who totally "grooved" with him; and then there were people who had no idea why he was speaking at the conference. After dinner, a bunch of people headed to the Garden Bowl, which is part of the Majestic Theatre building, which includes the music venue the Magic Stick. It's a famous Detroit nightspot. And the Garden Bowl is kind of a punk rock bowling alley and bar. It was really fun, though I wasn't in the mood to bowl. We stayed there for a while bowling with Joyce and Jim and other conference folk.

Then I decided to leave and head someplace else. I wanted to go to at least one gay bar while in Detroit (which is a usual goal for whenever I go someplace new). So I walked (quite a ways) to the Woodward Cocktail Bar, which is supposedly the oldest gay bar in the city. I was a little antsy that night because I was meeting up with Josh, a friend and ex-boyfriend from San Francisco who I haven't seen in five years. We originally were supposed to meet up Friday night but I decided to postpone it. Then he was running late on Saturday night. The Woodward was interesting. The entrance is tucked behind the building, down an alley, off a parking lot. You have to be buzzed in by the door person. And you get swiped with a metal detector. Why? Because it's an "urban" bar. Definitely gay, but pretty much an all-black clientele. I thought I would feel uncomfortable, but strangely, it was okay. People were friendly. I definitely felt out of place but not unwelcomed. Josh eventually met me at the Woodward. It was really good to see him again. He looked the same, quiet as ever, but I could tell that there were differences. We had a drink there and then met up with the rest of my friends all the way across town in a neighborhood called Hamtramck, otherwise called "Ham Sandwich" by our cab driver, at a bar called Small's, which is also a music venue. Many drinks were had there. Then we had to find our way home.

Jentery called for a cab, but because Hamtramck isn't actually in Detroit, we had to walk some blocks to get within city limits. Eventually, we stopped at a convenience store, whose owner had a friend who would pick us up. A friend. But the van came, got us, the Arab-American driver blaring Kenny Chesney, and dropped us back at campus. Then we all just sat around and talked till five in the morning. Josh and I actually hung out for a little while on our own, which was nice. More about that later. And he went home, and I went to bed right around 6 AM.

Sunday was a blurry blur. We got up late. Packed. Shuffled. Called a cab. Went directly to the airport. Ate. Snoozed on the plane. Had a three hour layover in Minneapolis. Made it back to Seattle. Got picked up. Dropped off at home. And I was ready for a vacation from my vacation.

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