Grocery stores

IMG_2371[1]
Originally uploaded by hemanuel

The city of Detroit covers 140 square miles and has close to 900,000 residents, but there is not a single chain supermarket within the city limits. This might be the primary reason I don't think I could live in this city, and it speaks to a lot of the problems the city has: the city's poverty makes it a tough model for grocery chains to figure out, so they stay away and residents have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and need cars to drive to the suburbs to get fresh food. The store in this picture was an independent grocer. It's now been closed for three months, but there are allegedly plans for it to reopen. No one has yet bothered to clean out the groceries.

Meanwhile, the city has one of the largest farmers' markets in the country, and one of the best I've ever been to. It attracts 40,000 people every Saturday, half from the city, half from the suburbs.