Grosse Pointe

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It’s Electric! (aka: GAH!)

electric stove

The stove.

Oh my gosh. I just found out that the stove in our rental apartment (where we’ll stay when we first move to Grosse Pointe) has an electric stove. I’m kind of freaking out. I don’t know what it is, but I have a huge aversion to the electric stove. I see one and I make a funny noise and start backing away with my hands covering my face.

I need to preface this rant by saying that I am first of all grateful beyond words to friends who are renting us the apartment dirt cheap, not to mention having to fix the place up for us and move a houseful of furniture elsewhere, just so we can move in all of OUR crap.

But back to the stove. Cooking is one of the things that makes me happy. And I am going to need to go to my happy place a lot in this apartment, I just know.

Does anyone out there have any tips on how to cook electric?!

How not to burn popcorn, for example? Really, how not to burn anything. Or how to bring a delicate sauce to a slow simmer?  Or how to remember not to put my hand on a hot burner that wouldn’t still be hot if it were a gas stove!

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Borders

detroit border

I came across this photo (yes, I see the spelling error) while doing research on Detroit vs. Grosse Pointe. It illustrates the close proximity of the Pointes to Detroit, and it’s also a good example of the abandonment and decay that has been going on in the city for decades. There are walls (actual physical barriers in the form of guard rails, fences, brick walls) separating parts of Grosse Pointe from Detroit. A horrible realization at first, but… I get it. I mean, we’re moving to Grosse Pointe and not Detroit for a reason.

So what does the future hold for this broken city? It’s a question I plan to examine once I get there. I feel like I know San Francisco in such an intimate way; it’s going to be daunting being a stranger again . But as is true with almost every unknown, there’s an element of excitement, too. Looking forward to exploring and sharing my discoveries and perspectives.

Google Maps image via http://www.63alfred.com/thewalls.htm
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Workshops at the War Memorial

chef holding tomatoes

My mother-in-law, a Grosse Pointe Farms resident, came to visit us after Christmas, as has been tradition since we moved into our TIC-turned-condo in 2006. On this visit she brought with her a brochure from the Grosse Pointe War Memorial.

A sampling of classes/lectures offered:

Miss Mustard Seed Furniture Painting Workshop (where one can learn the “pickled affect”), Wedding Ballroom Dancing (when regular ballroom dancing at a wedding just won’t do), Bridge 101, Asian Fusion Cooking (“What do you get when you combine east and west? You get an incredible and tasty Asian Fusion! You are hearing about this all over the place and it has become extremely popular”), Puppet Art and Facebook for Seniors.

That is all.

Image courtesy of stockimages via http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

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Welcome to the Blog: the What and Why

the Golden Gate A quick Google search reveals that Grosse Pointe is a 10.4 square mile “coastal area in Metro Detroit…that comprises five adjacent individual cities.” Its dwellers are “urban sophisticates” who benefit from a “small-town atmosphere” and “strong sense of community.”

Scroll further down and you’ll find this:  “GP, as it is called by some, is a hotbed for money, teenage marijuana smoking and a prodigious amount of alcohol, thanks to expensive fake IDs.”  And “rich white people” and so forth. Did I mention Detroit? I started this blog as a way to process our family’s move from San Francisco to Grosse Pointe, my husband’s hometown.

When we first tossed the idea around, I was elated. Get me the bleep out of this child-hating, downstairs-neighbor-yelling, summer-is-winter-but-winter-is-also-winter, no-parking-spots-ever city. Enter the panic attacks. I’d be on a run in the Presidio looking down at the stormy grey Pacific Ocean…and in front of me the ever majestic Golden Gate Bridge. Then BOOM. Weakness, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, nausea, tears, etcetera. The truth is that I looooove this place. I freaking love it. I love its insane beauty, its crazy people (hippie, yuppie, techie, LGBTQ, homeless, I’ll take them all), its quaint and quirky neighborhoods, its progressiveness, its intensity, its demand for equality and betterment…there’s no place like it.

Map of Detroit

Note: Lake Huron is mislabeled. It is Lake St. Clair.

Still, I sanction the move. I’m ready for a change. For the comforts of suburbia. A suburbia that shares a border with one of the most turmoil-ridden cities in the country. Let’s do this thing.