Mustang Alley and the Woodward Dream Cruise: Boss 429 Spotted

Yesterday, my friend Kevin and I volunteered to be photographers for Mustang Alley at the 20th annual Woodward Dream Cruise.  Each year since 1994, Woodward Avenue starting from the Detroit city limits to about sixteen miles to the north fills up with classic and modified cars on specific dates.  The Woodward Dream Cruise started out as a fundraiser but has since expanded into a multiple-day event in which large corporations are involved, namely Detroit's Big Three automakers.  Mustang Alley at 9 mile and Woodward, itself in its 16th year, is run by Ford and saw an especially large turnout in cars this year because of the Mustang's 50th Anniversary.

I picked up Kevin and essentially drove more than twenty miles east on the very road that we live on.  After several scenery changes and a few turns, we found ourselves in the volunteer parking garage and walked out into the "Snake Pit", a purely-Shelby and SVT vehicle display area in Mustang Alley.

Landmarks of Detroit: Fisher and Guardian

I've lived around Detroit ever since I was a year old but my parents never really had the desire to take me there.  They probably thought the possible things I could learn there were outweighed by the possible danger that our family could be in.  That's usually how people view Detroit: a dying city where murderers, robbers, druggies, and decaying buildings surround a small oasis that is downtown.  Of course, there's also the optimistic crowd that thinks Detroit is hip, the new cool, a blank canvas, and full of awesome opportunities.  In reality, it's not really either of those.  In the last four years, I've had a few chances to begin learning about Detroit from the inside: Playing at the Detroit International Jazz Festival for three years with the high school jazz band, taking a couple tours, driving around myself, and reading lots of books.  One major thing I did was to take a college course that had "real, live," big-name speakers from old and new Detroit share their experiences with us every week and normal residents of the city could sit in and offer their opinions too.  I don't plan to ever stop learning about the city and at no point will ever I say that I know "enough" about it.