31 March
Overheard on the plane: "Detroit is an armpit," said by two 'great guy' casualwear businessmen to each other, one carrying a Mulberry-England carrier bag with a present wrapped, for his wife? It's funny seeing the other passengers, I mean, who would want to go to Detroit? Answer: families, businesspeople, white-trash-looking people. Very few black people on the plane which is weird for a city that is - allegedly - 80% black.

The woman at the immigration desk says "Ok hon, you're in!" Customs want to see the soles of my shoes for foot and mouth evidence. We wait for a shuttle bus to take us over to the Budget car rental office. People are smoking outside the airport building, which looks like a flattened version of the South Bank Centre. The bus driver is super-friendly and helpful but we are too jelly-headed to respond in kind. It is, I expect, the first of many incidents in which I will feel like an uptight English whitey.

The car hire clerk is a bit sarcastic and jokey. I'm too tired to understand him and nearly agree to hiring a pick-up truck. Just gimme the wheels, mister! Naturally our car is massive, even though it's a compact. I look at the controls for a couple of minutes and then we're away, driving in the wrong direction along the Interstate. It's getting dark and I'm pretty scared. The roads are busy with drivers cutting into my lane. I feel as though I'm in a computer game. We see the big tyre (the largest tyre in the world, it was on display as a ferris wheel at the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing meadow, New York). We take some wrong turnings, but it's okay. Find the hotel in downtown Detroit, but where to park? There are enormous deserted carparks everywhere, but they don't look safe. How can I tell? I don't know. We get overpriced valet parking, just like everyone else.

The people we see are friendly and helpful, but I am so tired by now that I'm starting to feel paranoid rather than reassured.Do they want tipping? We have no change. They don't. We're okay. Our room is generic. Lots of kids about. We get two anonymous phonecalls. Wecan hear the kids shouting and playing next door - oooh nooo! Phew, move rooms.

The receptionist directs us to a bar where we can get "all kinds of food". I wish we had brought the camera so I could take pictures of my grilled cheese sandwich, fries and salad. It's all served on plastic, like mental hospital crockery. It all looks orangey. 'French Dressing' comes in a sachet and is like sweet ketchup. The waitress drops one on the floor, picks it up, wipes it on her apron and says: "It'll be alright". "Are you from France?" She asks us.

Get back, watch a bit of 'America's Most Wanted' on the massive TV and finally nod off under a weird synthetic foam blanket.

Phone directory information in our hotel room: "Call 311 to make an animal or drag racing complaint after the incident is over."

First impressions:
Roads are fucked
Downtown is deserted and full of massive derelict buildings
Gotham City
Steam rising from vents in the roads
Beautiful!
The Omega Man

1 April
Riots in lansing last night because the local team lost. I don't even know what sport. TV anchorwoman has bad hair. It's big at the front and strangely flat at the back, like she didn't check to see what she looked like from the sides.

Downstairs we eat soggy muffins and toasted bagels with lite cream cheese and apple jelly. Yum.

It takes 20 minutes for someone to get us our valet-parked car. We watch the other people in the lobby checking out as we wait. They look like they have been holding some kind of reunion/convention because they're all wearing matching shell-suits and t-shirts, they're in ultra-white whompy trainers. Fat arses. Some are flying back to Kentucky. One woman patronises a learning disabled guy.

We walk around a bit, disorientated from poor sleep and clocks going forwards. The urban wasteland is marvellous. It's snowing, the streets are empty, potholes, disused tracks with cobbles ripped up. Walk to Cobo Centre and look at the river. Walk past the old Detroit Free Press offices. Someone asks us for directions and we shrug. We see well-maintained churches.

The Charles H. Wright Museum of Afican American History is a massive building that is half-empty, like a lottery project that had run out of money. We look at the main exhibition, about slavery and emancipation. Some parts are very moving, in particular hearing the old version of 'Wade in the Water' and realising that it referred to people escaping from slavery. We saw slave shackles, and a model of a slave ship that casts of young students in it. We saw those amazing photographs of black men holding placards that read: 'I am a Man,' and Black Panthers handing out food parcels. But a lot was left unsaid, it seemed like a pretty anodyne view of Black America, which was disappointing.

We strolled over the road to the insane architecture of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and saw a couple of young hipsters - the first so far! Inside is the amazing Diego Rivera mural depicting the Detroit car industry in its heyday. A lot of the art is kind of rent-an-artist stuff, the kind of things you see in modern art museums the world over. But...the Nam June Paik American Flag, made of coloured distortion on video monitors, and the Claes Oldenburg lolly are both brilliant, bright, funny and pop.

Drive to a thrift store where the guy behind the desk shakes our hands. There's an incredible variety of stuff for sale. I buy a paper bag holder. Fucked up woman there searching for a bargain, heels worn down. Outside there's a fucked up dog hopping around on three legs, and a fucked up guy begging us for money in Jesus's name . We see people picking over some rubble that used to be a house. This is a fucked up place.

Back at the hotel I have a swim in the pool on the 17th floor. I can see the gothic Free Press lettering on the building out of the window.

We take the people mover monorail thing to Greek Town and eat bland, but huge, burritos. Walk home past a large, ornate and naturally disused theatre. Watch an amazing documentary about pro-life abortionist killers.

2 April
Woke up early again, looked out the window and there is actually traffic. I guess Downtown is a bit more alive during the week when people come here to work. Our plan to go up to the observation deck at the Ren Cen is scuppered when an employee tells us that it is under construction. The Renaissance Centre is a hideous airless warren of circular concrete walkways, disorientating escalators, tatty shops, cars and overpriced hotels. I have to get out of there now!

Drive to Dearborn and Ford central. The roads are terrible, some of the holes have been patches up with metal plates. We pass a thousand shop signs whose names we just want to shout out they're so brilliant; 'Mike's Famous Ham Place' is sadly all I can remember now. There's a diversion at Dearborn, so I don't get to see too much of the massive monolithic Ford global headquarters. Unlike downtown Detroit, Dearborn has large corporate architecture, all modern, glass, shining. Ford owns the place.

The museum is good fun, though Simon says that it's nostalgia, not history, that's on display here. There's no discussion of Ford, no information about the impact of the company on the city, the negative effects of car culture. What there is is an insane hodgepodge of product and collections: cars (naturally) of every type, car culture artefacts such as trailers, RVs, motel rooms, roadside diners, petrol stations, presidential limousines, the Wienermobile. Plus other forms of transportation, including bicycles, motorised roller-skates, a massive train engine which is probably the size of a house. Plus household collections: chairs, stoves, milk bottles. There's an exhibition about classic American toys, another about 20th century generations (including a fabulous back to the land display, complete with lentil recipes and macrame). Plus a Buckminster Fuller dome. So much stuff.