The student center
The two men sitting side by side couldn’t be more different. One is a dignified former college professor who quit his university job so he could teach people how to read. The other is an animated ex-con, fresh out of jail, who visits the teacher every day just to be in his presence, as if some of his eloquence will rub off. “I needed something like him in my life for quite some time.” says Scott Hudgins, the 44-year-old unofficial student of Mike Walker, the man he’s made his mentor. His eyes fill with admiration when he looks at Walker, his body language

String theory
“Violins up!” says the teacher, and the kids put their instruments against their chins. Some fidgeting ensues, of course, because they’re all barely 10 years old, but after a count-in they begin their song. They start with a single note, climb higher together, then split off at the end into a short burst of harmony. Simple and charming. Their brief performance is noteworthy not just because of their youth, but even more because the school is in their impoverished neighborhood. These music lessons began spontaneous

Land of the lost
Helen Turner has a mean scowl on her face. Always. It’s the look she gives customers at the diner where she works. “I don’t take no shit off of nobody,” she spits in an Appalachian accent. She’s behind the counter at White Grove Restaurant, a tiny, genuinely retro diner on Second Avenue near Charlotte, in Detroit’s skid row. Her customers are the city’s underclass — addicts, prostitutes, the homeless and the insane. They spend their days aimlessly roaming their neighborhood here like zombies, slowly killing time and themselves, waiting for the nex

Last call?
West Jefferson starts downtown and takes you to the middle of nowhere, from the city’s skyscrapers into the wilderness of the Delray neighborhood, the closest thing to a ghost town within a city that, in some places, often resembles one. Kovacs bar is one of a few places in Delray with the lights left on, an outpost for the handful of people who still work or live here, at Detroit’s wild edges. In every direction around it there’s emptiness — barren fields, empty buildings, quiet streets. Crumbling little houses dot the blocks.

Another one bites the dust
Another downtown skyscraper from Detroit’s golden years is being torn down, the victim of a city unwilling to maintain it and developers unwilling to invest in it. Demolition prep work recently began at the Lafayette Building, at Michigan Avenue and Shelby, an example of the city’s ornate, pre-Depression architecture. The wrecking ball comes next. “It’s coming down because there was not an economic reason to keep it up,” says Bob Rossbach, spokesperson for the Detroit Economic Development Corp., which pulled the trigger on the demolition. “