A visit to Mexican Town

The last time I visited Detroit, it was with a couple of folks for the Labor Notes conference about four years ago. One of them, when it was time to leave, insisted on going to Mexican Town to buy some tamale-making materials, yet apparently had no idea how to get there. Consequently, we spent several hours randomly driving around Detroit looking for it (this was, of course, in the days before iPhones and such like). Not only did we not find it, we were actually reduced to the point where my friend N insisted that we stop at a Taco Bell to ask the poor African-American teens working there if they knew the way to Mexican Town (they didn't).

Anyway, fortuitously, prior to this visit to Detroit I happened to read a wonderful blog post about Honey Bee Market La Colmena, a family-owned supermarket in Mexican Town. H and the kids went there yesterday for some food shopping while I was stuck in workshops, and decided that tonight, when I was relatively free of movement obligations, we should go and check out one of the many restaurants there.

We had a great dinner, then took a walk across the pedestrian bridge:


Everything was closed (it being after 8pm) but we saw a charming little building that has been turned into a theatre:


And, across the street, a former decorative-iron workshop that has been turned into a gallery:


and on the wall of a tortilla factory, this pretty cool mural (the text on the left reads "In the spirit of the indigenous people who cultivated the land that was once theirs"):