by
Ron Fournier trips into a New Detroit/Old Detroit misstep.
The editor-publisher of Crain's Detroit Business recovers gracefully in a column headlined "An untold story: Black businesses that never left Detroit." (The success story he tells wasn't totally untold; more on that later.)
The stumble by this self-described "new guy in town" came in November 2015, 10 months before the native east-sider moved back from near Washington, D.C.
After a suggestion from Mayor Mike Duggan, he wrote for Crain's and The Atlantic about young entrepreneur David Kirby -- one of those "Reviving Detroit by Disrupting It," as the national magazine's headline says. Fournier profiled the owner, then 28, of Parker Street Market, "a bodega-style organic grocery" in West Village.
David Hardin Jr,: "Businesses like mine have been taken for granted. We live in the shadows."
(Detroit Future City photo)
More than a year after those commentaries, Fournier acknowledges being "so focused on the new people in town — and the comeback narrative that they represented — that I ignored those who grew up in Detroit and never left."
He speaks again to Kirby, who closed last October, for this week's column -- which also is about another small shop around the corner:
I invited Kirby to my office the other day. We talked about all the publicity he received, the criticism that followed, and the one piece of Detroit's comeback narrative that journalists like me tend to miss.
"The criticism was legitimate — that I was a person who had been here a couple of months, happened to be in the right place at the right time, talked to the right people, and I was getting higher praise for something that was untested, unproven, and in a lot of people's minds, a small-time project," Kirby said.
There was a racial component to the fallout. Kirby is white. Duggan is white, as were most of the reporters whom the mayor directed to Kirby's Parker Street Market.
There it is, a frank acknowledgment of the script that tripped this seasoned journalist. His recognition brings a coverage commitment that will affect what we see in Crain's.
'An open mind'
When reader Dan Jankowski, suggests to Fournier in a Sunday morning tweet that "there probably are many more such stories. Time to shine a light on them with regularity," the new guy replies: "On it."
He tells another reader, also on Twitter:
Things always look different from inside. It's why you go there with an open mind and empty notebook.
Fournier starts by taking a notebook to Heavy Weight Cuts, a West Village barber shop at 8008 Kercheval Ave.,.around the corner from where Parker sold groceries.
It was the young entrepreneur who told Fournier during their follow-up conversation that the neighborhood has "predominantly black businesses that aren't getting any of the credit for sticking around and being successful while everyone else is coming in." The editor continues:
He told me about a barber shop a few doors west of Parker Street Market ... run by an African-American man, David Hardin Jr., who lives above the shop. "I can't think of one article that ever discussed the West Village or Parker Street that mentioned Dave's business."
That includes my own column. I was so focused on the new people in town — and the comeback narrative that they represented — that I ignored those who grew up in Detroit and never left. People like Hardin, 43, who began working at Heavy Weight Cuts in 2001, and who bought the business and its two-story brick storefront in 2008.
Ron Fournier: "Things always look different from inside. It's why you go there with an open mind and empty notebook."
The 53-year-old editor, whose haircut needs are minimal, is welcomed warmly at the shop by its 43-year-old owner, a graduate of the now-closed Finney High School near East Warren Avenue and Chalmers Street:
Hardin greeted me with a hello and a handshake. "Glad to finally have you here," he chuckled.
Hardin said journalists tend to overlook African-American businessmen like him — especially those who were making a buck during Detroit's bleakest years.
"Businesses like mine have been taken for granted. We live in the shadows," he said. "When somebody comes in and is flashy and new, they get all the attention."
In truth, though he mainstream media attention bypassed him, Hardin hasn't been completely ignored.
Serving his community
An 840-word profile by freelancer E.B. Allen with three photos was posted last July at Detroit Unspun, a nonprofit blog. The first-time business owner reflects on the Old Detroit/New Detroit dynamic without using those phrases:
Hardin didn’t worry about his store’s fate, he says, even when business was slow. Years later, the restaurants and food shops that have sprouted in West Village have benefited from population influx and media attention Heavy Weight Cuts seldom receives, but none can say they’ve sustained themselves and served the community for 15 years.
Hardin also gets an admiring shout from author Amy Haimerl, a former Creain's writer (2013-15), near the end of "Detroit Hustle," her May 2016 book.
In a chapter excerpted by Deadline Detroit last April, Haimerl writes:
I didn’t expect so much development quite so quickly [after moving into West Village]. It feels a little unsettling. I thought we’d have time to work together and to ensure as a community that the spaces were filled by a diverse group of business owners.
I am thrilled for everyone who has opened. I count them among my friends and patronize their businesses frequently. But I want to make sure that the old-time businesses, like the black barber Karl goes to, Heavy Weight Cuts, isn’t forgotten about. Few men in the neighborhood patronize Dave; most don’t even know he exists. When they hear Karl goes there, they are all curious, interested, but not sure they could go in. But Karl made it a point to start going as soon as we moved into Matilda.
It’s nothing fancy, but it’s Dave’s shop, a place he loves, and we want to ensure it has a place in this community. We don’t want it pushed out in favor of a luxury handbag store or one of the fancy barbershops with $40 cuts that have opened recently in downtown and Midtown. I want his voice to be heard, for him to be as important a part of the conversation about the future as some of us here at the Sister Pie grand opening. I don’t want him to be a casualty of the future. . . .
I feel like things are improving, but I know they may only be improving for people who look like me or who have means like me. I don’t know what the answers are, but I’m insisting on having the hard, sometimes uncomfortable conversations.
We also welcome those conversations and are glad Ron Fiurnier does too.
