Cityscape

Profane Bourdain Phrase Merits Detroit T-Shirt, As A Redditor Illustrates

November 09, 2013, 7:00 AM by  Alan Stamm

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Tony has ribs, collard greens and mac and cheese at Greedy Greg's, a Detroit neighborhood barbecue stand, in Sunday's "Parts Unknown" season finale at 9 p.m. on CNN.

If only Tony Bourdain weren't so publicity-shy and clean-spoken, we could do multiple posts about him in one week. Oh, wait . . . this just in via his Tumblr:

I love Detroit. I think it’s beautiful. I think it’s one of the most beautiful cities in America — still. . . .

Detroit looks like nowhere else. Detroit looks like motherfuckin’ Detroit. As it should.

I’ll say it again. And again.

I love Detroit. I love Detroiters. You’ve got to have a sense of humor to live in a city so relentlessly fucked. You’ve got to be tough — and occasionally even devious. And Detroiters are funny, tough — and supreme improvisers. They are also among the best and most fun drinkers in the country.


Tony's colorful post inspires a T-shirt suggestion from "ArcsReddit" at r/Detroit.

The TV host's Friday post, filled with the type of bad-boy bravura that goes way past self-parody, is the latest promo for his season-ending "Parts Unknown" episode. 

One of his phrases became an immediate meme, mocked up as a T-shirt at this discussion thread by a local Redditor with the screen name ArcsReddit. 

I’m glad it’s set in Detroit. Because Detroit, for many Americans, is an abstraction — truly, if incredibly, a part unknown. . . .

Detroit isn’t just a national treasure. It IS America. And wherever you may live, you wouldn’t be there — and wouldn’t be who you are in the same way — without Detroit.

That said, he acknowledges that parts of "Parts Unknown" this weekend could disappoint "our Detroit fans [whpo] might have wanted this show to be about what’s going right in their city."

I, too, I’m afraid, am guilty of wallowing in ruin porn, of making sure we pointed our cameras, lingered even, in the waist-high grass, overgrown gardens, abandoned mansions, crumbling towers, denuded neighborhoods of what was once an all-powerful metropolis, the engine of capitalism.

But there was no turning away. It’s there — everywhere you look, right in your face, taking up skyline, dead center: the things that were left after Everything Went Terribly Wrong. These aren’t just empty buildings — they’re monuments. And we shot them, illuminated them like monuments, with, I hope, the same respect as the Parthenon, the Coliseum, the remains of a magnificent — if ancient — civilization. . . .

I hope, that even among ruins, audiences will see what I see: an extraordinarily beautiful city — unlike any other in America — still.

Team Tony leaves no cliché unfilmed or unspoken, he seems to promise -- and confirms in his headline: Kick Out the Jams.

And what I'll say — still — is that I believe him. Again. And again. 

Earlier coverage: Video: Anthony Bourdain's Detroit -- 'One Of The Most Awesome' American Cities, Nov. 5 


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