Amid council follies, other politics, emergency management and Charles Pugh news that awaits another shoe drop, this newsfeed needs a ray of feel-good sunshine, a scoop of sweet sprinkles, a Detroit X Games surprise.
To the rescue: Los Angeles Magazine, of all sources.
The monthly bids farewell to the Summer X Games, hosted there since 2003, by passing the baton to one of four finalists to be picked this week by ESPN. (Our rivals are Chicago, Austin and Charlotte.)
If Los Angeles can’t have the X Games, then who should we endorse as its new host? The choice is a simple one, though perhaps not immediately obvious: We should be rooting for Detroit.
Associate editor Marielle Wakim explains:
Los Angeles and Detroit are, in so many ways, kindred spirits. The tenor of the cities is nearly identical, moreso than L.A. and any of the other locales that are up for the honor. . . .
The pulse of Detroit — what drives its inhabitants — is perfectly in sync with L.A.’s:
- Both places exude an aura of promise, of self-made success achieved through indefatigable tenacity.
- Both are home to a very specific type of person, one who is willing to wager enormous, mind-boggling success against cataclysmic failure; who understands that in order to flourish, he or she must take risks knowing that those risks might very well undo them.
But what sets Angelenos and Detroiters apart from the rest is this: Should ruin triumph over prosperity, they pick themselves up by their bootstraps and do it all over again until the scales tip in their favor. At the simplest level, aren’t these the very same principles that drive the X Games and its athletes? . . .
What it comes down to is this: if the X Games has to leave Los Angeles, then we should get behind a city that will do justice to something we’ve loved for so long. And that city is Detroit.
Now, doesn't that beat "this just in from City Hall?"
