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Palmer Park in northwest Detroit is normally pretty sedate at 5 p.m. on a Sunday.
But not yesterday. Hundreds of people, both black and white and of all different ethnicities invaded Palmer Park, all dressed in white, for the 6th annual "White Party." (No, it's not another name for a Trump rally)
Last year, the party was at the Heidelberg Project and the year before it was at Eastern Market.
It all began in 1988, according to the website Untapped Cities, when a Frenchman Francois Pasquier in Paris invited a group of friends to an elegant outdoor dinner, and only disclosed the location at the last minute. To find each other in the park, everyone wore white. It became known as "Diner en Blanc," which is French for White Dinner. In Detroit and elsewhere it's often referred to as the "White Party."
Today, the event spans five continents. The idea is for people to "flash gather" and set up a temporary, elegant dining area and then after several hours, clean up and move on. Friends involved in organizing the event invite people and those folks then invite others. Most people don't know the location of the party until days before. Everyone brings some food or beverage for their group table.
Notables at the event included Alexis Wiley, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan's chief of staff, WDIV Anchor Devin Scillian, criminal defense attorney William Swor, Free Press senior editor James Hill and Fox 2's Mike Elrick and wife Tresa Baldas of the Free Press, who invited me for the second year in a row.
