Bartender Charleen Dexter (left) and Sue Mosey
The author, a former journalist and press secretary to former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, is a local political and public relations consultant. His clients include unions, politicians and progressive groups.
By Greg Bowens
Sue Mosey and Charleen Dexter are tired. The long-time denizens of the neighborhood surrounding my alma mater, Wayne State University, have worked their fingers to the bone grinding out a life and livelihood for decades.
Their story is not new. The city of my birth is older than the country itself. Through the centuries Detroit has remained a hardscrabble beacon of industry and ingenuity where fortunes have risen and fallen time and time again.
Greg Bowens sees "the true character and spirit of Detroit." (Facebook photo)
And with each boom and bust, people like Mosey and Dexter climb from the rubble to begin again.
Mosey, the head of Midtown Detroit Inc., climbed from the debris left by the implosion of the Detroit Festival of the Arts – a fall celebration that went on for years – to build Midtown Detroit Inc., a business organization that has breathed new life into a once-neglected area.
Dexter, a server and bartender at the Bronx Bar, emerged from the wreckage of a young life forced into adulthood way too early, to become a fixture of the neighborhood for her big heart, quick wit and listening ear.
After so much work, we can all understand why they would be tired. What’s interesting is that they are tired for completely different reasons.
Like matter and anti-matter occupying the same space at the same time, Mosey and Dexter live in alternate universes at the same point in the city’s unfolding history.
Sue is in Midtown. Charleen is in Cass Corridor.
One place is bustling with a booming economy. The other is pricing people out of apartments.
One is providing jobs and new businesses. The other is giving tips and temp work.
Both have made Mosey and Dexter tired.
Sue, as she wrote to me in a 663-word email, is tired of the narrative of “Old Detroit vs. New Detroit.”
Meanwhile, Charleen is tired of working her ass off busing tables, serving people and occasionally chasing scoundrels out with a baseball bat.
Charleen Dexter on her last night of bartendning.
Mosey sent me the missive because she took exception to comments I made in a Free Press story about Charleen and the Bronx. I said she represented the true character and spirit of Detroit at a time where others are just faking it.
So, let me get this straight. A person spends 40-plus years washing glasses, busing tables and picking up plates, and the outrage is over characterizing new joints as fake Detroit?
Okay.
Needless to say, when the Bronx owners threw a retirement party to honor Charleen Dexter’s 40 years of work, Sue Mosley wasn’t in the packed room.
Sue was in Midtown. Charleen was in Detroit.
