Saying that Hour Detroit likes Oneita Jackson would be as understated as suggesting that Fox News tilts right-wing.
The magazine's admiration starts atop a 2,700-word January feature headlined "Oneita the Magnificent."
Associate editor Jeff Waraniak reports effusively on a pair of van ride-alongs with the self-described "Detroit ambassador."
Jackson, a 46-year-old former Free Press journalist (2001-12), is a self-employed taxi driver and tour guide. (She's also a human dynamo, I've long sensed and last year experienced during a brief chat.)
Oneita Jackson: "I don't know how to do anything else but honesty. I'm an ambassador, not a booster." (Facebook photos)
Here's part of Waraniak's passenger seat portrait:
Oneita, in her hound’s-tooth pants, mismatched earrings, green bug-eye sunglasses and “Detroiter From Detroit” T-shirt, isn’t your typical cab driver.
“I’m a big deal,” she says. . . .
When Spanish TV producers come to cover Detroit, they call Oneita to arrange meetings and shoots. When a French journalist flies in to write a story, he calls Oneita to show him the sights. When an unassuming German film student waltzes into Oneita’s cab at the airport, he decides to make her a documentary subject.
Everyone from Oscar nominees and NHL stars to Pulitzer Prize-winning authors routinely opt for a ride in Oneita’s cab. . . .
if you need anything or anyone in Detroit, they’re just a phone call or two away.
Ah, but enough of the journalist's words. For the full experience, listen to the lady herself, as relayed by Hour:
► Hosting visitors: "I don’t have a standard tour. . . . I ask people what they’re interested in. And sometimes they’ve already seen the big, big, big sites, so I do the nooks and crannies. And since I’m a newspaper chick, I ask people, 'Do you want to see the headlines or what’s behind the headlines?' . . . I don't know how to do anything else but honesty. It depends on what [visitors] ask to see, where they’re from or what they’ve read, but everybody who meets me gets honest. . . . I'm an ambassador, not a booster."
► My Detroit: "My Detroit is everything. I have friends who are young people. I have friends who are judges, educators, crackheads. I have friends who have been in federal prison. I don’t purport to know everything about the city, but if you want my Detroit tour, we do my stuff, which means we jump out of the car and we go say hi to my friends, and I run my mouth and ask ‘Have you been to this place, have you been to that place?’ Oh, and you buy me lunch. . . . I'm an experience.”
► Fabulousness: "I don’t take myself too seriously. Like, I think I’m fabulous, but who cares? Yeah, I like me. I’m a star in my own head. But at the end of the day, who really cares?”
► New Detroiters: "My neighborhood has all these millennials from the suburbs and wherever else they came from, and that’s cute. That’s very cute."
► Diverse city: “I wish people knew that Detroit is more than black and white people. A lot of people think it’s not an international city, but all you have to do is go to Eastern Market on a Saturday and just pick a demographic. They’re there.”
► Newspaper work: "If The New York Times called, I’m still not interested in journalism. I did my bid."
What's not to be enjoy about that, right? There's certainly no doubt she's an experience.
Oneita raw:
Jackson live-posted wittily Friday on Facebook before an east-side funeral. See her unrestrained "Casket Chronicles" thread.
