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20s: San Fran Minneapolis Philly (Obviously tentative)
Nice picks but you got to have Vegas top 3 in the 60's (The Rat Pack; Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis etc.) and SF in the 70's (Transamerica Pyramid and BART were opened in 1972).
1950s Montgomery, Brigmanham-Civil Rights era/Jim Crow hotspots
1960s San Fransciso, Detroit
1970s New York City
1980s New York, Los Angles, Miami
1990s Los Angles, Atlanta, Orlando (Disney Renssiance decade for why I put Orlando)
2000s New York (9/11 and the bloomburg era gave a city a new vibe), Atlanta, Miami, Houston, New Orleans
2010s New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, DC, Autstin, Nashville
Really spruced Detroit is the 1960s. Feels like a 1950s city to me. Like that was the Big 3 Heyday and the peak of cars being a sexy luxury item but also completely everywhere.
Plus culturally the 1970s/80s was Motown Recieds and the Detroit sound in addition the peak muscle car era.
Sure Detroit had riots in the 1960s but so did most places.
Really spruced Detroit is the 1960s. Feels like a 1950s city to me. Like that was the Big 3 Heyday and the peak of cars being a sexy luxury item but also completely everywhere.
Plus culturally the 1970s/80s was Motown Recieds and the Detroit sound in addition the peak muscle car era.
Sure Detroit had riots in the 1960s but so did most places.
Detroit was a mixed bag in the 60s.
The population decline had begun, the racial tensions were high (which gave way to the 1967 riots) and union membership was past its peak. However, Motown Records had swept the nation with its unique sound, Ford/GM/Chrysler/American Motors saw the peak of their market share, and there was a lot of excitement over the prospects of the city landing the 1968 Olympics (unfortunately, it was a runner up to Rio De Janeiro).
And as far as riots, while it's true most places had riots, Detroit's was on a whole 'nother scale in terms of how long it lasted and how much of the city was affected. At the time, it was the worst riot in over 100 years. Over the 5 day span: 43 people died, over 1,000 people were injured, thousands were arrested and thousands of buildings were destroyed. Livability changed virtually overnight as insurance companies would no longer provide coverage to property owners and businesses with a Detroit address (regardless of neighborhood) at a reasonable price and whites no longer felt welcomed in the city.
You are incorrect about the era for Motown. It was huge in Detroit during the 1960s when they would have the Motortown Revue at the Fox Theatre and groups such as The Temptations and Supremes took off with huge crossover hits. By the time the 1970s came along, Berry Gordy had set up its West Coast subsidiary and the business had already started transitioning out to LA.
Speaking of the 1970s / 1980s, the city was well into its decline by that point. Hudson's Department Store, which in the 1950s held the distinction of being the 2nd largest department store in the country behind Macy's in NYC, had closed most of the retail space at its flagship store on Woodward by 1971 and eventually closed completely in 1982, while Crowley's Department Store closed its downtown flagship store in 1977. Also, the huge movie houses throughout the city had either shuttered their doors (I.E. the Fox Theatres) or converted to venues for X-Rated films.
In hindsight, the 1970s and 1980s was really a weird transitional era for Detroit. The scale of divestment and abandonment that was underway hadn't really hit people who still spoke of it in the same breath as places like Chicago, Philly or NYC, as the dense residential neighborhoods hadn't completely reverted to prairies yet and the commercial districts were still active (it's just the clientele and makeup of stores changed). On the surface, it was still a big bustling city (albeit gritty and distressed).
1900s - St. Louis and Central Midwest, bread basket
1910s - Boston, universities, Old Money
1920s - New York, skyscrapers, finance, Jazz, Great Gatsby
1930s - Chicago, jobs, Capone
1940s - Detroit, war machine
1950s - Pittsburgh, steel
1960s - Los Angeles, San Francisco, culture and culture wars
1970s - Texas cities, especially Houston, oil
1980s - Miami and Atlanta, modern South rises
1990s - Seattle, Silicon Valley, computers
2000s - Washington D.C. and it’s suburbs
2010s - Austin, tech
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