The Travel Channel’s show No Reservations was in Detroit earlier this year.

Chef Anthony Bourdain, the show’s punk-rock aficionado and proud New Yorker posted on his blog about his visit to Detroit and other rust belt cities.

I think that troubled cities often tragically misinterpret what’s coolest about themselves. They scramble for cure-alls, something that will “attract business”, always one convention center, one pedestrian mall or restaurant district away from revival. They miss their biggest, best and probably most marketable asset: their unique and slightly off-center character. Few people go to New Orleans because it’s a “normal” city — or a “perfect” or “safe” one. They go because it’s crazy, borderline dysfunctional, permissive, shabby, alcoholic and bat sh!t crazy — and because it looks like nowhere else.

From a cycling perspective, this is certainly true.

For instance, the super popular Tour de Troit bike ride doesn’t start in a Wallmart parking lot. It starts in front of a amazing yet decaying 1913 Beaux-Arts train station. The route doesn’t take you past a repeating background of national chain stores and restaurants. You won’t find a Heidelberg Project or a Hamtramck Disneyland or a Dequindre Cut in the suburbs, much less anywhere else in the world.

And you won’t find as many major streets with such minor traffic.

Biking in the city of Detroit is like nowhere else. As we mentioned before, we don’t just fit the bike-friendly mold that other cities are chasing and that’s just fine. Let’s celebrate and hone what we have while not trying so desparately to hide the blemishes that aren’t hurting anyone (like old Tiger Stadium.)

But off the soapbox and back to Bourdain’s blog, he does continue with a focus just on our fair city.

Detroit. Where just about everything cool originated. As angry as one gets looking at block after block of abandoned row houses in Baltimore and wondering how the hell that happened, it’s mind boggling to see how far Detroit has been allowed to fall. But what a truly magnificent breed of crazy-ass hardcase characters have dug in there. Of all three cities we visited, Detroit, oddly enough, even while looking the jaws of death straight in the face, remains closest to being a true culinary wonderland. This is due entirely to the successive waves of migration and immigration from all over the world, when people came to MAKE things in America — each group bringing their own food and traditions. Detroit IS the story of America, for better — and worse, and I think we’ve missed that, allowed ourselves to look away. Detroit, after all, made us who we are. Literally. A country of cars, highways, car culture, upward mobility, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and what were once, unlimited dreams. Whatever happens next, Motown, Eminem and the Stooges’ “Fun House”, at least, shall surely outlast the automobile.

So, how does one tie together a post on Detroit, the Michigan Central Station, Tiger stadium and biking?

Eminem’s Beatiful video seems to do just fine. (Not safe for work, so watch it at home if you have to.)