On rebirth, reintroducing myself, and remembering my name

Sorry if this is going to sound a little self-important

My friend Andy Didorosi, CEO of the Detroit Bus Company, said I still have a name. Well, actually, he said I still have a name in Detroit, despite me uprooting myself — twice? — from Motown two years ago. The point is, I have a name, and that’s Aaron Foley. And I don’t want to talk about myself much longer, but for purposes of a Substack intro, I have to.

Several decades ago, my great-grandmother’s brothers decided that rural, racist Alabama was too short on opportunity and too long on oppression, so they migrated to Detroit and sent for their sisters and wives after they settled in. My great-grandmother’s son married a woman whose parents agreed that rural, racist South Carolina wasn’t an ideal place to raise a growing family, but the east side of Detroit was. They had a daughter, who had two sons, and one of them built a name in Detroit. (That would be me.)

I like to think I became a Detroit name when I was fifth-grade valedictorian at Chrysler Elementary School — there is still a plaque in the front office as proof of this — but it really started in 2012 when I started mouthing off at Jalopnik about things I thought about Detroit and Detroiters. The whole Jalopnik thing, as I like to say, spun me off into several corners of the Detroit media-verse, and the city (with and without a capital “c”) at large. There are many journalists in Detroit. There are fewer journalists who also offer commentary. There are even fewer journalists, commentators, and authors, and even fewer who have done all this and run a publication — twice, definitively this time. To my knowledge, there’s only one Detroiter who can claim being a journalist, commentator, author, but also satirist, speaker, snarker, shit-stirrer, storyteller, all from — here’s what separates me from Charlie LeDuff, aside from never having pissed in public or smashed a pizza into the face of a significant other — a Black perspective.

Acknowledging you have a Detroit name is tricky, because you’re constantly forced to reckon with what it stands for and where it reverberates. Was it the time I was sitting at a white-cloth networking something-or-another at Eastern Market, and Urban Consulate founder Claire Nelson proclaimed to the 300-or-so-member audience, “you had to be reading Aaron Foley to get a real view of Detroit”? Was it when a friend DM’d me on Twitter to let me know that he was eavesdropping on two people he didn’t know discussing a tweet I had posted earlier that day? Maybe it was the time I was sitting at Craft Work (RIP) at night, in the dark, with a friend seeking career counsel, and two complete strangers interrupted to say they loved my book. Or was it when Crain’s Detroit Business reporter Chad Livengood screenshotted a Facebook status of mine about a window display and beamed it out to his 10k+ Twitter followers as representative of what my entire office thought because of my affiliation at the time?

But I still have the name, at least according to Andy Didorosi. You see, two years ago, I thought I had to relinquish the name because I moved to California, and then again to New York, where I am now. And, quite honestly, I’m feeling a little homesick.

I’ve been talking with a few folks back home these last few weeks, and we all agreed that something was missing from the landscape. I’ve always had the itch to write more about Detroit, particularly in the style I’d honed at Jalopnik. But I didn’t know how to approach that. The podcast market seems to be comfortably occupied by middle-aged white media men, and while the thought crossed my mind, I didn’t want to start a paid newsletter or any other kind of paid subscription. So, I’m going to toy with this free — emphasis on free — Substack for a while, and turn my lengthy Facebook statuses and brain dumps into blog posts here. I’m calling this thing “The Renaissance” — something that speaks to the neverending Detroit renaissance, but also my experiences as I try to figure out my own rebirth here in NYC.

There’s always going to be something said about someone riffing on Detroit without physically being in Detroit. Fuck that noise. Thomas Sugrue lives in Philadelphia. David Maraniss is in Washington, D.C. Charlie LeDuff is in Pleasant Ridge.

One might say (well, one will say — I’m thinking Nat Zorach, if you know that guy) that this is all an exercise in ego. Maybe, but I wouldn’t be a journalist from Detroit if I weren’t a little overconfident. But also, I’m looking at what’s been done since I started ranting at Jalopnik nearly a decade ago. Hundreds of people now know exactly how not to be a jackass when they move into town, and now they tell their new-transplant friends the same thing when they arrive. Local publications have increased coverage of Detroit neighborhoods or outright started entire projects around them that look suspiciously like a little project I once managed. I can survey the region from a bird’s-eye view and see individuals, businesses and organizations that have benefited, or gotten a jump-start, from key placements in things I’ve published. I’ve saved the asses of a few of your entrepreneurial faves on the low, and quite a few people owe me drinks for other favors. But I suppose I didn’t realize have a name until this February when a young woman reached out to me about speaking to her employer for some Black History Month programming. She reached out because I’d spoken to her journalism class years ago while she was a student, and she remembered me. (I didn’t remember the class, but awwww, right?)

For housekeeping purposes, I don’t know how often I’ll publish here. Maybe once a week? But to reiterate, I get no benefit from this. The only favor I’ll ask is that if you’ve got a comment, my comment section here is open.