The mythical Detroit. My first association of its downtown at night: San Jose (I can never spare enough love for it, even from so far away) - just as empty, meaningless, out-of-place. Of course, a better association would be with Oakland, but the latter actually got people. All of skyscrapers except for pretty stunning GM/Renaissance center are old-school masonry. Many grassy holes and parking lots fill gaps between teeth. But it's not bad, actually, it's somewhat nice. The weather is perfect; traffic on a Friday rush hour before long weekend - non-existent. There are almost no people anywhere. "People Mover" elevated train rumbles by every couple of minutes without a soul in it. There are some locals on the riverfront who go cruising on souped-up old American cars blasting hip-hop at night. It's obvious that all the white faces we see are here for the electronic music festival. But there are many hundreds of them.

Dinner at a Greek restaurant in Greektown is one of the worst I've had in a very long time. The opening night party mostly sucks. A strange hall where the spacious main room hosts horrible music all night; a basement bar features an instant 100F degrees 99% humidity steam room with most excellent music, and a classroom is turned into a boring chillout with speakers set on the floor and a regular table set up as a DJ one.

Guess which cars fill the parking lot of Detroit airport car rentals. Yup - Toyotas, KIAs and Hyundais - in a compact to medium categories, anyway. And the signs in a spiffy, beautiful airport are in two languages - the second is not Spanish.