jacksdev

Growing up in the 1980s, Detroit sisters Kim and Rhonda Theus remember walking to Jack’s party store to buy penny candy. The building on East Canfield Street also housed a record store, barbershop, dry cleaner, and a salon. “It was a hub for the neighborhood,” Kim said, until the 1990s when Jack died and, around the same time, people began to leave the neighborhood. “As the neighborhood depopulated, there was less business and all the businesses shuttered,” she said, except for one man who still cuts hair out of the building. Since then, the space that once housed Jack’s

“I feel like tearing down blighted structures sounds like a good idea, but who wants to live in a neighborhood where there’s nothing left?” asked Kim. “Success is building on that empty land so that every piece of land has an identity and has a purpose and it’s not just sitting there.” See the full story: https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/detroit-sisters-return-to-childhood-home-to-restore-neighborhood

Rhonda Theus reminisces fondly of her youth growing up in Detroit’s East Canfield Village neighborhood, where get-togethers with extended family and close neighbors along her block on Montclair Street included barbecues, mingling, and relaxing in the alley behind their homes. “The alleys were social spaces, you know,” Theus, 56, says. “We would all have our grills out there, play, and sit and talk; they were social spaces when we were growing up.” See full story: https://www.seenthemagazine.com/culture/urban-acupuncture-revitalizes-detroit-alleyways/article_3daac803-4d4f-5c25-b416-758cebb7a9dc.html