
Turf war: Detroit Mower Gang competes in 12-hour playground cleanup - rmason
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2020/05/16/turf-war-detroit-mower-gang-competes-playground-cleanup/5201499002/
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thomk
Detroit, the city with the most violent crime per capita in the US, has also
now been ravaged by covid-19. Most of the residential neighborhoods in Detroit
are fucking terrifying for ADULTS. These guys are cutting grass in public
parks so poor kids have something to do. They should be applauded because poor
kids will have a place to run around and laugh for the first time in months
because of volunteers.

I have seen some comments here complaining about wildlife not having a place
to live close to humans.

You know what else thrives in high grass? Ticks and rats. And if a lot is
abandoned too long in Detroit there's a good chance it'll accumulate dead
bodies.

Screw your wildlife.

~~~
tclancy
Is any of this based on experience or just what you’ve heard? Because we have
a friend rehabbing a large space downtown and while it sounds like things are
weird, they don’t sound scary.

~~~
thomk
I have lived near Detroit for almost 1/2 a century. Downtown is one of the
pockets that are nice. Detroit has nice pockets, the stuff in between is where
you don't want your car to quit on you.

Detroit is a big city; like 140 square miles. The vast majority of that land
are neighborhoods that are high crime. It's been that way for a long time. It
is changing slowly but mostly around the afore mentioned pockets.

~~~
leesec
To be honest you sound like someone who lives in Sterling Heights that still
thinks Detroit is dangerous, when it hasn't been that way in a long time. My
wife and I regularly run around one of these "scary" neighborhoods (where we
live) even at night in summer and we haven't been hassled in any shape or form
for years.

Just my anecdata though.

~~~
thomk
I have been to hundreds of events in Detroit. I know the type you are talking
about, I am not them, I love Detroit.

The unfortunate truth is there are 20,000 cities in the US and in 2018 Detroit
ranked #3 for murder. Detroit has more murders than New York, Los Angeles and
Chicago combined. You live in a dangerous city and it's not because I said so.

My guess is you guys are new to the city and you live in a nice pocket. That's
great for the city, thank you. I used to 'run around' the city in the 80s when
it was twice as violent and I too was never harassed because I too could
afford to live and play in the nice areas.

I'm not talking about me and you.

~~~
modriano
Detroit absolutely doesn't have more homicides than Chicago, and I have no
idea how you could have come to believe that. Detroit hasn't had more than 400
homicides in a year since 2007. Chicago hasn't had under 500 homicides per
year since 2014 (over 800 in 2016), and we (I'm a homicide researcher in
Chicago who grew up in Detroit, btw) haven't had fewer than 400 homicides per
year since the 1960's.

If you meant per-capita, Detroit does have more homicides per capita than
Chicago, LA, or NYC, but combining per-capita numbers doesn't really make
sense/is misleading.

~~~
rossvor
I have no opinion on Detroit or crime rates in general. Just want to disagree
that combining per-capita numbers is in some way misleading. Makes perfect
sense for me and that is how I read the parent's comment -- combined and per-
capita. Meant to illustrate the degree of the problem compared to other
cities.

~~~
fhars
Adding per capita numbers makes absolutely no sense at all. None whatsoever.

~~~
rossvor
It works the same way as any other time a sentence like "A has a greater value
in X than B, C and D combined" appears \-- to illustrate that A is
significantly larger compared to its siblings in the set and its usually meant
to be a surprising fact. X can be a total, per capita or some other rate or
whatever, it will depend on the context, as long as it's the same, it doesn't
the affect the intent of the sentence.

To expand it further. I assume you don't consider below being misleading
somehow:

Mary gets paid 90k per annum -- which is more than what both Jane and Jill
receive per annum combined. It's the same principle.

~~~
rossvor
I guess I see now where confusion point seems for other people.

> If it's per capita, can't you just list every city that has a lower per-
> capita rate and claim that it is higher than all of them "combined"?

I can't, since that would be wrong, that basically not how I ever read and
understand that sentence(if it has "combined" in it), I am not a native
english speaker so I'm maybe wrong on this.

Mary gets paid 90k per annum, this is more than what Jane and Jill get per
annum _combined_. I read it as: Mary's per annum (90k) > Jane's per annum +
Jill's per annum

Mary gets paid 90k per annum, this is more than what Jane and Jill get per
annum. I read it as two separate comparisons: Mary's per annum (90k) > Jane's
per annum, Mary's per annum (90k) > Jill's per annum

~~~
jstanley
Salary per annum combines additively, that's fine. £10/yr + £20/yr = £30/yr,
easy.

When you add 2 annual salaries you're not increasing the number of years that
the salary is paid over.

Death rate per capita does not combine additively, that makes no sense. What
would it even mean? 0.1 deaths per capita + 0.2 deaths per capita is not equal
to 0.3 deaths per capita because the denominator changes.

~~~
DanBC
Why does the denominator change? You're looking at deaths per 100,000
population, and the 100,000 doesn't change for each city.

You're doing very simple fraction addition: 1/100,000 + 5/100,000 = 6/100,000

~~~
jstanley
The denominator changes because when you look at 2 cities together you don't
just add the deaths (numerator), you also add the entire population
(denominator).

If there are 100,000 people in city 1, with 5 deaths, and 100,000 people in
city 2, with 10 deaths, then we have:

city 1: 5 deaths per 100,000

city 2: 10 deaths per 100,000

Adding them together, we don't get 15 deaths per 100,000! We get 15 deaths per
200,000 (because they each have 100k residents) = 7.5 deaths per 100,000.

I feel like I'm missing the joke here.

EDIT: I mean, yeah, literally, if you add the fractions together, you get what
you wrote. But that's not a meaningful way to combine death rates.

~~~
DanBC
Sorry, yes, you're right. I'm being dumb.

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RickJWagner
Awesome. The Gang could have shirts printed up:

"I fought the lawn, and the lawn won."

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cocktailpeanuts
I don't get it. Why do they call it "gang"?

I first thought it was some Detroit mafia families competing to clean up
playgrounds.

~~~
setr
Probably for the fun of potentially making that mistake, or just because it
sounds cooler. Slightly relevant is that they're operating unsanctioned on
public property, which is gang-related behavior if you squint real hard.

But I had the same mistake; I thought somehow a business consortium had
spawned based on mowing rights/contracts, from the title

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dpeck
| 10 other abandoned playgrounds in the city. | "No one owns this particular
park, it just fell through the cracks," said Tom Nardone

Reading the article left me wondering about the actual status of this park,
and how many others are in the same state.

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_curious_
My kind of gang

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forgotmypw17
Cleanup is great. Mowing lawns instead of letting them grown removes one of
the last remaining habitats for animals living close to humans.

~~~
tengbretson
Well they're parks where people play, but on the bright side, if you're really
interested in conservation in the area there's a listing on Zillow here:
[https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/Shay-Lake-Rd-Kingston-
MI-...](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/Shay-Lake-Rd-Kingston-
MI-48760/119495276_zpid/)

1.3 acres for $6k where you can cultivate whatever plants/habitat you want.

~~~
rmason
Kingston is quite a ways North of Detroit in Michigan's 'thumb' region, lots
of great farmland just North of there.

You can buy large acreage in the city of Detroit pretty inexpensively. The
city itself will sell you individual house lots for $100.

~~~
rumanator
> The city itself will sell you individual house lots for $100.

Sounds like a great opportunity for all the wildlife proponents in this thread
to do their share and create a natural reserve where they believe there should
be one. That's far more productive than criticizing volunteers for mowig a
lawn.

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voz_
Mowers are lame. Lawns are lame. Let flowers grow, let insects thrive. Let the
birds and the bees live their rich lives.

~~~
forgot_again
Mowers are great. Lawns are great.

~~~
softwarejosh
Lawns are lame monocultures, but if a lawn exists it should be mowed.

~~~
dahfizz
People don't have lawns because they are intensely interested in farming. They
do it because they want a large, flat, soft area outside their house. You
can't play badminton with bushes and flowers in the way.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
That works up to a certain size. Beyond that it's just an anachronistic
emulation of an aristocratic manor house with wealth displayed by all the hard
working servants cutting an immaculate lawn by scythe.

~~~
dahfizz
That's ridiculous.

Having people cook for you used to be reserved for rich people. Are you
emulating slave owning aristocrats when you go to a restaurant?

~~~
esarbe
To some degree, that's probably the case.

