In this episode, we meet the founder of the Detroit Artists’ Test Lab, the head of an African American podcast network called Audiowave, neighborhood activists young and old, a closet poet, and the woman who taught The Slide to a generation of skaters at Royal Skateland roller rink. Have no pity on our souls, ‘cause we don’t want it. We’re proud, and we flaunt it, like a badge of courage. We’ve taken blows, but we’re not discouraged. Been down but never out, and you better know it. Got scars, warts, and wrinkles, and we ain’t afraid to show it. Poet and MorningSide resident Derrick Gray This episode was made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts Transcript Multiple Voices: Every neighborhood has a story, and every person from the neighborhood has a different outlook on said stories. The neighborhood is on a cusp of, “Are we gonna get worse? Are we gonna get better?” You can’t go but one way, and that’s up because it’s hit the rock bottom over the past, you know, twenty years or so. From WYPR and PRX, it’s a special edition of Out of the Blocks from MorningSide on Detroit’s east side. It’s one neighborhood, everybody’s story. The story of regular people who go about the business of working family, and they anchor Detroit, and they just quietly do it in their own honorable way. From the minds of Aaron Henkin and Wendel Patrick, in collaboration with the MorningSide 48224 podcast from Michigan Public Radio, it’s Out of the Blocks: MorningSide, Detroit, Michigan right after this. Mary: Even before you walk in through the double doors, you hear the music blasting, so that gets you pumping right away where you just wanna come in and put your skates on and you hear an old school or you hear just a song that you’ve been wanting to skate to, and you be like, “Okay, let me hurry up, get my skates on so I can get on the floor and do what I do.” I am Mary, everyone calls me Miss Mary. We are at Royal Skateland, 5201 Alter Road. Skateland is a place where you can go and just enjoy yourself, enjoy your families without the parents being behind you, somewhere where you drop your kids off early in the morning—as early as the rink opens—to late at night, to when it close. That’s how most of us spent our teenage years. We didn’t go home until they closed, and we was here before the doors even opened. Multiple children: My name is TJ Williams. I’m fourteen. I come here every day. My name’s Alexis, I’m thirteen, and Skateland’s awesome. I come here like every Tuesday. Skateland! I been going here for forever. Darien: I’m Darien. My job is skate counter, pass out the skates. Aaron Henkin: I see you repairing people’s skates. They’re coming over here, putting their feet up on the counter. You’re tightening them up while they don’t even have to take their skates off. D: Yeah, like, tell them to put their foot up here, and you can just fix it while they’re standing up and the skates still be on their feet. I’m seventeen. I’ve been coming here since I could walk, probably. AH: What do you like about working here? D: Mostly the girls. All the girls know me from being up here skating and stuff, so it’s easy for me to work here. I like it here. M: You start them off young, and this is something that they will wanna do. It keeps them out of trouble. AH: You are wearing roller skates right now as we are talking. You’ve got on a nice pair of white skates with gold wheels on them. How long have you been skating here? M: I’ve been skating here over thirty years. I’ve been working here for about twenty-three years. AH: And you get to do your job with roller skates on. M: Yes! That’s the fun part. That is the fun part about it. I can roller skate as much as I want. [?]: You have the Pontiac, the half-turn, you’ve got the b