The law of unintended rock and roll consequences...
Just got an e-mail from a friend in the States who is flying over here in a couple of weeks for a visit. Anyway, she gave the flight details and it turns out that she's flying from Detroit Wayne County Metropolitan Airport. Which made me sit up and go, "Huh?"
Detroit Wayne County Metropolitan Airport
Hey, I know that the UK's got John Lennon International Airport and George Best Belfast City Airport. Do you suppose the good burghers of Motor City realised what they were doing when proudly naming their brand spanking new airport (tenth busiest in the United States and the nineteenth busiest in the world) - that they were accidentally also naming it after a 1970s transsexual New York punk rocker!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_County_%26_the_Electric_Chairs
Or as the saying goes... D'oh!
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Ooops, sorry, don't know how to resize the piccie...
Erm... that's it...
I desperately want this...
... not to be an accident, but the work of some secretly subversive city planner.
Hope this isn't a urine/chips intersection
coz I want this to be true, too. But could Detroit have a county called Wayne?
I'll get me coat...
Disappointing News from Detroit
Sorry to report - but Wayne County is really a County in Detroit. I moved here 10 years ago - and I also had that "double take" moment when I flew into the airport. I thought perhaps he was from Detroit and had named himeself after the county - turns out - that isn't true either!
Just for fun some facts and figures:
Besides being established in 1796, with Detroit as county seat and 43 communities spread over 623 square miles, did you know that Wayne County is:
Home to three major airports and one of the nation's busiest marine ports
Home to the first traffic light in the country
Home to the largest boat marina in the country [Belle Isle's Detroit Yacht Club]
The potato chip capital of the world
Home to the oldest state fair in the nation, held first in 1849
The softball capital of the world
Home to the largest Arab American population in the country
Home to the first freeway in the country [Davison Freeway]
The only geographical place where Canada is south of the U.S.
The birthplace of the Motown sound, founded by Berry Gordy
Home of the fifth-largest library system in the country [Detroit Public Library]
A partner in the first auto traffic tunnel between two nations, the Detroit-Windsor tunnel [1923]
Home to the largest annual fireworks display in North America
Home of the tallest hotel in North America, the Detroit Marriot Renaissance Hotel
Home of the largest NAACP membership in the country
Host to the largest free jazz festival in North America, the Ford Detroit International Jazz Festival
Home to two IMAX theaters
Home to the "Boston Cooler"
Home of the typewriter, patented in 1829 by Detroiter William Austin Burt
Home of the first paved mile of concrete highway, along Woodward Avenue
A bowling mecca, with the most registered bowlers in the U.S.
Home to the largest building ever moved on wheels [the Gem Theater] in 1999
Strange coincidence. I chose today to send in my first blog - see the T shirt shirt thread - and it is followed a moment later by this Detroit link. Scary!!
And that, my dear friends...
IS THE WHOLE POINT!!!!!!! Of course it's called after the County of Wayne, Michigan... but they've inadvertantly also named it after someone I suspect they wouldn't have held up as a beacon of respect and civic pride (and who isn't actually from Detroit)!
Hence... the law of unintended consequences... you name an airport after the District in which it's situated and by accident name it after one of rock's great erm... eccentrics!
Sigh...