Riverside Park
Riverside Park will always hold a special place in my heart. For the longest time I loved this park because it was a bit like the wild wild west. People partying until the sun came up (literally), open booze and joints everywhere, fishermen having more than double the legal lines in the water at a time, and police showing up to break all the fun up only for it to return as soon as the cop cars pulled off. When I first got a job in Detroit but did not have a place to call home yet, I would often pull my car up by the water and get a few hours of sleep before starting up the engine again to head to work. It was not just the crowd that made Riverside Park fun back then; it was the odd things placed around the park as well. The old Detroit News warehouse used to crowd the south side of the park, an odd whale statue perched right next to it, occasionally the city would come to dump a mountain of dirt in the parking lot for god knows what reason; the benches were always wobbly or falling apart, and the boat that services the only floating zip code in America sat just to north from the park. If all of that has not enticed you yet, the best part about Riverside Park is the view. The Ambassador Bridge crosses your field of view so triumphantly, especially in the evening, with the City of Detroit, Belle Isle, and Windsor peeking out underneath it. Today, you can see the Gordy Howe Bridge, the former site of the Harbor Terminal Building, and Zug Island’s blast furnaces in the distance. Riverside Park has changed insurmountably in the years since I used to use it as a sleeping spot. An entirely new section of the park was added just upriver, offering new riverfront access, a pavilion, and lots of benches and swings. Just across the railroad tracks from the riverfront sections of the park are a brand new Tony Hawk funded skatepark, a dog park, soccer fields, a playground, and basketball courts. Most of this was finished around 2019 and is quite lovely. The skatepark is jam-packed on a warm summer day, the soccer fields see youth programs and adult leagues, and the basketball courts are home to a ton of pickup games. The new portions of Riverside Park are by far one of the best additions to the City of Detroit park system in years. The original section of Riverside Park has seen upgrades, too, with modern bathrooms, elevations, and pathways. I’m unsure how that old section of Riverside Park will look when it’s completed, but I will always remember it how it once was...wild.
