It’s at the south-east edge of Van Dyke Ave. & 9 Mile Road in Warren, Michigan…and you can’t miss it: It’s the brick & mortar retail monolith that is Detroit Rock City. The place is equal doses late-’60s haunted roadside shop and early 70’s Kiss-mania boutique storefront, liberally blackened with hard-rockin’ paint layers, and gloriously decorated with heavy metal hand-lettering and mural art. This Detroit area news clip says it all:
The store is awesome. I parked in the windswept dirt & gravel backlot, brushed off my King Diamond t-shirt, and made my way around to the drawbridge. A tiny hand-printed sign instructs visitors to ring both door buzzers… and wait.
…In the mid 1980’s this location was John’s Snake Pit, an amazingly well-informed heavy metal/hard rock store run by a smallish, leathery silverhair in tinted glasses & a plaid flannel. Like most Warren, MI shop owners, John (?) sat very quietly, bathing in the haze of a lazy cigarette, and would rise to pluck cassettes from the glass display case when asked. As for the shop: I do recall that there were an overwhelming number of Samantha Fox picture LPs on display, but mostly I just remember peering into that display case & absorbing all the band names and albums.
John was also kind enough to indulge my quirky patronage as a goofy 11 year old spending precious lawn-mowing cash on imported thrash tapes. When I bought Candlemass ‘Epicus Doomicus Metallicus‘ for the first time, side one had a weird fuzzy distortion that began about halfway through…and he swapped that tape for a new one, without hesitation. Perhaps more astonishingly, he also allowed me to return a demo tape by Fatal, which I punily pushed across the glass countertop, citing (in my impressionable youth) their “very base and offensive” lyrics.
…At any rate, please do shop Detroit Rock City online or *more imporantly* in person. Once Jeff opens those doors, you enter a magical shrouded landscape of collectibles, toys, CDs, LPs, guitars…there even seemed to be a stage and a recording studio in the shadows! Some amazing vintage t-shirts were for sale (Transvision Vamp, Saraya) – and even more amazing vintage Kiss tour shirts were on display (for nostalgia only) just below the ceiling. An electrifying and gratifying metal finish to my days in Detroit.
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Leave the guy alone!
The city should have better things to do with their time.
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