Piston's Destiny Theory

I didn't grow up here, but I have this weak theory that maybe Detroit is a better place to live when the Pistons win. We've given up on all the other sports teams, except the Redwings, but let's face it, not enough of the actual residents of Detroit proper could give a rat's ass about hockey. The Pistons are enthralling. They are the toss outs, the second choices, the lame horses, the most underpaid bad-asses. They represent everything Detroit is and wants to be, and, when they lose, Detroit loses. I have this nice old Nishiki, painted matte black, so that with it's old school handlebars it looks like something from the fifties in India. A friend gave it to me because he didn't feel safe about me riding the Grand River bus. He had gotten into two fights in the past year on that very bus, and every time I rode it (three days a week) there would be something sketchy happening. One time a man sat behind me and started muttering "I'm going to fuckin kill you, you fuckin honky." I ignored him. The bike was an appreciated gift. So I was cruising up 2nd St, past Martin Luther King and past the Coronado on my left, where my friend Gianni lives, when the light pop, pop of gunshots and the twang of ricochets started registering in my ears. I was on the phone with a Chicago girl I had recently become romantically entangled with, so I said "Hold on, someone's shooting," ducked my head and rode faster through the intersection. When there was a solid concrete building between me and the firefight, I picked the phone back up and said "Ok, I'm past it." "WHAT THE FUCK, ARE YOU OK?" She seemed rather perturbed by these circumstances. "Of course, they weren't shooting at me," I said, which seemed like a reasonable response. I've been learning about acceptable and unacceptable circumstances for years in this city, from the time I lived in an apartment on Schaeffer close to 96, where bullets would spray the bricks close to my window almost nightly, to the time I was driving down Grand River and a two story building fell across the lane in front of my pickup. I just drove around it. Sometimes I think that, had the Pistons won in 2001, nobody would've been shooting at my apartment complex wall. Had the Pistons been fated to win in 2005, that building would still be standing. I got off the phone when I arrived at my house. The Chicago girl told me to be careful. They have working streetlamps in her city. The traffic light on my corner had been out for two months. One time, someone broke into an apartment on my street, and a neighbor of mine, Dan, jumped out of his house naked, chased and beat the thief and duct taped him to a tree. The police, when they arrived, said they loved our neighborhood because we liked to take care of our own problems. I bathed, got in my truck, and started on my way to the Coronado, to pick up Gianni to go watch game 3 of the playoffs. On my left going down 3rd St., I saw a circle of police officers, all looking down at a certain dead someone. I don't know if they had killed him. I assume they arrived shortly after that shooting had stopped. Cops here don't much like to get involved. I suspect most of them are hockey fans. The Pistons lost that night.