Time for some Christmas miscellany from the end of 2017 and into the new year.

Once again I headed to JC's for yuletide festivities, passing the Ruscom Tavern along the way in what had become an annual tradition.

I've craned my neck towards the tavern for a number of years now, from years where it was a mystery if it was still open, to the decade where it was some dude's junkyard/storage facility, to the recent renovations. The only difference this year was that the old tavern was now silent, the renovations abandoned and all windows and openings boarded up.

Donnie and I drove back out to Ruscom since I love these last vestiges of Essex County villages, where if the blue Ontario town sign goes missing, then the place no longer has a landmark and is forgotten by future generations. Places like Byrnedale, Elmstead or Haycroft hold little square footage in my heart because they never were notable villages during my lifetime - but the same couldn't be said for someone 70 or 80 years old, where these villages would have had a general store, church or school in their lifetime.

With the new plywood over the entire tavern, I feared it wasn't long for this world & Ruscom would join that list of places where it's a name on a map, but indistinguishable on the ground from the surrounding countryside.

It's a funny thing that fresh plywood is often a sign that a building is going to go away, but by the next Christmas visit in 2018-19, the Ruscom Tavern was no more.

If it was going to be torn down, then it happened at the ideal time. As the news came up at family Christmas, my cousin who lived next to JC, said how he used to drink at the Ruscom Tavern for years when he was underage. I also learned that this was one of my old man's watering hole in his younger years, which was neat because I assumed he just drank in Belle River or Tecumseh, not out in the county in Deerbrook and Ruscom.

It was cold in the Ruscom Tavern parking lot and those low temps continued throughout my whole Christmas visit. Paying to bring my bike home, I only got to ride once in the intermittent flurries of Christmas Eve.

Trying to find other excitement, I realize that I've never been the first one out on river or lake ice to test its thickness. It was so brutally cold though, and there was so much hockey and snowmobiling occurring on the Belle River, that I had little fear in walking down that boat dock with the metal ledge by the Notre Dame Street bridge. From here, I checked out the bridge's underside for the first time (complete with graffiti from 20 years ago), a different view of our Home Hardware, as well as that old ice cream shop.

I only mention the ice cream shop because I saw a recent then-and-now picture that showed the square-faced building in 1910. I had no idea it was that old.

I headed south from there, with a few people giving me strange looks for strolling down the middle of the river instead taking it to town streets. Shaking them off, I was in heaven.

This was like going for a walk in a extremely familiar village where you've seen every fence, shortcut and home, but then finding a new pathway providing a completely different view of things.

As I approached Mulhall Island, my mind couldn't get over how sweet this was as I thought of other rivers I could go walk upon. Puce? Ruscom? Sydenham? The possibilities were endless and I was excited to get home and inspect maps of Essex, Kent & Lampton county towns, just to make sure I knew every village bisected by a river, haha.

Flanked by a giant willow and walls of reeds, I continued around the river bend and up ahead was the train bridge for the CN rail line. Knowing that bridges create weak points in frozen waterways I was cautious in passing underneath, but the recent cold had been so intense that I didn't hear any cracking at all.

I thought back to teenage years where I had friends that would climb on this bridge and then slip through the tracks down onto the concrete footings when they saw a train off in the distance. They'd then sit there and let the train zoom by above them in what was known as "The Rush", something that I never even got remotely close to doing, haha. It was fun to finally look up at the space where they sat.

Beyond the bridge, I was running out of time since I didn't plan to find such an amazing walk. One last thing I wanted to check out was where reedy marshland exists on the west side of the Belle River. I always pictured this area like a forest where there's a tree line and you break into it and find yourself inside the forest.

Instead there were these fun, narrow slots, where you couldn't see anything besides the tiny window back out to the river. This seemed like a great place to break for lunch or a few beers while out snowmobiling.

New Year's was somewhat uneventful, although a good time was still had with a few friends in South Windsor. One thing is that I finally went down to the Detroit River at midnight, while Detroiters rang in the new year with a chorus of gunfire through the night air, which was easily heard even on the Windsor side of the river.

I've never doubted the intensity and lawlessness of the New Year's celebratory gunfire deep in the Detroit hood, but the volume and variety of noise coming from the north really put things into perspective. To be in the midst of that must be something else.

A few days later I brought my Mom to go check out the new Red Wings arena. They were taking on the Senators and I enjoyed seeing Erik Karlsson's beautiful lettuce, as well as Filip Chlapik and Petr Mrazek (a couple of beauty Czechs) chatting at centre ice during the pregame.

That being said, we paid something like $100 USD for seats way up in the third level, with overhangs and tvs interfering with our view. I'm never not going to miss Joe Louis Arena, even if I have to admit that the Little Caesar's Pizzarena memorabilia cases were plentiful, the food options were numerous and looked great, and the concourses were wide and easy to walk through. Even as someone who doesn't especially care for new arenas, I have to admit the stature and grandeur of this place was something to behold. If I could ignore all the destroyed historic buildings, wasted taxpayer money and diverted school funding for a minute, this was a temple and a palace that made me feel small and humble, with sprawling ceilings and flashy screens and surfaces.

One thing I liked - along with the guy who was wearing a Boston Bruins Torey Krug jersey - was how they saved the old letters that used to fall vertically down the old Olympia Stadium on Grand River.

The letter 'O' here is actually a reproduction because someone stole the O when they left these letters to rot after abandoning the old Olympia. It's only after the first letter went missing that they decided to retrieve the remaining letters and put them into storage.

There were also the standard days and nights spent in Detroit, visiting with Nailhed and hitting some buildings. We actually went to one of the coolest place in years, one which I might write about in the future (here's Nailhed's writeup if you can't wait).

It was cold as shit, but the end of the golden hour and its smooth glow cast upon the west side houses was enough to make me forget about how much I wished I had better gloves and a heartier balaclava.

Following that, it was time for the customary stop at Buddy's for that delicious Detroit-style pizza, then deeper into the east side.

I've wanted to visit Harpo's Music Hall for years now, so for several Christmases I've looked at the schedule and considered whatever washed up hair metal band was playing at the time. I'd heard about how money wasn't being put back into the legendary Detroit music venue, while more and more of these institutions are closing every year.

After Nailhed mentioned that rapper Esham was playing this Christmas holiday, I decided that this would definitely work.

Harpo's was awesome with its cavernous interior, steps leading to different funky levels and old school doors leading inside. If you like old music halls, don't delay on checking out a show there. And if it's Esham, then even better.

Everything was well worth the price of admission.

Esham ended at a reasonable hour and having a good time, I checked in with Nailhed whether we should check off one of the numerous dive bars on the Detroit to-do list.

We ended up at the Nancy Whiskey Pub in North Corktown, which has one of those fantastic converted house exteriors and has been open since 1902. Unfortunately, it must've been suburban party Saturdays, because it just wasn't our crowd between the multiple Darren McCarty jerseys singing along to "born and raised in South Detroittttttt".

Afterwards, Nail didn't have anywhere for me to sleep and the tunnel bus had already stopped for the night, but thankfully there was the Detroit Hostel for $32.

It was a little weird sleeping in a city's hostel where I'm a local, but there were only two other people in the dorm room and one of them was really friendly when he woke up as I left.

Having a look around before leaving, this place looked legit with local books, inviting shared spaces and a clean kitchen. Now that the "New Detroit" has ushered in changes like the Corktown Inn (read: $69USD/night) becoming the "Trumbull and Porter - Detroit Downtown Ascend Hotel Collection" (read: $196USD/night), I appreciate that there's still somewhere cheap and clean to lay my head.

The Detroit Hostel is located just north of Michigan and Trumbull, and with Nailhed busy this morning I was left to explore the area on foot.

After a coffee warmup and chili cheese breakfast from the extensive menu at Coney King on Fort St, I waddled back up Trumbull to the Cesar Chavez Academy across from the old Corktown Inn (now the Trumbull and Porter - Detroit Downtown Ascend Hotel Collection).

In recent years, things have changed so much in Detroit between demolitions and renovations that there's really slim pickings for anything abandoned within walking distance of downtown.

If you would have told me this 10 years ago, I would have laughed in your face as it has been an unbelievable transformation.

I'd previously noticed this old school sitting in a rundown state from all those visits to the Corktown Inn, but even as someone who drags uninterested people to old schools because I love them so much, I couldn't bring myself to even suggest Donnie, Nail or whoever stop at the one-story building with limited windows that was the Cesar Chavez Academy.

This is a situation where I didn't expect much, but it was open, available to me and I was in the area. I'm content to check out anything and it would work to kill an hour while I waited for Nailhed to get back from Plymouth.

What I found turned out to be much more interesting than your simple single-level school. Leftover wall frames and drywall hid old factory windows, turn of the century brick and various concrete ramps leading to different levels.

Okay, so this was clearly something else before becoming a middle school.

Looking into the history of this building, pictures from the 1950s show that it was occupied by the George Willens Typesetting Company.

George Willens came from Chicago to Detroit in 1916 to start his typesetting firm, occupying for various points of time the Detroit Saturday Night Building (aka the Willens Building) downtown at 1959 East Jefferson, and this more industrial building over in Corktown that was constructed in 1924.

During the 1960s, as more and more companies left Detroit to construct new factories in the now more accessible suburbs, blocks of Corktown were flattened to open up large plots of land to these companies within city limits. This neighbourhood subarea was rebranded as West Side Industrial.

One of those blocks was just north of the George Willens Typesetting Co., but the parcel failed to attract anyone and instead served as a play lot for Corktown youths through the 1970s. It was only in 1985 that a housing project, the Clement Kern Gardens, was constructed on the lot.

(Aside: the Clement Kern Gardens are threatened with a 2023 demolition as this area has become much more valuble than a place to have low income housing.)

Despite outlasting the demolished homes to the north, this factory obviously, eventually became empty. Willens Typesetting was taken over by George's son Harvey and merged with the Michigan Typesetting Company. Soon leaving Detroit for Bloomfield, the building was then occupied by the headquarters of the Joe Muer Seafood restaurant.

The Cesar Chavez Academy would then come along. Originally started as a K-3 school in the Springwells area of Southwest Detroit, the charter school expanded as their kids outgrew the 3rd grade. As the kids eventually reached grades 6 through 8, the academy needed more space than their old St. Gabriel's School building could provide.

In 1998, the charter school rented the Willens Typesetting/Joe Muer Seafood building here at 1548 Porter Street for their grade 6-8 students. Even though this newly occupied building was far away from the other buildings of the academy, it was the only available and suitable space at the time.

Walking around the frigid interior, there were no signs that this was a middle school, so I imagined the Cesar Chavez Academy must've been a trade school to occupy this old factory building.

I now realize that the drywall and divided rooms were likely created by the Joe Muer Seafood Co., where the Cesar Chavez Academy simply moved in some chalkboards and desks.

As the students grew close to graduating grade 8, the charter school sought to provide them with a high school, which at first was simply modular buildings on the backside of this property. These modular buildings were in use for two years, until leaders came to an agreement with the owner of an abandoned 3-story office building and truck repair warehouse over at 1761 Waterman Street in Mexicantown, very close to the Springwells neighbourhood.

Purchasing the abandoned building at 1761 Waterman, the two existing structures were renovated, an additional building was constructed and the modular classrooms were moved over from 1548 Porter.

The next step was to fix the problem of Cesar Chavez's middle school being so far removed from all of the other school buildings. The academy tried to buy the abandoned YMCA building across from Clark Park, but the owner wanted $1.5-million and Cesar Chavez administrators were only willing to pay $400,000. The academy then tried to buy some of the other buildings near its high school, but was again rebuffed.

Finally they decided to simply build a new middle school on the backside of their current high school property. Using prefab buildings, this only took six months and the new middle school was open by the fall of 2005. I assume this building at 1548 Porter was never occupied again as the 2007 StreetView shows the building vacant and for sale.

Returning home in July of 2018, I was amazed to find the academy freshly boarded, but seeing that it was previously owned by Peter Kefallinos and put up for sale in August of 2017, this now makes sense because it probably changed hands.

By the time I returned in January of 2019, I was expecting to make a return visit but found the old Willens Typesetting Co/Cesar Chavez Academy flattened. In the New Detroit this is now a desirable property, where it was worth it to demolish the sturdy brick structure, to probably build some cheap vinyl-sided houses that match the beauty of the Clement Kern Gardens.

Nailhed picked me up after 40 minutes and we headed over to the east side while I told him about the cool building I had just been inside.

The cold spell still hadn't snapped and it had now been weeks. For our next stop, I figured it was time to pop in somewhere with a flooded basement, where a frigid winter will have opened up a whole new level of exploring.

We headed over to the Grand Trunk Warehouse, a 10-story monolith that is best known for once being home to a bunch of rotting, aromatic seafood left behind when the company departed. This is where my poor sense of smell paid great dividends while exploring this place in 2006.

At some point, a small building on the backside of this gigantic warehouse disappeared and the wall was left open. This meant free rein down onto the ice surface, instead of the usual crouching and searching for light in these abandoned building basements (the Roosevelt Warehouse/Urbex Hockey League Building obviously excepted).

I mean, there really wasn't anywhere for us to go down on the ice surface, but it made a great spot to take it easy and enjoy a cold Hamm's. Nothing like a cold beer outside during a frigid Midwestern arctic spell where you're standing needlessly on ice and feeling it through your shoes. That's living.

Instead of getting dropped off at the tunnel bus, Nailhed wanted to cross over into Windsor today and we cruised through the border with ease. Meeting up with Donnie, he thought we should go check out a couple of neat areas on the west side.

Again I was happy with frozen surfaces and additional access, although the flowing, icy Detroit River about 30 feet away at spots gave me some pause.

It was also neat to later stand in the area that will be dominated by the Gordie Howe International Bridge in just a handful of years.

Stepping out of the car only for a few brief minutes, the sun dipped below the horizon and the day grew even colder. Soon I would be off to a sunny destination and this was a funny contrast for what was to come in just a few days.

The weather still wasn't getting to me though, as there's just something about the golden light of 5pm sunsets absent of falling snow in Southwestern Ontario. How could I be mad about bringing my bike and not getting to ride when there was still such beautiful days.