I didn't have any vacation left, so escaping the abysmal hell of wintry Corner Brook wouldn't come via New Zealand weddings, cosmopolitan metropolises or Moroccan riads, but rather drinking malt liquor in a burnt-out church on the east side of Detroit.

My only option was to work from home to get away from the mundane drudgery of winter, so I bookended that week with a couple of weekends of fun.

Even though Nailhed was going to meet me in the afternoon once he was done work, I headed over to Detroit early. Not having explored downtown in a while, this was a real wakeup call from the "new Detroit." The old liquor stores were closed and as I walked by places offering dog washes and $150 pants, I found new liquor stores that had 6-packs of wheat beers and isles lined with artisanal groceries.

I pointed myself over I-75 towards dependable Stadium Liquor, happy to report that the front door wasn't boarded up and the entire building wasn't rolled over with red Ilitch paint like every other vacant building nearby. It was still surviving in the shadow of the new Pizzarena.

It was a funny, stereotypical Detroit liquor store experience too. I asked about batteries, then smiled as the clerk pulled out an old plastic cottage cheese tub filled with loose batteries and put 3 on the counter, the batteries proceeding to roll every which way. Catching them as they fell off the counter, the guy behind me declared, "oh you got them hands!" I almost blurted out something about playing hockey goalie once or twice in response, but decided against such a dorky response.

Now that I had flashlight batteries and a walkabout beverage, I went across the street and into the alley behind the Hotel Ansonia, a move I immediately reconsidered. Today was so windy that a nearby apartment building was losing giant patches of nail-ridden tar from its roof, the pieces blowing off and crashing into this alley below. Amidst the booming thuds as they slapped upon the ground, one landed about 5 feet from me and I hightailed it back to the street.

Further up Cass, these two housing relics remained standing in defiance of the parking empire needed around the new Little Caesars Arena.

The house on the left, built in 1881, was purchased by the Ilitchs in 2009 and would be demolished in August of 2017 to make space for a parking garage entryway. The house on the right still stands today, through blight tickets, condemnation and sale attempts for $4.7 million dollars because of its location (up from its $25,000 sale price in 2002). The most recent news is that of a 6-month rehabilitation permit being taken out, which means the house will be worked on to some degree and shouldn't go anywhere until at least February 2019 (knock on wood).

I find it so interesting that old houses like these would endear an arena to me, while the general public apparently doesn't care about anything around their stadium besides sprawling roads, giant interstate on-ramps and brand new, suburban strip mall-style restaurants. You could flatten everything within 10 blocks, plop down the same cookie-cutter arena and put up a stucco Golden Corral and 90% of people would bloviate about how great the arena was, while there wouldn't be one old building to tell you whether you were in Detroit, Tampa Bay or Sacramento.

Turning down Temple Street, demolition of the two-story Will Mar Garage at 131 Temple was underway to make space for another new parking garage (this new six-story parking structure is shown in this Curbed Detroit article).

The three-story Alden Apartments stand next door, right in the way of a dream surface parking lot expansion for the Ilitchs. The Ilitchs bought the Alden Apartments and evicted all of the residents, then tried to claim that the building was "structurally unsafe and not viable for redevelopment". The only problem is that the Alden Apartments are in a historic district, so the City Building Department has to sign off on it and after a visual, exterior examination, the City said that the building isn't in any danger of immediate collapse.

I continued across Woodward and into Brush Park, finding this always reliable, tiny old church sealed up. So I continued to walk around the streets until I came to the Brewster Projects/Frederick Douglass Apartments area, where I couldn't believe the sea of grass before me.

This scene has changed incredibly over the last couple years after the city tore down four smaller, 2-story townhouse rows; two 6-story medium sized buildings, and four 14-story high rises. I'd seen all of this disappear from I-75, but this was the first time walking the streets again.

There's not much here now except some old fire hydrants and that library/gym. With the "new Detroit" in effect, this spot seemed like my best option to crack my Steel Reserve while enjoying this fine March day.

My word was it nice to be outside without any snow around.

Walking over to Beaubien and the Service Drive, I noticed the two apartments down there were gone too, although I think I knew the older one was already gone. Sitting down on a cement block where the Angela/Weins Apartments used to stand, I'd get picked up from here soon enough.

Nail brought me away from Brush Park/Downtown and over to the east side, where it was still the Detroit of old. Stopping at this burnt out church near Grandy's Coney Island on Mt. Elliott and Mack, vacant lots were present at the same ratio to houses, and I could have visited the rough Brand Liquor Shoppe just by crossing the street and cutting across a grass lot.

That all being said, the standing houses here were in good shape and well-maintained, as this 2013 Google StreetView can attest.

As always with abandoned churches, I was worried about nearby neighbours not appreciating us going inside, but I don't think anyone was looking outside for intruders on a day like today with such high winds.

Nailhed's fantastic write-up about this church states that it was designed by D&H Greise Co. from Cleveland, and that it was built and dedicated by 1889. He goes on to say that his 1897 Sanborn Maps show this church labelled as the "German Lutheran Bethany Church", while this area isn't shown in the 1884 Sanborns because Detroit hadn't yet annexed past Mt. Elliott Street at that time.

I was excited with the thought that I was seeing a church so old that it was built outside the city limits of Detroit, but as best I can tell, it looks like Detroit annexed this land past Mt. Elliott in 1885.

The German Lutherans moved on sometime in the 1940s or 1950s and the church was subsequently taken over by Bishop Theodoshia Harris, known as Mother Hooks, who brought her Pentecostal congregation into this building. Her church was the Everybody's Universal Tabernacle Church of Holiness.

The first ordained female bishop in Michigan, Mother Hooks held a radio ministry that ran for 25 years, was honored as bishop of the year by FDR and was even the guest preacher of C.L. Franklin, Aretha's father, during the 11-year anniversary of his leading the historic New Bethel Church at Linwood & Philadelphia.

Mother Hooks died at age 83 and her funeral was held here at Everybody's Universal Tabernacle.

Following her death the church continued under Bishop Gene Carr, although there's some confusion as to when it closed. DetroitUrbex has that it closed in 2009, but Nailhed noticed the same thing I did, that their sign out front changed its scripture reference between 2011 and 2013 Google StreetViews.

Bethania Lutheran/Everybody's Tabernacle caught fire on June 2, 2016 and there's some spectacular BoxAlarmDetroit footage of the scene.

Fire crews initially entered the church to fight the fire from inside, but they couldn't find their way up into the sanctuary balcony to get at the fire in the attic. The fire chief pulled them from the inside soon after, where another alarm was requested and the fire was then fought defensively by soaking the structure and trying to make sure it didn't spread from the vacant church to the occupied house next door.

Although I don't pay the same amount of attention to "urbex photos" these days as I used to, I didn't see any pictures of this church where it wasn't fire-ravaged. And especially with its proximity to the Heidelberg Project and Mack Ave, this leads me to believe it was well sealed prior to the fire.

The metal pipes long ago stolen by scrappers, the pipe organ was still a sight to behold. I examined the Olde English knobs, climbed the stairs behind it, and savoured inspecting the elaborate wood carvings.

Moving around the balcony, the floor up here was a mess of roof plaster, burnt books and torn shingles. This made up a whole layer too, so you could only walk and hope that each step brought you to another piece of floor that was fine to walk upon.

Nail and I would eventually take a breather up here, sitting down by the pipe organ to take it all in and shoot the shit for a bit. For how windy it was outside and considering we were in an entirely wood building, she didn't creek and there wasn't much concern towards getting hit by stray lumber. Even the loosest roof 2x4's weren't swaying very much, as anything more precarious had seemingly already fallen.

As we were sitting there, a junco came and went a few times, landing on different pieces of charred beams and supports that made up what was left of the roof.

Observing birds in an abandoned building? This was like a Taco Bell in a skatepark, or a Bruins game playing on a lighthouse TV, or an arena built on a state highpoint. My favourite things were combining!

After a good hour of sitting around, Nailhed said we should go up to the steeple, something which I thought was a bit harebrained. To my surprise, the top floor of the tower remained in good condition and made for a great, although windy, place to look out over the bare, golden trees of this neighbourhood.

We stood up there for another little while, using the tower to block the strong winds, occasionally laughing nervously at the tower creaking while also enjoying peering out the open windows on what had grown into a pretty amazing evening.

Eventually it was time to leave and I had that usual thought of whether I would see this building ever again. In fact, I was actually surprised it was still standing and stuck around for this visit home.

DetroitUrbex reports that Bethany Lutheran/Everybody's Universal Tabernacle was torn down sometime later in the year (2017).

Lastly, we had to have some Buddy's Pizza since I missed it at Christmas. Therefore the two of us went up to 6 mile for a few beers, some grub and a fantastic end to this fine afternoon/evening. Nail recommended some special pizza they were offering and my God was it was the best pizza I've ever had. I continue to try and decipher the above photo and match it up with the Buddy's menu to this very day.