On Detroit (1 of 3): Seediness.

Downtown Detroit's a bit seedy.

For one, cab drivers try to cheat you, and have broken fare monitors on their dashboards.

When I was leaving one bar after last call, too, there was just this (older middle-aged) (pretty thin) (black) guy in a t-shirt sitting out on a bench with a shopping bag on each side as I turned the corner to go back to my hostel, and he was like, "Hey, my man, I got a bottle of tequila here for thirty dollars that I'm trying to get rid of."

Near one tourist site out in the neighborhoods, too, there was a woman selling water and Gatorade off her front porch.

Much of it is lack of work, but that cabdriver stuff and even a bit of that tequila selling stuff starts moving towards seediness.  Something seems just a little bit dark and weird and vaguely trashy about it, like you don't know who the people are and why they need the money, and they seem to be characters full of quirks and tics.