It was the school dropoff that did it for Ty Schmidt. When he first moved to Traverse City, Michigan, about 11 years ago, he realized that the frustratingly long lines of cars in front of his son’s elementary school brought out the worst in everybody.
“I would just stand there, and I would count on one hand the kids walking to school. Mostly because they’re blocked by the cars, Schmidt said. “Who in their right mind would send their kids through this maze of cars? That bothered me a little bit.”
So, he did something about it. He organized a group of neighborhood kids to start biking to school with him, and he’d also sneak in tips on bike safety and “how not to be a knucklehead.” Eventually, what began as a single “bike train” of children pedaling to school spread to 18 groups every morning in neighborhoods across the city.
Love or hate his politics, filmmaker and liberal activist Michael Moore has done one thing that local folks of all political stripes can agree on (for the most part): his Traverse City Film Festival, and refurbishing of the local State Theater, has helped my hometown with its economic revival. It took me a little while to get Moore to agree to an interview for a capitalist publication like Crain’s Detroit Business, where I wrote freelance business articles for a little while, but I finally pinned him down in 2012 for this feature story.
It is Thursday night and the State Theatre is packed to the balcony with attendees of the Traverse City Film Festival,who arecatching “Louder Than Love,” a documentary about Detroit’s Grande Ballroom.
Outside, the downtown sidewalks along Front Street are filled with folks walking elbow to elbow, patronizing restaurants and shops. Inside the theater, Michael Moore stands in the lobby, dressed in shorts and his trademark baseball cap, greeting filmgoers with shy smiles and bowing his head modestly as he speaks.
But beneath his bashful manner, Moore’s tongue is as sharp as ever. And it is aimed directly at his sworn enemies — what he calls “greedy capitalists.”
“I’m teaching Capitalism 101 to all the capitalists here,” he says in an offhand response to a question. “I’m not sure they get it.”
Then Moore amends his comment. “In Traverse City, they get it.”
In this way, the native Michigan director of documentaries — including the sarcastically titled “Capitalism: A Love Story” — transitions from his persona as a progressive firebrand on the national stage to the local guy who many in the business community in Traverse City say has done more than any other person to boost the economy of his adopted hometown.
