Forbidden City memories

The time was the early to mid 80’s, the place was the Forbidden City Restaurant in the Cass Corridor in Detroit. This was a very good place to look for trouble, pretty good cheap food and $1.35 lunchtime special martinis. Across the street was a little place with hookers outside strolling. This was not your usual lunchtime eatery.

Several of us from CCS, Detroit’s famous art school would eat (and drink) there often. My boss, Jerry Grove, myself and our V.P. Development, Jim Keyes, wrote our whole catalog there one afternoon. They let us stay and use the table and we paid for the lunches and drinks. This was a cheap and sometimes cheerful place.

I had to meet a large group of people for lunch one day, it’s hard to remember who was present, for sure President Jerry Grove and Dennis Barrie, the then head of the Detroit office of the Archives of American Art, later to be famous as the Director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center from 1983-1991. His tenure was rocked over a trial in 1990, when he and the gallery were indicted on pornography charges stemming from an exhibit of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe (the exhibit show was titled The Perfect Moment. At trial, a Cincinnati jury acquitted Barrie and the Center. The controversy and trial were made into a TV movie titled "Dirty Pictures". I can’t remember who else was present but there were many.

I had something to do at school, which was going to make me late for my $1.35 martini, but I told Jerry I’d meet them there.

I arrived, parked on the Forbidden City parking lot and scooted through the cars toward the front door. I was stopped by the sight of a station wagon with two people in the back, undressing each other and “going at it” to use a phrase. This would have not shocked me much, as it’s not that unusual for the neighborhood, but these were sort of middle aged people with the man dressed (almost) in a suit and the woman dressed (sort of) in a nice red dress. I was not one to sit and stare, the martini was waiting, so I sauntered by and went into the rerstaurant.
Well it just like Norm coming into Cheers, I walked in and was greeted by a hardy, “Arthur” from the assembled multitudes. I smiled and ordered, and then asked if anyone knew a man and a woman who must have just been in there. The man was wearing a suit and the woman was wearing a red dress.

“Of course, that’s Dr. (something or other), Vice President of (something) at Wayne State University and the woman was his assistant”.

Well, I said, “they’re doin’ it in the parking lot!”

Three weeks later I read an article in the Detroit Free Press that the two of them had gone missing. Foul play was not suspected.