The ocean night on the Pacific off the coast of Oahu was serene. The waves were no taller than two feet. It was just as calm on the fateful day more than 16 years ago when the submarine I was serving on surfaced in these waters into a Japanese fishing vessel called the Ehime Maru, sending it and several civilians to the bottom. The ship’s wreck once rested 2,000 feet below the surface of coordinates near where we were currently sailing. It lay in shallower waters now, south of Barbers Point on Oahu, recovered and lifted over after an agreement between the U.S. and Japanese governments. To this day, the USS Greenville and her crew haven’t quite been able to live it down – I know personally.

I unscrewed my Thermos and poured myself cold coffee into the top, raising it to acknowledge the dead. My hand suddenly slipped and the Thermos’ contents took to the floor.

“You’re in tatters, Daniel,” Siobhan said with a raised eyebrow as she stood next to me behind the steering panel. “All this foostering around was your idea so I need you awake.”

Then she pointed toward where I spilled my drink and looked at me with a crooked smile. “Also, you’re licking that up later.”

I feigned disgust, cleaned up my mess, and returned my attention to the radar screen. Just because Siobhan agreed to investigate my hunch on the mysterious sonar contact didn’t mean she had to like it. But she believed it more than most and I was grateful.

Admittedly, it was a wild goose chase, tracking down something underwater without military-grade sonar (we wouldn’t be good Greenpeace representatives if we started deafening whales now, would we?). But the coincidences were enough to convince me it was worth the detour as we sailed toward where we heard the contact aboard the Greeneville earlier in the day. My screen made a subtle beep and bore a new contact that was right behind us.

“New contact bearing one-eight-two; range 430 yards,” I announced. Siobhan checked my screen.

“Unless that’s a whale breaching just behind us, radar should have picked that up from miles away.” Before we could query more into the new contact, it disappeared.

“We’ve lost the contact,” I said. Siobhan radioed Alex Callahan in the crow’s nest to keep his eyes peeled for anything in the water off the stern. I saw the ship’s searchlight beam skip off the bow as Alex swept it over to face aft. I considered relenting on my search for the mysterious contact if we turned up short within a couple hours.

Ten minutes after the transient radar anomaly emptily piqued our interest, the ship’s cook, Devin Greensworth, peeked into the bridge and announced that dinner was waiting in the galley. A mixture of muttering and relief filled the control room as it started to clear out. Suddenly, a woman’s shrill scream pierced the night air. Everyone looked in the direction it came from on the ship’s port side, but nothing unusual was visible from the bridge. I glanced at the radar and my jaw dropped.

“Multiple contacts and they’re right on top of us!” I yelled. Siobhan ran over to confirm what I was seeing.

“Oh, God,” she breathed.

Then to my left, I saw the French Canadian scientist, Jennifer Martin, just outside the bridge’s windows, curiously hovering in the air. I realized something was holding her up as it moved into the beams of the ship’s overhead lights: It was scarlet red, wet, and wrapped around her entire torso. Jennifer was being held by what could only be the leaf-like end of a giant squid’s long whip tentacle. She was flailing her arms and legs, pleading for help.

People in the bridge began to move to her aid, but the leaf suddenly gave her a ruthless squeeze that resonated with a sickening crunch. Her head slumped forward immediately. The tentacle then waved her limp, pulverized body around in the air before slamming it face-first into the side of the bridge, sending glass everywhere.

What was left of her hung through a smashed window, oozing blood and pulp onto the floor next to me. The rank smell of ammonia emanated from her remains, confirming that we were indeed in the company of several specimen of Architeuthis. We couldn’t see the bulk of their bodies from the side of the ship, but no other marine animal had an appendage like the one that had just killed Jennifer.

Some people on the bridge started bawling, others screamed, and another person started retching. The beasts must have snuck up on us while submerged to avoid our radar as another one purposely surfaced behind us to get our attention. If these squids were really cunning, they must have sensed the Oasis wasn’t propagating sonar pulses.

Could they tell between a harmless civilian ship and a military vessel outfitted with cutting edge detection systems? And to that end, had anyone else – especially anybody at Pearl Harbor – been alerted to their presence? Were they even detectable by sonar? At the very least, I was willing to guess our foes were more intelligent than we gave them scientific credit for. We were in trouble.

I peered over my blood-splattered instrument panel to see if anyone was on the ship’s forecastle and bristled with horror when I saw someone rushing from the tip of the bow to get inside. I stepped outside the bridge onto the upper deck and desperately yelled at our crewmate to haul ass. As he sprinted into view, I recognized deckhand Frans Klerk.

Another extended tentacle with a leaf-looking end appeared from the port side bow, slowly curving backward. It bore down sideways on Frans with the force and velocity of a golf swing, launching him clear off the ship. It was as if the squids had more than the sensation of touch in their arms that made them so effective at surgically removing us, one by one. I looked over at Siobhan, who was staring right back at me. She was in disbelief and shock.

“Man overboard!” I yelled. But I knew he was gone. Shaking off her nerves, Siobhan took a breath and stoically got on the PA system.

“All hands are to get indoors and as far from windows as they can and await further orders - we are under attack from several giant squids…this is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.” Her hands were quivering as she put the receiver back into its cradle. She then sounded the general alarm – 7 horn blasts followed by a long blast - and radioed out a distress call on VHF Channel 16. The bridge cleared of the crew members whose stations were elsewhere on the ship.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the Oasis. We are an ice-class research vessel with 20 aboard. Several hostile animals – most likely giant squids – are attacking crew members.”

“Oasis, this is U.S. Coast Guard Honolulu, we read you. Did you say giant squids? Over.”

“Affirmative,” Siobhan said as she stared at me with apprehensive eyes. “We already have casualties, over.” I could imagine the mix of confusion and skepticism the other end of the transmission.

After a few seconds, the dispatcher asked, “Oasis switch to channel 22A and forward us your GPS coordinates, over.” While looking at my screen, Siobhan dialed in to the new channel and relayed our coordinates.

“Our coordinates are north, 21° 5 decimal 1-7-4, and west 157° 50 decimal 1-1-5., about ten miles off the coast of Oahu.”

“Received, understood, Oasis.” The ship suddenly stopped and jerked as if something had yanked it back. Siobhan tried to push the steering control levers forward.

“We’ve lost propulsion! Engineering, what’s going on?” Siobhan said into her receiver. Nobody replied. I looked at the radar screen again and immediately regretted it: We were surrounded by nine sizeable contacts, each more than half the Oasis’s length. That they were detectable by radar meant they had all surfaced.

The only person who probably had a view of the squids was Alex in the crow’s nest – based on Jennifer and Frans’ fates, any other crew member trying to peer over the side of the ship was going overboard or into a cephalopod digestive tract. I could tell from the searchlight beam’s erratic movement around the ship that Alex was watching what I could only imagine to be a murderous garden of living vines slowly overwhelming the hull.

“Oasis, I need your crew in lifejackets – can you reach your lifeboats? Over.” the Coast Guard dispatcher queried.

“We have RHIBs with enough room for the crew, but we’re not safe on deck to unmoor them,” Siobhan replied.

The ship had two fast rigid-hull inflatable boats that could fit 36 people between them – nearly two times the crew on board – but we needed the two skilled operators among us to stay alive to stand a chance in escaping through the monster-infested waters. And almost as importantly, we needed enough time to lower the boats into the water. Chances were the squids would drag them under before we would even have a chance to hop in.

“We also have a helo on deck that can fit four people,” Siobhan added. Another scream tore through the air and ended with a reverberating thud somewhere aft of the bridge.

Siobhan radioed the Coast Guard again.

“They’re literally picking us off one by one, over.” At that moment, five enormous arms lined with suckers climbed on board the bow and pushed down on it. The ship lurched, knocking everyone in the bridge off balance and over.

“Oasis, we’re sending a SAR team your way - are you taking on water? Over.”

I noticed Siobhan had a cut on her forehead as she pushed off her knee to get back up.

Her Greenpeace cap had fallen off, leaving her wavy mane of amber hair to fall around her face which glistened with sweat. She picked up the receiver back up.

“Not yet, but these squids are handing us our arses – .”

Suddenly, John Quarry, one of the RHIB operators, appeared outside of the bridge’s starboard side wrapped in the end of a sucker-lined arm. I froze. Siobhan dropped the receiver with her mouth agape, letting it bungee to the floor. The other Navy veteran on the ship was fighting for his life, angrily trying to pry off the vice grip of his monstrous foe. It only got more difficult for John as the huge, sharp teeth lining each arm sucker deeply lacerated his hands and arms, slowly shredding off his skin and clothes.

Blood was cascading down the squid’s arm and his legs. Then, as soon as John appeared, he was gone, hopefully dragged underwater to drown rather than gnashed to bits. Siobhan got back on the PA system, pleading, “do not go on deck, you will die. Put on your lifejackets.”

The remaining RHIB operator’s voice came on her handset, struggling for breath. “Captain, this is Kamarov, I’m on poop deck at the stern, we just lost Kaminsky and Liu. It first took Kaminsky…everyone went to railing to pull him back…then one of the arms swept them all overboard. [-A loud noise interrupts the transmission, someone screams and then begins sobbing uncontrollably behind him-] What are your orders, Captain?”

“Goddammit,” Siobhan yelled. In one sweep of a squid arm, the headcount of the engineering and electrical team dropped from four to two – Alicia Kempf and Grant “Gears” Gagnon were the only two crew members capable of troubleshooting any powertrain and electric problems left.

Addressing Sergei Kamarov’s increasingly pressing question, Siobhan told him to stay put and out of the squids’ “sight” as he was our only way off the ship in a RHIB.

Siobhan radioed for Alex at the crow’s nest.

“Alex, what are you seeing up there?” I hadn’t seen the searchlight in some time and wasn’t sure Siobhan would hear back. The ship started rocking unnaturally. The waves hadn’t been taller than two feet all night - even factoring in the chop the squids were making around the ship, that could only mean they were jostling with the hull. I shuddered at the thought that their beaks may pierce it and send all of us to the bottom. I took a deep breath and started thinking about our options - crew members were depending on me to help them avoid the same fate and my Navy experience had to count for something.

Engineer Alicia Kempf’s voice rang out on intercom from the engine room. “Captain, we’re taking on water [– a grating metallic noise -] I think the squids are starting to bite into the hull because small pairs of puncture marks are [– more grating ­­­-] sinking us from everywhere.”

It sounded like the devil was scratching a chalkboard down there and I could barely hear Alicia over the chaos around her. “There’s a meter of water down here already and it’s been coming in for five minutes and the bilge pump is running overtime. We’re going to lose the engines at this rate.” The diesel motors powering the propellers were about to get waterlogged.

The ship was about to be dead in the water with a shoal of oversized squids as company and it appeared the remaining crew would follow suit if we continued to play it safe. We weren’t just losing the ship’s capabilities – we were losing the people who were trained to make use of those capabilities. I didn’t want to think about it, but the possibility that the Oasis was doomed was becoming very real. The captain stood with her hands on the instrument panel.

I blurted out an idea.

“Maybe if we throw a RHIB in the water, it can be bait…I don’t know.”

Siobhan looked at me almost with derision. “We have one RHIB operator now that Quarry’s gone, so I’m going to tell you that’s a terrible idea. We might have 20 minutes max before we’re under. Start thinking, but nobody is running off with a RHIB, at least not yet. Where the hell is Abdullah?”

She radioed for the first mate. “Abdullah, we need you at the bridge…can you sneak over?” No reply. I wasn’t surprised Siobhan wasn’t having any of my maritime advice; I spent the first half of my adult life at sea wearing headphones in front of a screen and listening for things in the water while Abdullah learned how to sail a boat by himself in the Mediterranean Sea at age 10 while growing up on the Tel Aviv coast. Siobhan raised her receiver again. “Eli, come in.” she said.

“Captain, I read you.” Eli Levinson replied.

“Fire up the helo, we need to start evacuating,” Siobhan said. “Can you make it past the squids?”

The helicopter could only hold four people including Eli as its pilot, but given the squids’ ruthless killing spree on the crew, carrying capacity may have no longer been a concern. Meanwhile, I started for the door to the deck because someone had to survey what was going on.

“On it,” Eli replied. There was no fear in the Israeli’s voice. Noticing me making for the door, Siobhan grabbed me by the arm of my jacket before I could pull the latch.

“Are you serious? I’m not about to lose you right now you moron, I need you here.”

“You need a pair of eyes around your ship. I’ll be back ASAP,” I said. I had to look around because we didn’t yet know if the squids had disabled the RHIBs or brutalized more essential crew than initially thought. I stepped out, looked up at the crow’s nest, and saw the searchlight arbitrarily pointing downward and unattended. Either I’d find Alex dead or alive somewhere around the ship or he was squid fodder.

I paused for a moment to mull over how I could avoid detection by the squids while scouring the ship for survivors and useful info to relay back to Siobhan. If our invertebrate assailants were smarter than we had been giving them credit for, they were probably drawing us out, waiting to strike when we were tending to our wounded on-deck – as if they were preying on our humanity.

Voices were intermittently echoing around the outside of ship, mixed in with muffled sobbing. Some people just weren’t listening to Siobhan’s order to get inside and falling right into the squids’ traps.

As stealthily as I could, I scaled the port side of the ship’s superstructure, slinking toward the RHIB boats moored just forward of the helideck. From my viewpoint on the upper deck, I could see one was still hanging in place; the other RHIB was on the starboard side and out of my sight. I heard a voice and saw crew members one deck below me. It belonged to the ship’s medic, Eun Park, who was huddling over deckhand Alexa DeVries, next to another crew member with his or her back turned toward me. A winding trail of blood said they had pulled her away from the upper deck to a secluded stairwell hidden by the shadows of the superstructure. Alexa might have been dead anyway because she was lying spread-eagle with the dark red pool around her rapidly spreading, but I couldn’t see the extent of her injuries for sure.

I heard a subtle splash just ahead of me off the side of the ship. A menacing trio of suckered arms quietly rose from the depths, probably hungry for more carnage. The two souls attending to Alexa saw the arms and frantically – but quietly – looked for somewhere to escape, looked toward each other, then slowly backed as far away from the side of the ship as they could, leaving the Dutchwoman’s body behind.

I didn’t dare breathe or twitch; I could only hopelessly watch as the arms started feeling their way toward the medic and crew member. It was beyond me how the giant squids had the extrasensory perception from underneath the ship to “hear us” us out on deck. Opting to book it to safety, Eun and the crew member – who I could finally identify as Devin – hustled up the stairs toward the upper deck where I was, but the suckered arms were closing in, and fast.

I concluded the arms could hear noises or sense the vibrations our feet made as we scrambled to get away – echolocation would make sense since these monsters were marine animals who lived in the blackest depths of the ocean. Without thinking too seriously, I yelled. Loudly.

“Come after me you sons of bitches.”

One arm relented and started gliding along the railing in the direction of my voice, making a deep grinding noise and kicking up sparks where its sucker teeth grated on the ship’s metal railing. I was hoping the other two arms would join the distraction as I sprinted for the bridge. A leafed tentacle emerged from the ocean to my right, just ahead of where I was running, curling itself into what resembled a boxer’s glove. I was about to be punched into the ship.

Instead, the rolled-up tentacle rose skyward, lined itself up with the two figures loudly ascending the stairway behind me and then slammed downward on Devin like a hammer smashing into a nail, splattering the contents of his body all over Eun while punishing the integrity of the upper deck he had just been standing on.

Then, two of the three suckered arms caught onto Eun. As the ship’s de facto medical officer, she was the lifeline we needed right now. I needed a hatchet I didn’t have and a gun that wasn’t allowed on the ship, but I started back down the stairs toward the swiveling bouquet of cephalopod arms anyway. I knew there was an emergency hatchet stationed on-deck just beyond the squid’s deadly reach.

Eun was trying to scream, but one arm had wrapped around her waist and legs while the other was wrapped around her upper body, covering her jaw. Without warning, the arms started wrenching away from each other like they were wringing a wet washcloth, rending Eun into two, slowly and methodically. These motherfuckers were going to kill all of us. She looked straight at me; her face was contorted in agony. I was out of options to save her as she dangled several feet away from the side of the ship.

I could hear her spine start to disintegrate as the squid continued to tear her in half. If her diaphragm hadn’t been pulled apart, I’d imagine she’d be screaming, but her small figure must have been papier mache to the squid. The arms then threw Eun’s halves onto the deck. When she came to rest, her face lay on its cheek with her eyes rolled back into her head; her severed spine and entrails trailed from her top half. A few feet away, her waist lay on the deck, with her legs twisting around each other, mangled with open fractures.

Still trying to process what was happening, I darted back to the bridge, eyeing a big blood-coated dent from an impact on one of the ship’s exhaust funnels. The crumpled heap below it on the upper deck was defined by a yellow down jacket, what appeared to be hair, and pinkish-red guts; it was unrecognizable, but the jacket told me it was Gears Gagnon. One engineer left. I felt bile build in the back of my throat. Less than half the crew had survived a matter of minutes struggling with the squids.

Siobhan looked my way through the bridge’s starboard window as I galloped up the stairs toward the ship’s control room. She visibly inhaled at the sight of me walking back in and radioed Alicia. I hadn’t felt the engines vibrate at my feet for a long time.

“Captain, the engines are almost two meters underwater – I have to leave the engine room.” Alicia said. While I had been appraising the situation outside the bridge, I hadn’t paid attention to how close we were to sinking. The VHF channel came alive.

“Oasis, we have cutters coming your way, ETA 16 minutes,” the Coast Guard dispatcher said matter-of-factly.

“I copy - we are taking on water.” Siobhan returned the VHF handset to its cradle.

“Captain, this is Abdullah,” crackled Siobhan’s radio. “I’m using Eli’s radio – he’s got the helo running, but I think it’s only a matter of time until the squids notice the rotors.”

Abdullah must have also thought the monsters were sensitive to sound.

Raising her voice, Siobhan called for one final headcount on the shipwide channel.

“Everyone check in, now.”

“Captain, this is Kempf, I’m in the comm room.”

“OK Alicia, head for the helideck, on the double,” Siobhan responded. Even if there was a RHIB left on the ship, we would have better luck braving 20-foot swells than eluding exceedingly intelligent animals that probably stretched longer than the length of an ice hockey rink.

“Kamarov reporting in. I’m on my way to the helideck.”

“I copy, Sergei,” Siobhan replied.

“Sayed and Levinson reporting in from the helideck.”

“Copy that,” Siobhan replied.

Could we fit six people in a helicopter that could only fit four? We waited in silence for the next 30 seconds. There was no one else left of the 18 people who left Honolulu with us. I turned to Siobhan, who was shaking. I grabbed both her shoulders and turned her toward me.

“Time to get out of here, Captain.” I looked to the ship’s bow. The forward deck was clearly taking on water and the ship was tilting nearly 10 degrees portside while still being tossed around by the squids. I grabbed two lifejackets and threw one into Siobhan’s hands. As we put them on, I looked around the bridge. Jennifer’s body was still oozing onto the floor, half the screens were blinking error messages, and the VHF receiver was off its cradle, swinging around aimlessly on its cord. I chose not to look out the windows toward the rampaging mollusks gathering around the bow. One final time, Siobhan radioed the Coast Guard dispatcher.

“Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is the captain, we are making for the stern - the bridge is about to go under; will contact you when we get there. Over.”

“Copy that,” replied the dispatcher. Siobhan then unceremoniously dropped the receiver and dialed the dispatcher’s channel into her handset. She then looked in my eyes and gently brushed my hair before saying, “let’s go.”

Siobhan burst out through the bridge’s portside door onto the upper deck and began scurrying down flights of stairs toward the stern, looking back at me once. I heard a squid arm slam behind us in our wake. At full sprint, reaching the stern took less time and distance than a 100-meter dash. As we approached it, I noticed one of the RHIBs had been yanked clean off its crane. I risked a glance over the side and vaguely saw the squids were starting to congregate toward the stern of the ship – exactly where we were expecting everyone left on the ship to go.

I could see the helo’s spinning rotors, but the ship’s list toward the port bow was becoming severe and our escape route was getting more complicated. The forward deck of the ship had already plunged into the ocean and any unsecured cargo or objects on the main deck were sliding in the opposite direction we were running, threatening to knock us backward. I skipped over an incoming crate that was speeding my way and watched it plummet toward the two squids positioning themselves above the submerged part of the ship at the bow.

I finally saw them in all their Lovecraftian glory, put on exhibit by the bridge’s overhead lights: two living krakens, writhed viciously at the bow, savagely pulling down on the ship with half their arms and violently slapping away at the ship’s superstructure with the rest. Their nightmarish bloodstained beaks were loudly clacking, impatiently waiting for more human chow. The Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot couldn’t begin to scare me more than what I was looking back at. Their mantles were blood red and their eyes glowed lime green, illuminating the murky waters they were half-submerged in with a radioactive hue. Losing our footing meant certain death – we kept running toward the helicopter.

“I have Alicia, Sergei, Abdullah, and myself on the helo, Captain, where are you? We can take one more,” radioed Eli as we continued running.

Struggling to speak while sprinting, Siobhan exhaustedly replied, “I’m here with Daniel…” Slightly slowing her pace, Siobhan looked over at me with forlorn eyes. Between her and I, only one of us could hop on the overcrowded helo - and a good captain always went down with his or her ship. I could read her mind and understand, but…I pulled out my handset.

“Eli, this is Daniel. Take off. Now! Radio ahead for an LZ on one of the cutters or head for land, we’re only ten miles out.” Siobhan and I scaled the rising stern toward the helideck.

“Captain, it has been an honor and privilege.” Eli radioed from the helo. “Daniel, you owe me alcohol and lotto tickets. Rest assured, I will be seeing you soon whether you like it or not.”

The Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm Bo-105 then lifted off, nearly falling into the superstructure during its initial ascent because of the ship’s severe list. After holding my breath for what felt like the hundredth time tonight over imminent calamity, I exhaled with relief and replied, “Affirmative, Eli. Over and out.” Squid arms and tentacles were already feeling the edge of the helideck from over the sides of the sinking ship. We were fucked, but at least others would live.

I kept my eyes peeled for any sign of the Coast Guard. The Lusitania sank in 18 minutes; the Oasis appeared to want to beat that time. The consequences of our ship's inevitable foundering might not have been so dire as to take more than a thousand souls and inflame a world war, but goddammit, I really didn't want to die. Then in the distance, I saw a collection of approaching lights. Then...rotors. It was them. They were all getting free rounds of whatever they wanted, those fantastic Coastie bastards.

Writing by Ray Hidalgo

8/15/2018

The Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club is a fascinating group that anyone involved in Detroit’s art landscape should know about. Through its events, aspiring artists can share their work with the public. They can also meet local art experts and influencers in a warm, unpretentious atmosphere.

Every early Monday evening at Noni’s Sherwood Grille, the club gives two minutes to anyone who wants to present two pieces of artwork in front of a gathering of their peers, collectors, and members of the public. Of the 80-100 audience members usually present, many maintain significant ties to the local art scene.

“You’re in front of a community of possible followers and collectors,” collage artist Judy Bowman said. “It’s a great opportunity for exposure.”

In the two minutes that every artist is given to showcase their work, audience members are welcome to provide feedback ranging from critiques and praise, to bids on a presented piece. While many of the artists who are presenting are newcomers, it isn’t unheard of for their work to get bought for thousands of dollars by someone in the Breakfast Club. The money side of art is also strong here.

“Art is a business,” Breakfast Club co-founder Henry Harper said. “You should be able to look at a painting on a wall and know [that its worth] can send your kids to college.”

Harper’s background in antiques and private art investment adds more depth to the pool of art knowledge shared between members of the audience on any given Monday. Just attending the Breakfast Club guarantees that any artist – new and established – will gain something new, whether it’s advice from the the person in the next seat, or money from selling a piece of art.

“You’ll never be by yourself as an artist again,” Bowman said. “Someone from Breakfast Club will always be there.”

For more information, check out the Breakfast Club’s Facebook Page.

Writing by Ray Hidalgo

6/25/2018

For decades, the station’s shadow loomed over the city’s Corktown district. It stood as a visible reminder of the area’s decline. Abandoned by Amtrak in 1988, the towering structure became an empty shell. Afterward. it was the subject of several failed development concepts and constant vandalism. Although the incoming Ford era is a fresh chapter in the storied building’s more than century-long history, the open house was a public study in urban erosion.

Inside, graffiti is almost everywhere within human reach, and most surfaces from floor to ceiling bear degrees of deterioration. Despite the building’s unchanged state of disrepair, Ford’s overarching message during the event promised the opposite. The automaker emphasized rebirth, not only for the station, but also for Detroit itself.

Attendees interacted with exhibit iPads by sharing their “dreams for the future of a more advanced Detroit.” Meanwhile, a large projector screen aired segments and quotes about the station and the city from the History Channel. The automaker also focused on the station’s history by assembling a makeshift museum. Featured artwork and sequences of placards displaying images, timelines, and captions gave attendees a side-by-side sense of past and present.

As for the station’s future, Ford plans to renovate it into an automotive tech campus. The automaker made it clear it is looking to advance itself and the Detroit community. And based on how many people the event attracted, the Detroit community will be paying attention to Ford’s progress.

September 28, 2015 | by Ray Hidalgo

For social media personalities, it’s a numerical ego boost; and for online journalists, it’s measurable exposure; but for walk-in businesses, serious web traffic can mean new customers, increased foot traffic, and revenue. Before companies plan for large reception areas with outdated magazines and a poorly maintained aquarium, however, they need the right kind of web traffic to convert it into new customers. To better illustrate this important distinction, we’ve come up with a fictional example.

“BUT EVERYONE LOVES OUR PIZZA!”

Mario and Luigi’s Pizzeria is located in New Jersey, minutes away from New York City. They are looking into a way to boost their online presence and draw in new customers since a new trend in commuter traffic has forced their regulars to eat local New York City pizza rather than driving through gridlock while hungry.

Before, they had an easy commute home and had enough time to grab the duo’s favorite “Goomba Special” mushroom pizza. Here’s a list of what we generally recommend for businesses looking to retain customers, gain new customers, and maintain a sustainable brand.

CREATING A USER-FRIENDLY WEBSITE

Pizza doesn’t begin to cover the endless market of business products that are a good fit for web marketing. But in order to establish credibility, companies need to acknowledge a general rule of thumb: Customers in recent years are beginning to favor websites that they can view on mobile devices and navigate with ease. For that we recommend is responsive web design. It produces websites that are tailored to every screen resolution from smartphones and tablets to desktop screens for easy viewing.

If you can’t create a business website of your own, be prepared to throw down some change. The composition of the website itself serves as a platform for the following important digital and offline marketing tactics. Ignoring the website in and of itself will be an unwise choice.

FRESH BRANDING

For Mario and Luigi, using warm childhood memories about video games and channeling them into menu designs, pizzeria wallpaper, storefront awnings, logos, general fonts, and advertising messages gives their business a definite personality; a brand that everyone can remember, value, and trust because it feeds off of what its customers want, enjoy, and come to know.

BEWARE, however. Do not be tricked by thinking that a good looking website and brand will get you the right web traffic. If Mario and Luigi write blogs about their favorite video games, it won’t get foot traffic, but rather, web traffic with people who might be more interested in video games than pizza. However, if they recognize that there is in fact an overlap of both pizza and video game audiences, feeding off of that can definitely draw foot traffic.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

“I want to make the first page of Google rankings” is the new business catchphrase. However, as delicious as the Goomba Special might be, the endless abundance of pizza joints in the greater New York and New Jersey area might just rival the amount of food stalls in Beijing and Hong Kong put together. And especially if Mario and Luigi don’t SEO their site properly, search engines will penalize its rank – significantly.

Trying to nab a front page ranking in competitive markets is often times close to impossible, but that is only for general search engine keywords. There’s an alternative strategy that targets drawn out long-tail keywords that are slightly off the radar but nonetheless searched for often enough. Even smaller businesses can take advantage of these. Centering content and SEO practices around these particular keywords is an intelligent strategy. Localizing your SEO so that search results from local markets are favored over somebody in Nebraska or California is also important.

Done correctly, people looking for pizza online or querying “best mushroom pizza around New York” will pull up Mario and Luigi’s pizzeria as one of the first results. In theory, this should draw some foot traffic or dispatch a delivery person to a door.

Beyond SEO, user-submitted online reviews based on the inherent quality of customer service and products themselves are also a major factor in how search engines determine a business website’s credibility and subsequent ranking.

REGISTERING GOOGLE, YELLOW PAGES, AND OTHER SEARCH ENGINE LISTINGS

It’s no longer your Daddy’s phonebook. Yellow Page listings not only contain business phone numbers and addresses – GPS location maps, verified online reviews, picture galleries, accepted credit cards, menus, social media links, and more await the discerning customer.

And for the customer on the fly, Google integrates its Google Maps app into listings to drive them to business’ front doors on top of everything that Yellow Pages offers to boot. Neglecting these services is unwise, to say the least.

CONTENT/SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Providing great informative content for customers so that they may spend on the company the best fits their needs (yours, right?) and forging a visible, digital path to your business via SEO practices will craft a solid platform. It should not only please search engines, but also the choosy customer.

Enter the customer’s mind: What goes into every pizza? What are the highlights of the recipe and who came up with it? Where are all the ingredients from and how do they reach the pizzeria? Are the ingredients fresh or frozen? How long is the average wait for a pizza?

Answering those important questions and leveraging them through your website and social media will draw both pizza aficionados and famished, impressionable customers through the pizzeria doors.

Because everyone loves witty company messages as well as video montages of pizza utencils working up fresh, greasy slices of cheese-drenched pie. But when these are presented on the social media channels surrounded by the right information under one banner, Mario and Luigi have an even better brand on their hands.

PAID ONLINE ADS

Paid advertising continues to be a pillar of online business. For companies looking to break into the market and generate momentum, paid ads are a viable way to build up a business due to their ease of deployment and flexibility. Google AdWords and Bing Ads are the top dogs in that department with models centering around payment “per click” and monetized search engine keywords.

ANALYTICS

Everything we just mentioned can be monitored, scrutinized, and optimized with insights from analytics. Would Mario and Luigi rather have web traffic from China or the East Coast? Well, it isn’t exactly possible to draw in foot traffic from new customers from China, so obviously the East Coast is the better choice. Let’s say the duo finds out that they have more visitors from China (for reasons unknown) to their site. The best way for them to find this out is through analytics platforms like Google Analytics.

If they can’t figure out why they aren’t generating more business even after creating a website, Mario and Luigi can look at their analytics dashboard, analyze blog traffic trends such as average time spent reading a page, and determine a smarter strategy through those insights. Without that added statistical perspective, they are operating blind without even knowing if their website is returning on the investments they put into it.

IN CLOSING…

The old school ways of in-person recommendations, walking/driving by a store, or perusing a phone book are still around. But with the abundance of information available to potential buyers, businesses need to adapt in ways that are outside of the box of conventional marketing and advertising.

Whether companies want to sell branded pizza, cars, or even ideas, it all comes down to creating web traffic, discovering a target market, catering to that target market, and executing a sales and marketing campaign. Above all however, keeping vigilant eyes on if the campaign is profitable in the digital realm and bringing in foot traffic needs to be a priority. It will not only give a crucial level of awareness for a company’s business strategy; it will also ultimately get the product in front of the right people for them to decide on.

September 2, 2015 | by Ray Hidalgo

FREE!*

*But it depends on what you’re looking for in a website!

Here are some general price ranges we came up with. But before you make a website, evaluate why you are creating a website, who your audience is, and what kind of web presence you want to generate as a direct result of your site. So, how much does it cost to make a website? That’s entirely up to you.

FREE TO $50 MONTHLY

This is do-it-yourself territory! For the more agile web surfer, websites like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace offer free website services. Users can place content (photos, videos, links, text) onto preexisting templates and customize the formatting of their pages – to an extent. Also known as mobile web builders and what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) content management systems, these service providers can give form to blogs and professional portfolios. But without the premium customization options that small businesses may need, they aren’t designed for everyone or every company.

UNDER $1000

At this price range, we’re going to assume that you are ready to shell out some Benjis and throw them at a developer. But buyer beware: There’s a considerable chance that you’re going to get a product that isn’t up to par. Inexperienced freelancers and companies that outsource overseas may charge you prices that are consistent with some high-end kitchen appliances. But as the tired truth goes, “time is money.” And if they don’t have the time to send you proofs or deliverables during the design and development process, it’s likely they are wasting your money on a poorly crafted website. And especially if you are a business, this can be a pitfall for your ROI.

$1000 – $3000

Developers at this level will be more experienced freelancers or smaller web design firms. You’ll get a template-based website with a maximum of two deliverables (for design and for development). These are essentially drafts of your website’s pages. If the developer(s) are implementing responsive design (which they should be), creating mock-ups of your website’s pages on the three main formats (desktop, tablet, mobile) should take considerable effort on their behalf. Back to “time is money,” the developer you hire will charge you for their time, but if they are competent, that time will be reflected in the lengths they take to stay transparent on the methodology behind delivering a quality site for you to call your own.

$3,000 – $7,500

So you want to play in the big leagues, eh? Expect freelancers who straight-up know their shit or reputable web design agencies. Assuming that you are buying based on your needs rather than your wallet, you’ll get a highly to fully customized template-based website. There will be multiple deliverables in the development and design process to keep you in the game through an account manager who should be maintaining an open line of communication with you. Companies in this budget range will focus on your specific needs and project quality as opposed to throwing your product through the same process that it would use to approach the projects of its other clients.

$10,000+

Wouldn’t you rather buy a Rolex? Anyway, this price tag applies to websites designed and developed by medium to larger-sized agencies. You’ll be treated to a holistic strategy that makes your website the single point of the entire buying process. Regarding production, these agencies will kick out a fully customized website, tailored to your brand. You will also sit down with a project manager or Don Draper…err…a creative director, along with a whole team of designers, developers, and content writers who are tasked to your project. Just make sure you get an Old Fashioned before leaving the boardroom.

August 4, 2015 | by Ray Hidalgo with special thanks to the MSU Admissions Office

The marketing concept of brand affinity probably won’t be the first thing to come to mind regarding college. Especially at Michigan State University, foggy weekend nights, roller coaster football victories, and caffeine-addled study marathons are among the experiences that alumni (author included) will warmly remember with pride for their alma mater (read: brand affinity).

For the undergraduate college admissions office that welcomed us into the Spartan ranks, however, its efforts to extend that same opportunity to undecided high school seniors are no longer as defined as they used to be; the channels of communication technology continue to shift. But with communications manager Julia Janssen at the helm of the MSU admissions office’s social media and digital campaigns, recruiting prospective freshmen and nurturing school spirit can be a matter of direct social media engagement.

“People aren’t coming to social platforms in the search phase of college,” Janssen said. “It’s really after they submit an application or they’ve been accepted and they’re trying to decide between colleges when they’ll start building a relationship with the school and really where social [media] is a big player in my mind.”

To draw undecided applicants further down the consideration stage and into its social media network, much of the recruitment material that Janssen’s office distributes prominently features hashtags including #BeASpartan and #Spartans2019.

“From the beginning, we’re trying to get students to connect with us as part of our effort to try and drive that community sense and make them feel like they’re important here,” Janssen said. As involved in social media as she is, Janssen is also well aware that she has to continually adapt to her audience.

“Our demographic is always going to stay the same,” she said. “I may be getting older every year but I keep on trying to recruit that 17 to 18-year-old so I always have to evolve and stay on top of what we think these students are using, what are they relating well with, where are they going for information, and what are they trusting.”

At least for now, 50 percent of high school students in a 2015 Chegg survey said social media conversation influences their decision on where to enroll. With the resources of MSU at her disposal, Janssen continues to thrive on continuing the conversation through social media’s major hubs, also adapting the content of her posts and replies to the personas that students specifically assume for each outlet:

• Facebook: “Facebook is a more formal channel where I post more announcements, reminders, or photo driven things.” Janssen also uses fewer hashtags than other outlets.

• Twitter: “Twitter is more free form conversation. We tend to get the most questions through Twitter. It’s informal in the sense that students are asking short form questions because they’re limited to 140 characters so they can’t get too detailed. It’s also a real nice tool for us because that’s where I can monitor certain keywords…not just hashtags.”

• Instagram: “We’re just trying to share a really organic student version of what campus is like. It doesn’t have to come from a specific area and it can be anything from the ice cream students are getting at the MSU Dairy Store to their experience at the football stadium to being over by the Red Cedar River studying for finals.”

While she can’t quantify the exact number of students that she successfully persuaded into enrolling at MSU, Janssen only needs to look over the digital trail of communication that she’s put into motion. Her favorite story involves a high school senior who once expressed worry over Twitter regarding her inability to decide on a college to attend. Janssen caught the tweet and replied with, “Well we say, Go Green! Be a Spartan.” The response that Janssen received from the senior in question was…well, according to Janssen, it went along the lines of, “OMG that’s a great school with all these green hearts and everything.”

Without a spectacular athletic program, a warm student community, and an enormous digital presence to boot, a business won’t have the same brand affinity as a major national university. But at the end of the day, interacting with potential buyers through means that connect people throughout the world is a pretty solid start.

Writing by Ray Hidalgo

8/26/2015

On a Friday, nearly two weeks ago, Summer In the City, a community service organization in Detroit largely comprised of young volunteers, finished up its 14th season with more than 1,200 people gathering at the Crowell Recreation Center on Detroit’s west side to celebrate.

There was food and art and music at the celebration that included both volunteers and members of the community. But more importantly there was a feeling of accomplishment.

“What's exciting about Summer in the City,” said co-founder Ben Falik,“ is that even as things have expanded and evolved beyond anything we could have imagined, we haven't lost sight of what inspired us in the first place -- the idea that young people can be the change they wish to see in Detroit.”

Since its inception in 2002, more than 10,000 volunteers have performed more than 400,000 hours of high-impact community service that includes painting murals, planting community gardens and playing with elementary school campers at enrichment sites throughout the city. The program runs from June through August.

Many summers ago with fellow co-founders Michael Goldberg and Neil Greenberg, Falik says he championed the vision of a more unified Metro Detroit community, and tapped into the positive energy of its young people.

Initially, Summer in the City Detroit deployed volunteers -- suburban high school students -- from different carpool sites in the suburbs to designated locations in Detroit.

These days, volunteers come from both the suburbs and the city, as well as from a businesses community that has been eager to spend working hours giving back to the community. The program not only benefits the city, but the volunteers, as well.

For University of Michigan student and crew member Emily Aaron, this summer marks the bittersweet end of her three-year tenure with the organization; one of the more memorable chapters in her life as the leader of its Del Rey Play Program.

“It’s always fun to come back after the school year and see the kids [from Del Rey] still remember you,” she said. “They run up to you and give you a big hug because they’re so excited to see you and let you know you kind of made a difference in their life. And they want to hang out again.”