Through the glory of Facebook, I have been following the day of my friends who are Detroit expats, who are looking for their regular paczki (poonch-ki) fix on what around Detroit, is passionately known as Paczki Day, or more colloquially, Fat Tuesday. The idea is to load up on calories before the supposed Lenten fast, but of course, now we just pig out for the purpose of pigging out. We do this by eating VERY LARGE doughnuts ALL DAY LONG. If you think that picture above is the standard Dunkin' Doughnut's affair, rest assured it at least 6 inches in diameter and probably weighs a half pound. If you are unfamiliar with this tradition, read this article about it in the Detroit News.

I was happily steering clear of this until I walked into a bank lobby at 1:30 p.m. There on the table was a huge platter of glistening massively sized heart attack inducing paczki. Yes, the tradition is so ingrained that banks hand them out. I asked the ladies why they would do that, and they just smiled, telling me they had "only" given out 2 dozen. I thoughtfully resisted (Wife should be proud), and went about my day. Then I had an idea...

This sounds like something that Detroit COULD export to the rest of the country. In these poor economic times, Detroit needs something to push on the rest of the country. We should declare this a state holiday, and build tourism around it. We could Hamtramck into the New Orleans of the Midwest. Want to do something fun for Mardi Gras, but don't want to be shot or be exposed to all that debauchery, come to Detroit for Fat Tuesday! Just think of the tourist dollars flowing into the state!