Flint is an industrial city located an hour north of Ann Arbor and Detroit in Michigan. Having fallen on hard times over the past 30 years due to the slow decline of General Motors, the city is not without beauty in the midst of its evident urban decay. Filmmaker Michael Moore was born and raised in the area, and has made Flint the subject of many of his films and books.

Get in

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Flint can be accessed via US 23 northbound from Ann Arbor, and I-75 northbound from Greater Detroit.

Get around

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Flint is bounded on the west by US 23, on the south by I-69, and on the east and north by I-75/I-475. Be careful when driving on the freeways circling Flint (especially I-69), as numerous potholes, cracks, and heavy truck traffic will challenge your piloting skills.

See

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There are some great attractions in Flint. Crossroads Village is a family-friendly attraction reminiscent of a late 19th-century town. It features a cider mill, the Huckleberry Railroad, and the Genesee Belle steam boat. Applewood, the former home of Charles Stewart Mott, is a grand mansion near downtown Flint and the Cultural Center that is open for tours. The Cultural Center itself features the Flint Institute of Arts, the public library, Bower Theater, and the Whiting Auditorium. The Whiting features many off-Broadway productions and is home to the Flint Symphony Orchestra. Bower Theater is home to the Flint Youth Theater and features many other intimate shows. Other venues for taking in a show include the small and quirky Buckham Alley Theater, the "New" McCree Theater, the Flint City Theatre (which performs at the Good Beans Cafe), the Flint Community Players, Vertigo Productions (at the Masonic Temple downtown), and the University of Michigan-Flint theatre and dance program.

Do

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Check out the newly renovated Flint Institute of Arts, an impressive collection as well as a new art theater.

Eat

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Bubba's Roadside Inn in nearby Flint Township offers delightful food in tacky surroundings.
Sagano Japanese Bistro delivers wonderful authentic and a crowd-pleasing Bistro experience.


Flint (or flintstone) is a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline silicate form of the mineral quartz, categorized as a variety of chalcedony and broadly part of the mineral group known as silicas. Flint is usually dark-grey, blue, black, or deep brown in colour, and often has a glassy appearance. It occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks and limestones.

The exact mode of formation of flint is not yet clear or agreed but it is thought that it occurs as a result of chemical changes in compressed sedimentary rock formations, during the process of diagenesis. One theory is that a gelatinous material fills cavities in the sediment, such as holes bored by crustaceans or molluscs and that this becomes silicified. This theory certainly explains the complex shapes of flint nodules that are found.

Uses

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In Europe, some of the best toolmaking flint has come from Belgium (Obourg, flint mines of Spiennes), the coastal chalks of the English Channel, the Paris Basin, Thy in Jutland...