ann arbor is overrated.

This weblog has been a little lax about updating lately. The problem is not that Ann Arbor is beginning to suck less, but that it’s continuing to suck in ways that have already been written about here. So on to a way in which Ann Arbor could suck even more.

About a month ago, The Ann Arbor News published an opinion proposing closing off Main Street to create an outdoor mall. Ann Arbor Sucks moved stealthily away from this idea and avoided making any sudden moves, hoping that it would die a quiet death. Unfortunately, it has made a reappearance in the News’ letters page. Writes Ann Arbor resident Erich Jensen, “my wife and I ate at Gratzi’s indoors because dining on great food polluted by cars is no longer desirable.” Pause to wonder when it was in fact desirable, and you’ll miss this alarming closer: “Where do we join the movement to enhance Main Street by its summer closing?”

Stop to think which great cities close off their streets to create open-air malls, crossing off those which are rarely frequented by non-tourists, and you’ll find a slim list indeed. Boston has Faneuil Hall, which is arguably an open-air mall of sorts, but it fails the second test. It also has Haymarket, but that area’s smell of rotting fish would make it just as unsuitable as Main Street for outdoor dining. Chicago has none that I can think of.

If there is any edge, any life to Main Street at all, it lies in the traffic lights and intersections, not the Michigan souvenir shops and outdoor restaurants where parents of freshmen stop during orientation week. Closing the street would erase the last scintilla of city-ness that this place possesses.