Ad G’Nawseam
Saginaw is so far down on the cool scale that they’re desperately trying to emulate A2. As cool-cities guru Richard Florida put it, “the kind of people Saginaw covets sometimes prefer tending bar in a cool city such as Ann Arbor to tending a career in an uncool one.” (This is actually a reporter’s paraphrase of what Florida said; if he did in fact mention A2, his credilbility has been severely undermined.)
The Saginaw task force on cool, which some have suggested dubbing “G’Naw T by Nature”, then, has a long road uphill, even with a new “upscale hat store” in town. But don’t worry, says the state’s man in charge of coolness, Robert Johnson. In order to be cool, “you don’t have to become Ann Arbor.” Whew. That sound you hear is a collective sigh of relief from New York, Boston and Chicago.
To be fair, I don’t think I’d prefer to tend a career in Saginaw over bar in Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is overrated, but it’s a heck of a lot better than most cities in this state. Which of course, isn’t saying much.
posted by Brandon on December 18th, 2003 at 5:51 pmThe strange thing about Florida’s statement, if it is his, is that tending bar is itself a cool career. Now, if people would rather, I don’t know, work at Busch’s in Ann Arbor than tend bar at the coolest spot in Saginaw…
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 18th, 2003 at 5:54 pmSaginaw. It’s ugly, brown, drab, and cold between about November 1 and March 1 every year.
What’s more, it’s an hour and a half from either Detroit or Ann Arbor, or even Lansing.
The hopping college boroughs of Mt. Pleasant and Alma (home to my alma mater–get it, Alma Mater!?? err….) aren’t too far away, but yowzers, if you have to go to Alma to find culture, then…..anyhow.
What the whole “Cool Cities” thing keeps forgetting is that by and large, and especially on the eastern half of the state, the geography and meteorology and architecture, especially in the cold months of the year, are not conducive to drawing a personnel/brainpower “surplus” to begin with.
Winter’s a drag. That’s why people move TO Florida, Texas, Arizona, California–that’s why the brainpower “surplus” towns are located primarily in the Sun Belt.
I don’t get the impression that those leading the whole “Cool Cities” boosting campaign are willing to be utterly honest with The Facts about how unbelievably and depressingly gray Michigan can be in the wintertime–and if you’re not going to be honest, then people (esp. the so-called “cool”/creative people) are going to see right through it.
I mean, as of today, Dec. 18, how many sunny days have we had this month–TWO?? November was less cruddy than average but still.
My position is still that the area(s) in Michigan that have the best potential for generating a personnel “surplus” are all west of US 127. Reasoning? West Michigan architecture is less drab and more pleasing to the eyes than that on the east side of the state–perhaps this is the Chicago influence coming to play. What’s more, all the major west Michigan towns have some scenic element in their landscape. Grand Rapids is a fairly hilly area to begin with, and the view coming down into downtown from either direction in I 196 is pretty stunning, esp. if you haven’t seen it before. Kalamazoo is blessed also with hills and lakes, and a similar breathtaking view of downtown coming from the south into the downtown area on Westnedge Ave. Muskegon, Holland, and St. Joseph/Benton Harbor all have Lake Michigan, and beyond that, the “west shore vibe”, if you will.
Now, what does Saginaw have?
Exactly. Short of a complete cultural revolution amongst the common folk of places like Saginaw, Bay City, et al., in which the average wife-beating auto-mechanic hack suddenly starts smoking the best of weed, drinking the finest of wines, and watching the the entire catalogue of films made by the Altmans, Fellinis, and Downey Sr.s of the world, then cool just ain’t never going to happen to Saginaw, at least as far as the “national standard” for cool goes.
posted by Mike from Lansing on December 18th, 2003 at 6:38 pmOne more thing….from one of the Saginaw newspaper articles:
“The governor’s guru for this is David Hollister, former mayor of Lansing and now director of the state Department of Consumer and Industry Services. He’s credited with fostering a growing arts enclave in Lansing and luring heavy industrial investment by General Motors Corp. and a minor league baseball team downtown”
Growing arts enclave? Wow. It’s more like three city blocks’ worth of Grand River Avenue at and west of the intersections with Larch and Cedar Streets, and two city blocks’ worth of Turner Street immediately north of Grand River Ave–an area just north of downtown Lansing which goes by the name “Old Town”.
It’s not bad, but it’s five freakin’ blocks. I don’t know if I’d call that an “enclave”.
In fairness to Hollister, the stretch of Michigan Avenue between the capitol and US 127 has improved significantly over the years.
That’s only a start to what an aspiring “cool” city needs–multiple and diverse neighborhoods interspersed with multiple and diverse social “centers”.
posted by Mike from Lansing on December 18th, 2003 at 6:45 pmI gotta tell you, Mike. W Michigan is oppressive, racist, homophobic, and puritanical. I would rather live in Saginaw. I’m from Middleville, just south of Grand Rapids. I wrote a post
posted by Hillary on December 18th, 2003 at 6:55 pmabout it recently. The weather in W Michigan is worse too. Ann Arbor is supposed to get around an inch of snow tonight. The Grand Rapids forecast is 2-4 inches. This is normal. Everything west of US131 is hit even harder by lake effect snow. The weather here is nice compared to W Michigan.
Mike you are high.
posted by Steven B. Cherry on December 18th, 2003 at 7:00 pmUrban hipsters in Saginaw? AAIO, are you sure you didn’t get that article from the Onion?
posted by Anna on December 18th, 2003 at 7:12 pmIt was right by the “I Can’t Seem to Find the Moline Gay District” one.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 18th, 2003 at 7:16 pmAh, Sag-nasty (if you’re going by the official nickname. Which, by the way, Chan says makes a city cool).
posted by js on December 18th, 2003 at 8:18 pmAAIO- tending bar is a cool job, it’s not a cool career. It’s something that people do while they’re making plans to do something else, or while they’re too drunk to have a real job, both of which are cool.
Again, for Michigan, Ann Arbor IS cool. Try living near Lapeer…
Yeah, I realized that calling it a “career” sounded kind of dumb when I read over that.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 18th, 2003 at 8:35 pmI went once to a job interview to sell Kirby vacuum cleaners (”Management potential” they said) when I was desperately broke. They kept repeating that Kirby was a career, not a job, because job spelled “Just Over Broke.” After being told that I had to sign my friends up for “demonstrations” my internal shame led me to decide that delivering pizzas was less of a whore’s vocation.
posted by js on December 18th, 2003 at 8:52 pmI just realized something,
(I am a longtime fan of this rant about why ann arbor sucks, and it does suck.)
Almost everyone on here is ann arborite.
People on here actauly discuss “cool” and refer to things that define them as a person.
I bet most people on this board wear way too much brown clothing.
Anyways, ann arbor sucks, we can all agree on that.
posted by skins on December 18th, 2003 at 9:56 pmI will say this about this whole cool cities thing:
Back in my day (so great to write that), when our old friend Reagan was running the show, no one EVER talked about making a city cooler. Not only did Reagan not care about the generation coming up, he actively tried to quell “problems” with those who tried to rock the boat.
At least Granholm is making an effort.
I know this much: there is nothing cool at all about a bunch of dead-end jobs, homophobia, racism, and a host of other things that we deal with here in Michigan. I find the fact that they are trying to fix these problems on a governmental level heartening. The one thing that I would like to hear from all of you cynics is how would YOU fix these problems….and you can’t answer move to another city where someone else has already fixed some of these problems.
posted by todd on December 18th, 2003 at 10:09 pmAbout the weather: Chicago, the Twin Cities, New York, Toronto, Montreal, and Boston all have pretty shitty weather, and do pretty well attracting young “cool” folks.
As for West Michigan, the more time I spend there lately the more I think it is great: Eastown. Grand Rapids’ Eastown neighborhood is what I think Ypsi should aspire to… it is like a more lively Ypsi, with a diverse mix of students, punks, hipsters, black-and-white-working-class-folks, families, and older people. Ethnic restaurants, dive bars with live music, 24-hour coffeehouses, liquor stores, pharmacy, video rentals, a grocery store, book stores… all withing a walking radius. Attractive historic architecture, and none of the heavy right-wing moralistic feel West Michigan is infamous for. I really like that place.
posted by Brandon on December 18th, 2003 at 10:19 pmActually, Saginaw does have a lot of interesting architecture, last time I was there. You could probably find a cheap loft or storefront there real easy. Lansing and Detroit have leveled practically all of their 19th century neighborhoods; Saginaw has lots still standing.
And the city is geometrically interesting: rather than being an endless grid, each little patch of streets is oriented differently, so that the city is studded with quirky angles and intersections. The two sides of the river (originally the separate cities of Saginaw and East Saginaw) have completely different house numbering systems.
If anything, the fact that Saginaw is so radically out of fashion alone makes it appealing.
It is JUST NOT TRUE that cold climates can’t be cool. Try Minneapolis, or Copenhagen, or Boston, or Montreal.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 18th, 2003 at 10:21 pmBrandon’s comment slipped in, and made similar points.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 18th, 2003 at 10:23 pmGeometrically interesting huh? Try any Asian city. Asian cities are geometrically intriguing - almost no geometry at all. =)
Don’t you guy find it boring to have a city/town/whatever with a grid system? It’s just too mundane. You just know what to expect at every corner. No adventure at all.
posted by __earth on December 19th, 2003 at 5:03 amDon’t you guy find it boring to have a city/town/whatever with a grid system? You just know what to expect at every corner. No adventure at all.
Manhattan?
posted by Aaron on December 19th, 2003 at 7:11 amI agree that there’s nothing cool about dead-end jobs, homophobia, etc. I guess I would say to that the solutions are not going to be sexy or new — the best cure is to educate people better (catch them young — teach them tolerance in elementary school, teach them about the need for education — just for education’s sake, the joy of reading and creating something, the worth of ideas; somebody please tell them young — while there is time to do something about it — that it is imperative that they learn some marketable skills because the high-paying factory jobs just aren’t going to be there and there is no use fighting it) and then send them to solid colleges. After college, keep them in the state (or lure them back) by attracting interesting, creative businesses that can give them good, interesting work. Cool is going to follow the economy – Seattle didn’t become “cool” until it was infused with a nice dose of tech money. In the short-term, that’s going to mean better loan programs for small businesses and tax breaks for big ones, and in the long term, it’s going to mean educating people to fill the jobs created by those businesses. Do you think NYC is cool because there aren’t jobs there? Because there aren’t opportunities? Everyone in NY, even the hipsters who pretend not to be, is on the make in one way or another. Michigan is never going to appeal to people who seriously care about good weather. But it can appeal to people who are willing to give up on some lifestyle things for a good job.
posted by Anna on December 19th, 2003 at 8:48 amWow, I must really ask is there anyone who is posts regularly who isn’t white and rich (or a funded college student)? Just an impression I got from reading this lately.
Mike you wrote
“Short of a complete cultural revolution amongst the common folk of places like Saginaw, Bay City, et al., in which the average wife-beating auto-mechanic hack suddenly starts smoking the best of weed, drinking the finest of wines, and watching the the entire catalogue of films made by the Altmans, Fellinis, and Downey Sr.s of the world, then cool just ain’t never going to happen to Saginaw, at least as far as the “national standard” for cool goes.”
Ok, first off, the ‘common people’, you really are from some upper class sheltered part of this country. “average wife-beating auto-mechanic hack”, uh do you even know any mechanics? I have a very good friend who is one, used to have his own shop, now he’s getting an MD from UM, not only one like this, I know about 4 other ann arbor auto mechanics that are all in the same boat, very educated and intelegent.
And all you people who say that bartending ain’t a carreer. I know lots of bartenders in this city who choose to do that rather then use their masters or PHd, why, cause the pay is really good. I know someone who was a carrer bartender in ann arbor and made big big money. I have another friend who just started tending bar is is also making the best $ of his life. Its not that the bartender is wasting time being drunk, its that all the UM students spend all thier money on drinking.
skins - nope we dont all agree, in my book ann arbor is very cool, I’d even venture to say that more of us would agree that ann arbor is the coolest city in ann arbor.
posted by Just a Voice on December 19th, 2003 at 9:32 amJOV, I don’t have anything against people who are white and rich, but I’m definitely not rich. And I agree with you, Ann Arbor is the coolest city in Ann Arbor.
posted by Anna on December 19th, 2003 at 9:39 amJAV, I am white (Dutch-American), but hardly rich. My bank account currently has under $200 in it and I am subsisting of rice and garbanzo beans to make it through the holidays. I am a groundskeeper most of the year. I have nearly $20,000 worth of college debt. How’s that? I agree a lot of people look down upon blue-collar work, though, and a lot of folks I work with are intelligent and educated, or even if they aren’t they are at least good people and not “wife-beaters” and such.
posted by Brandon on December 19th, 2003 at 10:01 amAnna- Seattle was cool when there was nothing there. It launched that whole “grunge” thing you may have heard about, which started back in the late ’80s.
posted by js on December 19th, 2003 at 11:09 amIt was cool, then got money.
js
Perhaps I missed something, but I was under the impression that the whole “Microsoft” thing happened before the late ’80s.
posted by Anna on December 19th, 2003 at 11:40 amThe Melvins formed the year before Microsoft went public, Nirvana formed the year after, as did Alice In Chains and Mother Love Bone. Soundgarden formed in ‘84, before PCs were widespread or Microsoft was a power, as did Skinyard. The U-Men formed in ‘81.
posted by js on December 19th, 2003 at 12:17 pmSeattle was well known for cool bands before Microsoft had the capital to throw around Seattle, and certainly before the boom of Starbucks and IPOs of the dot-com revolution.
Unless you’re arguing that ‘75 was when everything started for Seattle? That was when Microsoft started, but I’d wager their impact on the greater Seattle area’s cool wasn’t as great as you would estimate.
JS — You were actually the one who argued that the whole grunge thing started in the late 80s.
I think that people at Starbucks, Adobe, Costco, EsterLite and others would probably argue that there was a bit more than “nothing” in Seattle before then.
Oh, and the Microsoft kids came out with DOS (you’ve heard of that right?) in 1981. And Basic before that.
But, whatever.
posted by Anna on December 19th, 2003 at 1:15 pmSo, you’re dating the influx of tech money into Seattle from ‘81? That’s a little removed from the internet revolution that took place there, what, at least ten years later? Why not say that Seattle didn’t become cool until Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980? Well, because the release of DOS was not the pure cause of Seattle’s “cool.” And around, say, 1989, when Seattle was first becoming known as a cool town to live in, that reputation came a lot more from the entertainment scene than the folks up in Redmond.
posted by js on December 19th, 2003 at 1:48 pmMicrosoft’s location certainly increased its pull on dot-commers, which in turn helped give Seattle it’s reputation, but it was known as a cool city before the internet really took off, and correllation is not causality, Anna.
js
Why does this little spat between JS and Anna remind me of Taming of the Shrew?
Is there something going on between you two that the rest of us aren’t aware of?
And yes, Boris, time to write something funny.
Happy Holidays to all of you, no matter which overrated city you spend your time in.
posted by todd on December 19th, 2003 at 2:37 pmFor the love of God, could you please try to be a worthy adversary? Isn’t the Knapps threat enough?
posted by Anna on December 19th, 2003 at 2:38 pmDespite the fact that you just called me a shrew, happy holidays to you, too, Todd.
posted by Todd on December 19th, 2003 at 2:39 pmer.. yeah. From me.
posted by Anna on December 19th, 2003 at 2:41 pmsince when is DOS cool? mac os 1.1 was cool.
posted by Dan on December 19th, 2003 at 7:29 pmhappy holidays all
Actually, speaking as a native (if displaced) New Yorker, I feel very strongly that grids are boring. It’s one reason why I don’t much care for Chicago: the grid is so monotonous, so unremitting, and so freakin’ extensive that it just seems repressive to me.
Manhattan (a) is geographically much smaller, and (b) has some quirks to keep things interesting. Broadway cuts across on a diagonal, Central Park takes up a nice chunk in the middle, and the downtown area has a logic all its own… Similarly, while there are grids scattered throughout the other boroughs, none holds sway too terribly far, and most of them have idiosyncracies of some sort.
(I still remember flying back to New York after my first visit to Chicago, nearing LaGuardia, and seeing the lights from the streets below… regular stretches here and there, but in a comfortingly chaotic patchwork, nothing monotonous about it. I was home. Conversely, flying into Chicago, I felt like I was entering Stepford.)
posted by Shmuel on December 19th, 2003 at 11:13 pmChicago is anything but Stepford. Perhaps you don’t realize that is a multi-cultural, cosmpolitan city, made up of a multitude of ethnic groups. We also have a large central park called Grant Park and a lakefront other cities can only envy. You should have made up your mind after deplaning and kept an open attitude. Incidentally, Chicago also has diagonal streets!!!!
posted by INO on December 20th, 2003 at 7:02 pmChill, INO, we’re talking geometry here, not culture.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 20th, 2003 at 11:36 pmWhen I moved from Chicago to Boston, I had to stop referring to “angle streets” - Boston doesn’t have any north-south or east-west streets, so angle streets are kind of a meaningless category.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 21st, 2003 at 12:02 amAnd Chicago’s much more of the Roman Republic, ’specially around the Aquarium and Field Museum. If you were going just by the architecture, you’d think that it was the seat of some noble empire, that just happened to sprawl out across the rest of the state, totally autonomous.
posted by js on December 21st, 2003 at 12:21 amI really like the public buildings of Chicago, and I like how there seemed to be a central vision for the aesthetic of post-fire reconstruction.
js
Re: wife-beating auto-mechanic redneckss from Saginaw:
I should have flagged my conventional wisdom/sarcastic-rant intentions a little bit better.
posted by Mike From Lansing on December 21st, 2003 at 4:24 pmQuibble: the so-called City Beautiful vision in Chicago was associated with the Columbian Exposition in 1893, not the fire reconstruction two decades earlier in 1871.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 22nd, 2003 at 3:57 pmIn any case, the grid system is a hell of a lot better than the idiotic pod-collector system of suburbia.
posted by Brandon on December 22nd, 2003 at 7:06 pmAgreed that grids are often interesting in and of themselves. Back in the early 1960s, Jane Jacobs documented that small blocks and a multiplicity of possible routes from point A to point B in a neighborhood (typical of old-time grids) helped create a more lively urban setting. Suburban pods and cul-de-sacs are the opposite.
posted by Larry Kesyenbaum on December 23rd, 2003 at 1:27 amEr, accidentally typoed my own name in that last post.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 23rd, 2003 at 1:27 amGrids are definitely better than cul-de-sacs/pods IMO. You can find your way around much better with a grid. As with so much in suburbia/NIMBYland, cul-de-sacs seem IMO to be about keeping “the wrong people” out. Cul-de-sacs are very confusing and alienating, and I personally cannot stand them.
posted by Vince Prygoski on December 27th, 2003 at 4:12 pmAll true, but suburban cul-de-sacs on the one hand, and a vast, uniform grid system on the other hand, are not the only possible choices for urban layouts. Can’t we have some variety?
For example, most American streets (and associated rights-of-way and building setbacks) are way too wide. Unnecessarily wide pavements signal drivers to go much faster, even on quiet residential streets. Long intervals between streets (long unbroken blocks) are not good either, making neighborhoods too one-dimensional. Angles are interesting features. And so on.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 28th, 2003 at 4:59 pmThe superior man loves his soul, the inferior man loves his property.
posted by Gilmore Marc on January 20th, 2004 at 1:16 am