ann arbor is overrated.

Finally, a developer with a bold, innovative vision for Main Street, someone who’s not going to settle for the same old same old. Says Jim Curtis of Curtis Commercial, which is renovating 333 S. Main, “Ann Arbor is known for its caliber of restaurant, and I think we have ample high-quality restaurants currently. We’re also well-known for upscale jewelry, art and to some extent upscale women’s clothing. We’d like to see more of the latter than more of the same.”

The piece also notes that Starbucks will be opening at Main and Liberty, “bringing a high-profile chain presence to the block.” Well, about time.

So, there’s this Blog It Forward thing, where you’re supposed to say something nice about a blogger you link to, and then they have to say something nice about someone else, and then there’s so much niceness that you almost forget your car is stranded on campus and the city’s after you for snow violations. Goodspeed said some very sweet things about this site, which he referred to as “the Cadillac of Ann Arbor blogs.” (It’s slow and driven by an elderly grad student.)

Now the task falls on us to keep this thing going, which isn’t easy, since there are so many wonderful blogs in Ann Arbor/Ypsi, many of which are linked to here. But the whole point of this blog is to whine about how much better everything is in Boston. So we’re going to pass on the honor to Shmuel, a onetime Ann Arbor transient who actually made it back out East.

Shmuel’s Soapbox, in both its “blog” and “journal” forms, traces the life of a creative writing student who struggles with his Orthodox Jewish identity and his morality. Sometimes it takes the form of philosophical or political thoughts. Of an early code name for the Iraq war, he writes, “‘infinite justice’ is a complete contradiction in terms. Justice is the force that enforces boundaries and restores balance. By definition, it’s carefully measured to correspond exactly with the actions it repays– that is, after all, the meaning of ‘meted out.’” But more often, it’s personal, and it can be both very funny and very poignant. In response to a tossed-off “Sex:not yet” on the site’s about page, a reader warned Shmuel, “I must say though, since you are a frum yid, you should change the “Sex” on your stats page to say ‘Male’. It is better to lose one joke than to make a Chillul Hashem (as defined in Mesilas Yesharim).” After explaining what “frum”, “Chillul Hashem” and “Mesilas Yesharim” are, he observes, “even joking about sex to the extent that I do on my public home page is kinda radical, and I knew it.” This is an earlier entry - as the journal progresses, Shmuel rebels more and more against this culture.

And he has this advice: “If you go to the toaster oven and slide out the rack using a potholder (or, if you are an Orthodox Jewish male who routinely uses his yarmulke for that purpose, then using a yarmulke as a potholder), do be sure that contact with the very hot rack is, in fact, made only through the potholder, and that your thumb is not extending past the potholder onto the rack itself.”

Ann Arbor resident Mary Lee Muzik, the News reports, is sick of A2’s constant inclusion on best-of lists - she’s worried that more people will start moving in. We’re doing our absolute best here, and the flood of list mentions hasn’t even slowed.

We can get Ann Arbor off these lists - but we have to work together. If you ever receive a survey about life in Ann Arbor from one of these magazines or demographic agencies, stay resolute and be prepared to mark “barely satisfactory” on every question. If a reporter contacts you, act like it’s too painful to talk about. The statistic-based lists with their flawed methodologies will be a little harder to combat, but we can do it - if we had all just gotten married and divorced three times before the “stressful city” study went to print, we probably could have stopped it.

Unite!

We’ve never bought textbooks at the Shaman Drum, being in engineering, so we can’t say much about the debate about their service that’s currently raging in the opinion pages of the Daily. They aren’t happy with Daily columnist Daniel Adams’ characterization of them as “the most confusing-ass bookstore in the entire world.” Last week, the store’s owner wrote in to complain about a similar letter which he describes as “an attempt to Red bait us.”

It wouldn’t be the first attempt. An Onion story entitled “Marxists’ Apartment a Microcosm of Why Marxism Doesn’t Work” contains the following line:

“A spirit of free-market competition in the house would likely result in better incomes or better grades,” Browning said. “Then, instead of being hated and ostracized by the world at large as socialist countries usually are, they could maintain effective diplomacy with their landlord, their parents, and Kirk’s boss who cut back his hours at Shaman Drum Books.”

The “dateline” on the story is Amherst, MA, not A2, but the comedy team at The Onion is pretty smart - when they need a name for a bookstore that a fictitious undergrad Marxist works at, it’s got to be something that’s both appropriate-sounding and funny in that context.

An addendum to all of these city studies: You probably didn’t miss that Detroit was recently named the country’s “fattest city.” This study got more press than the stress one, probably because fat is an easier thing to measure. However, Men’s Fitness, which conducted the survey, didn’t actually measure how fat people were in any city. Instead, they computed the rankings by counting things like gyms, fast food restaurants and television watching time - all things that inconclusive evidence might link to being fat or thin, but rather like picking the worst city for drunk-driving fatalities by counting liquor stores and roads.

Uh oh - is A2’s $4.79 milliion deficit going to knock us out of our number six position on the “least stressful cities” list?

It’ll probably still be calmer than ninth-most-stressful Detroit. Reports CNN, “Detroit has high murder rate, few restaurants.” They do quote a travel writer who says that its “post-apocalyptic feel” makes it a great place to visit for foreigners unfamiliar with U.S. cities. Is anyone else feeling a little uneasy?

To get everyone started, a remembrance:

Down on Fourth Avenue

I remember standing in my room at midnight

Trying to turn the heater on

There was this kelly green vinyl chair in our little living room

It looked great with the orange futon*

Through the long, lonely nights the radiator clanged

At 8 every weekend morning, nearby church bells rang

Down on Fourth Avenue

In the summer, my window air conditioner

I couldn’t plug it in the wall**

Well I’d park in the driveway beneath a window

My car was dented by its sudden fall

Unlike all the other houses, ours had no porch light

As I fumbled for my keys alone at night

Down on Fourth Avenue

And sometimes even now, when I’m feeling like I’m paying too much rent

I drift back in time and I remember that porch made of cement

Down on Fourth Avenue

Down on Fourth Avenue

* “chair” didn’t rhyme

** at least without one of those unsafe two-prong adapters that you can’t even buy anymore

As most of you reading this probably know, Bob Seger’s “Down on Main Street” was written about Main Street in Ann Arbor. And, as you’ve almost certainly observed, its lyrics, evoking seedy bars and strip clubs, are a bit incongruous with the current Main Street experience.

It’s time someone updated this classic. So - the first-ever Ann Arbor is Overrated contest. Post your entries for new lyrics to “Down on Main Street” that more accurately reflect the Main Street of today, and we’ll vote on a winner next week.

UPDATE: We’re hearing reports that “Down on Main Street” was actually about Fourth Avenue. We could write some great lyrics on that theme after spending a year in a certain apartment that was seedy enough to make Seger’s strip joint look like Palio. However, the original theme of the contest stands.

Someone’s been searching for “naked ashley mews” at this site. It’s a reasonable request - “Ashley Mews” would be a fine stripper stage name - and since we’re so eager to please, here it is: Ashley Mews in all its full-color glory. As this piece in the Copper Development Association’s magazine points out, “The handsome front and side doors greeting visitors entering Ashley Mews are bronze-clad over aluminum. If you’re one of the fortunate penthouse owners, you not only enter your dwelling through these doors, but you can maintain a firm grip on solid bronze railings while ascending the steps to the residential lobby.”

Writes grad student Anthony Ludlam in today’s Daily of his experience with GradCare administrative snafus, “my insurance has been ‘dropped’ without warning no less than three times, without my prior knowledge or consent.” This doesn’t at all square with our experience. Our coverage has been dropped about ten times, sometimes mid-semester.

Also, the Washington Post’s Style section shamelessly chases A2 trends by listing “homemade marshmallows” as one of its”in” things for 2004. Don’t they know that it’s all about Old Country Buffet pudding now?