Reality Check
If A2 is such a great city for dating, why do our grad students have to appear on reality dating shows? (Of course, she could have just stayed in town and learned about “amazing appetizers,” tai chi and beaded-bracelet-making at Womenfest.)
Who the fuck is Zimmerman in that story?
posted by js on March 18th, 2004 at 12:30 pmjs
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 18th, 2004 at 12:30 pmMaybe she’s from that big overpriced deli in Kerrytown. You know, Zimmerman’s.
posted by Boris on March 18th, 2004 at 12:32 pmWomanfest sounds like a good place to pick up some broads. It’s be fun to go down there and demand someone cook me a steak and give me a blowjob. (props to G. Carlin)
posted by Steven B. Cherry on March 18th, 2004 at 1:09 pmok, someone said this to me today, and I think its time to repeat it,
“how can you tell a Michigan student?”
“cause they tell you!!!”
in the example today the kid was even UM-flint
posted by Just a Voice on March 18th, 2004 at 4:24 pmShe’s in social work and she can’t meet people? Doesn’t compute. Grad student, huh? Ten bucks says she makes this tawdry experience into her thesis, with the nonword “(En)/Gendering” somewhere in the title.
posted by Laura on March 18th, 2004 at 9:14 pmHere I think you are protesting too much. Dating is terrible everywhere. It is an existential fact.
posted by Lucky Jackson on March 19th, 2004 at 8:52 amOfficial: Kerry failed
to act on pre-9/11 tip
3rd agent to say he warned security lapses made Boston airport ripe for ‘jihad’ attack
Posted: March 19, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Paul Sperry
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – A third federal aviation-security agent, one still with the government, has stepped forward to say he also warned Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry about security lapses at Boston’s Logan International Airport before the 9-11 hijackings there.
Earlier this week, two former FAA agents said the Democratic presidential hopeful failed to take effective action after they gave him a prophetic warning that his home airport was vulnerable to multiple hijackings.
Brian Sullivan, a retired special agent from the Boston area, advised Kerry in a May 7, 2001, letter (page 1, page 2) that Logan was ripe for a “jihad” suicide operation possibly involving “a coordinated attack.” He cited serious breaches at Logan security checkpoints exposed by an undercover investigation he and another former agent helped a Boston TV news station conduct.
Sullivan says he had a copy of the undercover videotape hand-delivered to Kerry’s office.
It turns out the person who delivered it was a senior FAA agent in Washington who’s now with the Transportation Security Administration. The agent, Bogdan Dzakovic, headed covert testing of airport security across the country before TSA took over aviation security from FAA after 9-11.
In an exclusive interview, he says he gave the tape to Jamie Wise, a Kerry staffer at the time.
After the office visit, “I received no feedback from anyone there,” Dzakovic told WorldNetDaily.
Kerry boasts in campaign ads he “sounded the alarm on terrorism years before 9-11.”
But he waited three months to reply to Sullivan’s letter. And his July 24, 2001, letter, a copy of which was obtained by WorldNetDaily, merely offers to pass Sullivan’s warning on to the Transportation Department’s inspector general – even though Sullivan had made it clear in his letter that going to his old agency was a dead end. He and other agents, including Dzakovic, had complained about security lapses for years and got nowhere.
“The DOT OIG has become an ineffective overseer of the FAA,” Sullivan told Kerry.
He suggested Kerry show the tape to peers on committees with FAA oversight. He even volunteered to testify before them.
Yet the correspondence stopped there. Kerry never followed up with him.
“He just did the Washington shuffle,” said Sullivan, who thinks Kerry had a chance to prevent the Boston hijackings.
Another former agent, Steve Elson, who set up the TV sting at Logan, tried to follow up with Kerry, but was told by Wise he wasn’t a constituent. (Elson, formerly of the elite Red Team that did covert testing, was a Houston field agent at the time.)
He came unglued, warning the staffer that if Kerry didn’t act soon he’d risk the lives of planeloads of his actual constituents.
“What would the senator say if a large plane filled with holiday travelers took off from Logan at Thanksgiving for somewhere in California and went – boom – spattering men, women, children and babies all over the landscape at a couple of hundred knots?” demanded Elson, an ex-Navy SEAL.
His warning now looks like prophecy: At least 82 Kerry constituents were murdered aboard American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175.
Elson says he also dealt with Gregg Rothschild, Kerry’s legislative director at the time. Attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.
Dzakovic laments the lack of attention to their warnings.
“We could have fed fish at the aquarium and accomplished just as much,” he said.
Sullivan is perhaps the most frustrated. His two-page warning to Kerry four months before the Logan hijackings was eerily prescient.
“With the concept of jihad, do you think it would be difficult for a determined terrorist to get on a plane and destroy himself and all other passengers?” he wrote. “Think what the result would be of a coordinated attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day. With our current screening, this is more than possible. It is almost likely.”
The toll from such an attack would be economic, as well as human, he predicted with chilling accuracy.
And the Logan security failures he highlighted in the letter included breaches at the very checkpoints the hijackers would later exploit.
The undercover investigation by Fox affiliate WFXT in Boston showed crews penetrating security checkpoints at Logan with knives and other weapons in nine of 10 tries.
Elson says the crew, led by reporter Deborah Sherman, walked through with Leatherman tools concealed in fanny packs. The Leatherman is a fancy utility knife. The 9-11 hijackers used utility knives. Sherman says she also had no luck getting Kerry to act on the video he apparently saw.
“It was always being ‘reviewed’ every time I called,” she said. “There was no comment or action taken on the senator’s part other than passing the tape along to someone else.”
Sullivan – a registered independent who’s also critical of Bush’s handling of aviation security, both before and since 9-11 – thinks Kerry could have saved the Twin Towers, which were toppled by the Boston jetliners, and thousands of lives.
“John Kerry should have – and could have – prevented 9-11,” he said.
How? “He could have taken direct action to address the concerns we had identified by visiting Logan and the MassPort authorities at Logan or the Massachusetts State Police,” he said.
If that didn’t work to bring about corrective action, he could have applied political pressure by having Sullivan and other agents testify before Congress, he says.
“Enhanced security would have prevented the hijackings, virtually without question,” Elson agreed. If nothing else, it might have discouraged ringleader Mohamed Atta, who monitored security procedures at Logan weeks before the hijackings.
Phone calls to Kerry’s campaign were not returned.
Right after 9-11, he told the Boston Globe that he’d triggered an undercover probe of Logan security by the General Accounting Office in June 2001, based on the TV report.
Only, he wrote Sullivan no such thing in his July letter, stating only that he passed his warning and the tape on to Transportation, not GAO.
And GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, did not test security at Logan. (Kerry confessed he didn’t know the outcome of the probe he says he initiated.)
GAO spokesman Jeff Nelligan says there is no evidence Kerry requested anything specific with regard to Logan, although he says GAO had communications with “a number of interested members and staff, including Sen. John Kerry’s office” about airport screener testing work in 2001.
He would not elaborate.
Sullivan and Elson, joined by aviation-security experts David Forbes and Andrew Thomas, want to see Kerry called before the 9-11 Commission, as well as President Bush, to answer questions about what he knew about Logan’s lapses, and specifically what he did about them, before that fateful day. They also recommend GAO and Transportation officials testify to sort out discrepancies in Kerry’s story.
Calls to the panel were not immediately returned.
“We don’t have to wait for a tragedy to occur to act,” Sullivan urged Kerry in his letter.
posted by Fred Jackson on March 19th, 2004 at 9:06 amThanks Fred, that was exactly the type of thing that I had no desire to read on AAIO.
posted by js on March 19th, 2004 at 10:04 amHow about this? Bush was given warnings about a year in advance too. I guess we should all just vote Nader again.
js
ditto JS. I sometime i feel that i’m writing too long off topic stuff. Then someone like him always comes along and puts things in perspective.
posted by Just a Voice on March 19th, 2004 at 11:25 amAre we to infer from this article that Kerry is having a diffult time dating in Ann Arbor?
I thought he was married.
posted by todd on March 19th, 2004 at 11:38 amTo get back on topic, (both on dating and coolness) one interesting thing is that if one goes on www.erosguide.com and compares the cities listed there with the cities listed by Richard Florida, one finds a STRONG correlation between cool cities and cities with an abundance of escort services. Has the task force considered offering tax incentives to high priced call girls in order to get them to set up business?
posted by Lucky Jackson on March 19th, 2004 at 12:11 pmLucky
Hmm…then judging by the Metro Times ad section Detroit is the last word in cool.
posted by Laura on March 19th, 2004 at 8:59 pmThough Lucky seemed to spell his stuff correctly this time, I think it was Nick who pondered the possibility that Leavenworth might indeed be the dating capital of America.
Hats off to Nick.
Never been to Leavenworth, and haven’t been to Ann Arbor in well over a decade, but as a male of the species, word always was — Michigan had the smart, ugly ones (I married a “Huron”).
Ann Arbor was never overrated in regards to the attractiveness of their coeds.
Ilya
posted by ilya on March 19th, 2004 at 10:03 pmDating is just horrible to begin with… we’re just being efficient by eschewing it altogether.
There are cute girls in Ann Arbor. They come out exactly twice a year: the first week of fall term and the last week of spring. The rest of the time, they’re covered in puffy down jackets.
That being said, I’m wearing a miniskirt tomorrow. So fuck you, Old Man Winter.
posted by snickerdoodle on March 19th, 2004 at 10:27 pmHey Snickerdoodle–
I’m a crazed knitter too! (www.needleandhook.com–although it hasn’t been updated in ages). You should come knit with us one of these Thursdays. We alternate locations. Drop me an email if you’re interested.
posted by Alex on March 20th, 2004 at 8:49 amI am going to knit a miniskirt, then wear it in the snow. What a koinky-dink.
What is so bad about dating? It can be a wonderful source of entertaining freaky stories.
posted by Mark on March 20th, 2004 at 11:55 amAnd by the way, the Leavenworth comment was ALL MINE! ha ha ha
posted by Alex on March 20th, 2004 at 12:35 pmYou will be awarded 15 points for the Leavenworth comment, and an additional 10 for being a knitter.
posted by Mark on March 20th, 2004 at 12:50 pm“It can be a wonderful source of entertaining freaky stories.”
True. Farce is the highest form of comedy…
Yay for knitting!
I’m new to this site, so I have a question… how exactly is Ann Arbor overrated? I don’t recall ever hearing it highly rated in the first place…
posted by snickerdoodle on March 20th, 2004 at 1:52 pmCheck the Observer or any one of the “About Ann Arbor” pages that U-M departments put on their websites.
posted by Nick on March 20th, 2004 at 7:07 pmIncidentally, at one of the Lansing cool cities meetings, the coolest cities in teh area were ranked as follows:
1.Chicago
2. Ann Arbor
3. Grand Rapids
4. Detroit
5. Lansing
I tend to agree, that I might put Detroit ahead of Grand Rapids. Ann Arbor may in fact be the coolest place in Michigan. (I count Ypsi as part of the AA area.)
posted by Lucky Jackson on March 20th, 2004 at 7:33 pmGrand Rapids has some cool urban neighborhoods and quirky business districts, and definitely less abandoned space, but overall Detroit is definitely cooler, especially as Grand Rapids has virtually no music scene and Detroit’s is pretty dang good, depending on what styles you are into. Unfortunately, Detroit seems to be trying to make its downtown into what GR’s is (lame yuppie/Bobo crap).
posted by Brandon on March 20th, 2004 at 8:44 pmWell, since both the Observer and the U of M exist to lure unsuspecting people here and take their money, I don’t think you can consider them reliable sources.
Seriously, though. Ann Arbor’s probably as cool as a small city in the midwest can be. Got any better ones?
posted by snickerdoodle on March 21st, 2004 at 12:34 pmWord on the street is that Lawrence, KS is really cool, but I’ve never been there. Hamtramck and Ypsi are pretty cool. I’m sure there are plenty more.
posted by Brandon on March 21st, 2004 at 2:28 pmLawrence ain’t a bad town, although it’s even more midwestern and football oriented than this town. If that’s possible. And it’s smaller, in an even less densely populate, insanely flat state. They have some good venues there, and *all* the national acts go through there.
But is there really a point to ranking the best of the worst?
posted by Alex on March 21st, 2004 at 3:04 pmI have a friend who just got accepted into U. Iowa’s writing program (supposedly the best in the country) but is feeling a little trepidation about moving to Iowa City. I get the impression it’s a step down from Ann Arbor… I’ve driven through, and it seemed pleasant enough, but just tiny and probably dull as heck. Anyone lived there?
Also, anyone ever live in College Park, Maryland… and would commuting from Adams Morgan or somewhere else in DC be feasible?
posted by Brandon on March 21st, 2004 at 6:40 pmI have heard Iowa City is actually pretty rokken. I have friends that went to Grinell and they loved it there. And they’re worldly people who live here in AA now and think they’ve taken a step down. I know that national act bands regularly go through there, if that’s any indication.
I grew up in the Maryland/DC area. College Park is a world unto itself, and there isn’t a whole lot of back-and-forth between there and DC. At least not amongst the people that I knew there. IN fact, you might even be closer to Baltimore than to DC. As for living in Adams Morgan and commuting to College Park, when I lived there the subway definitely didn’t go that far. Although it might now–or you might be able to train and then bus. Otherwise you’ll need to drive, and that stretch of the Beltway is some of the worst traffic in the whole country. Don’t quote me on this, but my guess is the DC to College Park commute would take you at least an hour each way.
Not to mention the parking situation in Adams Morgan is horrendous, and the rents are exceptionally high–almost as high as NYC. You’d find cheaper rents and better parking in Mt. Pleasant (or U Street, or Capital Hill). But your promiximity to major public transit hubs is slightly more removed from there. Plus gentrification is definitely already well under-way in that ‘hood so it may not be as reasonably priced as it once way.
posted by Alex on March 21st, 2004 at 7:28 pmPS–Your friend should go to the Iowa writing program. Grad school is temporary; a degree is forever.
posted by Alex on March 21st, 2004 at 7:29 pmThanks Alex… according to info I’ve found the Green Line does go to College Park, and it is far closer to DC than Baltimore… Parking isn’t a priority– the plan is to live somewhere I can walk/bike/transit around town and only use the car for occassional out-of-town trip. Some website was making Adams-Morgan sound like the perfect gritty, hip, non-gentrified, diverseneighborhood, but maybe it is more pricey and that isn’t the case: http://www.beyonddc.com/profiles/adamsmorgan.html
Anyway, I’m going to visit the University of Maryland next week and plan to check out DC. Say I’m looking for somewhere affordable and not very gentrified area, but a place that still has record stores, cool bars with good music, preferably ethnic diversity, etc… any neighborhoods you recommend?
posted by Brandon on March 21st, 2004 at 8:01 pmPersonally I hate DC so I’m definitely the wrong person to ask! Ha ha ha. But I do think Mt. Pleasant or U Street are your best bets. DuPont Circle will be way too pricey.
Adams Morgan is absolutely positively gentrified and expensive, although it does have its gritty parts and it is diverse (although less and less so).
Anyway, U Street has lots of bars, restaurants, and its kinda in the ghetto (the whole area is a renewal project) so you should check it out down there. Mt. Pleasant is diverse, but primarily residential. Adams Morgan is diverse, and have bars and restaurants (and a good record store called DCCD). DuPont is pretty over-developed. Georgetown is a tourist trap, although if Smash is still there they always used to have good records. As did Orpheus, but they may have gone under years ago. Most of the places I used to buy records at are long gone. Although I think Phantasmagoria is still alive and kickin’ out in Wheaton. There’s actually fair amounts of cool stuff in the various suburbs around DC and those are pretty much car traveling places.
A friend of mine just moved to DC a few months ago. Her info on DC is a lot more current than mine, I’d be happy to put you in touch.
See the nice long, informative posts you get from me when I’m procrastinating?!?!
posted by Alex on March 21st, 2004 at 8:48 pmYou’re correct that the Green now extends all the way to College Park (although you do have to wait there for a shuttle to bring you to the UMD campus, which can suck in winter). As far as areas of DC to live, it’s a pretty fucking expensive city and very economically segregated. You might want to check out the Cleveland Park/Woodley Park/Van Ness area (up CT Ave from Dupont Circle) - it’s a little more residential, with a fair number of embassies, not as cool as other parts of town, but beautiful, less expensive and right on the Red line. Another popular option is Silver Spring - not as cool or fun as living in DC, but you can live by the Metro pretty easily and cheaply, and it is a really young area (at least it was before Discovery America relocated there last year). I wouldn’t recommend Adams Morgan to live in - it is a fun area that you’d want to spend time in (I’d recommend a coffee place called Tryst and a loud-as-hell dirt-cheap bar called the Common Share) - but crime can be a problem, it’s a brisk 20+ min. walk to the Metro, the parking is horrible, and it’s extremely expensive. You can find good deals on Cap Hill, but neighborhood quality is variable and you’re not near the Metro. NE and SE are generally to be avoided, and lots of parts of NW near NE are sketchy - definitely scout your neighborhoods. A good strategy for getting apartments in DC is to fill out as many rental applications for buildings you like as soon as you can, so that when spaces open up you’re already approved. Hope that helps, Brandon.
As far as your friend in Iowa City, yeah, if you get into the best grad program in the country you’ve got to take a deep breath and do it (at least I’ll keep telling myself that). If 4-5 years in a less-than-scintillating city will give you lots of choices regarding your entire adult quality of life, make the sacrifice. And my cousin (from Portland, OR) lives there and is quite happy with it (although she is married and not in grad school).
posted by Nick on March 21st, 2004 at 8:59 pmIowa’s writing program is — hands down — the best in the country. Your friend should suck it up and go. I’ve actually heard pretty good things (as far as midwestern college towns) about Iowa city. Better than Urbana, for what that’s worth.
posted by Anna on March 21st, 2004 at 9:23 pmGood bars in Adams Morgan (if they’re still there even): Assylum in Exile, Hell, and Madam’s Organ. Tryst is way too yuppie for me. But then again, all of DC is way too yuppie for me. The bar at the Black Cat used to be an ok place to hang out, but I haven’t been there since they moved locations. State of the Union on U Street is pretty cool too. And I love the Velvet Lounge on pricipal–it’s the shittiest rock club ever and it rulez.
DC is segregated in every way possible. It’s pretty bizarre how, given that the population of the city is about 80% black, if you live in NW all of your neighbors are likely to be white. Even the queers are ultra-conservative. People in the music scene are cliquish and militant. The metro shuts down at midnight. It was a great place to grow up during the Dance of Days, but I ain’t ever going back
posted by Alex on March 21st, 2004 at 9:58 pmYeah, OK, DC has its downsides, as only a town comprised almost entirely of lawyers, bureaucrats and service contractors can be. But Brandon shouldn’t worry - after 2 years in DC in his early 20s, he’ll be all set to get married and move outside the Beltway like everyone else does.
Also, is it that the music scene there is militant and cliquish or that all the bands suck so badly it even upsets them?
posted by Nick on March 21st, 2004 at 10:48 pmI remember being bored in Iowa City as a tenth-grader at a math competition. Of course, if we weren’t too geeky to have fake IDs, it might have been cooler.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 22nd, 2004 at 12:27 amThanks, folks. Okay– DC music scene: better or worse than A2/Detroit?
posted by Brandon on March 22nd, 2004 at 2:07 amWell, DC has Adam West (www. fandangorecs.com) so I don’t know….
Do you mean in terms of local bands or availability of shows? DC is much larger, has more venues, more acts go through there. The bands coming out of Detroit are better, in my opinion, than DC bands. But I lost interest in the Positive Force/Dischord hegemony years ago.
But there’s definitely more variety in DC. Like go go for instance–a native DC musical phenomenon. Lots of salsa and latino music. More big nightclubs with dancy music. Etc and so on. Lack of music was never my complaint about the place.
posted by Alex on March 22nd, 2004 at 7:08 amDC kills Detroit in every conceivable category…
What were you doing in DC Alex?
Personally, it is one of my favorite cities in the world. Real honest to god multiculturalism. Great food. Great bars. Always something to do. Smithsonian. 9:30 club.
I did the undergrad thing there, and was fortunate enough to land a job at the front desk at a swanky hotel in Georgtown. The Concierge desk was too old to take advantage of all the freebies for everythine wealthy people get to do….theater, art openings, restaraunt openings, old restaurants….so they punted on all of the “gifts” to me. Had a ball for next to no money. If you want to do DC on 5 bucks or less, I’m your man.
Try Crystal City…yes, parts of it are an unforutnate underground concrete jungle, but there are some nice little neighborhoods that aren’t too pricey (or weren’t in ‘94)….same can be said of Pentagon City. Both areas have Metro stops that are a few from downtown. I lived there and loved it….not so much the area, but the price and the proximity to the city.
Hope you like talkin’ politics!
posted by todd on March 22nd, 2004 at 8:29 amIowa City’s actually really nice. Hell, it’s even got a Wazoo (thoguht it’s not related the two in MI). My mother thought about getting her doctorate there for a while, so we had to do a bunch of those “let’s peruse the town” trips. Then two of my cousins ended up there, and both of them loved it (of course, they’re from a town of 200 in Wisconsin, so your milage may vary). From what I hear, the music scene is kinda weak, but enough cool people go for the writing programs, so there are always things to do.
posted by js on March 22nd, 2004 at 10:57 amjs
I grew up in DC. Of course I moved away in 1991, and aside for one summer internship haven’t been back for more than 4 consecutive days since then–but my family is still there, so I’m stuck with it.
I have noticed that people who grew up there can’t stand it, and people who went to college there and/or moved there as adults love it. It’s definitely the place for me, but lots of people dig it.
If you’re talking about the new 9:30 Club it’s actually the old WUST hall, and it’s big and I’m not into it. The old 9:30 Club, which was at 930 F Street, was one of the best rock venues ever. That’s where I saw SNFU, got splattered with gore by GWAR, and saw the last Marginal Man show. Sigh, why can’t the world be like it was in 1988?
posted by Alex on March 22nd, 2004 at 1:41 pmsorry, *not* the place for me. wierd Fruedian slip? I think not!
posted by Alex on March 22nd, 2004 at 1:43 pmNo, Iowa City is definitely not better than Urbana.
posted by g on March 23rd, 2004 at 2:25 am