ann arbor is overrated.

As the last blogger in town to pick up the Observer and feverishly page
through to their “Weblog Guide,” we don’t have a lot new to say. We thought that the “recent posts” they picked for us - “critiques of news articles, examination of the term ‘Michigan hookup’, blogger slang” - were appropriately representative of the depth and seriousness we aim for at this site. Although, we’re not the first to notice that, of the nine blogs they picked to exemplify the “opinionated, tech-savvy residents” that make Ann Arbor “fertile ground” for a vibrant Web culture, three of them are from Ypsi and one of them is specifically devoted to hating Ann Arbor.

The Observer also marks the five-year anniversaries of a few local
businesses, including Leopold Brothers - congratulations! And a letter
from Wazoo’s music buyer complains about the (lack of) coverage given to our favorite local music store in an article about record shopping in A2 last month. We have noticed a tendency for local media to slight them in favor of Encore or Schoolkids.

And one non-Ann-Arbor business to whom we’d like to give a shout out - our hosting company, 2Xtreme Media, who got this site back up in less than a minute of being contacted after we exceeded our bandwidth restrictions this afternoon.

The new Trader Joe’s on Stadium prominently features an illustration of Ann “Arbour” Allen near the checkout. But where’s the love for fellow city namesake Mary Ann Rumsey, seemingly always destined to play Charlotte Caffey to Allen’s Belinda Carlisle?

And while we’re on Ann Arbor history, here’s what one writer had to say about A2 (or would that be just “A” back then?) in 1831: “emigrants are coming in so fast that people charge what rent they please.”

The News editorial page attempts to make sense of the alarming violence trend that’s gripped A2 in the past week, with a stabbing on William Street, a beating at the State Theater and a burglary and attempted sexual assault in a Thompson Street apartment. Trying to square these results with the perception of A2 as a low-crime, low-stress place, the News points out that crime is down 2 percent from 2002, which gives some explanation “as to why the city time and again rates as one of the country’s best on quality of life issues.” “Why should I move to Ann Arbor?” an out-of-town friend asks. “Well,” you can now say, “it was better last year than it was in 2002.”

Realizing that the police can’t do it all and continue to bust underage drinkers, the News has some helpful tips for how average citizens can help fight crime. Like “making sound decisions about where they should and should not be at night.” Central Campus rental housing at 4 a.m.? Why not just hold up a “Burglarize Me” sign?

One more musical tour that’s going to be more or less skipping A2: the every-17-year cicada infestation will have a less than “impressive” turnout in Tree Town. “It’s not the actual ’singing’ that is poignant but the chorus,” the Saginaw News points out. Sounds like any number of indie-rock outfits with plaintively off-key lead singers we’ve heard. Having spent most of the summer of 1987 indoors, we’re going to disregard MSU entomologist Fred Stehr’s suggestion to see the squishy, smelly, beady-eyed insects (hey, also could be indie rock!) at one of their gigs in Ohio or Indiana.

The incomprehensible A2 music scene explained: “There’s a special aesthetic to Ann Arbor, especially for musicians. It’s nice to have relationships where someone can be like, ‘Could you play tambourine or glockenspiel for us tonight?’ and there are so many people who’ll just come along with you,” says local musician Elliot Bergman in a story from the Daily Weekend Magazine’s local music issue. Well, there you go.

Most Tortured Metaphor of the Week award goes to Daily columnist D.C. Lee, in his column on the “Show Us the Jobs” tour: “Thus, the bus tour’s rationale that showcasing unemployment will counter misinformation regarding economic recovery is as disingenuous as filling a bus with 51 atheists and parading them around burnt down churches to prove that another bus full of bishops can’t prove there is a God.”

We don’t know how we missed this mlive.com article from last weekend (via Past the College Grounds), which takes a look at what the author claims is one of the main factors causing young people to leave the state in droves: clouds. But, wait - clouds aren’t so bad! They protect you from getting wrinkles, and, anyway the young and hip are moving to places like Portland or Seattle, which they must not realize are even cloudier. (Not mentioned in the piece: clouds often signify the few above-20-degree days of the winter.)

Next week, mlive.com explores other key reasons people are leaving Michigan that, upon closer examination, turn out not to be so well-founded. The state’s name ends in an ‘n’? Lots of cool places end in ‘n’s. Just look at Boston, and Austin, and…come on, it’s all been a big misunderstanding. Where’s everyone going?

In A2, even our Republicans are hip and with it. Said one GOP member after fellow Republican and city councilmember Marcia Higgins congratulated winning Democrats in the 2002 election, “She can go hang with her peeps (people).” We think the helpful parenthetical notation is the News’, but one can’t be sure.

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.)

The turnout at the Cool Cities meeting tonight (Tuesday night) was impressive, and many ideas were shared. With participants that fell well outside the 20-35-year-old demographic the governor is trying to attract, including a landlord and at least one couch-porch-ban supporter, it was a diverse crowd. But it wasn’t hard to come away discouraged. Sometimes, agreeing on certain core ideas, without falling into monolithic groupthink, is necessary to make progress. Monolitihic groupthink was not a problem tonight.

The thing that struck us was a sense of defeat. Concentrating on dense development outside of downtown is not itself a bad idea, but the suggested reason for doing so was to avoid having to fight the entrenched NIMBYism of places like the Old Fourth Ward. The idea of giving up on downtown completely, and instead starting from scratch and developing new cool neighborhoods in places like Lower Town, was popular.

The Cool Cities task force members are enthusiastic and hard-working, and they seem to have a real shot at making some good changes. But when one of the suggestions is harnessing the cool power of undergrads who were in their high school orchestras, you know it’s going to be an uphill battle.

Brandon wrote a better post about this.