ann arbor is overrated.

Watch out for a man hanging around North Division wearing a sweatshirt reading “The Punisher.”

Past the College Grounds gets a very prominent quote in this Free Press column about the Cool Cities initiative (in keeping with standard Web-ignorant print media practice, the column does not credit the site or its writer by name, let alone provide an address.) But while Brandon’s remarks about “well-meaning but clueless old farts” dominating the Ann Arbor Cool Cities task force meeting were a commentary aimed at what such meetings could do better, the Freep’s Dawson Bell takes them out of context to argue that the whole idea is doomed. Not only doomed, but flawed, because “[W]e might want to reconsider the value of an undertaking for which one measure of success is whether we can turn over our cities to ‘musicians and artists and hipsters and poets,’” to whom Bell refers with unintentional painful irony as “Bobos.”

Judy McGovern is concerned that new downtown development will lead to “trendy downtown living for the affluent, or for University of Michigan students - who are a welcomed part of the community but very different than year-round residents.” Well, if students are so different from year-round residents, why are we still stuck here at the end of June? (That is, “we” as in the writer of this weblog.)

Five local developers sound a distinctly pessimistic note about downtown development in a surprisingly candid Business Direct Weekly roundtable. “The funny thing about everything you read right now is somehow this is all going to stop urban sprawl, too. Come on: 500 units downtown?” “Mixed use - you don’t need it.” And, most depressingly, “But then people aren’t going to drive to Ann Arbor to park in a three-level underground parking structure to go up to Crate and Barrel. They’re going to go to Somerset (in Troy). It’s only 50 minutes away.”

A local blogger provides a little background (with photos) on the recent Ann Arbor News Police Beat item about a man who broke a window on an A2 house at 6 am last Wednesday and explained his actions by claiming that there had been a flash flood on the Flint River.

The Bank of Ann Arbor billboards we’ve seen around lately perhaps epitomize A2’s unfounded smugness. We can’t remember the exact wording - essentially, they point out that other banks have hundreds of branches, but then declare that you don’t need hundreds of branches. They don’t claim to offer something else - free checking, short lines, even hometown friendliness - in place of the extra locations. They just tell you that they don’t have them. It parallels the ways that Ann Arborites talk about their hometown: we’re just as good as any big city. And if a big city happens to have something we don’t, well, you don’t need that, whatever it is.

Columbia University economist David Weinstein, formerly of the U of M, explains the economics of variety in the NYT, with all the deserved smugness of one who’s managed to escape Tree Town: “In Ann Arbor, you have maybe a dozen good restaurants to choose from, and in New York you probably have several thousand good restaurants to choose from. Yet when you compute the price of a meal, you don’t take that at all into account.”

Someone keeps coming to this site and searching for “anything remotely useful or constructive.” We admire his or her persistence, but it’s not going to happen. We can, however, offer this Ann Arbor News story about the arrest of Eminem’s erstwhile spouse at Weber’s, where she was staying while a warrant was out for her arrest. We’re not sure where she got the idea that she could commit drug crimes and hide out in A2 indefinitely.

The Midwest may consistently be among the places that people would least like to live, but that’s just because “confused coastals” aren’t aware of its amazing opportunities, according to this Chicago Tribune story (reg. req.) For example, there’s this little town called Ann Arbor.

Architect Doug Kelbaugh grew up on the East Coast and spent 13 years in Seattle before relocating to Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1998.

“My wife and I were worried that we would be bored, especially because we were moving to a smaller city,” says Kelbaugh, dean of the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. “We assumed there was less going on culturally. It turns out that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Ann Arbor is hotbed of cultural activities. And because the cost of living here is less and access is easier than in Seattle or New York, we can take greater advantage of them.”

Arbor Update, the spankin’-new A2 news blog and successor to Goodspeed Update whose launch party we unfortunately missed when we went out of town, is looking for new contributors.