ann arbor is overrated.

Randy Cohen’s “Ethicist” column grapples with the particularly thorny question of an Ann Arborite who wants to steal roses from Chopin’s grave.

The notorious Packard drug house is all set to reopen for new tenants, with the same landlord but a different management company. “Some interior construction issues remain, but gone are the crumbling exterior walls, worn paint and numerous code violations,” reports the News. Interior construction issues? Well, as long as the neighboring homeowners don’t have to look at peeling paint.

The Detroit News’ Daniel Howes argues that it’s time for Michigan to start cutting spending, especially on “a state university in Ann Arbor that acts private, so why isn’t it?” How does a university “act private”?

A “legendary local baker” thinks that the symbols on the Espresso Royale sign on West Huron are reminiscent of sperm, Talk About Town reports.

Great Eats in the Ann Arbor Streets is the A2 equivalent of the Onion’s “Outside Scoop” entertainment column with its over-the-top praise of downtown chain restaurants. “The newest and yummiest sensation to hit State Street, is Buffalo Wild Wings!!!” “HONEY BAKED HAM!!! Yes, I said it Ham!!!” We sincerely hope that this newest and yummiest addition to the A2 blog scene is a final project for some kind of public relations class.

It’s a good thing we have the Michigan Review to stand against the sordid “obsession with sex” and “moral absence” that, they argue, so often defines college life.

Neighborhood associations are miffed that A2 government isn’t kowtowing to them on development issues. “As far as affordable housing is concerned, I personally don’t think there’s any point in protesting because I think the city council has an agenda, and they’re not going to listen to what we say,” says the president of the West Liberty Homeowners Association. We realize we have to give credit to the Old Fourth Ward Association for at least not having a name that specifically excludes neighborhood residents who rent their homes.

What could happen if their concerns are overlooked? “What happens is that more and more affordable housing keeps coming, and the risk is that you could just create a ghetto of some sort,” she says (emphasis ours.) More and more affordable housing? It’s an outrage! Anyway, she continues, the “snooty” residents of Burns Park should shoulder some of the burden of living with these undesirables too.

Some of the neighborhood associations would like to see affordable housing created downtown instead of in their areas, but that solution has detractors too, who worry that “taller buildings will not fit in with the character of the downtown and may cast undesirable shadows on other buildings.” Undesirable shadows? Like what, a dog or an alligator? Is the First National Building afraid that its wrinkles will be thrown into sharp relief by an unflattering shadow?

When we heard that the MSA was hosting a forum on the couch ban, we wondered if it wouldn’t be better to let the idea die a quiet death, rather than get all of its proponents all fired up once again about the dreaded upholstered blights on the landscape — sorry, fire hazards. It did, however, elicit this very revealing remark from Leigh Greden: “[M]easures such as installing sprinklers in all rental units would be prohibitively expensive for landlords and costs would be passed on to tenants. But banning couches from porches doesn’t cost anything and makes students safer, he said.”

Chris Heaton, a Campus Management owner who bans porch couches in his leases but thinks that doesn’t go far enough, also spoke at the forum. You may remember Heaton from a letter he wrote to the News in which he characterized U of M students as effete, privileged snobs who “condescend to decent middle-class housing.” We’re not moving, but if we were, we’d be very hesitant to look at anything under the control of Campus Management.

Photographic evidence of last week’s A2 celeb sightings, including Kid Rock. Uncle Grambo has some blistering words for this “posse of durstian douchebags”: “[F]eel free to publicly mock these buzzless cockrings for having the unmitigated gall to houseparty with undergrads.” Being the guy in the Onion’s “Guy At House Party At Least 35″ apparently becomes cool when you’re a Red Wing.

Murph meets with the neighborhood association that opposed the 828 Greene proposal and finds himself won over. Now, we’re not a planner of any sort and we know less about the proposal than he does, but we’re still unconvinced — not unconvinced that this proposal may have some major problems, but unconvinced that we wouldn’t be better off approving a version of it that the neighbors probably still wouldn’t support. Even though these residents may be nice people who played the anti-student card only because they had to and really wish there were some kind of drugstore downtown, we haven’t seen anything that suggests they recognize the need for density, or at least density in their neighborhood. And while a development like this may be an abuse of the zoning code, sometimes the zoning code may need to be abused.