ann arbor is overrated.

The text summing up the Current’s reader-selected “Best of Washtenaw County” is even more explicit in its mockery of the whole thing than last year. “Barry’s Bagel broke the bagel rut by coming in first place for Best Bagel,” the passage observes dryly. But along with shattering years of bagel hegemony, the readers also used their ballots for pointed commentary on the A2 singles scene and absolutely hilarious spoof votes, like Stadium Hardware for “Best Nail Salon.” “[H]ow could any of our voters have trouble finding a date, with such a droll and peculiar sense of humor?” How indeed?

Jessica Jernigan’s profile of “Best Women’s Clothing” store Vintage to Vogue — sorry, V2V — is either less dry or extremely dry. “V2V is well on its way to becoming not just a great place to buy a snazzy skirt or a very cool pair of shoes, but a total lifestyle emporium for Washtenaw County’s aesthetic cognoscenti.” The only Washtenaw County event we’ve attended is Larry Kestenbaum’s swearing-in as county clerk, and we can’t say that we detected the presence of an aesthetic cognoscenti there.

As exciting as it must be to compile a list like this year after year (is Raja Rani going to be the “Best Indian Restaurant” and Shalimar runner-up this year — or the other way around? Is Eve going to take “Best New Restaurant” for the second year in a row?) what we need is something more like this: the 50 Most Loathsome Ann Arborites. Only we can’t even muster up enough hate to do it; we’re pretty sure the exercise would quickly devolve. (”What kind of name is ‘Leigh’ anyway?” “Bill Knapp may not actually be an Ann Arborite, but…”)

The News’ special section of greenway letters runs slightly in favor of the Downtown Development Authority plan, but the greenway supporters aren’t giving up. “Next to landfills and war zones, parking garages are the worst use of our precious Earth,” writes Steven Tutino, referring to the DDA’s little-known first two proposals for the First and William site. Greenway supporter Matthew DeGenaro suggests that A2 emulate that model of parks and green space, Las Vegas. “[W]hy should we try to make Ann Arbor ‘cool’ for young people? Ann Arbor is already cool and there are enough young people. I think we should be trying to attract more wealthy retirees to live here. Look at Las Vegas: It has a tremendous growth rate built on retiree wealth.” But Deborah Green provides the most compelling argument against a parking lot: “People don’t come to cities to see parking structures…When I think of a ‘cool city,’ I don’t think of parking structures.” Wait a second, we thought the parking lot was “cool” (although not cool.) Maybe only if “cool” is bad?

The News trots out the well-worn “accidental activist” label to describe Friend of the Ann Arbor Greenway Margaret Wong, who’s “upset about some comments on Web sites portraying her organization as a collection of ‘Not-In-My-Back-Yard’ residents.” We have to say that Wong was the most polite, least strident pro-greenway speaker at last week’s Council meeting, and we’d be extremely surprised to find out that she had participated in the booing and other hijinks that other greenway supporters engaged in that night.

Wong even says she’ll stop pushing for the greenway if “there isn’t public support for it.” But, the News editorializes, “there are no signs of that as of yet,” justifying this claim by pointing out that “earlier this month, more than a hundred people showed up to a town forum and City Council meetings.” Including us, Murph and a list of public speakers that split almost evenly on the Friends-supported Easthope-Johnson resolution, which was eventually voted down by everyone except Easthope and Johnson. More evidence: “As of last week, 600 people had signed a petition on the group’s Web site.” All right, who told them about our sophisticated technology?

Todd has sent us an update on the greenway charrette he’s organizing at Leopold Bros. (We had to look up “charrette.” It’s apparently some kind of planning workshop with a lot of people.)

I’m happy to report that Rene Greff has accepted my offer to give the DDA presentation at Leopold Bros.

I spoke with Joe O’Neal just this past Friday, and he’s pretty sure that he can give a presentation on his vision of the greenway. He will let me now for certain on Tuesday. On a personal note, he was a very, very nice man who speaks with an authoritative wisdom that I found really appealing. His vision for the greenway is a long term vision (30+ years), and I have to openly admit that I really liked what he told me in about 5 minutes of conversation. Private funding. Parks in unbuildable floodplains. Flexibility on his part. Pretty cool. I think that his presentation will be great, and I look forward to hearing it. His only issue was that the charrette “not turn into a shouting match”. I couldn’t agree more. That wouldn’t be tolerated. Not in my house.

Ms. Wong of Friends of the Greenway has declined my offer. I have to admit that I am dissapointed.

I sent my email request to the Sierra Club’s Chairman Mike Sklar, and have not received a response. I am hoping that the problem is that he hasn’t seen the email somehow. If anyone is a member of the Sierra Club, please get a hold of your executive committee to ensure that they have received my invitation. It would be criminal, in my opinion, if the Sierra Club either didn’t receive my invitation, or declined to attend this event. Please help me out if you can. Thanks. You can reach me at brewer@leopoldbros.com

The response that I have received from both the City Council and the Planning Commission has been overwhelmingly positive. Easthope, in particular, expressed his support for the charrette. Two council members will be in attendance if time permits them, and Ms. Hall told me that it is likely that most of the Planning Staff will come too. I have recieved interest from professors from the Environmental Engineering school, as well as the CEMP program. I think that this is going to be a SRO gig.

When Mr. O’Neal gets back to me, we will set a date, and I will post it here at AAIO.

The Current’s “In Other Words” column this month features the musings of an EMU student who’s been walking around in a kind of daze, snapping back to full consciousness only to find that there’s a Zoup! near her house, her cereal is crunchy but quickly becomes soggy and Terry Gross interrupts people laughing on Fresh Air to ask them questions. And there are other, more sinister happenings that suddenly become apparent to her newly critical eye. For instance, EMU is using its “technology classes” as part of a program to soften up human students into eventually accepting an impending cyborg takeover:

Cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick says that “borgs” are human beings that embody some machine-like traits. While reading an article about borgs, I attempt to practice my new sense of attentiveness. I notice that the author refers to the process of cyborg-ization as an upgrade for human beings…Having gone through a sudden transformation from completely comatose to being constantly alert, I acknowledge this subtle attempt to persuade me — the human reader — to think that becoming a cyborg is progress is, at best, propaganda.

But it gets worse. EMU’s subtle pro-machine conditioning program has almost inured her to the evil of the supermarket self-checkout, when “[I]t hits me like tear gas at an International Monetary Fund rally.” Which, as we all know, is pretty fast. “I, along with the dozen other shoppers around me, have chosen to interact with a machine instead of a live, conscious human being!” We can only resist those cybernetic implants and wait for the day when the author will “implement a progressive curriculum in literature classes across the country.”

Ann Arbor underrated? “[T]here’s a lot of life in [A2] outside of football season,” The Boston Globe reports in a story that makes an attempt at clearing up some long-held misconceptions about A2. Among its virtues: a commitment to local businesses on State Street. “Ann Arborites stay true to their small-town roots; a Ben & Jerry’s franchise next door to the Stucchi’s State Street location sees little business.”

With the exclamation point vacuum created by the absence of Great Eats in the Ann Arbor Streets, something had to come in and satisfy the law of conservation of effusive description, and we really couldn’t have done better than Great Wraps! (The exclamation point is part of the name, not how we chose to end the sentence.)

Former MSA President and current law student Matt Nolan once again displays his inability to get it — this time, the distinction between grad school and preprofessional school. “[T]hey are still taking classes,” he writes. Not the PhD candidates, who also throw off the GEO opposition’s figures about the cost of tuition waivers. “[T]hey’re students — just like you and me, except they get free tuition and a boatload of money in a stipend.” Yeah, grad students are just like these super-undergrads who happen to get paid, right? How did they manage to fool every university in the country into paying them to take classes? And why have the small undergrad teaching colleges been able to see through their elaborate ruse? Wait, it’s on the tip of our tongue…eight-letter word, starts with “r”, ends with “search”…

We just returned from the first part of the City Council meeting on the greenway (it went into closed session for a while.) Some highlights:

• The first speaker on the issue, whose name we missed, began, “Once upon a time I was a citizen. Now I stand before you apparently a NIMBY.” She continued, “a couple of people have asked me, ‘Hey what about New York?’” but quickly demolished this argument that has apparently been so essential to the pro-DDA position: “Have they ever asked New Yorkers what they think about their crumbing sewers and water mains?” She then encouraged listeners to imagine themselves in the following scenario: You wake up in your condo at Ashley Mews, do some shopping in Kerrytown, have coffee at Zola and “now you want some green space.”

• When it was urban planning Dean Douglas Kelbaugh’s turn to speak, he wasn’t there, and Old Fourth Ward Association stalwart Chris Crockett stood up and introduced herself instead. A slightly bewildered-seeming Hieftje told her that there could be no substitutions for speakers.

• Dan Faichney, a planning student*, stood up and gave a speech that outlined a few main points to support the DDA’s plan. The only part of it that could have been considered inflammatory was his characterization of the greenway as an “environmentally irresponsible” plan with the potential to “undermine Ann Arbor’s reputation as a place for everyone.” Loud booing followed.

• A pro-greenway speaker asked those in favor of the greenway (that’s how he worded it — he didn’t mention the specific Easthope proposal) to stand. Everyone around us stood, and we couldn’t see anything. We didn’t notice anyone who was standing in the standing-room-only chamber sit on the floor to signify their non-support.

* UPDATE: We goofed. He is a U of M student, but not a planning student.

“Latte art proficiency is rare in the United States,” Talk About Town reports. But A2’s Cafe Zola has its very own latte artist, who recently reached the finals at the Free-Pour Latte Art Competition despite being a “self-taught barista” who learned his rosette-pouring skills on the streets of Saline.