ann arbor is overrated.

Murph gives a fascinating account of Doug Cowherd’s recent appearance at the Department of Urban Planning that explores the local Sierra Club bigwig’s “beyond smooth” rhetorical tactics for blunting criticism of his organization as an anti-density NIMBY lobby. At the event, Cowherd described “things people send me occasionally that they’ve found online” as “amazing, simply Orwellian.”

We have always been at war with the Old West Side. We have never been at war with the Old Fourth Ward.

Business Review profiles a Kerrytown condo and its designer. “You would never know you’re in downtown Ann Arbor,” she says of its quiet backyard that provides a refuge from those raucous Zingerman’s and Artisans’ Market crowds. $1.2 million still seem a little steep, especially with its roof at an angle that was supposed to be French but ended up being Italian? “It’s a hard price range,” the realtor listing the property concedes, “but Ann Arbor is a unique market. I always tell my clients, ‘You’ll know when home is home.’ It speaks to you.”

As far as creative capitalization and punctuation goes, LoFT 322 has nothing on

V

ie: FITNESS & SPA,

“downtown Ann Arbor’s premier fitness studio.” Is it supposed to be parsed “V, i.e., fitness and spa,” or would that be too easily confused with “V, e.g., fitness and spa”?

Maybe they could merge with V2V and form V

ie:2V

ie:

Jo Mathis makes the case for A2 as a great place to retire. Says one local retiree, “It has everything a big city could offer, but it’s a lot quieter.” It also has everything a seaport could offer, but it’s a lot more landlocked. And everything a tropical island could offer, but it’s a lot colder.

The Ann Arbor Summer Festival website is pushing the “squared” theme hard with its slogan “Senses^2 in A^2.” That’s right; attending Summer Fest will temporarily put you in a heightened state of awareness in which you have 25 senses.

You probably thought that we were going to post something complaining about yesterday’s snowfall. Well, we’re not. We actually thought it was pretty cool; for one glorious day, everyone else was as miserable in A2 as we are. Of course, the News manages to put their familiar “it’s not as bad as other places in Michigan” spin on it, like they’ve done for everything from tornadoes to poor air quality, in a story titled “Snow spares area but slams Oakland“. By “spares” they mean “dumps 6 1/2 rather than 16 inches of freezing slush on everything.”

As almost a sort of counterpart to the Daily’s series on A2 slumlords, the Ann Arbor News puts its priorities on display with a personal essay on the hardships of home remodeling. “Living through a home remodeling project is a long, dark journey to something better,” Lisa Carolin, whose house is in the process of having a foyer and laundry room added, writes. Among the indignities: “[T]he water softener has remained off through the construction making hard water a daily part of our diet and scalps.” And as if that weren’t bad enough, “We have to park on the lawn.”

The Daily’s second installment in their series about the appalling condition of A2 rental housing is even more alarming than the first. A description of one “decent middle-class” house: “Visitors have to step over doors that have rotted off their hinges, and they have to avoid insects that enter the house through holes in the ceiling where broken ceiling panels have not been replaced. Duct tape holds the doors closed and prevents air from drafting through the poorly insulated windows.” We’ve been dealing with our own landlord issues as of late; last week, the pipes connecting our house to the street backed up, dumping sewage all over our basement and the first floor bathroom. Our landlord did have it fixed, but we’ve asked him to clean the place with bleach to eliminate mold and bacteria, and he hasn’t responded to our calls. We’re not optimistic that any of our belongings ruined by the sewage will be replaced, either.

Unfortunately, the Daily’s journalism doesn’t fare as well with their scolding report on “study drugs” like Ritalin and Adderall, which fails to quote even one student who has ADHD and is taking the drugs with a prescription.

We were thinking of doing something like this for April Fools’ Day, but the satire is funnier 18 days late.

David Byrne on his appearance in Ann Arbor last summer, putting his finger on exactly what’s wrong with the A2 arts scene:

Our show is part of a arts festival that the University is putting on. We’re in a lovely medium sized theater on campus. Somehow, possibly accidentally on purpose, this festival seems to have managed to almost totally exclude the student body. That’s a considerable achievement, as there are students everywhere, even though school is out. There are smattering of younger faces in the audience, but mostly it seems to be faculty or former faculty who have possibly put on an arts festival for themselves. Well, that’s OK too, I guess. There were no ads that I could see in the music section of the local alt weekly- though the daily paper did run prominently the AP wire service article about my doings.