The Detroit News tackles the pressing issue of suburbanites who have to endure noise from radios, traffic and skateboards. “In years past, city-dwellers often moved to the suburbs to get away from the noise. But sprawl and modern lifestyles are cutting into the tranquility of suburbia, too.” Isn’t that kind of like saying that suburbia is cutting into the tranquility of suburbia?
The News runs a feature on burglary in Ann Arbor. “The typical scenario is this: A student leaves the front or back door unlocked, then goes out for a while or heads to sleep, and later discovers a laptop computer, Sony PlayStation or DVDs missing.” Not typical enough, though, for a student to be the profiled victim in the accompanying “human side” piece, which explores the feelings of a serial burglar, a Burns Park homeowner and an Ann Arbor Police detective in the aftermath of crime. (One of the detective’s cases described in the story does involve the apartment of a recent U of M alum.)
But students aren’t just blamed for contributing to the problem by neglecting to lock their doors and windows; they’re actually buying the stolen goods. Or at least AAPD detective Brian Jatczak has “a feeling that they’re re-circulated around campus and sold back to students some way.”
The New West Side Association, spearheaded by Dale of Urban Oasis, is one of the most exciting ideas we’ve heard in a while: a group that takes (subverts?) the form of a neighborhood association to bring students and renters together and fight for their common interests. (More on this Arbor Update thread.) If only we weren’t moving to the OWS — sorry, NWS — at the end of the summer, we could start the New Fourth Ward Association.
Is there some kind of NIMBY exchange program going on? A recent arrival to A2 who’s moved here from Edinburgh with her husband for the next few years (that would make her a temporary resident) shares her thoughts in this month’s Observer on what she calls “a very American place”. “In European eyes, it is very strange that the area close to campus is given over to a student ‘ghetto’ when it should be prime property. The big old houses near campus are beautiful, but the peeling paint, garbage…and soggy sofas don’t do the neighbourhood any favors. Still, I guess the students have to live somewhere before they turn into responsible citizens, so they might as well be all grouped together in one giant party community.” Yes, things would be decidedly less rummy if those young chaps would do something about the frightful paint on their flats now and then, what?
But A2 isn’t all bad; at least it “hasn’t made the mistakes of many other U.S. cities…like building an ugly high-rise downtown.” “I think we will be happy here,” she concludes. We think she’ll be happy here too.
Think the News’ coverage of student issues is bad? Check out this effort by the Lincoln Journal Star’s city hall columnist. “What is the deal with people who are inspired to put their plaid couch on the front porch? And what can the city do to stop them?” she writes. “[P]assing an ordinance in the summer, when there wouldn’t be as many college students around to notice” is her proposed solution, which she says would prevent the rioting that would likely occur otherwise.
The students recently arrested in the AAPD pot bust were “set up” by the city’s tolerant attitude toward marijuana, writes Ann Arbor resident Bill Barker. In particular, “You were set up to believe growing and selling pot would be overlooked because this council needs your student vote.” Can we have some of whatever he’s smoking?
Another summer, another chance to pass whatever anti-student legislation the neighborhoods can dream up before fall term starts again. This time, it’s parking. Some North Burns Park and Oxbridge NITWITs (Not In the Thoroughfare When I’m There) are having trouble finding spots for their friends and contractors, and it’s all the students’ fault. One “college-aged woman” left her car in an illegal spot and didn’t realize it for 10 days. Those college-aged people. When they’re not driving their cars everywhere and snarling traffic, they’re not driving them anywhere and making it really tough for the guy who installs the marble flooring to find a spot.
The article doesn’t make it clear whether residents who rent their homes would be considered “residents” under this ordinance, but if you go to the city council’s current packet, you can see that renters would be allowed to have permits, but only if their landlords apply for them. (Unlike cities like Cambridge, in which residents who rent and residents who own are treated equally, and you can get a permit for whatever the address on your drivers’ license says.) However, a friend of a neighborhood resident would get priority over a resident of a neighborhood a block away.
And while we’re at it, what kind of a name is “Oxbridge”? It’s almost a parody of a pseudo-British, pseudo-intellectual college town neighborhood. If this were fiction, the writer would be accused of too-broad satire, but A2 surpasses parody.
“U-M business school needs a massive tree,” runs a headline on the News letters page about how the business school needs a massive tree. This tree would teach the aspiring MBAs a few lessons, among them that “a storm will blow down limbs,” and “most of the tree is underground, unseen and unheard,” writes Catherine Jones of Ann Arbor. She is probably more optimistic about the ability of business students to take away such lessons than is warranted. We’re imagining the new bestseller “What a 300-Year-Old Ann Arbor Tree Taught Me About Business and Life.” “Lesson 1: A storm will blow down limbs. Massive layoffs are an inevitable and natural part of management to clear away the old branches and make room for the new. Lesson 2: Most of the tree is underground, unseen and unheard. Environmental laws? OSHA regulations? Accounting creativity? What your stockholders don’t know won’t hurt them — they just have to be confident that your roots are underground doing what they need to do, sucking up sustenance from the earth.”
Fortunately, this management classic is unlikely to be written, since the oak in question is being chopped down for the “new” Michigan campus (scare quotes hers), to create “room” (quotes again hers) for a new (this time it doesn’t get the quotes) building.
Is this a new grammatical convention of which we weren’t aware, to put quotes around things you don’t like? Sure, you see them around terms that the writer doesn’t like, to indicate that this is the language of the opposition — the “death tax”, the “MSM”, the “war on terror” — but when did it become acceptable to scare-quote anything that one has a problem with? If we did that, this blog would be a mess. The “Friends of the ‘Ann Arbor’ ‘Greenway’” are going to the “city council” meeting to “speak” about their “plan” to put a “park” in “downtown ‘Ann Arbor’”. See what we mean?
Well, the found-food restaurant we predicted hasn’t appeared in A2 yet, but would you settle for a found-object store? The new addition to Kerrytown is actually called Found, just like Ann Arbor’s most famous magazine. Won’t someone start an A2 version of Radar so we can have a Gawker-vs.-Radar-style feud with it?
The always-lively “umstudents” LiveJournal community invites its members to finish the sentence “You might be from Ann Arbor if…” But they don’t quite distinguish between being from Ann Arbor and living in Ann Arbor. Eating multiple meals a day at Jimmy John’s may be a fate to which both groups are consigned, but most of us out-of-staters have displayed valiant resistance to the mitten-map thing.
Also, Mlive seems to have the repeated title error straightened out, but what’s Flay Day?