ann arbor is overrated.

News columnist Mary Morgan uses the scruffy appearance of one Richard “Murph” Murphy to illustrate her point that even bearded hippies support the DDA’s plan.

We finally dragged our bleary-eyed self out of bed early enough to make it to Kiwanis. Talk about overrated. At least as far as clothes are concerned, Value World in Ypsi has much better stuff, and they’re open every day. And not only is Kiwanis inaccessible in terms of their 9-12 Saturday hours, they throw in a little extra inconvenience: an inexplicable policy where you’re not allowed to take an item out of its not-clearly-demarcated “area” (keep in mind that the entire place is about as big as half of a department of Value World) without paying for it. Maybe we just went on a bad day, but as far as we’re concerned, bring on the park.

On the upside, the new Kerrytown Sweetwaters is cute, if a little too Starbucksish in decor, not too crowded and open until a practically-unheard-of 11.

The News admits to misspelling the name of the business “habitatery.” At least they didn’t capitalize it.

A Chapel Hill group goes to A2 on a “fact-finding mission” that might help determine the future of their town.

UNC Chancellor James Moeser, who is familiar with both those universities and their leaders, believes Ann Arbor in particular was once right where Chapel Hill is now. Visiting Ann Arbor, he said, would give the council a good taste of where Chapel Hill might well be headed.

By that logic, we should be sending a fact-finding mission to Boulder to see what happens when greenbelts and couch bans contribute to a level of yuppification that’s ridiculous even by (current) Ann Arbor standards. Of course, there was another reason for choosing A2; the group didn’t want to go anywhere too nice “lest this particular fact-finding mission look too much like a cushy junket.” We think they chose well.

Kiwanis becomes the latest player in the greenway debate with their plan to purchase a lot that Margaret Wong describes as “an important part of the greenway that we envision.” The organization’s current building is inadequate, they say, a claim that we might be better able to evaluate if we had ever arisen early enough on a Saturday to go to Kiwanis. Are greenway opponents going to start being characterized as “in the pocket of the Kiwanis lobby”?

More Greenway hyperbole: without the Greenway, writes architect Martin Schwartz in an “Other Voices” piece in the News, “the dense downtown we envision will be uncivilized, even oppressive.”

Muncie, Indiana has passed a parking ordinance for its neighborhoods near Ball State University that’s even worse than anything being proposed in A2. Under the new law, landlords get one permit for maintenance vehicles and one extra permit; owner-occupants get two unrestricted. More like 0wn3r-occupants, or is it pwn3r-occupants?

Boil water alert for some of Washtenaw County. Before we moved out here, we’d never even heard of a boil water alert; now it seems like we’re putting a kettle on the stove every time there’s a sharp breeze.

Over the weekend, we’ve noticed a curious phenomenon — long lines outside A2 nightspots like Studio 4 and Oz (which has dropped the “Cafe”, sort of like when Hammer dropped the “MC”.) Who would wait in a half-block line behind velvet ropes to get into an Ann Arbor club, in the middle of summer, no less? Even if you do make it in, you’re in an Ann Arbor club. A club in Ann Arbor.

It’s not just “fitness studios” and lofts anymore; Ann Arbor scientific companies are getting in on pretentious A2-themed names, as evidenced by Fifth Avenue “evolutionary drug development” firm Genetics Squared, whose logo is a gamma with a superscript 2.

Also check out this month’s Current for a local blogger inside joke: Josh Steichmann defends local band Great lakes Myth Society from charges of uncoolness by pointing out that “Even that blogger who wears the natty sport jackets, usually a hipster barometer, shows up.” As of this writing, the blogger in question strenuously denies the hipster allegations.