Sorry about the light posting lately — first we were scratching our head over the lack of overratedness in Ann Arbor, and now we seem to have some kind of fever. We’ll be back when we’re feeling better, or when the News runs the first “brace for the hordes of dirty, noisy students!!” column of the year.
When we saw the “Talk About Town” headline “Tilting at unsightly windmills,” we were expecting something about the NIMBY liberals on Cape Cod who oppose nearby windmills because they “occupy scenic landscapes” (the Sierra Club, surprisingly to those of us mainly familiar with the A2 branch, supports the windmills.) But instead, the column profiles an Ann Arborite who’s embraced an even more critical cause: ridding the town of signs and posters. Described as “the white knight that rides through” by the Main Street Area Association’s event coordinator, he asks why “such a pretty town,” as exemplified by the industrial stretch of State Street by I-94, must be defaced with these ugly signs.
Ann Arbor realtor Edward Surovell (not inaptly spelled “Sourvell” here) tells the Los Angeles Times what he really thinks of a quarter of the population of the town where he does business. “Students are horrible, disgusting. Their rooms smell. They live together like rabbits in a warren. They eat and sleep together. They have beer fights, and they don’t make their beds.”
As violent crime in Ann Arbor appears to be on a sharp upswing, the AAPD sits down with the News and talks about one of A2’s most important crime problems: underage drinking and parties, “a primary complaint that neighborhood groups have when we meet with them.”
The location of the proposed new high school is known for “serving Ann Arbor as a site of Beauty,” says a movie on the Citizens for Responsible Schools site. “Will this now Change?” We don’t Know, but we immensely enjoyed the strains of dramatic New Age music that serve as the soundtrack while the names of Ann Arbor intersections flash on the screen. “Jackson at Maple. Miller at Maple.”
Don’t get the idea that this is some kind of NIMBY effort, though. “This is not simply a matter of not in my backyard,” the site insists. In fact, it’s actually a matter of not on my street. “[I]magine that there will be students on foot and on bikes that will want to use your street, mornings and afternoons…Imagine that some people will simply choose to park along your road rather than try to deal with the traffic to the parking lots inside the school property.”
One of Ann Arbor’s most irascible contrarians has skipped town with no warning. But don’t worry, we’ll try to keep doing this from Boston. Okay, okay, that was wishful thinking. And Dr. Mandrake did give us some notice before departing. It’s council member Kim Groome who appears to have taken off for the East Coast unexpectedly.
We didn’t always agree with Groome, but we’re going to miss her independent spirit. We were watching the August 2 city council meeting last night, when the council was discussing a proposed ordinance to place a lien on the property of anyone who had failed to pay fines for trash and weed violations. Groome repeatedly asked about how severe the violation would have to be, about whether there was a possibility of a property owner paying far more than the original fine. She asked questions over and over again on anything that seemed vague or unclear until she was satisfied that this ordinance would not place an undue burden on residents, while most of the council, it appeared to us, would have been happy to vote and get it over with. Who’s going to ask those annoying, unpopular questions now?
Acme Mercantile owner Nina Juergen talks about her motivations for opening her store in a column in this month’s Current that explains a lot about the A2 retail scene. “There was no place [downtown] I could get tampons, toilet paper, cough medicine…once you got here you were stuck.” But she says it didn’t work out that way since “unless you’re a CVS or something that can afford to lose money on one of the stores, you’re just not going to make it here.” So, stymied by the chain competition of all those CVS’s around downtown, she turned to what “Biz Buzz” writer Nora Flaherty calls “general merchandise with a kick to it,” the kind of stuff that actually sells in A2. “Mints? How about ‘national embarrass-mints’ with a picture of George Bush on the tin?” Maybe if they’re also infused with essential tea tree oil.
Okay, we knew that the greenway debate was getting intense, but this is ridiculous. “A 23-year-old man told city police that he was attacked by a man who asked, ‘Where’s the trees? Where’s the green?’ before punching him at 1:30 a.m. today on the 800 block of Packard Street,” the News reports. They then told him to hand over the green chits, and no one gets hurt.