Sweet Home A2
Well, we finally returned from our month-long stay in Chicago this week. It was suggested to us that, being the kind of curmudgeon who will find something to complain about anywhere, we might start a “Hyde Park Is Overrated” companion site, so we’ve been compiling a list of everything there is to hate about our temporary residence, which, as the home of the University of Chicago, is rated highly (too highly?) for its intellectual atmosphere and graceful architecture. But there are plenty of reasons that Hyde Park might be considered underrated as well. So here we present the Hyde Park Is Overrated/Underrated point/counterpoint.
| Hyde Park is Overrated | Hyde Park is Underrated |
| At CVS, you might see a car speeding away followed by employees frantically trying to write down the shoplifter’s license plate. | There’s a CVS. (Within four blocks of campus, in a shopping center with a grocery store.) |
| Sketchy people walk into the laundromat and ask you for money. | There’s a laundromat. (Also four blocks from campus.) |
| It costs $1.75 to ride the bus. | The bus takes you to places you might want to go. |
| The one bar with decent beer requires a University of Chicago ID to get in. | No real mitigating factors here. |
| It’s hard to find a nice place to take your parents when they visit. | There’s no street of overpriced restaurants that are all owned by the same person. |
| You can’t see the Michigan “M” from anywhere. | You can’t see the Michigan “M” from anywhere. |
| Gargoyle attacks keep you on your toes. | The gothic beauty of the campus spoils you for anywhere else. |
“There’s a laundromat. (Also four blocks from campus.)”
We have that in Ann Arbor, too, of course. Two of ‘em more like 2 blocks from campus, even.
posted by Brandon on August 4th, 2005 at 4:36 pmWho overrates Hyde Park? When I was choosing law schools, everyone I talked to (even there) said that Hyde Park was terrible. The campus is attractive, but the surrounding area is a un-college as you can be.
posted by Young Jeezy on August 4th, 2005 at 5:02 pmWell, I thought the only one here is Mr. Stadium, but I guess there’s also one at 609 S. Forest, over a mile from my house in “downtown” Ann Arbor but close to the east side of campus.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on August 4th, 2005 at 5:07 pmI’m not sure what they mean by “un-college” - it’s true that there aren’t a lot of undergrad bars in Hyde Park, but there are a lot more good cheap places to eat (not counting the ones on campus, where you can hardly walk into an academic building without finding a student-run cafe with good music and food from local restaurants.)
posted by ann arbor is overrated on August 4th, 2005 at 5:13 pmThere’s also Mr. Suds, next door to Jack’s Hardware (I used to live right across the street).
posted by js on August 4th, 2005 at 5:37 pmThe two Thai restaurants I went to in Hyde Park were way overrated, to the point where it was galling how much you were paying for decor and how little for food.
Yeah, I guess there are a couple in the South Universtiy area. Hyde Park is much less sprawled out, so you’re almost definitely going to live within 4-6 blocks of most of the things you need.
I haven’t seen any restaurants there with particularly nice decor, but I guess I ate mostly at cheap lunch counter places.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on August 4th, 2005 at 5:42 pmI appreciate the fact that I live within a ten-minute walk of a hardware store, laundromat, Kroger, CVS, bicycle shop, bowling alley, pizza, dairy queen . . . and zen buddhist temple. My neighborhood: not overrated. (Though really not rated at all - “just north of lower burns park” really isn’t an area that much is said about.)
posted by Murph. on August 4th, 2005 at 5:46 pmWith “Hyde Park is Overrated”, I think you just jumped the shark AAIO…
posted by Carl on August 4th, 2005 at 7:58 pmThis gives me the perfect opportunity to move someplace where I can go into the laundromat and ask people for money. It’s all falling into place…
posted by Real Big on August 5th, 2005 at 9:02 amHyde Park, as a place name, is several degrees higher on the pretentiousness meter than Ann Arbor.
“My undergrads were so scary and intense I was afraid to meet with them alone.” and “Everyone hates each other and themselves.” are just two of the glowing comments I’ve heard from a former Chicago (Sociology) grad student.
The boulevard (Garfield?) heading toward 94 is darker than shit and these fucking zombielike people will wander out in front of your car.
I believe Dr. Mandrake started his alcoholic downward spiral there.
Finding a public restroom is damn near impossible unless you can bluff your way past library security.
It’s a really ugly library.
However:
The old brick buildings in the area are very attractive, if a bit run down.
Your standard convenience store hotdog is Vienna Beef (at least at my one convenience store sample).
And the football “stadium” is named after Amos Alonzo Stagg, possibly the coolest man in the history of college football.
Which leads to the conclusion that what they need is to bring back big time football, to give those overachievers someplace to blow off steam. And to relax their sphincters about the library.
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on August 5th, 2005 at 10:19 amBeing scary and intense isn’t pretentiousness — it’s genuine social awkwardness. (And I mean that as a compliment; U of C undergrads are some of the coolest people anywhere.)
posted by ann arbor is overrated on August 5th, 2005 at 11:18 amWhoops, didn’t mean to conflate pretentiousness with scariness. They were two totally separate thoughts.
1. Naming yourself after a park in London is more pretentious than naming yourself after your wives and some trees.
2. Your experience may vary, but this particular grad student was frightened of suffering physical harm from her undergrads. One man’s awkwardness is another man’s psychosis.
She just described U of C, in general, as an unhappy place, but maybe grad school just feels like that to everyone everywhere.
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on August 5th, 2005 at 11:35 amThe people at U of C may be a little scary, but the ones I know are mostly harmless. U of C students like to complain a lot, but when I was there and observed my grad student roommates, they enjoyed a level of social interaction and intellectual back-and-forth that I’ve never seen here.
Stay away from Garfield Boulevard, though.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on August 5th, 2005 at 11:44 amI was told by someone who heard from a professor in Kalamazoo, and I quote, “Chicago is a place people go when they hate life”. I have so far been unable to test this theory, though I do know a few people in Chicago who hate life.
posted by Real Big on August 5th, 2005 at 11:51 amEvery time I have been to Chicago (more than 6 times but less than a dozen) I have had GREAT sex. I don’t know how it always plays out that way, but it’s true. Perhaps I should move there…hmmmm.
posted by OFWinsurgent on August 5th, 2005 at 2:38 pmOr at least visit more often.
posted by Dave on August 5th, 2005 at 4:07 pmI have experienced Hyde Park much less than you, AAIO (I only have been there twice; once for a weekend preview of the law school, and once on vacation), so I’ll defer on the “quantity” of the cheap placed to eat nearby. However, I label Hyde Park “un-college” because 1)the surrounding area is dreary, dark, and not especially green; 2) the manifestations of school allegience and spirit are few and far between; 3) the afformentioned lack of bars; and 4)a non-quantifyable, in-articulable, intangible feeling that I associate with Ann Arbor, Madison, New Brunswick, and even Ames that I don’t feel in Hyde Park. Maybe I’m just feeling the ramifications of the lack of a decent sports program, but then how would I explain New Brunswick?
posted by Young Jeezy on August 5th, 2005 at 4:11 pmY.J., I think that non-quantifyable, in-articulable, intangible feeling is called “boredom”.
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on August 5th, 2005 at 4:20 pmNo, I felt that in Hyde Park.
posted by Young Jeezy on August 5th, 2005 at 4:25 pmNot sure if this goes for the over or under side, but Hyde Park’s flocks of feral parakeets give it a certain flair that AA’s pigeons can’t attempt.
posted by Sandy on August 5th, 2005 at 6:51 pmWhen my mother was at Chicago for grad school (biology, mid-late seventies), she knew half a dozen people raped, robbed, or just assaulted on the streets of Hyde Park. In a couple months. But maybe the area’s gotten better since then.
UC also had the highest undergraduate suicide rate of any college in the country for a while, though I gather Cornell has surpassed them. They’re still up there, though.
posted by [libcat] on August 6th, 2005 at 2:28 pmLibcat - That was 30 years ago when your mother was there. Though Hyde Park is not known for its lack of crime, it remains a very desirable place to live. Housing prices have skyrocketed and the sprawl outward continues. I think Chicago (the city) just seems to have a hard time overcoming its racism - both ways.
posted by just me on August 6th, 2005 at 3:03 pmWhy do you Yanks like your universities tucked away in little hinterland villages, anyway?
posted by Pissah on August 6th, 2005 at 5:38 pm“The boulevard (Garfield?) heading toward 94 is darker than shit and these fucking zombielike people will wander out in front of your car.”
That stament is no exaggeration. I almost ran over one of the vacant-eyed shufflers one night.
“There’s no street of overpriced restaurants that are all owned by the same person.”
Unfortunately, the Main Street Ventures virus has spread south. I was in Toldedo today and MSV has a whole compound of restaurants on the river with the same over priced middling crap - it even includes a Real Seafood.
posted by LF on August 6th, 2005 at 7:17 pmit seems that “overrated” is very very relative. i lived in hyde park for many years and i don’t recall anyone ever saying anything positive about it. in fact, it seemed like all people did was try to get the hell out on the weekends.
that aside. when i lived there i thought it was pretty crap, especially after i moved “up north” to wicker park. however, after a few years of living in AA, i went back for a visit and it seemed like some kind of urban paradise–a great coffee shop! several places to eat that weren’t mediocre AND overpriced at the same time! a grocery store! (that CVS wasn’t there when i lived there) and a lack of drunken teenagers in m-gear! i remembered my old apartment, 2 blocks from the supermarket, where the parakeets nested in the tree behind my balcony. it seemed there was never anything to do there, but in retrospect even if i’d never left the neighborhood it compares favorably with ann arbor–doc films? the tiki (what can i say?) the med? it’s all good stuff, even if i didn’t realize it at the time (*sniff*)
i’ll cut my rant short here. i could go on. but i will say taht this debate about which place has a more pretentious name is dumb. i don’t think that pretentiousness was really an issue at the time, no?
posted by galfriday on August 7th, 2005 at 10:17 amThere are some very old rural towns in New York and Vermont named Hyde Park. Are they named for some square in London, too? I doubt it.
My psychologist wife tells me that people are drawn to live in difficult, dreary, hazardous environments (like Detroit, say, or Prudhoe Bay, Alaska) or workplaces (prisons, mines, insurance companies), not because they hate life, but because they feel guilty and don’t believe they deserve better.
If I’m in need of toilet facilities or research resources in the midst of a tightly secured urban university campus, my lawyer card gets me in to any accredited law school’s library. See, legal education does bring a couple of small rewards here and there.
Another good thing about Chicago’s Hyde Park: University of Chicago’s timely exit from the Big Ten allowed my alma mater, MSU, to join. In those days they took the “Ten” seriously; it was only later that they chose to emulate the “IV League” (four schools), disregard the number in their name, and expand membership to more universities.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on August 7th, 2005 at 6:07 pmNothing beats “Oxbridge” for pretentiousness. There’s a “Hyde Park” in Boston, too — a rather strange place.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on August 8th, 2005 at 12:27 pmThis is my favorite entry EVER! Thanks a lot, AAIO! I’m hanging this one up.
posted by DrMandrake on August 21st, 2005 at 3:42 pmI lived in Chicago for 9 years before coming to Ann Arbor. I would argue about Chicago’s racism comment. But, anyway, I just wanted to let you know there is a great restaurant in Hyde Park to take your parents.. its called the Dixie Diner or Dixie Table but its not really a diner. Just great southern inspired food (real food not like the Wishbone). They have the best bread pudding ever…laced with a bit of bourbon. Having lived in North Carolina for five years, and my father’s family being from east Tennessee, I can say its authentic southern fare. I want to say it’s not too far from the food co-op you can see from the train.
posted by Maggie on November 2nd, 2005 at 11:31 amI know we’re off the topic of laundromats, but Ann Arbor has something better than landromats: the lack of need for them, in my experience. In the three places I’ve lived in Ann Arbor (including one that was a total dump) there was a washer and dryer in the house/building itself. I’ll take that over a nearby coin laundy any day.
posted by Larry on June 27th, 2006 at 11:42 amPeople, a community is what you make it. I’ve lived both places and found A2 to be suffocatingly bourgeois, suburban, and white. I moved to Ypsilanti to escape the self-congratulatory consumer bubble, and meet some real people, of real diversity. As well as the tight monopology on rents that several large landowners hold.
Although the real benefit of Hyde Park is that it’s a 15 minute train ride to the rest of a throbbing, creative city, the neighborhood itself suffers from a lack of retail and service businesses (including bars). This has an old history of racism which the University had a heavy hand in creating and is now trying to reverse. On the other hand, it is one of the most racially integrated neighborhoods in all of Chicago, has lots of parks and access to the lake, and is a great and affordable neighborhood for kids. Yes, college types bump up regularly against real life — poverty, racism, urban renewal. But this is good. Is an education in real life (how many Ann Arborites ever go to downtown Detroit?) and makes you value your book learning, which I found spoiled Michigan undergrads took completely for granted. Yes, we need to make the neighborhood safer and attract more businesses, but this takes commitment and action.
What can you Ann Arborites do to make your town less segregated and less commercial? So, are you going to passively consume your urban space, or actively create it?
posted by slurker on August 2nd, 2006 at 11:50 am