Maybe A2 really is the Manhattan of the Midwest. From the Overheard in New York blog: “Guy on cell: Yeah, yeah, it’s pretty cool out here I guess…you should totally come visit…It’s just…sometimes I feel like New York is just one big Ann Arbor.”
From the “tell us what you really think” department: looks like Surovell isn’t the only Ann Arbor property management company with candid opinions to share on the students who live in their properties. Jim Fuller of Michigan Commercial Realty, unhappy with some tenants’ alleged propensity for flouting recycling regulations, tells the News, “There’s just a general attitude of indifference on the part of these University of Michigan students…A lot of kids come here, poop all over Ann Arbor for four years, and then they leave.”
At least the purse snatchers in A2 have the grace to feel a little existential angst about depriving you of your property. “[T]he man approached [the victim] from behind and grabbed her purse,” reports the News police log. “The woman said the man didn’t say a word, but had a sad look on his face.”
Elliot Mallen writes about Critical Mass in today’s Daily. Ann Arbor drivers have been remarkably tolerant of the movement, two of its riders tell him. “[D]owntown Ann Arbor’s streets and the sheer volume of traffic make a bike a far more practical mode of transportation. Residents of Ann Arbor realize this, and so the rides continue without excessive hostility from motorists or police,” one of them says. Or perhaps because in a town as small as Ann Arbor, it’s fairly easy to turn off on to an alternate street and get on one of the major arteries out of town (unless you’re unlucky enough to be riding the bus.) The worst harassment they usually experience is “some aggravated frat boy looking to pass everyone as soon as he can while yelling ‘beatnik’ out the window,” another rider says. If we were riding the bus home from our job in Ann Arbor to the apartment in the townships that was the only place we could afford, only to have Washtenaw blocked by hippies chanting “We don’t need cars, we don’t need gas, to ride around town in a Critical Mass!” we’d probably have the urge to yell something a little stronger.
“The rapidly deteriorating weather could put a damper on Critical Mass,” though, he writes. Wait — does that mean that there’s some time when bikes aren’t the most practical form of transportation?
Today the Daily has a nice story on letters like the Oppenheimer Properties one and other methods by which rental companies pressure students into October lease-signing. “We just get bombarded with phone calls with people asking about places and it seems earlier and earlier every year. We’re basically just satisfying the public,” one Oppenheimer spokesperson tells the Daily. That public would include Dan’s Houses tenants, one of whom told the Daily that he was required to renew by September 18. But this is all just student-driven competition, right?
The Observer has a little blurb about the closing of American Spoon on Liberty. The owners had done their research before opening; they knew that A2 consumers accounted for a large share of the chain’s sales. But there was one detail they overlooked: Ann Arborites are only interested in shopping there when they’re on vacation in Petoskey. “People just want to buy it up north,” one of the owners told the Observer. There’s still so much we’ll never understand about this state.
The Michigan Review’s David Miliken is concerned that the Sexual Assault and Prevention Awareness Center on campus isn’t doing enough to educate those college floozies about the consequences of their slutty get-ups. “A person has the right to wear whatever she wants, but a person cannot just shrug off personal responsibility in the name of low-cut tops and mini-skirts,” he writes.
SAPAC should take the straight forward role of presenting the consequences of sexual assault for both the attacker and the victim. What is the prison sentence for violent sexual assault? How many years of therapy do victims often go through? What does it mean to be a registered sex offender? Answers to these questions might give might give new students a better idea of college freedom means.
See, it’s all roughly equivalent. Prison, being raped — both consequences of using one’s college freedom unwisely, whether it’s by attacking a fellow student or stepping out in an above-the-knee skirt. And here we thought conservatives were against moral relativism.
Oppenheimer Properties, one of A2’s biggest landlords, has sent out the following letter to at least some of its tenants (excerpts quoted verbatim):
We realize that it may seem early to start thinking of future living arrangements. However, we’ve already been receiving calls from some of you and from other interested parties about leasing for the 2006-2007 school year. It is always our hope that our Tenants are comfortable where they are and would like to continue living in our properties. In order to ensure that you have priority over the prospective Tenants, we need to begin the renewal process now.
…
If you are renewing, please contact our office promptly to sign a renewal lease. Which ever way you decide, please mail this form to us to the address below. IF WE DO NOT HEAR FROM YOU BY 10/21/05 IT WILL BE ASSUMED YOUR APARTMENT/HOUSE WILL BE AVAILABLE TO LEASE FOR THE 2006/2007 SCHOOL YEAR.
If only some of the tenants — sorry, Tenants — in an apartment are renewing, they’re expected to provide the names of their housemates for next year. So much for “needing to decide on housing in October is a myth.”
The Observer’s Jas Obrecht seems to have become quite smitten with convicted “Hot Rod Killer” Bill Morey, who served a rather light 19 years for murdering a nurse on her way home from the night shift when he was 18 (after two unsuccessful attempts by him and his two accomplices to kill other young women walking alone at night in the Old Fourth Ward.) Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a writer seeing the humanity in a killer, but the distance here between journalist and source is perhaps a little too close. The piece concludes:
My friend Bill Morey died the next day, on August 26, 2005. The obituary in the Ann Arbor News made no mention of his crimes, featuring instead one of his favorite quotations, from Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche: “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” Morey himself would be the first to admit that he’d contributed to that madness. Personally, though, I’ll miss the laughter.
We hope he’s actually referring to the family-sponsored death notice; a newspaper would be rather remiss to leave out the fact that the subject of an obituary was at the center of one of the area’s most famous murder cases. Mad, one might even say.
The cost of food in A2 can be steep, so this month the Current comes through with “In Search of Affordable Eating,” a primer for cutting food costs. The article recommends only one grocery store: “Check out the People’s Food Coop…For $60 you can become a member for life and — unless the Coop needs the money for special projects — receive a rebate every year on a percentage of what you buy.” That’s right, you can shop at the most expensive grocery store in town, pay them extra and get money back on some unnamed fraction of your purchases at the end of the year. If they decide they don’t need the money for something else. See, there are bargains in Ann Arbor; you just need to know where to look.