ann arbor is overrated.

It looks like someone isn’t happy with the way that the Ann Arbor Public Schools are being run.

After Stephen Rapundalo defeated Michigan student Eugene Kang in last summer’s Second Ward primary, he tried his best to reach out to students. Well, if you were wondering what the former neighborhood association president would have to offer the student/renter constituency, look no further than Tuesday’s City Council meeting, at which a new residential parking permit ordinance was discussed. Rapundalo argued that the proposed number of permits, four, was “a little high — that’s certainly what’s been expressed to me by one of the [neighborhoods].”

The latest traffic-creating menace isn’t a big-box store or a high school — it’s a bike path along Washtenaw. Writes an “Other Voices” contributor to the News, “I was at the public hearing at Tappan Middle School earlier this month about this issue. The hearing was dominated by property owners who are worried they may be negatively affected by the bike path,” while simultaneously arguing that the path wouldn’t see much use. If there’s anything that could make us warm to the often-tedious faction referred to by conservative columnist Mark Steyn as the Bike-Path Left, it’s the Property-Owning Whiners.

Under the evocative subhead, “Someone leaving bread buns in yard,” the News reports the story of a man who claims that someone is leaving bread buns in his yard, the most recent incident occurring in the 28-hour-period between 6 a.m. Tuesday and 10 p.m. Wednesday.

A letter in yesterday’s Daily counters a state representative’s proposal to make English the official language of Michigan with a radical proposal of its own: “[H]ow about considering making love our state’s official language? When our governmental officials meet, we could hold them accountable to use that language.” And here we thought that watching State House coverage on channel 25 couldn’t get any more exciting.

This post on the MLive forums manages to conflate just about every A2 NIMBY bogeyman into one nonsensical scenario: “What are you people going to say when Walmart buys its first downtown building and opens it’s first 4 story store? I predict we will hear about this being done in the next 18 months.” Wal-Mart is a name that strikes fear into the heart of A2, yes, but it’s not sufficiently scary unless combined with the ultimate bête noire: buildings over three stories downtown.

Well, we predict that the Wal-Mart will occupy the first four floors of an eight-story building, the upper four stories of which will be student apartments. And they’re going to knock down a historic house to build it.

Students claim that they’re being pressured by their landlords to remove unflattering Internet postings (like an entire anti-CMB Facebook group.) Check out the original LiveJournal post that inspired all this while it’s still more or less intact (although it’s nowhere near as good as this.)

“Law student files complaint against vagina,” reports the Daily. (Okay, with slightly different capitalization and punctuation.)

This guy really doesn’t like people turning around in his driveway, in which he no longer parks so he can take up a spot on the street in front of his house and prevent people from driving on his lawn, which, if it’s that difficult to find a spot in his neighborhood, shouldn’t be possible anyway, but to which he will respond with gunfire in the future (owing to his “southern boy transplant” background.) So if you’ve ever wondered what happens when the worst of southern good old boy stereotypes meets the worst of Ann Arbor NIMBYism…

As usual, the A2 solution to a politicized dispute goes overboard. We’re all for public breastfeeding being accepted without a second thought, but does this mean that it now must be allowed in CAEN labs and libraries, near rare books and expensive computer equipment where food and drink is prohibited? The coffee drinkers need a La Cafe League or something to advocate for their rights.