“While the spoof Ann Arbor Public Schools Web site is the latest local site to criticize public officials, other sites also criticize various public officials or institutions,” the News informs us. Now we’ve heard everything.
We meant to make fun of 107.1 FM last week when one of their DJs proclaimed, “Ann Arbor has to be in anybody’s top three cities in terms of music, art and culture in the Midwest … I don’t feel this is a small pond … maybe in population, but in arts and culture it is bigger.” We never got around to it, and then they had to win us over by playing Saint Etienne’s “Heart Failed (In the Back of a Taxi)”. (Which does have something of a pro-historical-preservation theme, but we’ll let that slide.)
In Business Review’s Retail Roundtable, local business owners explain the A2 retail scene, and the consensus seems to be that downtown will do best as a kind of walkable lifestyle mall for suburbanites seeking an offbeat shopping experience. “Retailers are selling to who their customers are: People coming from Oakland County for the day.” Or Bowling Green.
Bowling Green State University’s student paper suggests A2 as a hot spring break destination. “It definitely is a cool city, and it’s kind of overwhelming,” one Michigan student tells them. “I still don’t feel like I know everywhere and I’ve been here a year and a half.” And if that wasn’t enough to convince you, the reporter also talks to Brighton High School students who go to Urban Outfitters every week.