Discover Ann Arbor
The News’ “Discover Ann Arbor (and surrounding areas)” guide came bundled with yesterday’s paper. It starts off with a typically breathless overview:
Many say that the Ann Arbor area has it all. It’s a place where you can visit the Farmers Market or a museum in the morning, then join more than 100,000 college football fans on a Saturday afternoon. Or you can stay away from the stadium crowd and bike or walk across town or along the Huron River amid a splendid fall setting.
It’s large-scale activities coupled with small-town charm.
Our favorite part is the housing section. It doesn’t acknowledge even once that some people (whisper) rent their homes, but it does feature a picture of a house with “historically authentic paint colors” (what does that mean — they contain only beet- and onion-skin-based pigments?) while cautioning that “with little room for new construction, you’ll pay a premium for the city’s older homes.” Well, maybe if by “room,” you mean “political will.”
I think it’s the “small-town charm” that’s slightly less hilarious than the reference to the outrageous housing costs. This place has all the “small-town charm” of a strip mall.
posted by Pants Rule on May 24th, 2006 at 6:48 pmHistorically authentic paint colors… not sure exactly who defines the colors, other than picking out ones that look old-timey, but there is a Benjamin Moore Historical Paint Colors palatte.
My living room is a lovely Historical Blue and Historical Green. I think requiring we pick those was an easy way for the landlord to make sure we didn’t go day-glow yellow after they gave us permission to paint.
posted by Anonymous on May 24th, 2006 at 6:56 pmAbout a month or so ago, the News did an article on a local firm that specializes in historically accurate paints and paint colors. I expect that’s where the reference originated.
posted by Anonymous on May 24th, 2006 at 7:22 pmI find it odd that bicycle transportation continues to be listed highly among Ann Arbor’s features. We’ve discussed this before, but AA is far from a bicycle-friendly town. And yet the meme lives on…
At least they seem to acknowledge that game-day chaos makes travel by car in most of town too troublesome to bother with.
posted by dcwp on May 24th, 2006 at 8:08 pmI think “bike-friendly” depends on your frame of reference. To your typical Southeastern Michigan native, Ann Arbor is comparatively bike-friendly. In just about every other place around the region, it is all about the car and the car only. Now, if you moved here from some granola paradise like Portland or wherever, then it probably isn’t all that bike-friendly to you. But who reads (and writes) the Ann Arbor News? Mostly people in Southeastern Michigan. So for them, the statement is largely true.
posted by Dave on May 25th, 2006 at 11:07 amI don’t know, I used to live in the granola paradise of Orange County, CA, and it was a hell of a lot more bike-friendly than “green” Ann Arbor.
posted by Nick on May 25th, 2006 at 11:41 amWhich hardly invalidates my point.
posted by Dave on May 25th, 2006 at 11:56 amMy point is more that Orange County is best known for being infested with spoiled SUV-driving Republicans. So it’s sort of funny that in certain ways it’s a more appealing place for a progressive sort to live.
posted by Nick on May 25th, 2006 at 12:56 pmThe mayor has proposed to close Huron River Dr on weekends or one day a weekend for biking and jogging–KEWL
The housing market seems to have crashed, and I have gradually become convinced that A2 may be overrated in some ways but it is not really overpriced. It is on average a third more expensive than other Mich, Ohio, and Indiana locales that are UNLIVEABLE, and it is a third of the price of the tolerable places to live on the coasts etc.
And I hate to be a vulgar functionalist, but do you think Orange County may be more bike-friendly because of … the weather?
posted by buzz on May 25th, 2006 at 2:13 pmThe weather and terrain and what-have-you, plus maybe more of a “California attitude.” In any case, it is still worlds away from Southeastern Michigan. I see what you’re saying, Nick, but I stand by my point.
posted by Dave on May 25th, 2006 at 2:35 pmSheesh, Pants, I think the boosterism is cheesy, too, but…come to think of it I can’t even figure out what you’re trying to say!
Esp. since a lot of small towns have strip malls nowadays…
So, what would you characterize this city as? Overpriced college town?
posted by Anonymous on May 25th, 2006 at 3:53 pmGood point Dave, knowing the audience of the A2News puts things in perspective. But in the bigger picture, Nick’s point is also well-taken. I’ve lived in a number of places across the country from Urban St Louis to small-town Utah and Ann Arbor is by far the most difficult and most dangerous to ride a bike in. I tend to think that it’s AA’s unfortunate combination of small-town feel and road system with it’s high population density. Add to that the tolerant attitude of AAPD toward pedestrians and bikers, and you’ve got a suboptimal bicycling situation.
posted by dcwp on May 25th, 2006 at 6:10 pmhigh density? don’t get these guys started
posted by OFWinsurgent on May 25th, 2006 at 8:08 pmRe: charm of a strip mall:
This has certainly been said before, but heck, I’ll say it again.
It’s extremely sanitized with zero personality, but with all of this overrated-ness, I keep hearing about what a wonderful, vibrant, etc place this is. I can only speak to my experience over the last year that I’ve been here, of course, but Ann Arbor’s become the kind of place where Urban Outfitters is considered “edgy”. This is not charming–this is suburbia.
Re: housing costs, I can think of at least a few east coast cities where housing costs are MUCH smaller and there’s actually some personality. Pittsburgh comes to mind first, but then again I’m biased–that’s where I’m from, and dammit, I miss my $625-a-month, 1000-square-foot hot tub apartment in a converted Victorian mansion.
posted by Pants Rule on May 26th, 2006 at 12:27 amIn their March 2006 issue Bicycle Magizine put A2 in the top 21 in the nation for cycling, # three in the 75,000 to 200,000 pop. range behind Boulder, Co. and Eugene, Oregon.
posted by Dustin on May 26th, 2006 at 8:09 amPants Rule: Does Pittsburgh really count as an East Coast city? Heck, I consider it the start of the Rust Belt.
I know what you mean about edginess and Ann Arbor. Urban Outfitters is not edgy. That’s what’s nice about going to better urban centers–more interesting shops/galleries/museums/art scenes/etc.
But in our neighborhood we’ve really found it to be more similar to the small Indiana town I grew up in than the neighborhood I lived in in DC or or the suburb outside of NYC that my partner grew up in. This place is a good place to live–it took me a couple years to get used to it (first year’s the WORST), but we’re happy here.
posted by Young OWSider on May 26th, 2006 at 10:59 amIf you want to question the strip-mall-ish character of ann arbor, just compare state / liberty / maynard *now* with state / liberty / maynard in the late 80s. The transformation mirrors the strip-mall-ification of the East Village in New York, which has occured on account of several factors, including the proximity of NYU. Here, the proximity of Michigan and its undergraduate population also plays a role.
Since the late 80s, however, another factor is that those who could have done so have refused to interfere in the local real-estate markets, thus virtually ensuring that only chain-stores can afford the rents in that area now. Thus the appearance of Caribou, Starbucks, etc. Basically, you don’t have much there that you wouldn’t find in a strip-mall in upstate New York (with the exception of Shaman Drum, Ambrosia, and a few others). The transformation of Borders, of course, hasn’t helped the situation either.
A liquor license in this town — seven years ago — cost almost 30 Grand. Now, I’m sure, it’s even more. This also encourages chain restaurants and over-priced single ventures.
but like the man said, don’t get us started…
posted by Daniel on May 26th, 2006 at 1:46 pmOh–well, sure, I see what you mean. “Charming” suburbia…yeah, kind of. It’s the fate of a lot of places these days (even most places, maybe.)
Depends on what you mean by “vibrant”, vibrant being relative (esp. around these parts.) I’ve never thought of it as “vibrant”, but then I don’t ask it to be and reserve “vibrancy” for only the largest metro areas in the country. I guess I’d just call it a small-to-midsized town, better than most its size. “Vibrant” as in “We don’t shut down at 5pm.” It all depends on what you’re looking for. It keeps me busy, at any rate. If I were looking for something else, it wouldn’t. But then, I just figure there’s nothing wrong with that–one place isn’t another.
And Picksburg this ain’t.
But then, why would it be? Heh.
(I call Pittsburgh the Midwest, but I have relatives from around here who live there and call it East Coast, so go figure.)
And yeah, the “small-town” feel can depend on the neighborhood you live in.
posted by Young Urban Amateur on May 26th, 2006 at 11:05 pmApropos of cycling conditions in Ann Arbor and specifically the deteriorating amenity of Huron River Drive, here a tidbit I’ll pass along in the category of hearsay, as in a buddy of mine emailed me with this about what another guy said:
posted by HD on May 26th, 2006 at 11:06 pm“Other big news is they’re going to repave HRDrive out of A2. Widen it, bike lane…not until NEXT summer though … I was driving into town yesterday and they (City of A2 folks based on the logo on their
truck) were working in the road doing some surveying. I stopped and asked the guy what they were doing and that’s what the guy told me.”
Bike lane, great–though I was on the Packard one all the way down and back today, and Miller recently same, and do sometimes wonder if the bikelane is’nt the worst place to be sometimes. The cellphone SUV delivery truck space people just suddenly drive in them, I don’t think everybody really GETS it.
CRITICAL MASS KICK SOME BASS
posted by buzz on May 31st, 2006 at 10:30 pmAs usual, the most annoying thing about this site is the number of people here who try to compare apples to oranges.
Pants, you just can’t logically compare Ann Arbor to Pittsburgh, a city nearly three times as big (Pittsburgh’s pop. is 334,563; Ann Arbor’s is 114,024), and built around completely different institutions (industry vs. academia).
For those who want to live in a city, please move to one instead of constantly whining about A2.
posted by Anonymous on June 6th, 2006 at 1:27 pmStill, A2 won number three in the country for bicycling in the March issue of Bicycle Mag. What do they know that we don’t?
posted by Dustin on June 9th, 2006 at 3:54 pmwell ann arbor USED to have alot mroe interestign stuff going on BEFORE it got GENTRIFIED. there used to be far mor eitneresting music and arts stuff going on, both in public venues and in peoples’ houses, and there were all these little home-made coop houses(cause it was always pricey, thoguh now its outrageous). I think, too, that the rise in tuition at what used to be a relativly do-able U of M has contributed a stupider, more spoiled student population. Whats more, the downtown area is now crawling with horrible francheises, which make it even LESS itneresting. It was nothing like an east coast city- ever- which was one of the things that was cool about it.
god they’ve even gentrified the f–ing arboreteum. what ever happened to scholarly benign neglect? it can’t be built, thats what.
ann arbor’s “overrated-ness” is built on real stuff, but stuff thats far in the past- the events leading up to the port huron accords, teh once festival, the john sinclair trial benefit, the teach-ins on the vietnam war, the ORIGINAL ann arbor blues and jazz fest, the OLD REAL performance network, and all the crazily wonderful book shops of every ilk that used to crowd the streets, not to mention the regular stuff you could get, a little pharmacy owned by a grouchy old woman, a map store, a soda fountain with cheap-as-anything food, now all these things are shoved underground and are constantly struggling. . . . . there used to be street buskers(music, art), too, before they were regulated out of existance, and all kinds of cooperatives and social engineering experiments. i remember it, and its all gone now.
its sad sad sad. . . . ann arbor is overrated by real estate investors and yuppies who want to capitalize on all that without actualy having to INTERACT with it. Ugh! i remember when they ran teh bike path out to geargetown(a really stupid, tract-housey neighborhood south on packard), and it was a huge deal. . . . .there were suppoed to be more of them. o well.
posted by marya on June 22nd, 2006 at 1:20 amHow many embittered Ann Arborites does it take to change a lightbulb?
Three: one to change it and two to whine about how much better the old bulb was.
posted by OFWinsurgent on June 22nd, 2006 at 7:56 amMayra–
What’s wrong with the Arboretum? How has it been gentrified?
posted by Young OWSider on July 2nd, 2006 at 7:03 pmA map store? God, that would be great. Eff book stores, we need a good store of new and antique maps in this town.
posted by Dale on July 2nd, 2006 at 7:23 pmOops–marya.
posted by Young OWSider on July 2nd, 2006 at 7:38 pma year later, i found my own post lookin’ for pictures of the arboreteum(WOW lookit all those typos! whew!)-
the map store was not a store which sold regular maps. they sold antique ones, and prints– the old man who owned it was always very cool to me as a little kid. . . . . it got swallowed by depresso spoialle. . . . but they had amazing antique maps everywhere, really beautiful ones full of arcane pictures and things. . . . .
the arboreteum used to be alot. . . wilder. it was less festooned with plaques, flashing safety lights, railings, stages, and the like. they hadn’t built that ridiculous house by the peony garden yet, where well-to-do umich students create work for themselevs by leaving the refuse of their ambitions for something more than shit jobs all over the arborteum(in the form of above mentioned articles). it was cared for, but more. . . .. like a wild place would be than a garden.
tree diseases have also taken their toll. My favorite tree there to sit in was a huge but SHORT one near the hill at the center of the place. . .. . it had great huge limbs to sit on, but it got hit by lightening one year. there was a big pine forest by the cemetary, and all these crazy loopy trees in one section. . . they all died of disease. Of course the people putting up railings and lashing lights and fancy houses and stages did put anythign at all in the dead areas- just let them lie pretty much falllow. No, they had to go and destroy the places that were healthy- i suppose it looks better on their wet-behind-the-ears resumes. . . . . .
oh, and the cops patrolling all over the god damned place are new too.
so yes! the arboreteum WAS gentrified. along with the rest of ann arbor. . . . .
posted by marya on June 21st, 2007 at 10:56 pmit’s all about perspective, isn’t it. and the way places inevitably change. so i’ll leave you my perspective, for what it’s worth. i’ve lived in many cities, on the east coast mostly, and in europe. compared to everything, ann arbor isn’t bad…at all…especially compared to pittsburgh!?. and for michigan. i can’t think of anywhere that i’d actually want to live except ann arbor.
and they should definitely shut down the road next to the river on sundays…they do that in cambridge, ma and it’s awesome.
posted by joe on January 6th, 2008 at 2:25 amJeez if you hate Ann Arbor so much, move to NYC. It seems like everyone in Ann Arbor already pretends to be New Yorkers anyhow.
posted by Charlotte on March 11th, 2008 at 1:21 pm