More Like the Fancy Dealer
“Three-and-a-half hours from Cleveland and bursting with youthful energy, the college town of Ann Arbor, Mich., invites us to remember those warm-weather moments — at a street festival, in a bookstore or paddling across glimmer-glass water — when we lingered as soulful teenagers,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer effuses in their paean to “enchanting Ann Arbor, college town of renown.” We’d also put “four hours from Chicago,” “four and a half hours from Toronto” and “two hours from Boston in a plane” ahead of “bursting with youthful energy” on our list of positive A2 attributes, but that’s just us.
A2’s student culture is best experienced without all those students in the way:
Those endless summers are gone, but there are weekends to rediscover the kind of artsy, outdoor and mind-expanding stuff we used to love and always will.
College is this city’s year-round business, which keeps the idealistic culture continuously flowing. Spring and summer bring the bigger festivals, fewer students and more parking spaces … Bring lots of loose change — of the pocket and of the mind.
So that’s the secret to enjoying A2: a certain mental slackness. Good to know.
Looseness aint’ what you need, AAIO, money is what you need, and I’m not kidding. If you have a steady income stream this is a great place to live. I’ve lived in Chicago (southside and Wicker park), Minneapolis, LA, Phoenix and here and I’ve got to tell you, if you are a professional especially with a kid, this is a great place to live. But there is no doubt, the nadir of lifestyle here is as a grad student, with peaks occuring during undergrad and “I’ve got a real job” stages of life.
posted by Sulli on May 15th, 2007 at 9:18 amBeing a grad student sucks. When I was in medical school in Chicago, late 80’s, you couldn’t find a clean one bedroom in Hyde Park for less than $600, these were late 80’s dollars mind you. I dug living in chicago, but the truth is, i almost never left Hyde Park and really couldn’t afford to go out. I moved to Ann Arbor for residency and rather liked not having my car radio stolen from my sweet ‘78 Ford Fairmont for the fifth time. Other than that, I really did not alter my lifestyle from living in chicago because i was still broke and busy.
As someone who spent, well, school years there, “warm-weather moments” don’t figure prominently in my memories of Ann Arbor.
Also, am I missing something, or don’t a lot of people in Ohio already have pretty strong opinions about A2? It’s hard to imagine this getting a great reception from the readers. Sort of like a Boston Globe travel writer talking up the wonders of Yankee Stadium.
posted by Nick on May 15th, 2007 at 6:48 pmFortunately, there are many people in Ohio who couldn’t give a two-cent shit about all of the UM-OSU/Michigan-Ohio chest-beating.
posted by The Squid on May 15th, 2007 at 9:08 pm“Bring lots of loose change”
Bwaahh! Some of that change might even be used in parking meters.
posted by Sketchy on May 16th, 2007 at 8:16 amI always enjoying reading a review of a place (or book, or movie) that I know well as it is so interesting to see what gets included and visa versa. So from this writer’s perspective there are so few restaurants in Ann Arbor that she needs to repeat herself. That flies directly in the face of what I have read on this humble site.
I also have to wonder if the restaurants have to pay or lobby to be mentioned in the article. Now I know that some say AAIO has a bone to pick with a certain company that resides on the end of the alphabet but when writing for tourists they probably should be mentioned at least once, or maybe twice. But what’s with Afternoon Delight being a place to go twice … and in one weekend?
posted by abc on May 16th, 2007 at 9:35 amThat would be ‘enjoy reading’. Damn that spell check.
posted by abc on May 16th, 2007 at 9:36 amThat paper uses the same sucky web platform AA News uses. They oughta learn how to do a decent online newspaper, like the New York Times or The Guardian, for example.
posted by tom on May 16th, 2007 at 1:14 pmThe fuck-awful “MichiganLive/ClevelandLive” extends far and wide, and includes Portland, Oregon’s shitty paper, the Oregonian (aka., OregonLive).
posted by Morbidly Midwestern on May 16th, 2007 at 2:26 pmMy wife is convinced that they use that terrible platform to drive people back to print versions of the paper. Personally I would rather buy a print paper that I know has a good presence on the internet so I can look for stories later and send them to friends or link to them.
In addition to being laid out in a confusing way and basically impossible to search, M-live only archives articles for two weeks. So searching for older articles is essentially out of the question.
posted by dcwp on May 16th, 2007 at 3:27 pmBesides the crappy layout, broken links, irritating page breaks, lousy search and lack of archiving, they interrupt your reading with a pop-up “survey” asking you your ZIP, birthdate and gender. It’s incredibly annoying.
posted by tom on May 16th, 2007 at 4:00 pmdcwp: “M-live only archives articles for two weeks. So searching for older articles is essentially out of the question.”
Given a choice between using M-live search to find something and rummaging through the recycling bins of every house on my block, I’ll take the bins.
Better than bins, though, is the Ann Arbor District Library, which has an online archive of the A2 News starting from 2004, which is a part of its Research Databases. Registration is quick and painless and free. There’s a lag time of up to two weeks between publication and inclusion in that archive, but on occasion I’ve found it to be as short as 2 days.
Another strategy for finding some specific A2 News article is to use a general web search tool, narrowing the search to M-live. I’ve found articles as old as a month this way when the M-live search turned up nothing.
posted by HD on May 16th, 2007 at 6:00 pmTwo hours to Boston by plane. Oh man, we love you in this house…and at least one of us earns quite good sum of money and we cannot afford to do a damn thing in Ann Arbor. We are neither financially equipped nor emotionally strong enough to handle constantly feeling ripped off afterwards.
posted by Sarah on May 16th, 2007 at 9:00 pmHD - Thanks for the tip, that will be very useful!
posted by dcwp on May 17th, 2007 at 11:16 amSarah, what is “quite a good sum of money?” Thinking of moving to A2 and want to know my chances for comfort. (this board has been quite instructive)
posted by StarChild on May 17th, 2007 at 2:08 pmI think if you can’t find even one “damn thing” to do in Ann Arbor without spending a lot of money, you aren’t trying very hard.
I do not mean to imply Ann Arbor isn’t generally overpriced — I agree it is, and I’m also forced to skip a lot of things I might otherwise like to do — but come on.
Of course, if I owned a house, I’d probably be eating ramen noodles when not doing freelance jobs to pay the mortgage and maintenance costs. Though maybe that’s why I rent…
posted by Dave on May 17th, 2007 at 2:30 pmFrankly, if you have a family, you want to make more than 75K ( bottom end ) to live with comfort in Ann Arbor. You can do it for less, but forget life’s little extras.
posted by LittleB on May 17th, 2007 at 6:32 pmUntrue. I don’t make $70k. own a nice home on Old West Side (purchased 5 years ago when i made much less and prices were REALLY through the roof), have a family, spouse doesn’t work outside home and we do great. We live very comfortably. Decadent even. New car, investments, savings, no credit card debt, dinner out, drinks with friends, vacations, tickets to shows, and even some left for charity(and no financial help from family or others). Livin’ the dream right here in AA. And for less than $75k!
posted by imjustsayin on May 17th, 2007 at 11:05 pmI’ve lived here as a grad student without a car and now as a married burgher homeowner with the requisite children and yeah, life is tougher as a grad student. I discovered you could rent a shithole and spend every possible nickel getting out of the place as much as possible or you could rent a nice place and have not a nickel to spare going out. Somehow, I suspect that would be true in most other college towns.
We’re not living quite as large as imjustsayin (maybe our mortgage is more), but this is a great place to be with kids if you look for all the cheap or free events. Lots of UM sporting events are free with an MCard, free for kids 5 and under, and $3 otherwise. Go to the unending stream of street festivals. If you stop at a coffeeshop for a snack with the kids, Washtenaw Dairy doughnuts are always the cheapest option *and* a crowdpleaser. Walk past the firehouse — the firefighters are generally willing to let kids look at the trucks. Go to Downtown Home and Garden and pet Lewis the Cat. Hang out at the library and their great outdoor garden reading area. Maybe your kid is too little for all this, Sarah, but there is tons to do without spending much money.
posted by Chris on May 18th, 2007 at 12:08 pm“I think if you can’t find even one “damn thing” to do in Ann Arbor without spending a lot of money, you aren’t trying very hard.”
Word. $1.75 PBRs at the 8-Ball.
posted by Brandon on May 18th, 2007 at 12:54 pm$2.50 Imperial pints (twice as strong a beer, almost twice as big) at Arbor Brewing Happy Hour.
posted by a2oldie on May 18th, 2007 at 2:53 pmJust over a year ago, I moved to A2, following my wife, from NYC. For the first few months, we were in a state of relief, exhilaration - to have moved away from matchbox apartments, train commutes and crowds. But now, I want out. I’m sick of the drunken college students on weekends, the TERRIBLE food choices, the weather. So I love this blog. Very apropos.
posted by A year old on May 18th, 2007 at 10:00 pmoh, and I cant fucking stand the UM sporting events. I never thought Id end up in the middle of sports culture.
posted by A year old on May 18th, 2007 at 10:02 pmI think you found someone to take over the blog, aaio.
posted by David Boyle on May 18th, 2007 at 11:10 pmTo: A year old ….the crime rate is going way UP in AA,,,so that will make you feel right at home soon.Just like NYC…Muggings, drunks, panhandlers…And yes I have been to NYC!
posted by CB on May 21st, 2007 at 3:08 amI am not a rah-rah AA person…just saying…be careful out there folks..
Look at when and where crime happens in AA. It’s all 3 am, and right outside the bar. Well, for the most part.
posted by LittleB on May 21st, 2007 at 4:56 pmThere are way more panhandlers and drunks in Ann Arbor than NYC (per capita anyway).
posted by Brandon on May 21st, 2007 at 8:15 pmWe suffer the same web forums in New Orleans at the Times-Picayune. You could search for Katrina and get a single article about some lady arrested for shoplifting.
posted by Alan Gutierrez on May 22nd, 2007 at 9:34 amI enjoy my evening strolls down Main Street, being asked for spare change every 50 feet.
posted by Dirty on May 26th, 2007 at 10:45 pmThat rhymes, actually.
posted by David Boyle on May 28th, 2007 at 5:17 pmAnn Arbor is a big fat tourist trap. Tourist traps have 10,000 restaurants and all kinds of shit to do for a price. I’d rather go to Detroit.
posted by A2 Ex on May 28th, 2007 at 8:47 pmyou want rhymes? i’ll give you rhymes! bad rhymes!
i often carry dollar coins
that jangle in pockets near my loins.
i give one to each main st. bum
that begs with outstretched hand and thumb.
except the guy with the phony crutch
whose insincerity irks me much.
i s’pose i should give him a break
his indigency is no fake.
just like the crazy lady who
just babbles ’til the day is through.
or the guy who always looks away
even as he pleads “some help today?”
their begging never makes me mad,
posted by peter honeyman on May 29th, 2007 at 9:02 ami wish they didn’t smell so bad.
Don’t make a war
On the suffering poor.
If you keep up
posted by David Boyle on May 29th, 2007 at 11:51 amWith your hostile plan,
We’ll have to rename you
Vinegarman.
as usual, david, you misunderstand
i am a very generous man
i’ll give a buck to any old bum
posted by peter honeyman on May 29th, 2007 at 3:48 pmno matter how filthy or besotted with rum
Okie dokie,
posted by David Boyle on May 29th, 2007 at 7:55 pmBut I’d hope to expect
You’d call them “homeless”, not “bums”, and be more
Politically correct.