For those discovering this site for the first time, I thought I’d pick out the “greatest hits” — posts that were significant in some way, or that I just happen to like. Notice that there’s nothing from the first year and a half of the blog’s existence. That’s not a [...]
We really appreciated all the nice comments over the last week. Come visit us at our new digs, the newly launched This Blog is Overrated, where we will be extending the concept of overratedness far beyond the boundaries of the Mitten State. Although we can’t promise we won’t blog [...]
Ann Arbor style cheesecake? “The cheesecakes are made light and fluffy using the famous Ann Arbor air of superiority!” writes Leighton.
[...]The latest concern about the hundreds of liquor licenses that could potentially become available: a possible crime wave. “I don’t think we have a police force that can enforce potentially a hundred or more new bars,” worries current license-holder/newly-minted temperance advocate Roger Hewitt.
[...]Ann Arbor may be overrated, but the state of Michigan as a whole has generally been rated more or less correctly. Except for in Iraq. “When Iraqis talk of going to the U.S., Michigan often is the place they want to see … Recently I made a trip to check [...]
But enough about us; what does the News think about us? Fortunately, we were not asked to pose waiflike on a bed with a laptop cord. “Lame and small-town,” by the way, was just supposed to be a hyperbolic description of what was running through our mind soon [...]
Business Week is also excited about the potential for continued housing unaffordability in A2, “a college town in the southeast corner of Michigan known for liberal marijuana laws (many residents and students take part in the annual Hash Bash) and intense loyalty to Wolverines football.”
[...]Ann Arbor Business Review columnist Paula Gardner expresses her hope that housing in Ann Arbor remain unaffordable. (Credit for the wording of this post goes to Dean Baker.)
[...]“I think it will change the whole feel of downtown … Every little space in this town, people will try to sell liquor,” laments a community member. Is it Joan Lowenstein or one of her crypto-prohibitionist fellow members of Campus Community Conversations? Nope, the concerned citizen is none other than [...]
“Whereas in Berkeley two City Council districts contain the majority of the student population, in Ann Arbor students are distributed centrally throughout the city, said Ann Arbor Councilmember Joan Lowenstein,” reports the Daily Californian in a story comparing students’ involvement in local government in the two cities. Isn’t it [...]
We were going to have this op-ed about University Village in the Daily (under our real name!) but never finished revising it before the end of the semester:
It’s the right building, but the wrong place. It’s the right place, but the wrong building. It’s too dense for a single-family [...]
Sick of all those best-cities lists that employ laughably faulty methodology? How about one that employs no methodology at all? A2 ranks among the Smithsonian magazine’s top 15 “where to live next” places, a list aimed at retirees from the “culturally-attuned Smithsonian audience.”
Prominently featured among A2’s “compelling strengths [...]
Well, it’s not exactly surprising: Council unanimously passed an amendment to the city living wage law to exempt the Ann Arbor Summer Festival. As Chris Easthope argued, “the festival’s seasonal employees — almost all students — are not the kind of workers the wage law was meant to protect.” [...]
A skate park seems like an odd cause for Ann Arborites to throw their weight behind. The sport appeals to young people, has a reputation for being dangerous and, most importantly, could result in more people using the park, which is generally not considered a desirable outcome. Of [...]
City Council wants to amend the living wage ordinance to include a loophole that will end up exempting the mostly younger workers that clean out trash cans at Summer Fest, but why stop there? How about adding some explicitly discriminatory language to make extra sure that employers of some high [...]
The News once again misleadingly ignores the contributions of graduate students to the university’s research output in their story on the GEO work stoppage: “Graduate student instructors teach part time while working on their advanced degrees … The typical instructor teaches 16.5 to 20 hours a week during the [...]
Murph has a great post about the future of the single-family detached house monoculture in light of recent economic problems. “Quality of life” and “diverse neighborhoods” (in the A2 sense of “low density” and “low density” respectively) have been the norm only for a few decades and may start [...]
Observer writer Vivienne Armentrout has announced her candidacy for the 5th Ward, running on a “quality of life” platform. Now, “quality of life,” as it’s used in A2, is what all the hip blogging kids would call a “dogwhistle.” It signals to a certain constituency that you’re willing [...]
Geoff Larcom is thrilled at Ann Arbor’s ranking on Prevention’s “best walking cities” list. Why is A2 such a great place to walk? Larcom illustrates:
A recent Friday night is an example. I got out of work around 10:30 p.m. after an evening shift. I took a favorite route, [...]
“The problem with Israel,” wrote Aimee Smith in the MIT student paper, “is that it is a racist, colonial, settler state built on ethnically cleansed lands.” Some would merely call it a “Western Cultural Imperialis[t]” state, but that’s just (matzo-)mealy-mouthed Israel-pandering, she argued.
We remember Smith’s, um, activism from our [...]
Ann Arborites are pretty savvy about marketing. They don’t consider a jar of President’s Choice salsa to be the height of cuisine just because it’s labeled “gourmet,” and they’re well aware that “light” doesn’t mean healthy. Even “organic,” which has a specific legal meaning, is often criticized for not being [...]
In a cartoon in the latest Observer, a professor is depicted addressing a crowded lecture hall: “Each year students ask, and the answer is, ‘No, U of M students do not have immunity from city and state laws.’” Interesting timing — we can’t help thinking that this lecture might have [...]
Last night’s public meeting about the proposed University Village development was a kind of preliminary attempt at the kind of neighborhood input sessions that would be required under Sabra Briere’s recent proposal. Without this kind of back-and-forth with the neighbors, she said, an “immediate hostility to change” is [...]
Ann Arbor ranks third on Prevention magazine’s latest list of Best Walking Cities. Wow, A2 must be a really great place to get around by walking.
Okay, those of you who are familiar with these best-cities lists know that it probably means no such thing. The criteria? “How many residents [...]
We’re still waiting to hear a reason why “seasonal” employees, like those who work at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, should be exempted from the city’s living wage law, other than that these workers should be discriminated against because of their age and family status — or as Summer Fest [...]
City Council finally revisits a serious problem: that Summer Fest workers may have to be paid a living wage (previously). They may be doing work and all, but is A2’s living-wage law, which would take effect if the city increased its funding for the event, really intended to [...]
So well-meaning, so beside the point. Geoff Larcom wants students to realize that science can be fun and exciting, since we need “more math and science grads to compete with other nations that impose more rigorous requirements on their students.” Unfortunately, until opportunities for scientists improve, this is an [...]
The News relies on a faulty understanding of how universities operate in their story on GEO talks. “The typical graduate student instructor teaches 16.5 to 20 hours a week during the eight-month academic year. In return, the graduate student receives a full tuition waiver, health care coverage with the [...]
The Golden Avenue anti-density zoning change passed unanimously last night. At least the landlord lobby seems to have done their research; they didn’t let one of the proposal’s supporters get away with casting it as a measure aimed solely at stopping commercial development, when just two months [...]
“Is it just us, or does it seem that you can hardly pick up a national magazine or a newspaper without reading something about Ann Arbor?” (It’s probably just him, or otherwise we wouldn’t be posting about this.) “What’s so special about Ann Arbor? Why does it seem to be [...]
Crime-fighting, at least when it happens in Ann Arbor, “is overrated,” according to the National Post’s review of the Samuel Jackson vehicle “Jumper” (UK title “Sweater”— well, it should be) in which Hayden Christensen bends time and space in a desperate attempt to get out of A2. The Peterborough [...]
Leopold’s is moving out because of the high rents, but how, one wonders, can landlords continue to charge these prices when half of Main Street seems to be sitting vacant? Isn’t this a terrible business move as well as a drain on a potentially vibrant downtown?
This Ann Arbor Business Review [...]
This reggae follow-up to last summer’s indie-folk video sensation “The A-Squared Environmental Blues” (thanks, Brandon!) confronts head-on the theme of…well, we can’t quite figure it out, so we’ll let them put it in their own words: “This cultural attack focuses on the greedy and shortsighted actions that have [...]
That’s great, it starts with an “earthquake,” (probably) birds and (possibly) snakes, (probably not) an aeroplane. David Cahill is not afraid. It’s the end of the pro-development era in Ann Arbor.
In case anyone was wondering, we feel fine.
[...]Todd Leopold has just announced that he and Leopold Brothers are leaving A2 for Denver. Writes Todd:
Our lease expires in the summer, and shockingly (note heavy sarcasm), our landlords asked for an obscene amount per month in rent, so we’re done. This move has zero to do with [...]
“City says: Talk to the neighbors.” AAIO says: Talk to the hand. (Sorry.)
It seems that the reason that all these proposals are passed by the Planning Commission and then rejected by council is that the developers aren’t seeking neighborhood input. Or they’re seeking it, but not doing anything about [...]
“Facebook could hurt you!” News at 10, after our exclusive on KILLER SUNSCREENS! Actually, this was the topic of a recent faculty talk on “online privacy and boundaries.” Panelists agreed that “it’s naive for students to think that only their friends are looking at their Facebook profiles because often, [...]
The fairy doors are spreading westward to Jackson! Well, sort of. This one materialized at a yoga studio in an establishment known as “Pink Heels at Art 634,” which suggests a terrifying possibility: suppose fairy doors are actually ruptures in the space-time continuum that allow little bits of Ann [...]
“Students get trash tickets,” reports the News. Quoted in this article are: an employee of a church that’s next to a fraternity, an executive director of a fraternity’s national organization, a landlord, a police lieutenant and Mayor Hieftje. As is sometimes the case with these kinds of stories, we [...]
“West side neighbors blast student housing complex,” reports the News. Maybe literally if they don’t get their way! Council decided to reject the Planning Commission-approved apartment building on the west side last night, after intense neighborhood opposition. And we mean intense. One resident, the News reports, “said the group [...]
Tomorrow night Council debates changing the zoning of Golden Avenue to single-family. We thought we’d look through the Planning Commission minutes, which can be found here, to see why this change is bring proposed; much like lower taxes, less development in a neighborhood is something that people rarely call [...]
We missed this story in the Daily from last week about the Burns Park zoning changes, and having read it, we still feel like we’re missing a lot of the story. For instance, a business school student says “he thinks people are concerned about property values, not the neighborhood [...]
If there’s anyone who should be able to dispel the idea that the new Burns Park zoning proposal is based on anti-student demagoguery, it’s an alum from 1970 who grew up in the neighborhood. Writes “Alum 70,” “Having students next door are [sic] a constant problem…The students are for [...]
The Daily bypasses the most anti-student arguments against the new 26-story residence on South U and goes for the most sophisticated one in the anti-density arsenal: more housing would be great, but just not this project. University Village “will turn out to be a high-end apartment complex serving [...]
A student Livejournaler regurgitates townie talking points about spoiled, pampered students destroying the character of the city:
So, in the Daily, I read a bit about the proposed 26 story sky rise with four bedroom suites, built-in washers/dryers and all this good stuff. Sounds like a pretty place, I suppose. [...]
Who and/or what are the Ann Arbor Seven? It looks like it’s somehow related to the destruction of the neighborhoods of A2, which we’re always for, but the details are intriguingly scanty. The following remark does little to elucidate the issue:
Defend the Ann Arbor Seven
as if six were [...]
The Clinton campaign is characterizing Obama’s efforts to draw student voters as “trying to manipulate the Iowa caucuses with out-of-state people” who have no business participating in the election, unlike “people who live here, people who pay taxes here.” Writes John K. Wilson at Inside Higher Ed, “[H]er campaign [...]
Another thing we’ve noticed about some of the Burns Park zoning coverage: language that suggests a certain point of view. “Portions of that neighborhood currently occupied by single-family homes are actually zoned for multiple-family and two-family dwelling units…Homes already used as students [sic] rentals would ‘grandfathered’ under the plan, unaffected [...]
It used to be that neighborhoods had to do a little work to get rezoned as R1D (R1D of the Students and Renters). Put up a website with some plaintive-folk-soundtracked videos about the destruction of the neighborhood, give impassioned speeches to city council about how your high school kids can’t [...]
“How much do you want to subsidize golf?” asks a consultant studying the city’s money-losing public golf courses. Well, if “you” refers to the citizens of A2, the answer is “a lot”; as Tom Gantert’s story points out, this is a city where a write-in city council candidate almost [...]
It’s Anglin and Briere: the First 100 Days! Only — they’re going all reasonable on us? “Newly elected Council Member Sabra Briere, D-1st Ward, cautioned about asking the DDA to spend the money” on the Y building demolition. Caution, eh? (The News, by the way, could save some ink [...]
This A2 nonstory made Gawker — and the explosive breakup of Jakob Lodwick and Julia Allison didn’t? (If you don’t know what we’re talking about, we’d suggest not clicking on that second link; once you’ve become aware of the world of techno-hipster fameballs who tumblr-log their relationships and [...]
It’s been too long. This has been a rough (stressful, not traumatic) couple of weeks for AAIO (the person, not the blog.)
We will be back on Monday with new content. Mike Anglin is now officially a member of the A2 city council — how could we not be?
ann arborially,
aaio
The watchword for writers seeking to capture the essence of A2 seems to be “sweaty,” if you go by this Daily column on fiction with an Ann Arbor backdrop. Author Bharati Mukherjee depicts our town as “an equal parts hot-sweat sexy academic wonderland,” while a character in a Dean [...]
Another A2 blogger makes headlines: this time it’s The American Princess. But while we might not be making appearances on CNN or garnering coverage on NPR, don’t think we’ve been left out of the Tree Town publicity whirlwind. A recent Metromode Media story on “SE Michigan’s [...]
An anonymous blogger’s reign of snark over the defenseless citizens of A2 has come to an end as he is finally exposed. Johnny Quest, now known to be Paul Tassi of the Daily, was known for writing searing critiques of the shallow, status-obsessed Greek system on campus. Like [...]
Overheated A2 rhetoric strikes again! The sale of one of the city’s golf courses, should such a thing ever happen, would be “lethal for the residents and golfers of Ann Arbor,” writes golf course architect William Newcomb. “To sell off a corner of the golf course is morally corrupt [...]
Michigan Radio’s fall pledge drive is over, but we still have the enduring memory of Jennifer Guerra imploring her listeners to donate by featuring a short voiceover by a young woman named Britten who stated her title as “creative inspirational doer.” Now you can read all about her found-object [...]
A Duke Chronicle columnist defends his university’s setting:
[...]Durham is not and will never be a college town like Chapel Hill. I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing.
Chapel Hill looks an awful lot like Ann Arbor, Mich., to me.
A few quick thoughts on our return from fall break:
WQKL, “Ann Arbor’s 107.1,” is heartbreakingly close to being a great radio station. You hear three to four songs in a row of 80’s New Wave (The Smiths, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads) interspersed with the Shins and Spoon. Commercial radio pop bliss — some claim to prefer less-hyped local artists, [...]
The crowd that turns out for M-Flicks is a little too coarse for the sensibilities of Daily writer Elie Zwiebel. The mostly-student audience members cheer violent movies, “continually engag[ing] in a participatory celebration of brutality … It’s not as if we are isolated from this base and vulgar bloodlust. [...]
Thirty travel journalists are about to embark on a tour of A2 in a quest to get more “fam” with the area (that’s “familiarization,” natch. Obvs!) “Their outlets include AAA Magazine, as well as niche products that cover golf, food and the arts,” reports Ann Arbor Business Review. [...]
“Huron Hills site is valuable even if no one is golfing there,” an “Other Voices” column in the News argues. For one thing, it’s been adjacent to the writer’s property for 37 years. And now the city goes and hires an “out-of-state consultant” to decide what should be done [...]
Today’s News carries a somewhat baffling story about the newfound maturity of Michigan receiver Adrian Arrington in the wake of “the spring that almost ended his college career.” So what took place in this tumultuous spring? An “incident he hasn’t publicly discussed,” which, as the News helpfully informs us, [...]
The latest cause celebre in liberal A2: saving the taxpayer-funded city golf courses from being sold to pay for frills like a police station. “Other recreational facilities lose money, so what?” says accountant Karen Sidney, although neither she nor the News provide any data as to how they compare [...]
Town Hall Meeting Gives Townspeople Chance To Say Stupid Things In Public. ‘’This town used to be so different … Kids are different. Adults are different. People. People are different. What happened? How do we get back to the way things were? How, Councilman Reed?”
[...]The Daily starts off the year with a salvo against the blogosphere. “Aren’t we smart enough to know the difference between real news and blog lies or sensationalist drama?” writes Theresa Kennelly. “When blogs satisfy readers’ speculations and news reporters entertain watchers, the desire to turn to other news [...]
This doesn’t happen every day: the city cracks down on a negligent landlord, this time for failing to provide gas and electricity.
Newman said many of the apartments are vacant this time of the year. Tenants are allowed to keep their belongings in the apartments, and can enter them, [...]
As much fun as the A2 townie-vs.-student wars are, sometimes you just need a break from pondering what Jane Jacobs would have thought of the setback on the building slated to replace Anberay, or how the new stormwater fee structure affects renters. Our less academically encumbered counterparts in East Lansing [...]
Well, “Huron” and “awesome” sort of rhyme. Brandon’s unfailing music-scouting skills bring us this gem of a video that uses the power of soulful folk to make the case for a greenway. Our best transcription of the lyrics to “The A-Squared Environmental Blues”:
We live in Ann Arbor
We are [...]
A letter to the News brings to our attention a growing problem in A2 that will only be exacerbated by a proposed development on Fifth Avenue: “ugly apartment buildings in residential areas.” “[T]here is nothing worse for a quiet residential area (which that area is, generally) than a rental [...]
Of all the places (you’d need the better part of one hand to count them!) to eat a delicious lunch in A2, The Boston Globe recommends “Dominick’s … an Italian cafe inside an old house with a fountain on its backyard plaza.” Is Dominick’s really known for its food?
[...]Urban Oasis’ thoughts on last night’s election results:
I am almost gleeful in anticipation of the schadenfreude I will no doubt be feeling over the next 2 years — Ann Arbor is going to be feeling some serious buyer’s remorse. “Wait, we just elected a retiree and a B&B [...]
“I’d like to see aaisoverrated turn out 50 voters to support their pro development position.”
— mucho gusto
Check in here if you voted in today’s election (whether or not you voted for a tool of Big Development.)
[...]Remember all those News food columns with readers requesting bygone recipes for retro dishes like “townwheel sandwiches” and “colonial salad dressing”? Today’s returns to form with an inquiry about two Willow Run school cafeteria specialties from the 60’s: hamburger gravy and whipped peanut butter sandwiches. “The gravy had hamburger [...]
“Council race swerves to the left,” reports the News. So what’s so left about the new group of candidates? They “call themselves more ‘progressive’ than most of the current City Council members.” Well, if they call themselves progressive, then they must be. And as if that weren’t enough proof, [...]
Fifth Ward council candidate Mike Anglin identifies what’s wrong with A2 government today — too much action and decisiveness! “We have had too long a time of no discussion and rapid decision making,” he writes to a resident who expresses concern about the new storm water rates. Well, it’s [...]
After 6 years in Ann Arbor, we’d somehow come to imagine Madison as a slightly bigger, slightly less expensive and overhyped version of Tree Town. Sure, it seemed edgy and hip when we were in high school in the Chicago suburbs, but it’s still a Midwestern college town, not unlike [...]
Summer Festival board member Julie Fritz reiterates Judy McGovern’s point that the event’s workers are temporary. And young! Why do they need to be paid as much as real workers? Especially when it might mean that Ann Arborites could be deprived of “free performances of that colorful, pole-perching [...]
Fifth Ward city council primary candidate Mike Anglin answers for council the question “What is a Neighborhood?”
The purchase of a house in a particular neighborhood is for many who live in A2 a very thoroughly processed decision. The values that the family holds are focused in this decision…
In [...]
The News trumpets A2’s showing on the most recent city ranking: 59th place. The ranking, conducted by an association of home builders, purports to rate cities on housing affordability by calculating “the percentage of homes sold that would be considered affordable for a family who earned the median income [...]
AT&T generously provides pristine white surfaces for local first-graders or aspiring Golden Paintbrush Award winners to transform into community art, and all the Old West Side can do is complain about the alleged “monstrosities.”
[...]Sure, it’s nice for employees to get a living wage and all, but is it really so important for young “temporary” workers — temporary workers whose “pretty good gig” controlling crowds and picking up trash at Top of the Park allows them to experience the thrill of seeing great family [...]
The steady stream of letters to the News about the Avery House project has to be one of the most bland, uninspired NIMBY campaigns we’ve ever seen, but today’s just about takes the giddy biscuit. Where you’re expecting a soaringly metaphorical rhetorical-question leadoff, the writers go [...]
This somewhat desultory city council video mashup of footage from last week’s meeting was sent only to Murph, as he is “the very good blogger … many others like mark mayfred and arbor dates did not receive it.”
[...]Planning Commissioner Ethel Potts trots out the hoary concept of “quality of life” to honor departing councilmember Bob Johnson. (Okay, this was from Monday’s News, but it’s A2; do we really want to be some fast-paced megalopolis where bloggers write about something on the actual day it happened?) [...]
Ten years and still no dog park. The reasons given at council last week — “no consensus,” concerns about the reaction of “the neighbors” — could apply to just about any delayed project in A2.
Venerated Chicago columnist Mike Royko once argued for the use of public jogging paths by [...]
“I can’t think of anywhere else in the city where there is more than a two-story building in an otherwise residential/single-home neighborhood,” a letter writer to the News points out in her opposition to the Elks/Avery House project. “Such discrepancies between the heights of the dwellings change the feel [...]
