The most Ann Arbor thing ever
This dude with the hair was sitting in front of us at the game, reading The Economist.
Also, shout out to Scanner Blue for stopping to chat. It's always nice to meet a fellow MGoBlogger. 
December 6th, 2023 at 12:51 AM ^
This guy’s a commie!!!
December 6th, 2023 at 7:23 AM ^
Reading The Economist?
December 6th, 2023 at 7:38 AM ^
More like “The Ecommunist” amirite?
December 6th, 2023 at 1:03 AM ^
I have a nomination for the most Ann Arbor thing ever.
The bike lane on S Division. They took a major artery for egress from the athletic campus and put in a bike lane. Evidently the bike lane is against the curb and if you park you are out in the middle of the street.
So a two lane egress becomes one lane and traffic now backs up to a standstill with all that gas burning and CO2 being emitted. Haven't seen a bike rider using it yet as I sit in traffic after football and basketball.
December 6th, 2023 at 1:48 AM ^
You win. So spot on, counter productive.
December 6th, 2023 at 4:22 AM ^
I used that bike lane after the OSU game. Was back home by 4 watching a late afternoon game while you were stuck in traffic.
December 6th, 2023 at 7:42 AM ^
They’ve done several moves like that to make driving worse while only offering value to the small subset of people who can afford to live in town but are broke enough to rely on their bike to get everywhere.
Which includes me, incidentally, but I typically avoid those bike lanes on the main thoroughfares because it’s just as fast, quieter, less smoggy, and safer to ride through residential side streets. Whoever thought the main bike arteries should overlay on the main automobile arteries didn’t think it through or was acting out of contempt/malice.
December 6th, 2023 at 9:14 AM ^
Even if you hit that stretch on a Tuesday at noon, you're going to be waiting for the bottleneck to clear for what feels like an eternity. It's going to suck so much more when they add a thousand more people with the new dorms on Elbel (RIP).
Protected bike lanes (i.e. the lane placed between the parked cars and the curb) are great. That stretch, however, is just too narrow. to accommodate a bike lane, parking, and traffic.
Good intentions mixed with bad planning, which seems to be the coin of the realm in Ann Arbor right now.
December 6th, 2023 at 11:45 AM ^
I'm not sure the intentions are good. I know people in the city government and their smug condescension toward motorists is palpable. I love cycling but definitely do not enjoy cycling on the most congested streets, bike lanes or not. And those protected lanes are highly under-utilized relative to the motor traffic potential that's been taken away -- I suspect for similar reasons as mine. People are biking, but they don't want to go out of their way to bike on the busiest, most congested streets just because there's a bike lane there. And the features that made those streets popular and efficient for motorists (multiple lanes to keep turners from obstructing as much thru traffic, single-direction traffic flow, lack of stop signs, traffic lights timed [formerly] to facilitate efficiency) provide little to no value to cyclists. That said, there are folks in city gov't who look at the inconvenience presented to motorists as a net W regardless of the low cyclist utilization.
December 6th, 2023 at 9:25 AM ^
I really hate that they did that to S. Division. We go to hockey, too and it's such a problem. I was really hoping they would suspend on street parking on game days to alleviate the bottle neck, but, nope. A2 is really trying to become aggressively anti-car, but they forget that not everyone who enjoys coming to A2 lives there. Given the lack of regional mass transit, to get to A2, you have to have a car.
December 6th, 2023 at 9:43 AM ^
The traffic engineering in Ann Arbor is amongst the worst I have ever encountered. Absolutely zero forethought to the impact but you realize they don't give a shit about cars or people in them. That is their goal, and they accomplish it well.
December 6th, 2023 at 11:12 AM ^
When those dorms are finished and they build up those houses they bought, it will turn that stretch into mini-State Street. There will be so many crosswalks, no one will be able to move at all.
It's an artery used to get to the hospital, especially in the summer when Main is closed. With traffic as it is, does an ambulance get privileges to the bike lane, otherwise there's the potential to get stuck with everyone in front of it lacking the ability to get out of the way.
My 2nd nominee for WTH were they thinking, the left turn at Busch's. They give you two lanes to turn and then condense it into one right away. It was a very good spot to not have a bike lane and have people use the rather large sidewalk that could be shared with pedestrians. The bike lane could have started after the driveway continuing down Main towards the mall.
Bike lanes are fine, but the way they've planned all of this is off. If buses are part of their strategy, they're failing. They've made lanes hard to navigate for buses, the amount of times that cars are in the right spot but still need to back up so a bus can make a turn is increasing with these changes.
December 7th, 2023 at 11:38 AM ^
All of these replies are basically it. Ann Arbor has expanded into a metropolis college town with a housing shortage, to which the university has appended a gigantic medical system with massive staff and patient traffic needs, with just-OK bus transit and inadequate car/parking infrastructure. Every day in A2 is a football Saturday now in terms of traffic, sometimes more than once with shift changes.
I'm very sympathetic to the desire to reduce car traffic and encourage walkability, which is part of the reason why we're not staying in SE Michigan. But it seems to me there's a disconnect between eliminating cars in A2 while also maintaining a city where it's now fundamentally unaffordable to live walking or biking distance from your place of employment. Any of us who rented in A2 as students would be shocked at what our old rooms/apartments rent for now. It's more expensive than comparable living in major cities like Chicago, in many cases. That's insane.
And yet City Council and the bike lane advocates are shocked when people still need to drive and park to get to work. The issues aren't changing. The high-rises aren't fixing the housing crisis--they're just making everything else more expensive.
December 6th, 2023 at 1:15 AM ^
Probably saved money on the ticket compared to paying for peacock. Had enough left over to buy the magazine.
December 6th, 2023 at 1:32 AM ^
He reads it for the pictures.
December 6th, 2023 at 2:04 AM ^
It use to be Hash Bash back in the 70s and 80s. When I was a student in the 80s, I knew people who traveled 1000s of miles to partake.
December 6th, 2023 at 6:30 AM ^
Hash Bash was so much fun in the late 80’s
December 6th, 2023 at 7:22 AM ^
And the late 70’s.
December 6th, 2023 at 4:13 AM ^
That dude is at all the games and sometimes reads the paper ( WStJ?). He also has his last name on few buildings around campus.
The pleasure was all mine meeting one of the nicest, frequent posters on this here board.
p.s. the venerable Craig Ross reads Alan Furst paperback novels at UM hockey and softball.
December 6th, 2023 at 5:23 AM ^
Was he wearing sandals? I didn’t know Brian dyed his hair for Podcasts?
December 6th, 2023 at 6:52 AM ^
That wouldn't be surprising. Visually, everything else checks out. :)
December 6th, 2023 at 6:17 AM ^
More importantly, do those pants match that sweater?
December 6th, 2023 at 8:46 AM ^
Not only did the pants match the sweater but the soft leather loafers matched, too. No socks.
December 6th, 2023 at 6:24 AM ^
Is that John Johnston of Corn Nation (the guy who records postgame rants in his bathroom)?
December 6th, 2023 at 6:28 AM ^
The only business magazine worth reading.
December 6th, 2023 at 7:07 AM ^
To be fair to the Crisler crowd, you can have some fascinating and very esoteric discussions with the people around you depending on where you are. It is difficult not to have at least one quite Ann Arbor moment there or indeed at Michigan Stadium too.
December 6th, 2023 at 7:24 AM ^
Is that a Roll Tide fan?
December 6th, 2023 at 7:45 AM ^
It's kind of sad what is happening in bball. Feels like were suddenly back in perpetual and never-ending mediocre basketball. Many noted you could see the chinks in the armor on that team a couple years back that had a heck of a lot of talent but the pipeline was drying up for new recruits and you could tell they were all going to dip out leaving us with year after year of hoping for something in the transfer portal.
It's not really quite that terrible, this team did show some flashes, but man...hard for me to get super excited right now.
December 6th, 2023 at 7:52 AM ^
I bet he got there in a Subaru Outback with a Coexist sticker
December 6th, 2023 at 8:08 AM ^
or a prius
December 6th, 2023 at 3:12 PM ^
Range Rover with a "Save The Planet"
December 6th, 2023 at 8:19 AM ^
Wendy, thanks for the update…
I hope your kids enjoyed the A 9:00 pm EST start on a Tuesday so it can be broadcast on Peacocok is a practical example of what’s wrong with these media agreements.
Was there much of crowd last night? It seemed light to me.
A home court advantage didn’t exist. I’m not saying a 6:30 or 7:00 pm tip would have meant a full house. But, 9:00 pm on a Tuesday, for Peacock..just ridiculous.
P.S. - hoping your drive back is uneventful…
December 6th, 2023 at 6:18 PM ^
Student section was full. The rest of the arena was probably half full. I have to think a 9 PM tip on a Tuesday night didn't help. We didn't get out of there until almost midnight.
December 6th, 2023 at 8:31 AM ^
I need to take notes from this guy. I have trouble reading an email with 2 toddlers running around screaming.
December 6th, 2023 at 9:04 AM ^
One woman who sits in front of us at the basketball games reads a book during every time out and break.
December 6th, 2023 at 9:04 AM ^
I guess we are a football school now?
December 6th, 2023 at 9:05 AM ^
The most Ann Arbor thing ever was a guy putting a [stop] "eating meat" sticker on a stop sign, then getting back in his Maserati SUV and driving off. I wish I had recorded him doing it on my phone...
December 6th, 2023 at 11:33 AM ^
This just reminded me of the time when just about every stop sign in town had 'rape' spray painted on it. Another thing that went away because of 24/7 video coverage.
December 6th, 2023 at 9:06 AM ^
Wendy, I thought you live in Evanston. You drove from Illinois for the game?
December 6th, 2023 at 9:12 AM ^
The economist used to be good... canceled my subscription long ago...
December 6th, 2023 at 10:35 AM ^
I don't want to ruin the surprise, but given the hair and the color of that jumpsuit, it would appear that you were sitting behind Santa (Claus, not Ono). I bet that was the Naughty/Nice list disguised as an academically oriented publication.
December 6th, 2023 at 10:59 AM ^
I don’t know, the people holding up “deer lives matter” signs while protesting the deer cull years ago is the most Ann Arbor thing ever
December 6th, 2023 at 1:24 PM ^
Great publication. I used to subscribe.
December 6th, 2023 at 2:51 PM ^
The entire basketball program is broken. Crisler is broken. needs a complete overhaul. It’s so sad how the program has reverted back to before the Beilein rebuild. Sigh…..