I forgot about Hung Wan. I haven't had Hunan cuisine as good as that since then. What I miss now is Old Siam which closed a couple of years ago. That was my family's go-to restaurant for Thai food.
Ann Arbor was considered to be the area between the highways with a few township pockets thrown in. I am referring to travel within this area. The time to traverse has increased for any travel during normal hours including evenings. The problem is the alternate routes which allowed you to bypass the traffic congestion have slowed down significantly due to road reconfiguration, especially around the downtown area.
My high school teacher used to call Ann Arbor a 15 minute town in the early seventies where you could get from any point in town to another point in town within 15 minutes. No longer the case due to increased traffic but more importantly design changes to traffic flow (lights, lane reconfiguration/removal, etc.) I can point to all the downtown streets significantly slowing down traffic as they can take several lights to go through an intersection because of the backups due to the next segment of the road which is backed up for the next segment etc.
Roundabouts have been great but I am not sure the bike lanes are safer as most drivers weren't educated to look to their right before making a right turn. I have seen several close calls where a bicyclist almost ran into a car turning right. Whose fault? Car driver when they expect right of way turning right with nobody in the intersection or bicyclist who thinks they have right of way through the intersection and don't slow down?
I have been an Ann Arbor resident for 50 years and went to U-M in the mid-seventies. The thing I miss the most is the small town feel and economic diversity of Ann Arbor at that time. Ann Arbor’s attractiveness as a place to live has led to gentrification over the years which in turn gave us more expensive housing and displacing many of the lower income workers who used to live in Ann Arbor before. This gentrification and the university increasing the number of well to do outstate students made it economical to develop the high density housing which we now see with all the tall residential units put up around campus and downtown. Our leaders have made it much more difficult to navigate through town, especially if you have to go downtown. The bike lanes are great for a handful of people but cause disruptions for many more people such as reduced parking (which there is not enough of if you go to campus or downtown during the day), and increased time to go though many streets as they only have one lane now (try waiting for the Amazon delivery truck to move when delivering on one of these streets). We still have lots of great things which make it a great place to live. However, Ann Arbor is getting a big city feel though I am not sure that’s for the better.
Anyone remembers the 3 dots and a dash line ? This was the first football game that I saw (on TV) when I came to the US and the game which got me following football with a passion. I watched at a friend’s house where he picked the Lions and I got to root for the Vikings. That was a good time to watch football on TV as the games went quickly (not as many ads and the refs let a lot more stuff go by). The TV networks were trying to build up viewership so they tried to educate new viewers on the rules and strategy of the game which let me figure out what was happening on the field.
The Vikings are still my team but being in Southeast Michigan for the last 50 years has made me a Lions fan as well. This doubles the chances of seeing one of my teams win the Super Bowl (though double nothing is still nothing :-)
I have never posted before though I have been lurking on the blog for 15 years or more through the depths of the RichRod and Brady Hoke years. MgoBlog has been consistently excellent in its content even with some pretty bad teams.
This past year has been one of the best years to be a Michigan football fan, both from watching the team play and from following the team on MGoBlog. Seth and the guys did a great job stepping up to the task of keeping MGoBlog informative and entertaining. The MGoBlog content over the past couple of weeks has reached new levels of great with Brian and his tremendous writing.
Brian, Seth, Alex and everyone else who contributed to making MGoBlog the best, THANKS.
Recent Comments
I forgot about Hung Wan. I haven't had Hunan cuisine as good as that since then. What I miss now is Old Siam which closed a couple of years ago. That was my family's go-to restaurant for Thai food.
Ann Arbor was considered to be the area between the highways with a few township pockets thrown in. I am referring to travel within this area. The time to traverse has increased for any travel during normal hours including evenings. The problem is the alternate routes which allowed you to bypass the traffic congestion have slowed down significantly due to road reconfiguration, especially around the downtown area.
My high school teacher used to call Ann Arbor a 15 minute town in the early seventies where you could get from any point in town to another point in town within 15 minutes. No longer the case due to increased traffic but more importantly design changes to traffic flow (lights, lane reconfiguration/removal, etc.) I can point to all the downtown streets significantly slowing down traffic as they can take several lights to go through an intersection because of the backups due to the next segment of the road which is backed up for the next segment etc.
Roundabouts have been great but I am not sure the bike lanes are safer as most drivers weren't educated to look to their right before making a right turn. I have seen several close calls where a bicyclist almost ran into a car turning right. Whose fault? Car driver when they expect right of way turning right with nobody in the intersection or bicyclist who thinks they have right of way through the intersection and don't slow down?
I have been an Ann Arbor resident for 50 years and went to U-M in the mid-seventies. The thing I miss the most is the small town feel and economic diversity of Ann Arbor at that time. Ann Arbor’s attractiveness as a place to live has led to gentrification over the years which in turn gave us more expensive housing and displacing many of the lower income workers who used to live in Ann Arbor before. This gentrification and the university increasing the number of well to do outstate students made it economical to develop the high density housing which we now see with all the tall residential units put up around campus and downtown. Our leaders have made it much more difficult to navigate through town, especially if you have to go downtown. The bike lanes are great for a handful of people but cause disruptions for many more people such as reduced parking (which there is not enough of if you go to campus or downtown during the day), and increased time to go though many streets as they only have one lane now (try waiting for the Amazon delivery truck to move when delivering on one of these streets). We still have lots of great things which make it a great place to live. However, Ann Arbor is getting a big city feel though I am not sure that’s for the better.
Now get off my lawn.
Anyone remembers the 3 dots and a dash line ? This was the first football game that I saw (on TV) when I came to the US and the game which got me following football with a passion. I watched at a friend’s house where he picked the Lions and I got to root for the Vikings. That was a good time to watch football on TV as the games went quickly (not as many ads and the refs let a lot more stuff go by). The TV networks were trying to build up viewership so they tried to educate new viewers on the rules and strategy of the game which let me figure out what was happening on the field.
The Vikings are still my team but being in Southeast Michigan for the last 50 years has made me a Lions fan as well. This doubles the chances of seeing one of my teams win the Super Bowl (though double nothing is still nothing :-)
I have never posted before though I have been lurking on the blog for 15 years or more through the depths of the RichRod and Brady Hoke years. MgoBlog has been consistently excellent in its content even with some pretty bad teams.
This past year has been one of the best years to be a Michigan football fan, both from watching the team play and from following the team on MGoBlog. Seth and the guys did a great job stepping up to the task of keeping MGoBlog informative and entertaining. The MGoBlog content over the past couple of weeks has reached new levels of great with Brian and his tremendous writing.
Brian, Seth, Alex and everyone else who contributed to making MGoBlog the best, THANKS.