Changes in the city of trees.

[netmouse]

In a response to Mrissa from an earlier thread I go on a bit about ways that Ann Arbor has changed that makes it less fun these days for me to show people around town. I grew up here, and find it much less the comfortable, casual, ideosynchratic and hippy college town it was when I was a kid. Borders has changed from a deep and interestingly unique store to a chain clone. I didn't even go into how the Art Fair has gotten less artsy and fun and more commercial. Even Zingerman's sandwiches are not as good as they once were, since they shrunk them a few years back to keep competitive in the face of Amers and other sandwich cafes.

Would you agree that Ann Arbor is changing for the worse?

What changes do you like? (having Trader Joe's and Whole Foods come in could be counted as positives, for instance).

What do you miss?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

That's definitely a fair point. I should caveat what i've said with the fact that, relative to many many places, A²'s still got a lot going for it.

I think much of my gripe is, again, the "seeing how it could be and asking 'why not?'" and not liking the hypotheses that seem to best answer that question. I haven't been here as long as some to be able to tell if the A² i dreamed of is also an A² that was, or if it was all just a silly dream and nothing more.