20 years ago in the Daily
Ann Arbor: A town like no other
Ann Arbor is an easy town to take for granted.
After spending a few years here, one becomes an expert at moaning about everything from obscene rents and astronomical tution rates to the condition of the streets and the dearth of parking spaces. And yet, we all return each fall, drawn like lemmings to the city.
The fact is, deep down, we all love this place, and after a summer in the real world, it's a relief to return to our cozy little pseudoreality:
Where you can dress and act any way you choose since there's always someone much weirder than you around the corner.
Where you can see 50 different movies a week, (quite a relief after a summer diet of Monkey and the Bandit and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo) and most of them at a cost of only $1.50.
Where you can come home from a tough day and turn the stereo on just as loud as you like without any complaints from the elderly couple next door.
Where you can always expect to find someone to talk to who is an expert in whatever new subject in which you've suddenly developed an interest.
Where you can join a group or organization that shares your values, whether your goal is to burn the Administration Building and depose Robben Fleming or to crusade for psychoanalytic counseling for plants.
Where you can wait in line on Sunday mornings for omelets at Steve's Lunch, and you know they'll be better than Mom used to make.
Where you can play pinball until 3 a.m. and not be alone.
Where you can smoke and drink yourself into oblivion and have no one to answer to the next morning but yourself.
Where you can sit in a booth from your parents' era, eating Drake's famed toasted pecan rolls and sipping darjeeling tea.
Where a man named Shakey Jake will sing you a song if you buy a paper from him and jeer and hiss at you if you pass him by.
And where you can watch top-ranked football and basketball and hockey teams, eat fragels from the Bagel Factory, buy hardback books at discount from Borders, devour all-natural ice cream at Mountain High, eat the best crab you've ever tasted and not pay an arm and a claw for it at the appropirately named Cracked Crab, where you can buy every comic book ever made at the Eye of Aggamotto, and read one of the nation's finest college newspapers delivered to your home each morning for a paltry $12 a year (sorry about that).
Gee, ain't it good to be back home again?