Ann Arbor, June 13
Hope you all survived Friday the 13th. (I know, some of you are saying, "What? Was that just Friday the 13th?")
Growing up in Adrian, Michigan (population 22,000) my friends and I, by the time we got to high school, started to feel trapped in our small town, with its green lawns, church bake sales, and pick-up trucks. Getting that driver's license at age 16--an undeniable rite of passage and a huge step toward independence for kids all across North America--allowed us to at least stretch the edges of our world. And without a doubt, the best place we discovered was the city of Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, an hour to the northeast. Ann Arbor--equal parts hippie haven, research center, and small-town Americana--beckoned with "record stores," where the latest alternative sounds took us somewhere new and exciting musically, and used bookstores staffed by bearded old beatniks, where we would spend hours exploring dusty shelves of yellowing paperbacks. In the summer, cafes would expand out onto the sidewalks, and dread-locked musicans would sit on benches and strum guitars on the university campus. It made us feel important and in a way fulfilled to think we were soaking up something--a kind of knowledge of a wider world we observed in an "intellectual center" like Ann Arbor. And the large university naturally attracted people from all over the world and gave Ann Arbor a funky,
During my years in Taiwan, I would visit Ann Arbor without fail on every yearly visit home. I've watched record shops close (in the wake of all the downloading, perhaps) to be replaced by Verizon Wireless stores and seen the traffic get ever thicker, but the city, with its red brick shops and Victorian houses, continues to draw me back for a flip through a rack of used CDs, a gig at a local club, or just a coffee and a stroll through the leafy university campus. Oh, and Kitty digs it, too...
Anyway, enjoy the images...
Growing up in Adrian, Michigan (population 22,000) my friends and I, by the time we got to high school, started to feel trapped in our small town, with its green lawns, church bake sales, and pick-up trucks. Getting that driver's license at age 16--an undeniable rite of passage and a huge step toward independence for kids all across North America--allowed us to at least stretch the edges of our world. And without a doubt, the best place we discovered was the city of Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, an hour to the northeast. Ann Arbor--equal parts hippie haven, research center, and small-town Americana--beckoned with "record stores," where the latest alternative sounds took us somewhere new and exciting musically, and used bookstores staffed by bearded old beatniks, where we would spend hours exploring dusty shelves of yellowing paperbacks. In the summer, cafes would expand out onto the sidewalks, and dread-locked musicans would sit on benches and strum guitars on the university campus. It made us feel important and in a way fulfilled to think we were soaking up something--a kind of knowledge of a wider world we observed in an "intellectual center" like Ann Arbor. And the large university naturally attracted people from all over the world and gave Ann Arbor a funky,
During my years in Taiwan, I would visit Ann Arbor without fail on every yearly visit home. I've watched record shops close (in the wake of all the downloading, perhaps) to be replaced by Verizon Wireless stores and seen the traffic get ever thicker, but the city, with its red brick shops and Victorian houses, continues to draw me back for a flip through a rack of used CDs, a gig at a local club, or just a coffee and a stroll through the leafy university campus. Oh, and Kitty digs it, too...
Anyway, enjoy the images...
posted by Brian Kleinsmith | 7:54 PM
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