Ch-ch-changes

They were and still are an exclusive group of White wealthy new-age ex-hippies and expatriated suburbanites with no taste, culture or respect for Ann Arbor's urban history.

So, in part, does a woman from Ann Arbor called Jobee, (sort of) summarize the 'gentrification' of that college town (where I went to school).

I got onto this from Flint Expatriates, the latest post on which is about (the former) Drake's Sandwich Shop in Ann Arbor.

Drake's was this little hole-in-the-wall place that served ... well, pretty much the same fare a Licorice & Sloe here, only it was cheaper, and they also sold candy. It had these wooden booths, with (unpadded) benches, which if I'm remembering correctly at the time I went to school in Ann Arbor, were painted puke green.

I did not have the same experience at Drake's as did Jobee - if Iggy Pop was in there while I was, I had no clue who Iggy Pop was at the time. He would not have stood out.

We were merely college kids meeting between classes to grab a sandwich or a pecan roll and/or a pot of tea.

I hope Gordon Young will forgive me for pillaging from his blog when I re-post this quote, from Michigan Today (a publication of the University of Michigan):

Alums who graduated before the early '90s will remember pecan rolls and sandwiches at Drake's, the legendary sandwich shop that faced the Diag. Drake's closed in 1993. Other eating institutions, such as the Pretzel Bell, are also gone. In their place, a number of chain restaurants have moved in, but so have food joints that cater to today's palates: sushi bars, falafel stands, and organic pizza.

The Diag is a green area in which sidewalks spin out diagonally from a central spot in front of the Graduate Library. Most of the classroom buildings faced the Diag, in my time there. North Campus was just getting off the ground when I left.

And does not all this sound oh so familiar? Legendary places that you'd think would be preserved, replaced by organic pizza places and such ... not that there is anything wrong with eating organic. I try to do it as much as possible myself.

I once puked up my guts at the curb outside the Pretzel Bell (wow, used "puke" twice in this post) ... but hey, I see the Blind Pig is still there! yay

Did I ever mention how, when I was a kid, there were these mansions of auto pioneers and others in Flint, and how when I was in my 20s, they tore them down to make a freeway (or expressway, as we called them there) so they could move the auto bodies from Fisher Body to Buick more easily?

Zip, zip. That Buick plant is gone, gone like the wind. That link is to yet another post on a blog, about Flint in general, and the state of affairs all over the place in particular.

Don't think the two places (here and there) have nothing to do with one another. Hitching your wagon to just one star never works.