I’ve lived in Ann Arbor for the last 5 and a half years after coming here for grad school, and I’ve managed to do all of those things, plus have a kid.
The quality and diversity of ethnic food in Ann Arbor is really quite impressive, especially given that it’s not a large city. (I grew up in the inner suburbs of D.C., so that’s my point of reference.) By comparison, in Lansing “ethnic food” basically means “Mexican, Chinese, or Itallian.”
Madras Masala is my favorite of the many Indian restaurants in town (and I love Indian food). It’s just one block away from the Diag (the main quad in the middle of the Central campus). Tuptim, over on the Ypsi side of town, is good for Thai. (If you’ll settle for “fast food Thai”, there’s always “No Thai!”, which has two locations near campus.) There’s an Ethiopian restaurant I like that’s also only about 3 blocks from the Diag – the Blue Nile. There are a lot of so-so Chinese places, but I finally found one I really like: Chan’s Garden. In particular, they have a great selection of vegetarian options (but my wife, a non-vegetarian, likes them too). And they have free delivery.
Not an ethnic place, but I just thought I’d mention Eve (in the Kerrytown neighborhood) as a great restaurant for special occasions. (It’s about $30 a plate – before adding the drinks, dessert etc. – but you get your money’s worth.) Speaking of Kerrytown, they have a farmers’ market every Saturday that I’ve enjoyed frequenting.
If you just want a slice of Pizza, I’d recommend either NYPD (New York Pizza Depot) or Sylvio’s Organic Pizza, both of which are right next to the central campus.
Honestly, the only thing not to like about Ann Arbor is the cold weather, which is no worse than what you’re used to in New York and Chicago.
There are actually several grocery stores close to the campus (“White Market” and “Village Corner” less than a block away, People’s Food Co-Op about 6 blocks away). But what I think Hello Again means is that there aren’t any supermarkets. Any “big building” stores (supermarkets, multiplexes, chain bookstores, shopping malls, etc.) are closer to the edge of town. Downtown you have more smaller, locally owned equivalents – e.g., tons of used book stores, a couple of movie theaters that get a lot of “artsy” films, etc. One notable exception is the original Borders bookstore, which is right by the central campus.
Taking the bus is “a drag” only for the reasons that taking the bus is always a drag, not because of anything unique to Ann Arbor. On the plus side, you can ride the city buses for free with your student ID (as well as the University buses, of course).
It’s a lot cheaper to get an apartment on the edge of town than in the downtown area. (I didn’t know this when I first moved here, and ended up renting a small one-bedroom apartment three blocks from campus that cost more than the large two-bedroom place five miles from campus that I have now.) If you do live on the edge of town, it may make more sense to take the bus in to work (or if you live further out, drive to one of the commuter lots and catch a bus from there). Free parking right by the campus can be hard to come by (there’s a number of lots you can pay for, though.) Many of the streets near campus are metered or permit-only, and the others fill up fast when school is in session. Actually, I’ve found I can almost always find free street parking available if I’m willing to walk 7 blocks – but presumably it’s available because most people aren’t willing to do this.
Yeah, anyone from a major city would laugh at the idea of Ypsi being a bad neighborhood. It’s just noticeably poorer than Ann Arbor. Not remotely on the level of even the semi-bad neighborhoods in Detroit, though.
Oh, a friend of mine just finished her MD. (She’s doing a unique MD/MPP program and is now here in the policy school.) Okay, I don’t have anything else to say about that, because I don’t know much about the MD program. I do live in the medical school ghetto, though, because that’s where I found an apartment. It’s a pretty good location, because while the city busses stop running at about 9.30, the school busses continue until 1 am and they stop at the hospital just a block from my house, which is really convenient.
Ypsilanti isn’t that bad, but I guarantee you’d regret living there just because hauling back and forth to campus every day would be a pain in the ass.
There must be some kind of spring preview day; you should come for a visit.
Yeah, I just noticed housing was cheap in Ypsi. After these responses, it’s clearly not worth it, so I’ll strike that off my list.
Thanks for all the insights on restaurants! I’m definitely bookmarking this thread for future reference.
Hey I wouldn’t give up on Ypsilanti completely. Rent in Ann Arbor was way too expensive to maintain after a while. So my husband and I moved to a rather nice apartment complex just inside Ypsilanti… quite close to the Eastern Michigan University stadium, practically on Washtenaw Avenue and less than half a mile from Ann Arbor city limits. I finished out three semesters of school living there, and he worked on campus as well. We paid less than $600/month for a one-bedroom. It was a very safe environment and the landlords were good with fixing things. It was pain in the neck to walk 12 minutes to the bus in the cold, but other than that it was no sweat (you’ll have to do some walking even if you have a car, so that’s pretty much a given anyways.)
Whether you have to have a car depends on where you’re going to live. Parking is a bitch in downtown Ann Arbor and they will crucify you at some point no matter how good you are about watching the signs. To give you an idea, in our five-bedroom apartment on campus there were only two parking spots available, with an option to enter a lottery to ‘‘win’’ a third one. If you ‘‘won’’ a third one, you then had to pay $2000 for the year for parking. It seems to me they are also perpetually changing where it’s legal to park just to keep people on their toes. So if you’re going to live off campus and drive, prepare to circle the block for 10-15 minutes every day while you try to find a place to park. If you live on campus there’s a reasonable chance you can find a place with your very own parking spot, but you don’t need a car as long as you don’t mind paying twice as much for basic grocery supplies.
Ypsilanti is not as bad as you hear, though I admit I kept mostly to the west side with occasional forays downtown. My overall impression is that Ypsilanti is considered a slum because many poor working class immigrants live there. Oh, and black people live there too. So you know, slum city. :rolleyes: We lived pretty damn good for those two years because of all the money we saved not renting Ann Arbor property, and we didn’t have to put up with any more drunken frat parties.
The worst thing about Ann Arbor is the snobbery. Many of the students are a stuck up bunch of entitled snots. One thing I loved about Ypsilanti was the people seemed much more down-to-earth. In conjunction with this, Ann Arbor is an extraordinarily insular community… just driving 20 minutes outside of city limits you’ll feel like you’re living on another planet. I think it can be too insular, and too hostile to conservative thought. There are some active conservative groups on campus but they are in an extreme minority. Most of the professors are incredibly liberal. In my hippie commune ‘‘learning living community’’ the Residential College, we had more than a few professors that were active communists who taught courses on Marxism. I’m a liberal with the bleediest of bleeding hearts, but even I could sense a disequilibrium. (the RC is its own special isolated student population, though, all contained in a single dorm… regular LS&A students poked fun of us all the time because we were so insular that we’d be stumbling around campus as Juniors without a damn clue where major campus landmarks were.)
Finally, once you’ve been acclimated to the University, and have spent some time getting to know Ann Arbor, you must check out the hysterically funny (in an in-joke kinda way)
free-to-download RPG, Crisis Wolverine: Insurrection Green. The gameplay is rudimentary but totally worth it for all of the parody.
I’ve heard people describe the undergrads as kind of snobby and over-privileged, but in a grad program you probably won’t have to deal with them much unless you’re teaching. The grad students in my program were generally pretty cool.
Actually, even when I was teaching I can’t recall ever really having a problem with anyone. Then again, I was mostly teaching engineering students, and my friends who had to teach pre-meds said they could be a lot more difficult. Mostly, I think, because they were convinced that if they ever got a bad grade it would doom their chances of getting into med school.
Hijack/ Having just applied to med school, I understand how they got that impression. I had someone say to me in an interview, “So, your academic record is solid, but really not exceptional. I noticed in particular a C+ in Biochemistry and B’s in Physics. Why don’t you talk to me about that?”
FTR, I had a 3.5 average at a top 10 university. Oh, and I worked 20 hours a week doing biomedical research EVERY SINGLE SEMESTER. In addition to a full course load, and being captain/president of my rugby team. Am I bitter about this a**hole? maybe just a bit… /Hijack
Anyway, thanks for the info about the undergrads. I don’t expect to be interacting with them too much, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem. Also, I can be snobby at times too! (see above)
Also, if you are into the outdoors and the more pastoral recreations, you have the beautiful, glacial, rolling countryside and lakes of the Irish Hills and Devils Lake regions a short distance to the SW (as well as Michigan International Speedway-MIS) Lake Erie a short distance to the East and South and some of the best perch and walleye fishing in the world. Not to mention some of the Best Salmon Fishing to your North on Lake Michigan in the Muskegon area. You can drive a bit North to go skiing in Brighton. Windsor Canada is a fun Daytrip (Great Chinese Food there by the University of Windsor).
Not Many People know it, but every year they have a Spring Break type Debauche called the Jobbie Nooner (NSFW) a very short distance away from Ann Arbor on an Island in Lake St. Claire.
The cool thing about Ann Arbor is that it… ends rather suddenly. Hunting in general is a popular pasttime, and is permitted in some state recreation areas (with license, of course), for example, Waterloo recreation area which is about 30 minutes from Ann Arbor. Not being in the game bird business myself, I don’t know what’s good or not good. More info on game bird hunting can be found at the website of the Department of Natural Resources
BTW, there is a public (ie DNR) outdoor shooting range in Grass Lake, I’ve actually been there oddly enough (my takeaway from the afternoon: when the zombies come, aim low )
Sharonville Shooting Range
14520 Sharon Valley Rd
Grass Lake, MI
734-428-8035
Outdoor Pistol (25 yds), Outdoor Rifle (25, 50 100 yds), Trap, Skeet, Archery,
Range Access: Public
I just found out about the Jobbie Nooner a couple of years ago. Haven’t been, though…looks like a clusterfuck. Just assume go to Put-in-Bay.
Point Mouillee State Game Area is about 25 miles southeast of Ann Arbor, Ducks and Canada Geesegalore. Sterling State Park is a bit further south near Monroe and a beautiful place to camp. I imagine the pheasant, quail, and possibly turkey are probably pretty good near Ann Arbor and environs. There’s definitely a reason Ted Nugent has a Ranch not too far South of Ann Arbor. There’s also a giant Cabela’s Megastore on the way up 23 to Ann Arbor.
That would make a great Zombie movie/story. Ted Nugent is visiting the local Cabela’s to a throng and contingent of Michigander, redneck, “book signing” groupies and the reanimation occurs, whether that be bio, atronomical, magnetic, or interdimensional. The local Cabela’s takes on the zombies.
Be a great Redneck Comedy Tour vehicle. Ron White would be the only one who survives.
No, the ideal place is clearly the Meijer’s on Stadium. Think about it. It has a pharmacy, guns and ammo (+knives+bows) , fuel sources (propane, firewood, sterno, charcoal), clothing, and enough canned goods to last you a century. It even has a garden department so come spring you could have some fresh veggies!
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