response 70 of 81:

Nov 1 05:24 UTC 1994

The UGLi construction is almost finsihed, and it has been renamed the
Harold and Vivian Shapiro Library.  I wonder it the new name will ever
stick, or if the best the University can hope for will be the Harold and
Vivian Shapiro UGLi.

response 72 of 81:

Jul 31 05:12 UTC 2000

Reading through this was rather interesting, a sort of time capsule.  In
the last six years, much has changed, including, but not limited to:
Crazy Wisdom leaving 4th Ave for fancy new digs on Main st, The advent
of A2's second Borders Books and Music, The slow decay of the Chamber
arts series from the University Musical Society About 5 billion
different failed restaurants in the old Howard Johnson's space on
Carpenter near Washtenaw, The rise and fall of the halo from hell, And
the feeling that Ann Arbor is losing the character of a Midwestern
college town and becoming just another overcrowded place to live,
commute and otherwise deal with being too close to too many other
people.

response 74 of 81:

Jul 31 19:26 UTC 2000

I have been attending the Chamber Arts series since about 1979.  Through
the decade of the eighties, you could count on at least two concerts a
month from September through May, with several top-tier concerts each
year.  The Guarneri, Tokyo and Borodin string quartets were fixtures,
along with others.

As the nineties came in, the fare began disappearing, to where I think
there were about ten concerts in the series last year.  There are still
top performers, the Emerson Quartet and Beaux Artes trio etc, but it's
awfully slim pickings anymore.

In particular the reign of Ken fisher, while it has perhaps resulted in
revitalization of other parts of the Musical Society's programming has
meant a slow and inexorable withering of the content of this formerly
formidable series.  It's a matter of demographics.  The people I went to
chamber music concerts with twenty years ago are still the ones that I
co-attend with now, except for the ones who've died or moved away.  Even
now I'm still under the median age of attendees.  Sad, but inevitable I
suppose.

response 76 of 81:

Aug 1 05:58 UTC 2000

Another restaurant location that can't seem to support long-term success 
is the corner of Liberty and Stadium. La Pinata was replaced by 
Watercress, and now it's UpSouth. No one seems to be eating there, 
though, so I fear it will soon go away too.

response 78 of 81:

Oct 1 14:12 UTC 2003

William and State's curse is, of course, continuing.  I'm told Famiglia has
recently gone out of business; credit for that failure is given to the
proximity of NYPD down the block, which is a fairly similar pizza place (I'm
told; never been to either), but with better food, and with a more firmly
entrenched position in the student body's stomach.

response 80 of 81:

Oct 2 00:01 UTC 2003

Er, yes, that's what I meant to say.