the tron game at pinball pete's beneath the establishment formerly known as tower records has at long last been repaired -- the joystick no longer sticks when moving to the right. my trigger finger was out of shape and slow on the draw, and the volume on the sound effects has been turned down, but i still took the top 3 high scores with my 75 cents, and i beat my old personal high schore. i am still the undisputed tron king of ann arbor.80 responses total.
and we are so very proud of you, skippy.
What programming language do you make it to?
Greetings, program.
Uhhh....massive drift, but.... "establishment formerly known as Tower Records"????
Unfortunately, it's true. Tower Records closed on Sunday afternoon.
AAAACCCKKKKK!!!!! What happened?
From the discussion in the Spring agora, the chain didn't think the store was getting enough foot traffic, so they closed it. I noticed today that the Burger King was cleaned out, too.
Megan: for more on the demise of Tower, see item 154 in Music conference, starting with response #199. (resp:music,154,199 is a valid link I hope)
Burger King was gone while I was still in Ann Arbor. Tower closed soemtime after I left, I think.
resp:2 cobol. i can't get past the tanks on cobol. fortunately for me tron isn't too popular a game, so retaining my self-applied 'tron king of ann arbor' title isn't too difficult. as long as i can beat my old high score each time i sit down for a session, i'm happy. more than anything i'm happy they fixed the joystick. it's *really* hard to play tron when you can't move to the right.
How long can pinball pete's possibly last in that location? Where is the Tron machinae, anyway? That whole area is taking quite a hit. I hope Jimmy John's sticks around.
yeah. with the parking garage dusted south u's gonna be in sad shape. tron is way in the back, behind all the air hockey tables.
That mall is the kiss of death.
I love air hockey!!! Well, after six you can park in the structure on Church St. Or you could park in the structure at Thompson and walk across the Diag... that's what I do during the day when Church is permit only. Oh wait...some people loathe fresh air and walking...
That's interesting about Tower Records. Schoolkid's couldn't make it, WhereHouse is gone, and it looks like SKR's cutting way back. Are people not buying records anymore or have they just gotten too expensive?
I've only purchased maybe 3 CDs in the last year but they all came from amazon.com. I'm usually looking for a recording of a specific somewhat obscure piece, not just browsing. Online I can find it quickly, hear parts of the movements, and buy it with one click and it shows up in my mailbox maybe three days later. In the past I would have had to visit the store, have staff look it up in the catalogue, have it maybe arrive (at the store) two weeks later, and buy it without having heard it. I can't be the only person who has been seduced by the service and convenience. My question is how far will this style of shopping go? In the future will there be fewer malls because of online buying?
A pre-Napster study of buying habits in college towns showed a significant decline beginning a year or two before Napster.
...which is generally attributed, by everybody except Metallica's legal team, to the availability of e-commerce sites like Amazon.
Heh, this will turn into another music retail item and I will have to link it to the music conference. :/ The Recording Industry Association of America says CD sales are up, up, up, in the aggregate. I don't fully understand what's hit Ann Arbor; 3.5 CD retailing failures downtown in two years, destroying Ann Arbor's preeminent position as a CD shopping town. (As a serious CD addict, I'm *really* upset about this.) East Lansing also lost a Where House store, leaving the Tower there with a MSU campus monopoly. I have never seen a shakeout like this, not even in the recession of the early 1980s. Ann Arbor was way overbuilt for CD retailing. Since 1991: Tower came into the market; Schoolkids doubled its space; Borders went into CD selling; Tower doubled its space; Media Play moved in; and nobody went out of business. Square footage devoted to CD retail went up by a factor of 4 or 5, by my eyeball estimates, just in the downtown stores. Best Buy and Media Play have probably cut into sales at the downtown stores. Maybe there is something to the theory that college students have shifted to free illicit MP3s, though the Soundscan study is deeply flawed: as Cyklone points out, that study attempts to blame Napster for retail declines which happened before Napster existed, and it does not control for shifts to mega-retailers. Internet shopping? In the aggregate it's supposed to be only a small percentage of the sales, but it's probably higher in a well-networked university town. I've moved more and more of my shopping to net retailers, mostly because the obscure stuff I want no longer comes in to Ann Arbor. But the news stories are reporting that the two biggest online CD retailers, Amazon and CD Now, are losing money and cannot continue much longer. CD Now was the star of the Barrons' "deathwatch list" of about 50 online retailers expected to run out of cash in 2000, and yesterday's news everywhere included stories about Amazon running out of cash within 4 quarters unless a miracle happens. The Washington Post went so far as to run a story yesterday about how customers and competitors feel about the prospect of life after Amazon.com.
I forgot that I meant to add: The Ann Arbor Tower had two local issues: its parking garage was demolished at the end of 1999, and the University of Michigan was willing to bid high for the space. My guess is that UM intends to take the entire Galleria building.
Another factor in downtown CD sales is Borders Books and Music. These days, I've bought my CDs only from Borders (downtown and Arborland locations).
i used to haunt wazoo for cd's. it was worth the parking hassle. but since i have fleshed out my cd collection to replace the lp's that are gathering dust in my basement, i have had little need or desire for 99% of the new music being sold today. not my generation. it's as it should be. my last two cd purchases (santanna and crosby, still, nash and young) i bought thru amazon.com. i have no theory as to why a town saturated with young people has had so many store closings other than to echo the "net connected" theory.
If you don't need 99% of the new music being sold today, then you should still be buying about one CD per week. My vague recollection is that there are about 5000 CDs released every year, so you need about 50 of them. :)
I found that Borders is the place for semi-obscure stuff. I'd try to buy it SKR, but they usually didn't have it. Really obscure stuff comes from artist's sites on the Web. Note that the Arborland Borders has sucky selection compared to the downtouwn A2 store.
re: #23 heh, ok, let me put it another way instead of using a figure of speech. i don't want or need just about every music cd being released or having been released in the last five years. and even the ones i want or need i don't want or need. except for the ones i do.
Thanks for being clear.
Tower and Borders were/are too expensive. I get mine over Ebay or at used cd stores.
re; #26 at last. someone who understands me.
I buy most of my CDs from Record Exchange nowadays. Occasionally, I can find some good stuff for 50 cents to a dollar. Recently, I foind a Hedningarna album and the Anastasia soundtrack for $1 each.
hedningarna?!! i love those guys. i have all their stuff. my fav is 'tra', of course.
pornopolka?
Iggy is a Hedningarna fan? jerryr is a Hedningarna fan?
hedningarna AND wimme will be at the lotus fest in bloomington indiana this fall. i'd think about going myself, but i have a prior commitment. i think it is like a 6 hour drive from ann arbor.
cutters.
((( Agora #79 <---> Music #263 )))
Yeah, Hedningarna seems to come over and play one or two festivals, and that's all for their American tour. I think it was 1999 when they played the Northside Records Scandinavian Music Festival in Minneapolis, over Easter weekend. Ten years ago I would have gone, but I think I'm getting too old to drive all those hours for a band, no matter how much I love them. But an Indianpolis show is tempting... maybe there was also going to be a Chicago show? I need to look at the e-mail from their record company. KAKSI remains my favorite, I played it daily for six months after I got it back in what, '93? TRA has some songs which are better but I don't think it's as consistent end-to-end. Has iggy heard Hoven Droven's GROOVE compilation CD?
How many hours is the drive to Minneapolis?
14 or 15 hours? It's farther than driving to Philadelphia or DC, I think, which are the long-haul family trips we do regularly.
the only hoven droven i had heard is from the two nordic roots CD's. kaksi.. yeah, 'vottikaalina' cracks me up. loosley translated is about "if my mother-in-law messes with me, i'll kick her ass! you want a piece of me? YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?!!"
DTW-MSP is about 13 hours by car.
#23> Ken, you're one in a million. That means there are several thousand people on this planet just like you. Net v. store shopping> I prefer shopping in the stores, because I like to browse, and browsing on the net is slow and cumbersome. OTOH, if there's something I really want, and it's not a likely Billboard 200 listee, I'll go to CDNow or (if it's English) CDZone. OF the last 20 CDs or so that I purchased, I'd say about half were on-line purchases.
#40 shoudl be ARB-MSP...
(Thanks for the driving times)
mapquest.com says 655 miles, 12 hours, from Ann Arbor to Minneapolis.
i have a friend driving to north dakota this weekend. she intends on using the ferry from wisconsin to michigan on her return leg. i wonder if the six hour boat ride makes for all that much time saving. anyone ever do that?
Never. I can't imagine it would help that much, but it might since she's coming into WI way north of where I've been (I've never been north of Milwaukee, so the Chicago route makes much more sense for me).
The boat ride is only worthwhile in itself, is my take on it. The departure times are very restricted, there's little if any time savings, and the ferry toll is pretty large. We've thought about the ferry ride several times but we have never done it.
there will be four people. she said the cost was 100 bucks, but they got a room included for that price. i think they are doing it to get a break from driving on the 4th and for the experience. i find ferry's chancy since they load by size, not by when you get there and buy a ticket - at least they do on the east coast.
Careful with the Mapquest directions and mileages... I asked for a route from Ann Arbor to Columbus recently, and it wanted me to drive 90 or so extra miles so as to stay on freeways the whole time. I was being routed thru Cleveland! Sheesh. The ferry probably doesn't save time, but then it does save time that you are stuck behind the wheel. That's an improvement in my book, anyway.
Mapquest also overestimates driving time because they average you at 45 mph, or something like that. If I'm taking freeway the whole way, I divide the mileage by an average speed of 65-70 mph.
Re #48: The Ludington Car Ferry is "drive up, drive in" and runs on a very strict timetable. Though as krj mentioned, the cost is not cheap. The shoreline cruises ($25 per person, no cars) are a lot more fun, but there's only a couple a year.
The ferry from Tobermoray to Manitoulin Island saves a ton of time and only costs like $30 Canadian. It wont help you if you have to get from WI to MI though.
But how far is it to Indianapolis?!
I find Ann Arbor to Indianapolis to be about 5 hours or so.
okay kiddies, here's the buzz on the galleria mall: miami moon went under for drug sales. the building's owner just jacked up the rent, and tower records said fuck you, burger king said fuck you, and Noggins Hair salon will be moving two doors down as well. That's the story according to my friend corrinne, who works at noggins
i'll plead ignorance. what was "miami moon?"
mostly a piercing place.
yeah, piercing/tattoos/bongs/raver clothes
ah, now i know why i didn't know what it was :) thanx
oh ya, I couldnt remember if they did tattooing.
All of the businesses in that mall always seemed marginal to me, except for Tower and maybe Noggins. None of them was ever crowded, and with the double whammy of no parking and a greedy landlord, I can see why the businesses would give up. Serves the greedy bastards right, though. Instead of higher rent, they get no rent.
UM is taking over the space for offices. The greedy bastards will get even more money now.
And now can rely upon it for a very long time.
I unplugged your tron machine. Get another 75 cents, egomaniac.
couldn't get past RPG, eh? i gotsa date with the evil mainframe to-marra, yassar-ee. but ... before or after my b3 deluxe? WOT TO DO< BLAAARGJ!@
The only CD stores I patronize now are those that sell used CDs. (Remember when the RIAA tried to shut them all down?) I do sometimes buy new CDs from them if I see something I want, but if I'm looking for a specific album I often buy it online.
Pity about the comix store, though. They had neat action figures.
They'd been somewhat marginal since the original owner sold out and moved away. Also, the collectible trading card business which was a big part of the store's core business has had some shakeups. At any rate, it's a hard business to be in, especially in this town. With the exception of Dave's Comics, which lasted a little longer, all of the Ann Arbor comics stores I can think of have been really hard-pressed to make it to the five year mark..
How many years have Underworld and Vault of Midnight been open? I thought the Underworld is over 5 years old by now.
Vault of Midnight is near the 5 year mark too...
Underworld's just over 5 years. It opened in Spring 1995.
goddammit. i miss dave's comix. joe was the best comicshopguy in the history of comicshopguys EVER. curtis at vault of midnight is pretty damn cool, tho. blonde haired chap. if you're at all interested in 'twin peaks', just bring it up to him, he'll jabber about it past closing time.
ooh tempting
The owls are not what they seem.
/sings: "All we are saying, is give Peaks a chance".
i think the cafe burned down last week. rosalynds or something?
Ohm, that is sad. I wish that Josie Packard had gotten more character development. The log lady too. Garmanbozia.
"Twin peaks" sounds like a topless bar.
Well, you are wrong.
Dang, I haven't played Tron in nigh unto ten years... I'll have to stop by Pinball Pete's and wipe out a high score or two.
You have several choices: