The Gas Leak

There's a musty-smelling room in the basement of my apartment building where we go to do our laundry, push rent through a slot in the wall, and haphazardly store our bikes. Like everything in the building it's imperfect, but functional laundry machines and relatively secure bicycle storage is all I can ask for, really.

Last week I woke up early Sunday morning, intending to go to church. But when I opened the metal door leading to the basement the smell that greeted me was not must, it was gas. Very strong gas. I held my breath while extricating my bike and pulling it up the stairs. Noticed briefly that the dryers appeared to be pulled away from the wall. Gasped the fresh air once back outside!

Once in an over-occupied student house in Ann Arbor I thought we had a gas leak, woke up all my housemates, and called the fire department as we sat on the porch eating cereal. Their truck blocked the traffic on our one-lane street while they informed us that actually, our refrigerator had suffered a mini explosion. This crossed my mind as my fiance and I called the fire department and DTE. I'd feel pretty stupid if that happened again.

We first guessed that someone had walked into the room before me, smelled the gas leak, and then decided too unplug the dryers and call it good. Maddeningly irresponsible but not sinister. But the firefighters noticed something I had not - the glass punched in on the inner door to the room, just big enough to slip in a hand and turn the lock. Their first guess, which seriously freaked me out, was that somebody with a grudge had cut the line on purpose - perhaps intending to blow us up. I knew if that were the case we would move. Immediately. Pay two rents, live at my parents' - anything to get out of a targeted building.

But then they noticed that the coin boxes had been torn out, all the quarters gone. I don't think they're really ever emptied, so with $3 per resident per week that could have been a lot of cash. The new narrative that emerged was of serial thieves who target laundry rooms in beat-up looking apartments everywhere, who took the coins and then were in the process of stealing the appliances when something scared them off - maybe even the gas leak itself.

It still doesn't make me feel super comfortable, but at least it wasn't purely malicious and at least no one entered our personal apartment space. On the up side, the landlord  has been shocked into doing some landscaping to make this place look occupied. On the down side, who knows when we'll have laundry again? I don't know whether we'll keep living here after our lease is up. I'm mostly just happy they didn't take our bikes.

Has anybody else had this particular experience? Or gone through other property crimes that didn't directly affect your safety but made you feel squirmy nonetheless?

The Pious Prius Effect

Every day that I ride my bike I get rudely tailed/cut off/nearly run over by at least one car. It's something a cyclist expects and artfully maneuvers around. It occurred to me one day, though, that a number of those incidents have involved the drivers of Priuses, which is funny since ownership of such a vehicle is supposed to indicate moral superiority and a respect for the creatures of the earth. Granted, my sample is not random, since I've spend much time in Ann Arbor, the Prius capitol of the Midwest. But it got me thinking, why does that happen?

Maybe that sense of self-righteousness that comes from sinking into the energy-efficient seats makes drivers think they've somehow magicked away all the negative consequences of driving. And while they may have decreased some of those, they're still driving a vehicle that can kill, operating within and contributing to a system that allows some people freedom of movement and denies it to others.

I actually did drive a Prius once, when I had to grab a last-minute Zipcar.

The best laid master plans

We have some really amazing municipal plans in this region. So why do we have such crappy municipal planning?

As part of my job I've been reading the master plans for several of the region's townships and cities (I have the coolest job), and I had to do some double takes when I first ran into talk of sustainability and New Urbanism and multimodal transportation. Was this the same metro Detroit that I live in, where I take my life into my hands every time I ride a bike and have to drive forty minutes to and from work every day? Exurb after exurb after exurb, master plans expressed desires to preserve open space and protect natural features, to work collaboratively with regional governments, and to invest in nonmotorized transportation infrastructure - even occasionally in public transit. A couple weeks of this led me to the original question: if the plans are cool, why does reality still stink?

I'm open to answers. Here's what I've thought of so far:

Questions from first month in Detroit - part 1

December

Yikes, it's been a long November! This semester's wrapping up, though. One more and I'll be a real bona fide Urban Planner, just waiting for someone to employ my skillful self.

This thing is happening in Ann Arbor where people are starting to realize that homeless folks live here! And that it's really cold in Michigan. And that one underresourced warming center can't take care of them all.

It is BLOWING their MINDS.


Reading live tweets of the A2 council meetings always makes me angry in a really unproductive way, so I try not to read them. Besides, it's like being nerdy but not being nerdy enough to actually be out there and be cool and live tweet things myself. Well, I learned about investment analysis all day and now I have two kittens sleeping on top of me, so I'm not going anywhere.

Pedestrian safety / Roving Reads

Fall break - time to take a breath and write some things. I realized lately that I'm a kind of grumpy blogger and kind of get on a soapbox about things. Although I'm really a quite happy person, I find it hard to write cheery slice-of-life stuff when madness is always going on in this region. So, today I'm going to write about one thing that gets my goat and one super cool idea that I read about.


Walkable Ann Arbor?

 

The pedestrian and the car

Two weeks ago Ann Arbor saw two vehicle-pedestrian accidents, one of which was fatal and incredibly tragic. In the second, the Ann Arbor police chief exculpated the car involved because the runners in question were not using the crosswalk. This was at Beakes and Fifth, where I've run many a time, and anybody who's been a ped knows that whole area is a death trap, with cars whizzing over the bridge and taking sudden turns. The week before, a fellow urban planning student was clipped on her bicycle - and luckily not harmed - by a reckless right-turner at Glen and Fuller/Depot. In August, someone was hospitalized crossing W. Stadium. And of course, last year saw another tragedy of University of Michigan student killed at a crosswalk on Plymouth Rd.

More amazing transit-themed writing awaits you!

Click on the cover to read volume II

Turning artists into beggars (ft. Aladdin)

Gwyddion Storm is an enterprising guy I used to chat with while walking past Borders. You can read the Ann Arbor News story about his "professional beggar"days from back in 2011. After a while he switched from panhandling to selling jewelry made of beautiful stones wrapped in copper wire.

I got this one a while ago for my mom

But apparently somebody has complained about him selling his stuff. Must have been some regulation-obsessed cat lady/dude, since Gwyddion doesn't bother anybody and is very careful to not obstruct foot traffic.

Travel with Strangers STILL LIVES!

Remember that public transit litmag I started a while ago? We're finally starting on the second issue! If you've ever had a hankering to read/write a short story, limerick, epic poem, monologue, existentialist one-act, or soul-baring memoir that takes place in/around public transit, this is your chance. And let's be real, it's pretty much your only chance, since nobody else publishes the incredibly obscure genre of transit lit.

Oh, we also like visual art - drawings, paintings, photos.

If you've never written anything before, COME ON PEOPLE! The time is now. Pull out those pens or quills or whatever floats your boat and give me some bus verbage.

travelwithstrangers.wordpress.com

Xenophobia and Liberty Plaza

I've said this before, but the A2 city council meeting last night, well-documented by the politically active twitter denizens of the city, has brought it to my attention yet again.

There's nothing wrong with wanting a park to be safe. I enjoy safety. I'm actually a bit of a worry-wort, so I try to avoid scary situations. And of course, a city government has a responsibility to keep its public spaces high-quality and secure.

It's the way the conversation about Liberty Plaza goes that gets my goat. As reported by the Ann Arbor News, it's a place where "homeless people congregate." Oh, God forbid that homeless people exist in Ann Arbor,

Adventures of a one-car cross-county household

Life gets a lot cheaper when you move in with somebody, and Alex and I recently took our Ann Arbor and Detroit habitations and merged them into one big beautiful Ypsilanti. Besides sharing rent, cooking, and bunnies, we decided to junk his clunker and rely solely on my decade-old Ford Focus, which has belonged to every member of my family and traversed the country twice.

Bunny numero uno

It's not like we have ten children, or any other small mammals in our care besides the furry type. But still, with our wildly regional schooling and employment patterns, there are days in which we have to be...creative.

The Detroit News goes off the deep end, and the Socialists miss the point

The Detroit News is going to get a reputation for being on the loonier side of conservative after they published this op-ed written by a random guy in Mt. Pleasant. Emboldened by the unscrupulous ravings of Keith Crain, he jumps on the vaguely racist anti-historical down-with-Detroit bandwagon.


First, let me reiterate my tireless point that suggesting apocalyptic, improbable schemes for various levels of capitalistic Detroit takeover is not useful in any way. It only creates more division, fanaticism, and distrust, and creates roadblocks for people who try to propose real solutions. The Detroit News has published a poorly-thought-out, speculative idealogue's rant that only sets us back as a region.

Ahh Detroit, the intellectual playground of anti-government Michiganders

The Transit Dork Speaks

Check out my op-ed in Concentrate! Encouraging everyone to vote yes for more buses on May 6. But be warned, it will make you hungry, 'cause I talk about pizza.

Do you smell it? The sweet scent of improved transit. MMMMMM.