DETROIT!

Yeah.

I have in-laws in Ann Arbor, so we spend a lot of time there. There's definitely enough to make it worth a stop - lots of good food, decent breweries and very walkable. We've taken lots of day trips to Detroit (since we have free housing in Ann Arbor), but we've had lots of fun taking our 7-year old. One day was a museum day, we hit up the DIA, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and the Michigan Science Center (my son particularly loved the latter). Also spent another day at Eastern Market, got some amazing food at Russell Street Deli, and took a tour of the vinyl plant at Jack White's Third Man (no matter what you think of the guy himself, the tour was fun).

There's great gardens and arboretums too if you like that--possibly not in January though.

Also some absolutely terrific record shopping if you are into that - both in Ann Arbor and Detroit.

Ugh, I think we're done with "science centers" forever (or at least I am), but that other stuff sounds great, thanks. No firm plans here, just an idea she has in her head that I have yet to talk her out of, so now it's more a matter of talking myself into it.

I was the "mahb" who asked in March last year ^^^. I went in April and didn't do much walking around looking at things because of the incessant sleet, freezing cold rain and icicles falling off buildings/passing buses etc. Also I was there on a Sunday when much (inc. the Motown Museum) was closed. I did manage to drink some beer, though.

If you go in the summer there's a 90% chance that on any given weekend you'll stumble into a community barbecue, block party, art fair or something going on.

I'm sure. Tbh, sometimes it's nice to check in on certain cities. Again, for example, Milwaukee is changing pretty fast, as are Nashville and Austin; I'm glad I've been back to all recently. Vs, I dunno, SanFran, Portland or NYC, which haven't seemed to have fundamentally changed much between visits over the past 20 years (change-wise; all three are great places to visit!). I have a couple of friends that swear by the Twin Cities. My fave Twin Cities within easy driving range, though, are Louisville and Lexington, which have a lot going on.

My wife went to Michigan so I spent a lot of time in Ann Arbor 20+ years ago, and I worked in downtown Detroit in 1997 and 1998. I moved back to Michigan a year and a half ago (to the OTHER big college town about 1.5 hours from Detroit, which is absolutely not as interesting as Ann Arbor) and have been to Detroit a couple of times since for shows.

It's honestly shocking to me how drastically parts of Detroit have changed in 20 years; it's really disorienting to wrap my head around it. There was like a mile of empty burned-out nothing along Woodward ave north of the State and Fox theaters, and that whole area now is just packed with bars and restaurants and Little Caesar's Arena and Tiger Stadium and Ford Field and a street car and people out at night doing things. It feels like an actual continuous city now (in some places) instead of these weird little islands with like a thing or two miles away from another little island.

There are, of course, lots and lots of places that have not had any of this gentrification and overall might be worse off than they were 20 years ago, but the main downtown / New Center / Wayne State / Cass Corridor areas are radically different. I think it's worth checking out for sure, but it might feel like kind of a letdown compared to what you're used to in Chicago?

Ann Arbor is awesome, though my perception of this is as a 21 year old visiting my girlfriend during spring break and buying records and skateboarding around at night and all that. I still think it's got a great downtown area, lots of good food and drink, and a lot of those record stores are still around.

Yeah, honestly a lot of my love for Ann Arbor stems from it having like my platonic ideal of a college town vibe, which my (different) Big Ten school decidedly didn't have.

We had a great time in Detroit, btw. The city has come a long way since I was last there, and while it is still pretty surreal to see boarded up blight and hipster bakeries on a not even block-by-block but lot-by-lot basis, the city seems to be on the serious upswing, and people there have real pride for it. Plenty to do and see and eat and drink, and so on. We stayed in a perfect place upstairs from Slows BBQ and across from Mercury Burger.

Ann Arbor was nice, too, though nothing particularly special. Good vibe, great school.