This could be bad

Ann Arbor is thinking about shutting down the Studio 4 nightclub after a stabbing this past weekend, and Joan Lowenstein says the city is "concerned" about pretty much every clubby bar in the city.

Seems like City Council is just posturing here, but the focus on Studio 4 is a little troubling -- maybe I'm being oversensitive, but won't students of color take issue if the city singles out that bar?

Don't worry about Rick's

Rumors have been spreading this summer that Rick's, the premier trashy upperclassmen's bar in Ann Arbor, lost its lease and is closing or moving to somewhere near Necto. According to sources close to Rick's, there's no truth to them — in fact, the owners just recently signed a 10-year extension on the lease. Just thought it was important to clear this up.

Hitchens on Anna Wintour

Ben just directed me to this YouTube video where some guy runs across Christopher Hitchens on the street and asks him what Anna Wintour was like in the the '70s. It's pretty awesome. I had no idea they'd dated, but this Guardian piece confirms it.

Hitchens-ism of the day

From Slate:

When I check into a hotel room and send my free and unsolicited copy of the Gideon Bible or the Book of Mormon spinning out of the window, I infringe no law, except perhaps the one concerning litter.

Jesus, Hitchens.

For more, see this Onion article.

Republicans are wusses

The GOP front-runners are backing out of their CNN/YouTube debate. Why? The second point here is a good one. (via Dan Savage)

Attention Wes Anderson fans

In case you haven't heard, the trailer for "The Darjeeling Limited" came out yesterday. (via Alyse)

The debate

Just watched the Democratic CNN/YouTube debate. A few thoughts:

• I expected this format to be worthless, especially after some hipster doofus opened the debate by lecturing the candidates on how to answer questions. It's actually not bad, though. This Reggie Longcrier guy, who called out the candidates for using religion to justify opposing gay marriage, was fantastic -- you'd never see a moderator ask a question like that.
• All of this talk about whether American soldiers died in vain in Vietnam or Iraq is pretty irritating, because it leads candidates to say inane things to avoid admitting that's the case. (That would be a Kinsley gaffe.) For example, does John Edwards really believe soldiers can't die in vain if they're following their commander in chief's orders? Does that mean there has never been a war that wasn't worth the human cost?
• Richardson had one good moment: his answer on gay marriage. By talking in terms of what is achievable, he at least seemed to acknowledge that full marriage rights should be an eventual goal. His actual position is the same as the others, but at least he's a little more honest about where he's coming from.
• Richardson also had one awful moment: his answer on pulling out of Iraq. I know he's trying to set himself apart from the other serious candidates by urging immediate withdrawal, but the formula he used -- that saving Bush's legacy isn't worth American soldiers' lives -- was pathetic. I hope he doesn't really think the fate of Iraq and the humanitarian crisis there are only important to Bush's legacy.

Great moments in campus conservatism

Justin Zatkoff, noted idiot and chair of the Michigan Federation of College Republicans, posed for some racy pictures at the College Republican National Convention last weekend. Scroll down to the comments for some hilarious intraparty backbiting, hand-wringing and anti-Semitism.

This raises a serious question, though: How does a person like Justin Zatkoff get elected chair of his party's statewide youth organization?

My personal experience with Justin has been limited (I wrote about him, briefly, here), but from what I gather, he's the prototypical YAF type -- loud, obnoxious and obsessed with "un-P.C." political theater.

(My impression of YAF has always been that it's a manifestation of the Ann Coulterization of the campus right -- it's interested only in offending the left and otherwise amusing its own members and sympathizers.)

I guess maybe YAF members feel entitled to act like assholes because the campus far left is similarly loony. And sometimes they do manage to provoke BAMN and the like into looking like kooks, which they probably think reflects poorly on the left.

But we already know BAMN is crazy. And unlike YAF, BAMN doesn't control its party's statewide college organization. So how is YAF helping its side, again?

Here's the bio of Steve Japinga, Zatkoff's opponent in the MFCR chair election. (Yes, he had a campaign website.) He seems like a pretty typical College Republicans sort of guy. I've met enough of them to know that, for the most part, they have very little in common with YAF.

So can someone explain to me why this guy is their leader in Michigan?

Ann Arbor and warm beer

For this week's issue of Metro Times, the editorial staff took a thermometer to 104 Detroit-area bars to find the coldest beer around. In first place was Lime Light Grill & Bar in Warren, which sells an aluminum bottle of Budweiser cooled to 25.1 degrees for $3.50. (The bar uses Anheuser-Busch's "Chill Chamber," a sophisticated machine that makes shitty beer in aluminum bottles unnaturally cold and expensive.)

Five Ann Arbor bars made the list, and the results don't look good:

• #9 - Conor O'Neill's (Coors Light, bottle, $2.50, 31.7 degrees)


• #89 - Rick's (Bud Light, bottle, $1.50, 43.7 degrees)


• #91 - The Brown Jug (Miller Lite draft, chilled glass, $2.95, 43.9 degrees)


• #94 - The Arena (Pabst Blue Ribbon, glass, $2.00, 45.7 degrees)


• #103 - Ashley's (Stella Artois draft, glass, $5.00, 50.3 degrees.

In the interest of fairness, I called Rick's, the Jug and Ashley's for a response. (I didn't call the Arena because, well, who gives a shit about the Arena?) Bartenders at Rick's and the Jug didn't sound too concerned -- nor should they be. I love Rick's and the Jug for the atmosphere (delightfully trashy and comfortably Michigan, respectively), the $2 pitchers and the $4.25 40s. I won't begrudge them their warm beer.

Ashley's, whose Stella Artois was the second-warmest brew on the list, is the big disappointment here. I couldn't get a bartender on the phone -- after two rings, I got what I believe was a recording of Paul Giamatti asking for bartender applicants -- but I'm assuming they keep their beer above 50 degrees because that's how their specialty Trappists, porters and stouts are meant to be served. Ice-cold beer would clash with the bar's sniffy, grad-student image.

The problem: Stella Artois, like Budweiser, Miller and their ilk, is a pale lager -- a weak-flavored category that, as any beer nerd will tell you, demands to be served near-freezing.

So Ashley's is serving bathwater-warm beer, presumably because they and/or their customers think it's more highbrow that way. Such is Ann Arbor.