Having someone else from my old school made it easier, and at times harder, for me when I got to Ann Arbor.
It was nice to have a place to stay when I came out to interview and looked for my house in the fall plus it was also nice that he showed me around town and took me to some parties.
Because I was another student from UB there was some of “who does he think he is” and “what does he know” but the worst thing is that I had a New Yawk accent.
As I soon found out there was always some hazing of the new students, mostly all in jest, and I was not the only new student and we all had to prove ourselves to the older students and faculty.
Ann Arbor was, and still is, a cool place to live and I enjoyed exploring it when I had the time.
There was a lot to see and explore in Ann Arbor.
As I have worked on my Blog I have reviewed my old Playbills and have looked up old friends and places on the internet.
I recently took a virtual tour of Ann Arbor with the help of Google Maps Street View feature.
After thirty years I was surprised how many things still look the same, but of course there have been changes.
The three houses that I lived in are all there and look about the same, although one house had scaffold along side of it and looked like it was getting some long needed updating.
The college and town as grown since my time there and most recently they tore down the old Theatre building just as they opened a wonderful new multi-Theatre complex on the north campus.
For those of us who spent many hours working in the Frieze building we will miss it.
I found a nice photo set on Flickr that shows the Frieze Building in it's last days:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfobrien/sets/72157594246447684/
A postcard shows the building when it was still the Ann Arbor High School:
As a student I did not have a car, so I explored my world mostly on foot and with the help of an occasional bus or friend’s car.
During my time there I went to all of the college museums; the Arts, Natural History and small but interesting Museum of Archaeology, where you could see ancient treasures stolen from other countries.
http://www.umma.umich.edu/
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/exhibitmuseum/
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/kelsey
They have expanded and changed all of the museums since 1980, but I did enjoy exploring them at the time between classes and working on productions.
I also found the rare book room in the library, although I was often amazed by how old some of the books were in the regular collection.
The rare book room is now part of the “Special Collections Library”, although I was disappointed they only have a Second, and not First, Folio of Shakespeare’s plays.
http://www.lib.umich.edu/special-collections-library
There were many fun shops, restaurants, bars and others places I like to go.
For anyone who has spent time in Ann Arbor you would know Nickel’s Arcade, the Cube, the Fleetwood Dinner, Old Town and the Blind Pig.
There were plenty of things that I never got to do in Ann Arbor; places I never saw, but I always had a great time when I was there.
My days were full of working on a plays, researching papers or drawing and drafting, but those short times between classes, walking home or those rare days off I enjoyed the town as much as I could.
I got to go back to Ann Arbor five years after I graduated, but its been almost 25 years since I was last there and a return trip is long overdue.
No comments:
Post a Comment