Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair Opens; Here's the Report
After a year off, the Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair opened today (it runs through Saturday). I stopped by this morning, and I'm so happy I did. It's the first normal day I've experienced in Ann Arbor since attending the Michigan-Nebraska basketball game in early March 2020. It felt GREAT. Some notes:
- I only walked along State Street, but everything is open. It looks like a normal Art Fair in every way. A few people wearing masks by choice but the vast majority appear to be vaccinated and maskless.
- All the stores are open, and there are some great sales in front of the stores, too. At its tent out front, the MDen has all the 2020 football season shirts that didn't sell, and you can get them CHEAP. In case you'd like a wearable reminder of that season.
- The Union is open, too, but there's a card system to get in, so you need to wait for someone to walk out to let you in. I think it's been closed for all of the pandemic, so it was great to be able to walk around inside, too.
- All in all, if you haven't been to Ann Arbor since the pandemic, it's the perfect time to come back. Find a time over the next three days when it's not raining and come on down.
'At its tent out front, the MDen has all the 2020 football season shirts that didn't sell, and you can get them CHEAP. In case you'd like a wearable reminder of that season.'
I already got mine.
LOL! I like yours and I wonder if they have a 2020 shirt has the won loss record and score of the games as well as our bowl game! Or is it on the back of yours?
Nice - logged in to upvote this!
That's not new. It's a not so old Cleveland Browns shirt. I bet some Lions fans own that shirt, too.
No, this is one of our old t shirts (that i actually own btw)
Found this @ Dollar General, they said wait til January as it will be a clearance item.
Glad you had fun! Gonna probably get lunch down there at some point over the next few weeks. Anyone know if they will resume giving out free season schedule posters at the front desk in Schembechler Hall/Townsley Museum? I made a habit of picking one up for about five years but haven't gotten one since 2016.
The ancient art of seduction
Told my wife about it, and she looked it up and said that there are no food vendors or entertainment this year. Can anyone confirm?
Good question. I wasn't looking for food, but I did see a lemonade stand open on State Street. And a guy playing the saxophone on Maynard Street was the only live entertainment I saw.
The only food vendor I saw was the Chicago Dogs stand on State. Didn't find anybody selling bottled water. There were a few lemonade stands and an Italian ice stand near Hill Auditorium. Entertainment-wise, there was a xylophone player as well as the sax guy, and the violinist who wears a wolf mask was at his usual spot at Main and Liberty.
People have been eating outside for about a year now in downtown AA. If they scrapped food vendors, that makes zero sense.
Ann Arbor is about 3 months behind everywhere else in getting back to normal. That makes zero sense.
I saw that as well and it appears correct that they scrapped all food court plans. Sounded like local restaurants will try to have pop up food offerings in front of their restaurant. But yeah, I’m going to miss my yearly corn dog and funnel cake.
Ann Arbor bars/restaurants > food vendors
Art Fair Gyros beg to differ.
The Ark has six free concerts, one each Thursday/Friday/Saturday at two stages (Main/Liberty and State/SUniv). Sorry, don't post often, can't imbed.
A few people wearing masks by choice but the vast majority appear to be vaccinated and maskless.
I suspect that adherence to regulations requiring the unvaccinated to mask is...low. But hey, maybe I'm just overly pessimistic?
I spent a week in Louisiana this month and everywhere I went indoors, only the staff had on masks. Considering only 35% of the population is fully vaxxed, I don't think there's much adherence to regulations out there.
The Delta variant is having its way in unvaccinated areas. It might be the only thing that keeps the SEC out of the playoff this season.
It's like this everywhere. As soon as we gave unvaccinated people the out of "well, if you're vaccinated, you don't need a mask, and we're going to take your word for" it was all over. Michigan's numbers are still doing pretty good but if we get another spike because of Delta Variant + Anti-Vaxxers it's gonna be damn depressing. Like the CDC says. Every death from this point forward was 100% preventable.
Ayup. And, look, I don't care that much if you forgo a mask outdoors since the risk of transmission is quite low. But indoor spaces essentially implementing the honor system for being maskless "only if you're vaccinated" is gonna be every bit as effective as "do not click if youre under 18" warnings on pr0n sites
The title of this article about sums it up:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-07-13/column-right-wing-paranoia-could-get-you-killed
All the title does is support the narrative that the “right” is the culprit for all (negative) things covid.
As an example, in Hawaii the indigenous population are the ones lagging behind in vaccination. They are NOT generally right wing.
In Michigan it’s the Black community that is lagging in vaccination. Again, not exactly a right wing stronghold.
But I guess it’s easier to make it political…
BTW - Saw a Trump 2024 hat on an old guy at a market yesterday and almost threw up in my mouth!
I appreciate what you're saying - sometimes it's an issue of access or ability to get a shot and I'm sure we can think of a couple apolitical folks who are resisting the vaccines, but it's largely divided along a political line. States voting for Biden have higher vaccination rates - much higher, in fact - than the GOP strongholds.
Eh, once you read the article, you can see they're not arguing that every single bad Covid thing is because of conservatives. It's actually talking about how the largest source of Anti-Vax disinformation is thanks to conservatives.
That massive amount of shit flinging into the world affects everybody, not just people who voted Republican
Agreed. But it was this comment that made me post:
The title of this article about sums it up
As an example, in Hawaii the indigenous population are the ones lagging behind in vaccination. They are NOT generally right wing.
In Michigan it’s the Black community that is lagging in vaccination. Again, not exactly a right wing stronghold.
True, yes, but the context is that both Black and indigenous populations have a long, sad history of being used for medical experimentation. So there's distrust--well-earned distrust as tragic as it is.
Yep. I knew that would be pointed out. But it doesn’t change the fact that these left-leaning groups are a big part of the problem with low vaccination rates.
If you are concerned about Covid, you should get the vaccine. (I had to for my job but probably would have anyway.). If you are not, then don't get it. That's up to you.
The point of all our restrictions on society over the last year and a half was to ensure that we would have functioning health systems. Now that most of our most vulnerable people have been vaccinated, our health systems should be able to function OK. The evidence suggests that not only do the vaccines largely ward off Covid infections, but that even in cases of breakthrough infections, they seem to offer adequate protection so that symptoms are minor.
People should not obsess over the number of new cases at this point. The UK has had a surge of new cases (30-40,000 a day lately, in a population one-fifth our size) but far fewer hospitalizations and deaths than in previous surges. Your mindset about Covid shouldn't be the same now as it was in the days before mass vaccination.
If some don't want to get vaccinated, hey, it's their life.
Yes, but if say 40% of the population stays unvaccinated, the virus will keep moving from pocket to pocket and mutating into more dangerous variants (see Lambda in SA) for those who aren't able to be vaccinated like young children or immunocompromised. Yes, the shutdowns were to preserve the hospital capacity originally, but now we're talking preventable deaths for no good reason other than willful ignorance abetted by the loudest carnival barkers.
When it comes to vaccinations and how they work, it's not just their life; it's all of our lives. That's not political, it's the science of disease and vaccinations.
My daughter goes to preschool summer camp. Yesterday was baby shark day and a live performer was supposed to come in. There is still a mask requirement because all the kids are obviously unvaccinated. The performer arrived at the school yesterday morning and was told about the mask requirement. He refused to put on a mask and left. The kids were devastated. I don't know how someone could do that to 3-5 year old kids.
Sounds like they sent a clown instead of an entertainer. That person couldn’t put a thin piece of cloth over their mouth to get paid and entertain kids? I would have loved to hear their rationalization.
I got serious about that a number of years ago when I had a friend at the office contract Cancer. she was a single mom and the chemo was wrecking her immune system.
Sure, not coming in to work when I had a fever and sanitizing extra before I went into her office was mildly inconvenient. But it wasn't about me.
We who can need to take the little extra effort for those who can't. I used to support our cancer center. You see kids in there getting infusions. I'm going to try to make sure I don't give them or their parents one more thing to worry about. If people want don't want to vaccinate, then mask. Get over yourself.
Just my $0.02.
The problem is Americans are less healthy and have worse health care than in the UK. Also, I'm not sure of the age breakdown of vaccination rates exactly but from all I've read there was much less vaccine skepticism in the UK. Their vaccination rate is 60% and only 52% here. But the US never dipped below around 230 deaths per day in a 7 day moving average, and it's already starting to climb a bit now. The UK was down to 5 or so deaths per day, which is a lot fewer per capita. Their cases were rising exponentially without much of a budge in deaths for a while, that already doesn't quite seem to be the case in the US. Combine that with no restrictions and no masks and low vaccination rates and a worse variant, and it's not going to be as bad as before but it could get quite bad again, especially in a few big hotspots.
jmblue - You may want to check in on Arkansas.
“Our COVID ICU unit is full and the majority of the patients are on ventilators right now. Our COVID unit upstairs, which is our med surge COVID unit, is also full right now," said Debbie Hewett, R.N. and director of critical care services at Mercy Fort Smith. "Our patients here in the ICU are just so incredibly ill and that's COVID and non-COVID patients. Hewett said the hospital is not yet seeing record numbers of COVID-19 patients, but they are much more sick than in previous months and when combined with non-COVID-19 patients and limited nurses, it is a stress for the health care system.“
Or Missouri:
“The Springfield, Missouri, health department is requesting funding for an alternate COVID-19 care site in response to a spike in infections and hospitalizations in recent weeks, health officials announced Wednesday.
Several local health facilities and hospitals jointly requested the alternative care site funding, which would include money for more beds, staff and antibody testing. One of those facilities was Springfield-based Mercy Hospital, which had so many hospitalized COVID patients last week that it had to call in backup ventilators from other hospitals in its network when it ran out.
The increase in severe illness is taxing the health system and sick patients are expected to outpace hospital capacity, according to the Springfield-Greene County Health Department.”
100%? No.
This is a good take and you should feel good about it.
And how does someone “appear to be vaccinated”?
After sixteen months I’ve learned that 20% of MGoBlog COVID talk is informative and accurate 15% of the time.
We're vaccinated but our kids are too young so we mask up when going inside places as a sign of solidarity for our kids and to make sure they're protected if they're with us, but that's probably not the case for most people.
We do the same. Daughter turns 12 in late September and will be eligible for vaccine. A lot of her classmates/friends are already 12 but their parents have told us they are not vaccinating them because they think it could make them sterile. So our daughter will continue to wear a mask for the foreseeable future.
VERY low
A few people wearing masks by choice but the vast majority appear to be vaccinated and maskless.
I certainly hope the vast majority of fair attendees are vaccinated, but it's impossible to tell whether anybody actually is by simply looking at them.
Those vaccinated could be the star-bellied sneetches and the unvaccinated the sneetches without.
Yeah I hardly see anyone wearing masks even indoors now, but when you consider just under half are vaccinated in my county, it's a solid assumption that at least half of the people there are unvaccinated and maskless. If anything, it's probably more than that because probably anyone wearing a mask is already vaccinated.