Times change, but what things do you miss?

There's a whole second list I could make about shit I miss in general about college, like living in a pig-sty of a house with best friends, etc. But Ann Arbor in particular: 1. Ashley's Pub. I still visit sometimes but having to drive home to metro-Detroit afterwards limits the amount of bitters I can suck down. Also, it's not the same without the old frat brothers and bandmates et al. 2. The cheap food. Where do students get pitchers for a $1.00 now? Howabout chinese meals for $3.50? Or a post-hangover pancake breakfast and coffee for under $5.00? Liberty and State now feels more like 5th Avenue and 92nd Street than the Oxford-meets-Midwest atmosphere of the late '90s, early '00s. 3. Yes, Blimpy Burger is still there, though the lines are longer and the food is more expensive, and they've gotten stingy with the ketsup, and you feel like you are rushed every time you're there because you're the only guy who has his food and there's a line out the door of hungry people who could probably all kill you for your burger and you know they are thinking it... But really, the biggest change here is that the word "cholesterol" is now in my vocabulary. 4. The dOWN UNDER!@ I'm going to leave my typo there because it conveys my emotions on this one. South Quadders: if you want a burger and fries, and you want your parents to pay for it, and you don't want to go through the huge hassle of putting on pants, what are you going to do now? Sure, there's Cafe ConXion. But the Down Under, and the Half-Ass -- those were INSTITUTIONS, man! 5. First day of spring. For Ann Arbor, this was a day in March when it finally went to 45 degrees. Thing is, for college students who've survived the AA winter, 45 degrees is fucking summer! The whole campus is outside, tossing frisbees in the law quad, sunning on the diag, everyone just in a great fucking mood, probably because after their long winter hibernation, all the tits seemed to come back out then too. I mean, one day in November all the tits disappeared into North Face jackets and such, and then this glorious day months later, they are back and newly sprung and some of them have grown... 6. Casa Dominicks. Pitchers of sangria after finals. Tradition. 7. Rollerblading pretty much everywhere. I rollerbladed into class, into elevators, through the fishbowl, up stairs, down stairs. I don't even know where the blades are now, and I'm sure nobody thought this was cool at the time, but I loved it, and only on a college campus can you get away with that kind of crap. 8. Fishbowl. I hated it when I was there, so I don't know why this is making the list. I guess I have the M-Desk employees to thank; once they discovered they could watch DVDs, the denizens of the Fishbowl were free to turn it into 9. The "See Ya" chant at hockey games. Fuck family friendliness: if your kid is going to have any future as a fan of Michigan varsity athletics, he is going to need every single one of the lyrics in that chant. 10. Stucchis I'm what they call an all-weather ice cream consumer. 11. The Guy Selling Books on the Sidewalk is still around, but his selection has been whittled considerably. The books were all generally good, quick reads that didn't require the thought-processes of your class reading. 12. The Anti-Aesthetic You go to Ann Arbor today and you can tell who's Euro, who's gay, who's vamp, who's jock, etc. It's like fucking high school. I was in A-squared during a special time in which everyone wore t-shirts and relatively baggy clothing, and if you didn't look like Nirvana no-one would talk to you, so we all looked like Nirvana, even though that was like 10 years ago by then. The only way we could even tell when a North Campus engineer kid was among us was when he got on the bus to North Campus. Now it's like everyone has on their "I'm in this class" uniform. 13. Bond. James Bond. 007. Goldeneye. Rockets in the Stack. Grenade Launchers anywhere. Put it on License to Kill mode. Fuckin' Klo88 ("klobb"). "NO ODD JOB!" Prox Mines in the Basement. 'Ah, I hath avoided thine attempts to slayeth me in my un-ammoed stated. But hark, a mine of prox.' 14. Drinking until 3 a.m., waking up at 9 a.m., and being fully rested and ready to go. 15. Waking up on Game Day, already on State Street, with people already thronging toward the stadium. 16. Vote Hideki. And the funny thing is, we actually voted for Hideki (those who didn't vote for Yeza). And then he wasn't even half bad.