An accumulation of flyer detritus on a telephone pole in Ann Arbor.

We decided to walk around Ann Arbor together instead of heading directly back to the "porch livin' situation." It's become increasingly clear to Matt that he has to get out of the house and do things and meet people or else his life will go uselessly stale. An indication of such things is the fact that he hasn't gotten laid in two years. That's not quite as bad as the six year slump Tyler was in before Deya save him, but who know how long it will last?

An Ann Arbor police car posing anachronistically with the other, older cars at the Ann Arbor car show. Like many of the other cars, the hood is up to display the immaculately shiny muscles under the hood.

We made ourselves drinks back in Matt's car and then hit the streets again. I'm really surprised covert public drinking isn't a better acknowledged institution in this great nation of ours.

As we walked by store fronts and through milling throngs of unabashed yuppies, Matt repeatedly made mention of the sorry state of the arts, music and even bar scenes in this town. "There'd never be a Buddhist Biker Bar in Ann Arbor," he assured me. The reason for the weak creative scene seems to be relentless high property values. It's simply impossible in Ann Arbor to find big spaces for experimental galleries or subcultural music. There could never be a Downtown Artspace in Ann Arbor because its landlord would soon find a profitable business willing to pay far better rent money than any rag-tag band of starving artists. As Matt explained this situation to me, I suddenly realized that there is a process akin in many ways to ecological succession at work here. It starts with a bombed-out slum, with high crime, lots of drugs, and very few legal forms of work. Eventually artists move in to take advantage of the low rent, willing (in the boldness of their youth) to take the necessary risks. With their presence and with the culture they bring, crime is gradually driven away and wealthier people, the kind less willing to take risks, settle in, increasingly driving up property values and eventually driving out the artists themselves. When an area becomes completely gentrified, it will remain that way until there is a decline in the underlying conditions that support the local economy. In Detroit, for example, the automotive boom led to lavish neighborhoods and glorious infrastructure. But with competition from the Japanese and changes in the purchasing habits of Americans, the bubble burst. Now there is so little tax base in Detroit that the city can't even afford to pull dead cars ("entropy-mobiles") off the shoulders of its interstates.

Karen took us upstairs to show us a video she's been working on. But she was fast forwarding, rewinding and changing tapes and parameters so much that mostly what we saw was the default blank blue screen. I'd like to do some videotape editing some time, but I've always been intimidated by recollections of my feeble past attempts.

Karen led Matt and me down to nearby "West Park," and we shot basketball hoops for the better part of an hour. None of us were any good at that sort of thing, but the amount of practicing we did while there tonight had a marked positive effect on our accuracy towards the end.

At midnight Karen had a scheduled appointment with her housemate, Grumpy Emily, to provide moral and emotional support related to an ongoing crisis in Emily's life. Karen wouldn't fill us in on the details, but Matt suspects it has something to do with Emily's recent breakup with a boyfriend.