And I’LL SEE:
- A vibrant campus town crawling with college students who LOVEEEEEE their Urban Outfitter. (Seriously, U of M students take fitting this store’s mold of hipster seriously — we popped in while they were having a 10 percent discount sale and you would have thought they were giving away the store.)
- A beautiful Big Ten campus with soaring stone buildings and serious students tucked away inside, all contributing to a suspicious feeling you’ve stumbled onto the Ivy League set of a film..something like “Good Will Hunting: The Sequel.”
- SUNSHINE! Folks, when you haven’t seen sunshine since the start of the year, you rejoice in the littlest of victories. Who cares if the wind is bitter, the temperatures in the teens — a dose of sunshine does a girl goooood. (And had it been 32 degrees and sunny, we might have seen some of those college kids in their flip flops!)
I’LL HEAR:
- Sam Beam of Iron & Wine singing an a cappella version of “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” (kinda like this) followed by an acoustic encore of “Boy With a Coin” (which goes something like this) that left Friday’s audience at the 33rd annual Ann Arbor Folk Festival hungry for more.
- And while I’m at that folk fest, I’ll tap my toes and nod along to Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab) and Jay Farrar (of Sun Volt) sing songs like “Big Sur,” from their collection of tunes paying tribute to Jack Kerouac.
- Then I’ll wake up on a lazy Saturday morning to hear birds chirping, airplanes droning above, and a voice inside my head saying, “Yep, this is gonna be a good, lazy Saturday.”
I’LL EAT:
- A goat cheese appetizer with plantain chips followed by arepas at a great Cuban joint called Little Havana. And if you’ve never had ‘em (and I hadn’t before Friday), arepas are corn cakes with (more!) goat cheese and avocado and sauteed spinach. Yum!
- Lentil soup and a to-die-for BBQ eggplant sandwich with sweet potato fries at Seva, a vegetarian restaurant I’m still dreaming about.
- A coconut CUPCAKE as a reward for all that walking we did. In the cold. I mentioned it was cold, right?
I’LL BUY:
- Alexander Girard pillows from Urban Outfitters (but not these particular ones … no, mine were a lucky steal at $5 a piece. Which made standing in that line of hipster college students buying their $78 jackets at 10 percent off totally worth the 20 minute-wait. $5 A PIECE PEOPLE!)
- A scarf. Yeah, ’cause, you know, I NEED another one. (That’s sarcasm, friends.) My neck hasn’t seen the light of day in weeks.
- A T-shirt at Moosejaw, a Michigan-based outdoor company I had no knowledge of before Saturday but am henceforth completely obsessed with.
I’LL THANK
- My friend Melanie, who let me crash on her futon while she played host, showing me around her new city. (Melanie is a Michigan native who was a photographer for The Star Press, where I was a journalist, before moving to Ann Arbor last year, causing me to make this face
- Melanie’s cat, Lucy. Just ’cause she’s cute. And makes me laugh with those belly flops of hers.
I’LL FEEL
- Relaxed. 100 percent so. For the first time in ages.
- Inspired. Because I love few things more than a weekend like this — hearing live music, eating new food, seeing a new city, all with my camera beside me and my senses ready for the challenge.
See more of Gail’s work at www.gailwernerphoto.com. Friend Gail on Facebook. Follow Gail on Twitter.
by Gail Werner
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