In the Zone

continued

"It's really destructive," she said. Which is, I refrained from pointing out, the inescapable truth about destruction.

"Violent," she clarified.

Violent indeed. And curiouser and curiouser in a town with such a peaceful-sounding name as "Ann Arbor"--a name as charming and genteel as the city itself.

Except during these bouts of darkness, I thought, while the houses creaked and buckled--the bad days when Ann Arbor takes sharp objects to its renowned skin and turns ... self-abusive.

A cutter. A tweaker.

The Lindsay Lohan of redevelopment.

An elderly spectator hobbled from the scene, hands batting the air as he muttered something about the wrecking of nice things and the ugly ones going up.

Not that everything ever lost to new construction was "nice" to begin with, but the man did have a point.