When East Lansing and Lansing make their entrance at the annual mixer party for Michigan cities later this year, Sault Ste. Marie will inevitably turn to Marquette, Warren and Bay City and ask: "Who invited the nerds?"
It's official. East Lansing and Lansing, you are uncool. Gov. Jennifer Granholm's finalized list of 17 Michigan "Cool Cities" that will receive $100,000 in state funded grants is flagrantly devoid of our hometowns. We will receive no state money to lure young professionals into our urban centers, we will not have access to funds to rejuvenate our downtowns and we will never have a chance of taking Warren to the prom. You, East Lansing and Lansing, are audio/visual, chess club poindexters. Go play with your computers, Urkels.
If we took the time to devote an editorial to how East Lansing shouldn't really want to be a "Cool City," it would probably sound like sour grapes for not being selected out of the pool of 150 city applicants. It would be whiny and trite and reek of a hipster mindset in which being left off the list of "cool" somehow makes us "cooler." The cold reality, though, is that East Lansing doesn't need to be on a list of "cool" to attract the young professional.
Because outside of Ann Arbor, East Lansing has the market cornered on being a Michigan city that people are trying to get out of. There's a really big school in East Lansing and a lot of people study there. After enough studying, they apply their knowledge someplace else. In the meantime, local businesses pump us full of pizza and beer, and we move on so the next crop of students can start spending. It's a predictable little niche market known as the college town business model, and it's working pretty well for us.
East Lansing doesn't need another Gap. We don't need another Starbucks, and we actually prefer Georgio's to franchise cardboard pies. We're, well, "cooler" than what "development" would bring to downtown. We aren't a suburb.
Sour grapes? Hardly. East Lansing takes pride in its history and its culture. The independent business is what gives the city its flavor. Should tens of thousands of dollars fill city coffers in hopes of luring the young professional, the students become a second- class citizen - more than they already are - in a market made for them, built by them. Thanks for omitting us, Granholm.
Lansing is a different story. Not many cities around the state can say they've done more in the past five years to improve image and keep up appearances. Lansing is investing in its future at a delightfully frantic clip and it's a shame to not see them on the list they certainly should top. During the selection process, Granholm needed to take a look at what was going on in her own backyard.
Live it up, East Lansing and Lansing. We're two cities full of cool people, but were just left off the guest list. Just take a page from Anthony Edwards' character Gilbert from "Revenge of the Nerds" - we're nerds, and we're pretty proud of it.
