After every MSU road game, State News reporters will share tales from their travels. Men's basketball reporter Tom Keller discusses the highs and lows of the Badger State.
The bad news from this past weekend: The MSU men's basketball team kind of, you know, lost twice.
The good news: State News photographer Mike Itchue, fellow reporter Matt Bishop and I had a great time on our road trip covering them!
All right, so maybe that didn't make you feel any better. But we still want to keep you in the loop.
So here are our (read: my) impressions of Madison, Wisc. I'd tell you about Champaign, Ill., but we were only there for a night. All I can say is that there are way fewer cheese stores there.
• Diversity of restaurants: I'm not just talking Qdoba. Madison boasts places with food from Afghanistan, Laos and East Africa.
• More local flavor: Most of Madison's downtown businesses were one-of-a-kind places, which made me realize how much of the main strip of Grand River Avenue relies on chains. Among the most interesting: Ragstock, a thrift store where I found a Goonies baseball T-shirt, and Hawk's, a swank restaurant/bar/place-we-got-hit-on-by-30-year-olds. You don't see that kind of uniqueness in East Lansing.
• Citywide smoking ban: There's been talk of having one in East Lansing, and this was the first city I've been to with one. The verdict: a great idea. It was refreshing to walk in and out of buildings without having to adjust to different smoke levels and to get back to the hotel later and not smell like I'd just been bowling for three days straight.
• Cheaper/more abundant parking: In East Lansing, you usually have to search for awhile and then sign over your firstborn to get a parking spot. In Madison, there are parking structures all over, and most cost only 70 cents an hour.
• Quasi-allies: Despite being downtown all Friday night, we only saw one Spartan ally — a guy standing alone at a bus stop wearing an MSU jacket. As we walked past, I gave him a friendly, "Go Green!" He looked at us and said nothing. I began walking faster.
Tom Keller can be reached at kellert1@msu.edu.
