I made some TC friends in college and visited them during the summers. Boats on the lake, house parties in suburban palaces, parents out of town, mushrooms at the Sleeping Bear Dunes. It’s one of those rare charming places, isolated from the world and fiercely local. Everyone I knew from there left but eventually came back.
Lucky me, I got to go back for a visit recently. Traverse City had a major glow up, and not necessarily for the better. Prosperity is its own sort of threat.
We stayed at a swanky Airbnb downtown. Brick walls, high ceilings, big TV. Post-industrial steampunk decor, wheels and gears, a sleeping nook for children. Warnings from the host about putting towels in the dryer and running the dishwasher. God, Airbnbs are the worst.
Started the night at a pinball bar. The bartender poured us some Oberons, orange slices on the rims of plastic cups. The bar was booming, every table occupied, pinball machines buzzing and whirring, pizza on deck. Michigan summer. Baby, we’re so back.
Two beers and some poorly played pinball, and we are on to the next bar. The fellas are surprised at how lively this small city feels at night. We end up at a more dive-y bar, more beers, conversation in a wooden booth. This place is packed to the gills, and we barely got a table.
Some spirited arguments with locals about politics, of course. One of them likes Gretchen Whitmer, because she protects the state game lands. He doesn’t care about any other issues. Of course, he turns up his nose when we mention social policies, identity politics crap. That’s beyond the immediacy of his local interests. He just wants to hunt and fish, for the state game lands to stay open, and to be left alone otherwise. Very northern Michigan—a real life “hicklib,” a rural liberal who still indulges the status his luxury beliefs bequeath him because he’s never seen the madness they’ve wrought downstate.
A few cigarettes out back, then on to the club—the only club in downtown TC, one my local buddy (now married with kids) knows by name. He laughs about it when I mention it the next day. It’s the sort of place only young men dare enter and, very quickly, get too old for. The bouncers usher us in, telling us we sure picked the right night—there are three separate bachelorette parties here. They weren’t wrong, several groups of ladies crowd the dance floor. Bottle blondes mostly, Hinge girls, email-job girlbosses, you know the type.
We dance around to a DJ playlist that felt like something from a decade ago. Euro club dance hits from the 2010s, old pop electronic stuff; my God, even some dubstep mashups. Smoke machines and laser lights glare across the club. TC is a cultural backwater in 2024, but it’s fun for me, every track brings me back to college. We chat up the local talent. Friendly, but suspicious of outsiders, and they clocked us right away—the ladies reveal the real character of the place. “Midwest nice”—outwardly friendly, inwardly suspicious, hard to earn their trust.
TC feels like a place where you can live the millennial dream—the hoppy IPA, exposed brick apartment, barcade fantasy—but also have real kids, not just “fur babies.” Nothing against dogs, but let’s be real, they’re not children.
There’s a dream here, no doubt, but like so many other distinctive places, that dream is increasingly threatened. With the mid-level high rises popping up, the shops underneath with Pride and BLM signs out front, “little free libraries” sprouting all over the place… you know your rent is going up soon.
My visit coincided with two ironically juxtaposed articles about TC. The first, a New York Times piece, “36 Hours in Traverse City.” A nice piece, honestly—great restaurant recommendations, even a suggestion to visit Sleeping Bear. They mention the TC airport expanded, with direct flights now from 20 U.S. cities, tourists and potential residents no longer at the mercy of the brutal four-hour trip from Detroit.
The piece even mentions some changes in the city brought by newcomers. “Lately, some visitors are staying. Pandemic-era transplants are bringing a new, creative energy: renovating cafes and hotels, selling prints of watercolors at area markets and championing biodynamic winemaking.” No surprise, given its charms. People come here and never leave!
The second, a local piece in the Traverse Ticker: Leaving in Droves’: How Cost of Living is Driving People out of Grand Traverse County. A grim local assessment of how the rising cost of living is driving out a particular segment of the population—those above the federal poverty line, but just below the ALICE threshold, a metric for actual economic livability of a place. In other words, Traverse City is full of people with jobs and families but budgets below what’s needed to live decent lives.
According to a source interviewed by the Ticker, “You see all this growth [of ALICE households] in neighboring counties, and I think that just shows how the cost of living in Grand Traverse County is pushing out these working families that are working lots of jobs but are just not completely financially stable.” The higher cost of living is forcing locals to move away or live even more precariously.
The double-edged sword of gentrification strikes again. The coffee shops get better, the restaurants improve, techno sneaks into the hip-hop mashups at the club, but at what cost? Especially for a place already fiercely local and loyal to its own regional identity, is this inherently a good thing for Traverse City and other towns like it? Outside tourism, visits from NYT writers and such, undoubtedly bring prosperity, but also pose a threat.
Traverse City and places like it need to walk a fine line in the coming years between balancing their growing cultural significance, outside attention, and the dreaded tourists, with the well-being of the locals. Growth is a fun ride, no doubt, and new wealth brings prosperity, and who doesn’t love better food? Excitement and beauty are worth championing in any town, but not at any cost. Enjoy the ride, Traverse City, but try not to lose your soul in the process.
Bobby Mars is an artist, alter ego, and former art professor. Follow him on X at @bobby_on_mars.
