The Hottest New York Times Travel Destination is… Traverse City?
Prosperity is its own sort of threat
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.
