4B - The Michigan Daily - Weekend, etc. Magazine - Thursday, February 4, 1999
Bookstores of all sorts
and sizes have long
histones on localstreet
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The Michigan Daily - Weekend, etc. M
THE 1999 MERCURY COUGAR:
PROTECT YOUR BUM
I Top 10 Albums
I I
By Sasha Higgins
and Will Weist
Daily Arts Writers
In a world where theme restau-
rants, Hollywood movies and
Websites have become as common
place to islands in the Caribbean as
they are to metropolitan cities, the
term local has begun to fade into the
background. In this new and ever-
popular global approach to busi-
ness, the "shop around the corner"
has been made available to corners
worldwide.
On East Liberty Street, not far
from the Michigan Theater, stand
two examples of how bookstores
have graduated into the global mar-
ket. Borders Bookstore started in
1973 as nothing more than the idea
of a pair of local brothers Tom and
Louis Borders. Today, besides its
Ann Arbor store, Borders locations
can be found across the United
States and as far away as Singapore,
England, Scotland and Australia.
Next door, above one of the area's
most well-known murals, is David's
Books. A local used-book icon, it is
still a haven for bulky piles of rare
fiction, non-fiction and other rari-
ties. But today it is also home to a
Web-linked computer and a tele-
phone where book dealers from
around the globe call in special
orders.
The Borders brothers started sell-
ing used books in the early '70s and
decided in 1973 to start an official
store in the South State Street loca-
tion now home to Steve and Barry's.
The store first occupied nearly
5,000 square-feet, and eventually
was expanded to twice its original
size.
In 1986,the brothers decided to
try their luck at another Borders
store in Birmingham, Mich. After
that came a store in Indianapolis,
and then twohor three more new
stores through the Midwest. By
1992, the Borders brothers owned
DANA UNNANE/Daily
David's Books employee Paul Sweeney poses In front of his store's 15-year-old "trade-mark" mural. Border's Books and
Music's downtown Ann Arbor store Is located next door.
around 35 stores, and decided to sell
their company to K-Mart Corp.
After the sale they decided to leave
the book business completely.
Desiring more space for a larger
inventory, the new owners moved
Great Brands
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music by George Gershwin - AN AMERICAN IN PAMS-choreography by Cliff Keuter
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join us for special poetry readings of Mark Strand's "The Delirium Waltz"
UnveityiDanceICompanty Shaman Drum Bookstore, 313 S. State, Mon., Feb. I at 7.PM and Borders, 515 E. Liberty, Tues., Feb. 2 at 7 PM
the store to its current location on
East Liberty, enabling it to acquire
an area of more than 40,000 square
feet. Also included in the new store
was a music section and a full-ser-
vice cafe.
Sharon Gambin, an employee of
Ann Arbor's Borders Books and
Music, described the brothers'
intentions when building the new
store as "aiming to keep the 'nooks
and crannies' of the original."
"A lot of bookstores are box-
like," Gambin said. "We wanted to
create a kind of store within a store
effect."
K-Mart did not hold on to Borders
for long. In the spring of 1995, K-
Mart sold Borders and its other
book franchise, Walden Books -
both became publicly held compa-
nies. Ann Arbor's once local book-
store, having already spread nation-
wide, now sought to go internation-
al. A store in Singapore opened in
fall of 1997, followed in 1998 by
stores in London and Brighton,
England, Glasgow, Scotland and
Melbourne, Australia.
Despite its chain-store status and
the increasing familiarity of the
name Borders, the Ann Arbor loca-
tion seems to maintain a distinct
character from all the rest.
"All the procedures and method-
ologies of Borders stores worldwide
started at this store in Ann Arbor,"
Gambin said. "We've always been
the store upon which strategies are
predicated and we are still a place
where new things are tried."
But as Border's continues to
spread all over the world, its neigh-
bor of almost five years has
remained in one spot in one country
- above the painted heads of
Woody Allen, Edgar Allen Poe,
Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka and
Anais Nin.
"In the summer when the win-
dows are open and the winds are up
you can hear people speculating
about who the people are in our
mural," laughed long-time David's
employee Paul Sweeney. "The artist
did it about 15 years ago and hasn't
show his face since - but in the
meantime it's really come to sym-
bolize downtown Ann Arbor."
But while David's Books has not
expanded its used books business
worldwide, the world has come to it
in many ways.
"The charm of the store is clutter
and how long it takes to find every-
thing," Sweeney said. "But the
Internet has really changed the way
we do business outside of the store.
We get mail orders from private
See BOOKS, Page 56
Until the recent coverage of the
1999 North American International
Auto Show, The Michigan Daily didn't
talk about cars. But now, every week,
you can come back to this very spot
and read about cars and trucks. Enjoy.
Years of chronic back pain have
taught me never to compromise the
integrity of one's arse. Along with a
steady diet of driving German cars,
being the only man who appreciates
the 496 New Balance shoes, and
adding a spot of
olive oil to great
sourdough bread,
the keeping com-
fortable of my own r .
ass is one of the "
things I try to keep
constant in my life.
Thus, a car can live
or die by the way it
comforts me duringa
a long journey. REILLY
Simply, my car has BRENNAN
to have a firm, but DAILY DRIVER
forgiving, throne.
The 1999 Mercury Cougar has the
worst seats I've ever had the displea-
sure of sitting in. They're perfectly
firm, but way too hard in support of
the lower lumbar section of the back.
Someone at Ford must have
thought really hard about lumbar
support, and then called in Sven -
Mercury's resident contortionist
who was born without 50 percent of
his lower lumbar vertebrate due to
his mother's penchant for Nutra-
Sweet and long afternoons on swing
sets - to test the seats. What we get
in the Cougar is damn near torture.
When you drive for more than 30
minutes, your entire back and rear
end feel like they've just gone ten
rounds on the Meijer one-cent pony
ride, with Sven laughing at you and
supplying the pennies.
The'sad thing is, the Cougar could
have been really good. Its design hails
from Ford's European smaller sport
hatches, the Ka and Puma.
Flawless in the bigger, American
interpretation, the Cougar is a treat to
look at. I still marvel at the car's lines
and especially the rear tail lights -
ones that my friend Courtney
describes as "puss balls."
Especially with the new image
Mercury is trying to erect, it's a shame
they haven't changed the old logo. It's
the same roaring-cat-in-a-circle that
evokes older Mercury models - like
the yellow Mercury Grand Marquis
two-door my mother drove during the
first five years of my life. That car def-
initely isn't anything Mercury should
try to emulate. Its interior was a wash
of yellow vinyl, and after the guy at the
gas station put coolant in the oil reser-
voir, it probably started every other
day and on occasional bank holidays.
Not long ago, I drove a 1999
Mercury Cougar V6 in order to test the
car's highway prowess in a trip to
,Harbor Springs, Mich. Along with my
friend and colleague Mellon, I had
five good hours to experience the
Cougar and do a little spirited driving.
Besides the horrible front seats, the
Cougar's biggest downfall might be its
V6 Duratec engine, one that Ford
trumpets as an engineering master-
piece for fuel economy. But, what you
might make up in a few dollars a
month compared to other coupes, the
Cougar's weird transmission and
engine combination make for strange
shifts. I'm not a racer, but regular
shifting of the manual transmission is
anything but regular.
Probably due to a heavy flywheel
in the transmission, the entire car
bucks when you shift. Why? Say
you're shifting at 4,000 rpms from
second gear into third, the revs
don't fall to meet the next gear.
Rather, they just loiter around
where the last gear took it, and the
car tries to make up for this laziness
by bucking. This becomes really
hard to get used to, and nearly
requires re-educating yourself on
how to shift.
Also linked to the problem men-
tioned above, the car has virtually no
engine braking. What is engine brak-
ing? A manual transmission car will
use the physics of the engine to slow
down naturally if it is in gear, not using
the brakes. The Cougar has almost no
engine braking - it feels like the car
is in neutral when really you're in gear.
Beyond annoying and unnerving, this
becomes almost dangerous if you're
like me and don't use the brakes as
much as downshifting and engine
braking to slow the car.
The Cougar has a fully independent
rear suspension, and really is quite
good on the highway. The redoubtable
Mellon can attest to the car's handling
abilities, as an incident on I-94 would
have ended his flawless visage, had it
not been for the Cougar's sure-footed-
ness. (He'll tell you it was a tire from
the Grave Digger, but my estimate was
the tire in the road ahead was nothing
bigger than a tire from a full-sized
sedan.)
In any event, Mellon was forced to
swing the car into the lane next to his to
avoid contact. The Cougar responded
1999 Mercury Cougar V-6
~Base Price: $18,095
~ Price as Tested: $20, 535
~ Engine: Duratec 24-valve DOHC V-6
~ Power: 170 bhp @ 6250 rpm
~Performance: 0-60 mph in 8.0 sec
~ Torque: 165 lb-ft @ 1250 rpm
~ EPA City driving: 19 mi/gal
beautifully, keeping its composure and
never transferring its weight too much to
get the man in trouble. Good thing, too,
because Mellon isn't that great of a driver.
Great drivers, or at least those who
drive fast, won't like the Cougar's
mysterious gauges. I've never seen a
car that doesn't tell you where the red
line is. The function of a car's red line
is to act as a warning checkpoint for
the driver, marking the point at which
the gear is exceeding its driveable
limit.
If you exceed the red line when dri-
ving, bad things happen. The Cougar,
oddly, never tells you where the red
line is. It does, however, have an elec-
tronic revolution limiter, that basically
cuts off engine power past a certain
point.
In the interest of research, I flogged the
Cougar's engine for an afternoon, deter-
mined to find out when the engine slaps
you on the wrist. 6,900 rpms is about that
point, and rather abruptly at that. The car
screams from 4,000 to 6,800 revolutions,
and then violently cuts off at 6,900. What
a tease!
At $20,535, I could not in good
conscience recommend the Cougar
over a hoard of other great coupes
with decent engines. If this is your
market, think Mitsubishi Eclipse
GS, Honda Prelude, or even the
(gasp) Toyota Celica.
For Mercury, this is definitely a step in
the right direction, but still many paces
from perfection.
- When not on the road, Reilly
Brennan can be reached via e-mail at
brennanr@umich.edu.
Top 10 Books
(The week's best-selling hard-cover
1. "Southern Cross," Patri
2. "A Man in Full," Tom W
3. "Billy Straight," JonathE
4. "In Danger's Path," W.E
5. "The Poisonwood Bible,
6. "The Cat Who Saw Stat
7. "Angel's Flight," Micha
8. "Seize the Night," Dear
9. "When the Wind Blows,
10. "The Simple Truth," D
What happena
"Dawson's Creek", The guy
angsty conflicts. Pacey'sdc
along on a father/son fishin
should - remaining comple
needs. Back at the ranch, J
get the "teenage irl's"e
resolve issues while snooer
"90210" Donna and Dylar
and the gang holds an irte
*friend. Kellyhas trouble ex
her sideburned ex. Gina an
one to take care of poor M
star wears the dress shed
*and Kelly are getting their.
form of another significant
Matt; Tell it to the judge.
"Law and Order": (R) A co
sadomasochistic sexual pi
dence to hold him for anyt
of his release. McCoy dea
is found' out to have comm
sadomasochist to Texas w
being beaten by a woman,
himself.-
"Friends": (R) The week off
from each other, while Ross
"ER: (R) Why bother with r
pense l sweeps advertiser
Hospital? Be still, my heart
"The Simpsons": Rupert Mi
and Dan Marino lead an all-
no actual football or singing
book, came near its onelu
how long it takes to produc
"X Fies": Preempted for tix
Smoking Man made sure th
Trophy.
"Ally McBeal": Preempted I
sick because she needed t<
"Buffy The Vampke Slayer"
honors at Sunnydale High, t
ing, dreamlike scene that ti
to an entirely new level.
"Felicity": (R) Felicity and
their make-out-and-flake-o
(The nation's top-selling albums
for the week)
1. Silkk The Shocker, "Mad(
2. Dave Mattews! Tim Reyr
"Live at Luther College"
3. Britney Spears, "Baby Or
More Time"
4 Offspring, "Americana"
5. 'N Sync, "'N Sync"
6. Lauryn Hill, "The Miseduc
of Lauryn Hill"
7. DMX, "Flesh of My Flesh
of My Blood"
8. 2Pac, "Greatest Hits"
9. Dixie Chicks, "Wide Open:
10. Jay-Z, "Vol. 2 ... Hard K
Life"
Source: Bii ac
UNIVERSITY WOMEN- CHECK OUT
This
cooperatively run house features:
*Utilities -Su
*Cooked Meals *Pa
*New Computer Room *L
*Cable T.V.*B
-Study Room *Sc
an Deck
irking Lot
aundry Facilities
aby Grand Piano
Greened in Patio
And More!
Spaces Available for Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter
For more information and an application
call Monica at 668-6774 or stop by 1330 Hill Street
courtesy of Mercury
Replete with bold styling cues, the 1999 Mercury Cougar is miles better than its
predecessor, but still far from the top of the under-$20,000 coupe heap.
I
t UM 1001 Of MUSK