4B - The Michigan Daily - Weekend, etc. Magazine - Thursday, February 4, 1999 Bookstores of all sorts and sizes have long histones on localstreet 0 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 - d~ ~cxer '\ Retro Night "''"kals College Night Hosted-by $1.50 Pitchers. 10 d by No cover with student ID. 21+ Stu nt d ss c rdi 105.1'"5Dj Tm on eye exams and - ,.eyeglasses.. _ Wi to 'R1PJ ill2- ANN ARBOR'S BIGGEST & BEST Hours: - i HI~A iII I 1111A HoernlockDane P fl~ MonTue-Thu-Fri 9-5:30'- E HA AA BL Mdern lock Dane P affies wed&Sat 9 Incudes Train & Hote, Courtesy KyTorur. No cover before 9PM. 21+ 320 S. State St .icardson s (lower level of 0' DeckerDrugs) tical MI 662-1945 £c~Z~m~ Z7I music by George Gershwin - AN AMERICAN IN PAMS-choreography by Cliff Keuter AQUARIUM " choreography by Evelyn Velez-Aguayo- music by Edward Sarath choreography by Peter Sparling -THE DEUIMUM WALTZ - music by Frank Pahl choreography by Gay Delanghe " music by Stephen Rush - PASSAGEWAYS February 4 -6 at 8 PM - February7 at 2 PM - Power Center - Tickets $18 & $14 Students $7 with ID at the league Ticket Office - Charge it! 734-764-0450 * . . . .. . .. ... @@ .. @.@ . . 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