Word: michigan
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...lift a decades-old ban on the use of flotation devices like boogie boards on the city's waterways. (The ordinance was established to prevent accidental drownings; government officials were chiefly concerned about liability and the prospect that novice swimmers, imitating highly skilled surfers, might leap into Lake Michigan, especially in harsh winter conditions.) The move will effectively legalize surfing in the heart of the Midwest and make Chicago an unlikely beachfront in the war to extend surfing's influence across the country. (See 10 things to do in Chicago...
...robust beaches. This spring, Chicago opened its newest beach, on the South Side, and a former resident of the South Side - the city's favorite adopted son, Hawaiian-born President Barack Obama - is a surfer, although it's hard to imagine him ever taking to the shores of Lake Michigan. The city's beaches have more than a century's worth of history. In the 1890s, a group of prominent Chicagoans, including doctors and businessmen, lobbied for the creation of public beaches along Lake Michigan, in part so working-class residents would have access to clean bathing water...
...School Luxury. The famed Grand Hotel on Michigan's Mackinac Island is a delicious taste of the turn of the century, where guests must still dress for dinner in the dining room. (If the scene looks familiar, you may remember it from the 1980 Jane Seymour-Christopher Reeve film Somewhere in Time, filmed at the hotel.) There are no cars allowed on the island, so you'll have to get around by foot, horse-drawn taxi or bicycle (available for rent at the hotel or on the island starting at $4 per hour; or bring your own on the ferry...
...recession a theater ticket or concert seat can seem like an indulgence. Meanwhile, with corporate profits tanking and charitable endowments badly deflated, donations and underwriting have also been drying up. And as state and local governments contend with huge deficits, arts spending has been a major casualty. In Michigan, where the struggling Detroit Institute of Arts recently laid off 20% of its staff, the 2010 budget proposed by Governor Jennifer Granholm would cut arts funding to exactly nothing...
...there such a thing as a homogeneous city - which helps to account for the Detroit metro area's (relatively) spend-happy ways. Acxiom figures that some 64% of people in Oakland County, Michigan, home to Chrysler headquarters, fall into demographic groups that are more likely to spend. In neighboring Lapeer County, that percentage is 41%. The national picture reflects the same lumpiness. In other words, there are plenty of people in the Rust Belt with tightened purse strings, just as you would expect - but in the aggregate, other pockets of the country have pulled back more. And while there...