mcsokrates

I guess the parking thing all depends on what time of day you're doing things. Street parking and a couple of lots (in addition to the courthouse, there's one on First and William that's adjacent to essentially the only decent venue in Ann Arbor, the Blind Pig) are free after 6pm, this much is true. But good luck finding a spot on a Friday or Saturday night, especially after 9pm. And as a long time resident, those after hours passes are still a sore spot. Before about 3 years ago, all the UM garages were free and open to the public after 6. University jerks maximizing revenues and such.

I know a lot of Med students (and other grad students who spend a lot of time in the hospital) tend to live directly across the river from the hospital - the apartments over there are sometimes called the "white coat ghetto". The neighborhood north of Huron and east of Glen is mixed undergrad and grad, but its significantly better than the student ghettos to the south of campus.

A couple things: First, getting an apartment in Ann Arbor is, as you suspected, more or less a laissez faire type deal. Ann Arbor/Ypsi is small enough that you shouldn't have much of a problem finding a place if you use craigslist, etc. In terms of socializing and proximity, keep in mind that a) parking in downtown Ann Arbor can be a pain and b. living within walking distance of campus/downtown can be prohibitively expensive, especially if you want to live around grownups rather than undergrads. So its kind of a trade off. Parking isn't expensive in money terms, but it can be difficult to find parking near where you want to be on Friday and Saturday evenings. This is more of a big deal in winter, since nobody wants to walk a half mile across town to get dinner and drinks when its -5 and there's a foot of snow on the ground. Traffic is usually not a super big deal generally, but there are two things to watch out for: 1) the Washtenaw corridor has gotten progressively worse in the last 5 years (this is pretty much the way you'll have to go to and from school if you decide to live in Ypsi) and 2) times and places where there's a large concentration of Undergrads can make car travel nigh impossible and relatedly 3) don't expect to get any errands done on home game Saturdays.

Ann Arbor is actually a pretty decent place to be for non-undergrads. You'll find that there are plenty of young professionals around (Ann Arbor is the home of a major Google office as well as JSTOR, and a number of firms and startups either affiliated with the University or the U of M hospital.) In terms of night life, there's good news and bad - the good news is that if you stay away from South University, you can avoid the largest concentration of party party party undergrads. The bad news, though, is that its impossible to avoid them altogether - Ann Arbor's downtown is small enough that even "grown up" places - like, say, The Jolly Pumpkin (Belgian style gastropub) or the aforementioned Ashley's (Microbrew focused bar - they have like 50 taps and rotate through really obscure beers) will have at least a few undergrads hanging around. They're usually pretty well behaved. As for food, just check Yelp - pretty much every major cuisine can be found in Ann Arbor (although if you want a good and authentic taco, you'll have to head over to the East side of Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti.) If you can scrape together the dough, get a sandwich at Zingerman's deli for sure, and Zingerman's Road House (on Jackson on the West side of town) has been getting some national press for their modern barbeque. Seriously, though, if your boyfriend likes holes in the wall, send him post haste to Ypsilanti (Ann Arbor's poorer, grittier, less annoying neighbor, 10 minutes down the road) You can get a burger at Sidetrack (one of GQ's best 25 burgers in the country,) a breakfast the size of a semi-truck at the Bomber, the best Thai food in Washtenaw County at Thai-Thai (do take out though, there's literally 3 tables,) crazy good Tacos at La Casita, etc. The Arb got mentioned in terms of primo outdoor zone, but there's also the Matthei Botanical Gardens just outside of town, and I believe there are 2 or 3 dog parks (you can get an off-leash permit from the city too, if that's your thing.)