Editor's Pick: Beer & Blue Angels

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the Ann Arbor Art Fair(s), where the city's downtown becomes an open-air flea market for aesthetes, crafters, and lots and lots of out-of-towners. It's where abstract painting meets elephant ears. Good times.

But after a few hours of pushing through the hot and sweaty throngs you're going to need a beer. Lots and lots of beer.

Hops to it!

Luckily, just a hop, skip, and seven-mile jump away is the Michigan Summer Beer Festival in Ypsilanti's lovely Riverside Park.

Named one of the Top 10 Summer Beer Festivals by Road Trips for Beer, there'll be music, more throngs of sweaty out-of-towners, and, most importantly, more than 300 different beers from more than 50 different Michigan breweries.

The Beer fest runs Friday and Saturday, and you can get more info here.

Look, up in the sky...

The Fat Albert. The Diamond Take Off. The Opposing Knife Edge Pass. No, they're not tantric sex positions, they're formations executed by The Blue Angels. These stunt flying F/A-18 Hornets will be the center ring attraction at the Thunder Over Michigan airshow.

On Saturday and Sunday, Willow Run airport becomes another mass of hot, sweaty crowds, all with their heads craned upward and their mouths agog. It's kind of an anti-art fair of sorts.

It's also a heckuva lot of fun. And if watching jets touch wings and fly upside down isn't cool enough for your inner gearhead, the show also includes an air and ground reenactment of a World War II battle (with live flamethrower!), and a fight between two legendary Vietnam military aircrafts.

For the peacenicks in the crowd... yeah, they're militaristic, yeah they're expensive, and yeah they pollute. But so do fireworks. And fireworks can be pretty darned cool. If nothing else, it's an opportunity to marvel at what human engineering can produce.

Adult tickets purchased between June 1st and July 24th are $25 per adult with $5 parking. Tickets purchased at the gate will cost $30 per adult with $10 parking. The cost is free for children 15 years or younger.

Get more information about Thunder Over Michigan here.