Belleville

Belleville is a Wayne County lake town that the Ann Arbor crowd forgets exists, which is mostly to its credit. The lake is the entire personality; everything else is strip-mall infrastructure servicing Metro Airport and the Ford Rawsonville plant. Dating pool runs younger and more blue-collar than Ann Arbor proper, with a noticeable Detroit-exurb pragmatism, and a real divide between lakefront-owning lifers and renters passing through on the way to somewhere with a downtown. Summer is the only season that flatters it. Egan's, the Bayou Grill patio, a pontoon if someone in the family has one. Manage expectations carefully.