Julie’s Music, the tiny store selling sheet music for “piano, voice, and band instruments, but not string because Shar does string,” is closing October 15, says owner Julie King. She opened the store in 2006, branching off from the family business, King’s Keyboard House, across the parking lot.

Her bestseller was always the locally published piano instruction series called “The Method.” Randall and Nancy Faber’s series can now be purchased directly from the Faber Institute in the old Loving branch library building at Packard and Creek (faberinstitute.org).

Julie’s brother Jim, who took over King’s Keyboard when their father died several years ago, says he may start selling sheet music again. “There’s still a small market for sheet music sold the old-fashioned way. You know those old-time piano teachers–the ones with the half-glasses on a chain around their neck? They’re freaking out. They don’t quite understand the Internet thing. They need to send people to a store.”

As for Julie, she says cheerfully: “I’ve got some feelers out there. I’m not sure where I’ll end up. Probably not in the music industry.”

Ken’s Nielsen’s Flowers on Broadway closed sometime in August, leaving behind only an 800 number, which connects to a clerk in Perrysburg, Ohio, the mother office of what is now a four-store chain. The Toledo-area stores are all called simply Ken’s Flowers–the Ann Arbor store name embodied its grander history as Nielsen’s Flower Shop and Greenhouses, formerly on Maiden Lane, where, one customer remembers, “you’d walk in and the smell of roses from the greenhouse would almost knock you over.”

In 1999, Ken Cappelletty and Fred Moore bought the business from Paul and Diane Nielsen and moved it to the onetime church that has most recently been Broadway Gifts. Cappelletty couldn’t be reached for comment, but Ann Arborites probably don’t need much of an explanation. This is the third flower shop to have closed in as many years–all on what used to be the Pfizer side of town.

There’s an old saying about Harleys: “If it breaks, make it bigger, and if it sticks out, chrome it.” Granted, it’s said mostly by guys who ride “rice-burners,” as Harley riders might put it–they can be equally contemptuous of Japanese bikes. Now it looks like those in the Japanese camp have the last word in Ann Arbor. Nicholson Enterprises on Jackson Road, which specializes in Japanese motorcycles, is still open, but the American Harley-Davidson dealership just down the street closed in mid-August.

General manager George De La Nuez blames the weak economy, and notes that a lot of his customers work in hard-hit industries like manufacturing and automotive. They like their bikes, but Harleys don’t come cheap; new ones start at $8,000, and De La Nuez says sales have been falling steadily for the last couple of years. But it’s not all bad news. The Ann Arbor dealership is merging with the Brighton Harley-Davidson dealership. Both are owned by Charlie Stephenson, who lives in Oklahoma, and De La Nuez, who manages both, says they brought over seventeen employees from the Ann Arbor store, and he’s trying to find jobs for the rest at other Harley dealerships in Michigan.