The Mentors
“My dad was kind of never really in my life, and my mom, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia before I was even born,” says Michelle Hanke. “That was just really, really difficult.
Read More
Featured
The Observer’s Next Leaders
My first Ann Arbor Observer article appeared in the October 1980 issue. This October will be my last as editor. Our deputy editor, Brooke Black, is already planning her first issue as editor-in-chief in November. Publisher Patricia Garcia is also retiring and will be succeeded by our media director, Danielle Jones.
Read More
Screens vs. School
Pioneer High at 3:01 p.m. has the feel of a busy commuter airport. Students pour out of classrooms shouldering backpacks, swinging musical instrument cases, laughing and chatting. Many are holding cell phones.
Those phones are a point of contention at all levels of the education system: from individual classrooms to the school district, and all the way up to the Michigan legislature.
The Meaning of the $3,100 Campus Studio
As move-in began this August, Vic Village South’s website advertised, “Leasing Now Open for 2025–26!” Social media ads announced, “We have 1, 2, 3, and 4-Bedroom apartments available!”
Read More
Because They’re There
How does a “walk in the park” become a challenge only the hardiest and most determined locals accomplish? By inviting people to visit every single one of Ann Arbor’s 162 parks. Nearly 100 community members have accomplished this feat in the past five years.
Read More
Library Lot Referendum Heats Up
As the increasingly bitter campaign over the future of the downtown library races to a close, both sides are spending the final days before Tuesday’s election making their cases by going door to door, flooding social media, and pushing targeted ads through mail and online platforms.
Read More
Internet Fraud and Its Victims
At ten o’clock on a Sunday night, my eighty-six-year-old mother received a call from a girl who sounded like my daughter, then a college student. Crying, the caller said that she had gone to Canada with friends, their car had broken down, and they were stranded without money. Could Grammie please wire $700 right away, so they could get back to campus?
Read More
The Rise of Busch’s
The company’s stores in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, Lenawee, and Washtenaw Counties employ 1,600 people. Busch’s is privately held and doesn’t disclose sales figures, but ZoomInfo.com lists them at $296 million annually.
Read More
AADL’s Summer Game
Since its modernization, the Summer Game has increased significantly in popularity. Retyi says that last summer they hit record numbers of participants, amassing nearly 15,000 sign-ups. This year, they’re on track to beat that record; more than 11,000 players and 3,000 lawn signs with redeemable codes for Summer Game points have been registered already.
Read More
Coming Home
“I always missed Ann Arbor—the slower pace of life, seeing familiar faces around town, being close to my family and friends of fifteen-plus years,” Carter says. She enjoys “going back to all of the wonderful restaurants, shops, museums, libraries, parks, and events that I loved growing up and now getting to share that with my family.”
Read More
Featured Artists
Wandering the lines of booths that snake through downtown, the Ann Arbor Art Fair feels like a single vast event. But within it are three separate fairs, each with its own governing board, jury, and territory. And every year, each expresses itself with an original poster and merchandise created by one of its artists. This year is no exception, and all three artists, in their own ways, are exceptional.
Read More
Wage War
The wage war began in 2018, when One Fair Wage, a national coalition of activists, workers and organizations fighting for a higher minimum wage for tipped employees, gathered 370,690 signatures to put the decision up to voters. If the measure had passed, the wage paid to tipped workers, then set at $3.84, would gradually be increased to match the statewide hourly minimum wage—which the same proposal would increase to $12 by 2022 and thereafter index to inflation.
Read More
Small Town / Big City
Supporters argue that the city needs that “densification” to allow more people who work in the city to live here, to bolster the property tax base eroded by the U-M’s expansion, and repair economic and racial inequities caused by past “exclusionary zoning.” Opponents question whether growth on that scale is necessary or even likely. But if it does come to pass, they predict, it will be at the expense of the city’s neighborhoods, as apartments and condos crowd out single-family homes.
Read More
The Ann Arbor Travelers
One sunny day in June of 1957, Kenny Scodeller pounded on my front door. When I answered, he commanded, “Get your baseball glove, you’re going to work!”
Read More
The New MRF
On December 1, 2021, Recycle Ann Arbor unveiled Ann Arbor’s revamped materials recovery facility (MRF). Their predecessor, ReCommunity, had trashed it back in 2016, and the upgrades came with a hefty price tag. RAA secured two grants but still had to take out $5.9 million in loans.
Read More
Warde Manuel in the NIL Era
“Ninety-five plus percent of our student athletes are not going to play professionally when they are done here,” Manuel says. “So, if that’s the case, I’m not going to design a system for only five percent. I want a system that will help one hundred percent of them.”
Read More
Surf Michigan
A small cyclone was predicted to hit Lake Michigan on November 21, 2024. Saint Joseph lay still—no wind, just the occasional whisper of movement—but out in the heart of the lake, the waves roared to life. For the MSurf club at the University of Michigan, it was the perfect storm—an unmissable call to adventure.
Read More
“We May Be the First, But We Won’t Be the Last”
This year, the U-M saw a 24.5 percent increase in applications from first-generation students; they currently make up 12 percent of the undergraduate population. But the university’s relationship with first-gens hasn’t always been supportive.
Read More
Modern Love
To this day, the stream of applicants from the recovery community has not abated. They are like our very own LinkedIn and Indeed all rolled into one. Over the ensuing ten-year period, while owning and operating a growing vegan food business that now includes a restaurant, a bakery/cafe, and an events venue, I have hired more than 150 people in recovery. As their employer, I have had the privilege of joining them on their life-changing and lifesaving journeys
Read More