Marketplace

From a street of wide-eyed front windows, it felt peculiar to descend the dark stairs to Melange’s subterranean recesses. Once seated in a roomy semi-circular banquette, though, we appreciated the intimate sophistication...

In June, Susan Bay announced the closing of Bay Design Store, her elegant furniture-and-accessories showroom at the Detroit-Division fork. Bay says she’s sold the distinctive, triangular building to Michael Yi in order to...

Miyoko Honma will close her restaurant, Cafe Japon, at the end of June. She will keep the space open until July 21 as a bakery, but pending approval from Ann Arbor Township, hopes to move that operation to the Washtenaw County...

Engineer Bob Ender is moving his showroom, too. He started DreamMaker Bath & Kitchen eight years ago, after a first career designing industrial spaces and factory layouts. Ender says his company does all types of...

These summery Friday evenings in Dixboro, mandolin- and guitar-picking provides background as folks stroll past canopied stands. Shoppers fill their baskets and bags with pickled eggs, lettuce, zucchini, garlic, beeswax candles,...

A pink Toyota Camry Hybrid appeared on Ann Arbor streets during Breast Cancer Awareness Month last October as part of a fundraising and awareness campaign promoted by the national Taxicab, Limousine, & Paratransit...

A Clean Cigarette has traded a Briarwood kiosk for a tiny shop in Lamp Post Plaza. The clinical looking space makes very little effort at visual seduction–if it’s nicotine you’re after, you probably know what...

Laurie Wicks bought Georgetown Gifts fifteen years ago from Marilyn Harber, who started the store in the 1970s in Georgetown Mall. Now Wicks is hoping to find someone who wants to buy it from her. Though it’s currently...

For artists selling on the street, which is worse for sales: a tornado warning or temperatures in the nineties?That’s a choice the weather delivered during the 2010 and 2011 Ann Arbor art fairs. And Greg Lawler, publisher...

Carol Lopez, feisty owner of Peaceable Kingdom, is taking some flack for selling Obama pins and bumper stickers while offering nothing promoting the other guy. But Lopez, who opened her store in the Age of Aquarius (aka 1971),...

It almost goes without saying that gift shops are feminine territory. But Rock Paper Scissors is bright and lively feminine rather than hearts and flowers feminine, and it’s male friendly: up toward the front, owner Lisa...

We’d driven all the way to downtown Ypsi, and the guys were getting restless. To case this new Red Rock Downtown BBQ joint on Michigan Ave., I’d collared some loyal amateur smokers–not so hardcore that they...

With Borders, @burger, Allure, Poshh, Sole Sisters, Squares, Champion House, and Organic Bliss all having closed in the past year, commerce on E. Liberty has lately been looking like a game of Whac-A-Mole.Grand Traverse Pie...

Delux Drapery, a seventy-year-old business owned by Steve Blunk, the grandson of the original owner, is leaving its location on S. Main across from the South Main Market, where it’s been for eighteen years, to make room...

“I emailed Bongz & Thongz and said, ‘If you’re having trouble moving this merchandise, I’m the one who can do it for you,'” says Tanya Brown. Eight months later (mainly because Bongz &...

For two years now, the Bank of Ann Arbor has been gleefully giving competitors the Ann Arbor version of the Bronx cheer. The ads—in both traditional and social media—highlight competitors’ outsider status. Each begins,...