Marketplace

In late August, a small, plain sign appeared among the garish “Store Closing” and “Everything on Sale” banners at Borders Store #1 on Liberty. It announced “Now Hiring,” and directed...

Taste Our Goods is possibly the tiniest lunch counter in town–it’s a two-seater, and if there’s a one-seater somewhere, we don’t know about it. It’s been next to Kerrytown’s Sparrow Market...

At the other end of Scio Town Center, Westside Furniture Consignment Emporium just got bigger. When Joe Grammatico, who owns the complex, opened his used-furniture store there a few years ago, it was a shot in the dark. With his...

American Home Fitness has moved across town. “We love the mix. We’re next to REI, Whole Foods, Ethan Allen. Everything is full, there are no vacancies, plenty of parking,” says manager Adam Burns of his new...

Nabeel Gneym made money at his new Tower Mini Market before he’d even opened the store–and it came in the form of hidden treasure.When Gneym, fifty, leased the onetime Matthew C. Hoffmann jewelry store in Tower...

Frank Wilhelm had never before seen a woman in charge of a car wash.Though we like to think of Ann Arbor as a Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, Observer reader and emeritus U-M prof Wilhelm thought it was unusual...

When I was a kid, my mom and I perfected the technique for making and eating root beer floats. I use the word “eating” deliberately, because the dish we concocted was more suitable for dessert or Sunday supper than...

Mollie, a purebred Yorkie, is sensibly dressed today, wearing a brown Louis Vuitton dress, a black-and-white Up Country collar, and a hair ornament. “It’s her everyday collar,” says her owner, Shauna Williams,...

If you’re looking for pork, Ted Li’s got you covered. He carries pork ribs, pork liver, pork belly, pork feet, pork legs, pork stomach, and if you’re really adventurous, pork rectum. Li, fifty-four, opened the...

Miki, Ann Arbor’s oldest extant sushi restaurant, harking back to the 1980s, has new owners and is in mid-course of a name change. Felisha and Yoon Kim will eventually change the name to Sushi Zen, but for now, Felisha...

The urban food court that burst into bloom in May on West Washington, near the corner of Ashley, has to be the most novel Ann Arbor eating scene in recent memory. Credit goes to impresario Mark Hodesh of Downtown Home and Garden...

At the end of June, Peter Dale retired from the first job he ever had when he closed Encore Recordings, one of campus’s most beloved used-music shops. Longtime employees Jim Dwyer and Bill McClelland immediately reopened...