Middle Earth is closing at the end of December. Owner Cynthia Shevel and her partner Elaine Selo closed their Selo/Shevel gallery on Main St. earlier this year when they sold the building. Shevel says they’ve bought a house in northern California and will be moving in the spring. Meanwhile, Shevel reports, Selo isn’t sitting on her hands–“Elaine is taking Ralph Williams’ “Memoir and Social Crises” class at U-M. She’s auditing it, but loves it so much, she wrote the paper.”

Shevel opened Middle Earth in 1967. Named for the Lord of the Rings epic (which had a more selective following before the blockbuster movies), it was, like a lot of the campus retail, a head shop–sort of a lifestyle store for dope smokers with paraphernalia, posters, beads, and incense. In time, it became Selo/Shevel gallery’s more affordable sister, though it also offered a most un-Selo/Shevel-like rude selection of gag gifts. “Quirky,” Shevel calls it with a smile.

Not so smilingly, she says “Elaine and I are concerned” with what’s happening to Ann Arbor’s retail environment with so many of the older stores pulling out. “I could have sold the store, but not for what I was asking.” With South U area rents at $30-$35/square foot, and “Amazon–the Walmart of the Internet” undercutting prices, not many people are willing to take the risk. “And students are so tech savvy. They come in with their phones,” checking for lower prices. Or just talking. “You can’t separate them from their phones.” One time she gently told a woman who was talking as she checked out “that there would be a fifty cent surcharge, for that. She said okay,” and went on talking.