It is hard to imagine now just how rare parks were in Washtenaw County in 1972. Ann Arbor and other big towns had their own parks, and there were the Metroparks on the river and the state recreation areas at the northwest edge...
Read MoreA family once shut out of Ann Arbor home ownership now has a lawn to mow and taxes to pay. A young couple skipped a starter house and moved straight to a multibedroom family home. And a professional couple saved hundreds of...
Read MoreAn expanse of sky and treetops on North Campus spreads out in the windows behind Wei Shyy as he describes his work designing tiny planes that fly and perch like insects and birds. Talking about an insect’s arms, the chair...
Read MoreThis is a tragedy in three acts.The setting is a huge, festively decorated L-shaped room in Chelsea’s Clocktower Commons. Adobe walls are adorned with colorful murals, including one of a lady kneading dough who seems...
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The dirt road to Ray and Karen Berg’s Victorian style home in Manchester takes visitors past farms, cornfields, and rolling green pastures to a light blue Queen Anne perched on a hill. The house and its pastoral setting...
Read MoreAndrus McDonald says the name of his new nightclub, the Fifth Quarter, refers to several things: the club’s Fifth Avenue location, the five clubs he hopes to eventually run (a second spot in Lansing is in the works), the...
Read MoreTheresa Whitley, who is forty, has spent most of her life arranging flowers. “I’ve been doing flowers professionally at a flower shop since I was thirteen years old, but I’ve actually been arranging flowers...
Read MoreA spinning disco ball dapples light on the walls of a darkened room. Travis, a fifteen-year-old with autism, walks toward an illuminated bubble tower. As the tube changes colors, Travis presses his face against it and glides his...
Read MoreFirst-time Ann Arbor children’s book author Sheila Pursglove found her dream illustrator through a blind ad on Craigslist. “I’m your man,” confidently asserted bily charley (he doesn’t capitalize...
Read MoreThrift- and style-conscious Ann Arborites have long been fans of the weekly Saturday sales at the Kiwanis building downtown. Few realize that on Thursday mornings, the store opens again for a private sale to a select group of...
Read MoreStepping into Bagger Dave’s the first time, I felt as if I were entering a giant time-and-space blender. Take a 1950s soda fountain, add a dash of 1980s sports bar, season with local nostalgia blowups from the 1920s and...
Read MoreAnn Arborites are rediscovering the art of preserving their own fruits and vegetables. “Everybody’s doing it,” says Mark Ho¬desh of Downtown Home & Garden. “We normally get in hundreds and hundreds...
Read MoreAgainst a backdrop of skyscraping cranes, a towering framework of I-beams, and the pounding of pneumatic tools, a lone forklift recently chugged into the courtyard behind C. S. Mott’s Children’s Hospital and, in a...
Read MoreMike and Jennifer Spadafore had twins last fall. This fall they opened a twin business, Main Street Bagels, right next to their Twisters Ice Cream in Chelsea.The bagel shop was carved out of some spare space at one side of the...
Read MoreRenaissance has brightened the uninspiring southeast corner of Division and Washington, formerly parking space for TCF Bank. Owner Roger Pothus regrets the loss of foot traffic he had in his former location on Main, but he says...
Read MoreMost restaurants try to give things away to customers when they open, but Ann Arbor’s fourth Panera, when it opened the last week of September in Upland Green on Plymouth, was taking—asking customers to donate...
Read MoreJoe DeVito comes onstage with no gimmicks. He doesn’t sing songs, wear funny clothes, or pretend to be anything other than what he is: a nerdy, clever New York Italian. We should all be so comfortable in our own...
Read MoreElmo’s Hideaway, beneath Elmo’s Main Street T-Shirts, is no Birdland or Village Vanguard. Still, it sure gave owner Elmo Morales a thrill when his first paying customer was musician Dick Siegel, who reserved the...
Read MoreWhen Cadillac Sky’s album Blind Man Walking appeared early last year, bluegrass fans didn’t know quite what to make of it. These musicians from Fort Worth, Texas, took the generally conservative sound of bluegrass...
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