Sheer Pleasure
With large eyes like obsidian rocks, alpacas have comic faces—and that’s what hooked Greg Croasdill when his wife, Kara Heinrichs, suggested the idea of raising them. Now folks driving past their property on Stone School...
Read More2008 November
Fresh croissants on Packard
While young Kathryn Loy, owner of Pastry Peddler, was on the phone with a technician trying to get her credit card machine to work, the older woman at the counter explained that this was exactly the kind of annoying glitch that...
Read MoreTrash Takeover?
Most of the solid waste produced by Ann Arbor households is now recycled-but businesses still landfill 80 percent of their trash.The city doesn’t have much leverage to change businesses’ practices, because its free...
Read MoreAmish furniture on Jackson
Wladyslaw and Nell Narowski started out online selling big tables—really, really big tables. “They go from a five-foot table that seats six and expand up to twenty-two feet and seat twenty-four,” says Nell.Size was...
Read MoreBack Door Cafe swings open
Once again, Saline’s Downtown Diner has changed hands and its name. Former owner Keith Saloum decided to pursue a career in civil engineering, so he recruited Jamal Sway, who spent a few weeks observing before deciding on...
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Cupcake Station
Cupcake Station owner Kerry Johnson credits the popularity of his cupcakes to variety and portion control. “If you’re having a party with twelve people, you can come in and get twelve different kinds of...
Read MoreChris Canas Blues Revolution
If Chris Canas isn’t livin’ the blues, he sure knows how to channel it. This guitarist and singer, with jazz training from the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts, recorded his first blues CD at seventeen. Now...
Read MoreEstonian Chamber Choir
Shortly after gaining independence from Russia in 1991, Estonia ditched socialism and embraced capitalism. The result was a balanced budget, no public debt, and one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Perhaps not...
Read MoreEugene Chadbourne
Accounts of Eugene Chadbourne’s music usually state in one way or another that it’s impossible to predict what will happen during his shows. While this is indeed noteworthy in a calculating world, it’s not...
Read MoreThe Phelps Effect
Watching Michael Phelps power his way through the pool in Beijing this summer has had a butterfly effect of its own: local swim clubs are bursting at the seams.The Chelsea Recreation Aquatic Club has gone from about fifty...
Read MoreMichael Wex
Whether Yiddish is a dead language or reviving has been an ongoing source of debate ever since Hitler murdered most of its European practitioners, and its American speakers, of whom there were many even into the 1940s and 1950s,...
Read MoreToo Much Time
Pieces of women peek out from behind shadows, prison bars, and maximum-security doors in the current collection of Jane Atwood’s photographs at the Slusser Gallery. Taken throughout the 1990s in prisons from Arizona to the...
Read MoreWinning brand
The city of Ann Arbor is no longer growing—but you’d never know it to look at Ann Arbor SPARK’s renamed website, AnnArborUSA.org. The economic development group’s map of the “Ann Arbor region”...
Read MoreHorse Play
To Ted Kennedy, riding a Clydesdale around Kerrytown is a form of performance art.His performance atop Duncan, on the afternoon following Election Day, was a crowd-pleaser.Duncan’s literally a ton of horse, rescued from...
Read MoreSaxophonist Joe Lovano
For many the tenor saxophone is the totemic instrument of mainstream jazz, and Joe Lovano is one of its prime high priests. Born in Cleveland into a family that worshipped music, he was largely self taught, although mentored by...
Read MoreEasy come, easy go
Seven years ago, Ann Arbor environmental engineer Kevin Olmstead won $2.18 million on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. During the three weeks between the time the show was taped and the time it aired, Olmstead prepared, like an...
Read MoreIt’s a Scoop!
The word spread through voting lines on the morning of November 4–Ben and Jerry’s is giving away a free scoop of ice cream to celebrate Election Day. At about 2 p.m., a crowd of U-M students flocked in the State...
Read MoreArtist Martha Keller
Martha Keller’s hair is thinner than Andy Warhol’s but just as white. At eighty-two, she’s begun to feel her age, but when she talks about painting, her eyes fill with the joy of a child.After earning a...
Read MoreA new club on Fifth
Daniel Stephens closed his clothing store Ethnic Creations last December after a ten-year run. Now he’s back with BGreen, which was scheduled to open in mid-October in Colonial Plaza on South Industrial. Its niche:...
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