A hot orange wave catches my eye as I walk into the new exhibit at UMMA. It’s a study for the roof of the Paul Klee Centre in Switzerland. Like most of the buildings featured in this exhibit of 21st-century museum...
Read More“Lung cancer seems to carry a stigma, because people think everyone who has lung cancer is a smoker,” says former Ann Arborite Janice Nash. In fact, Nash points out, “over fifty percent of people with lung...
Read MoreThe city’s first underground parking garage will be expensive—but also bright and cheery.So promises architect Carl Luckenbach, designer of the structure the Downtown Development Authority will build beneath the current...
Read MoreSue Upton of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation called to correct an error in the Ann Arbor Observer’s April Events listings: the AAACF’s annual meeting will take place on Tuesday, April 28, not on Friday, April...
Read MoreIt’s a running joke in the tattoo world that everyone owes Leo Zulueta $100. It started when an inker friend handed him a $100 bill, saying it was partial payment for all the money he’d made from the designs Zulueta...
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Alan Black, operations manager for WAAM, bought his first vinyl LP, a Nirvana bootleg, in 1996, five years before he owned a turntable.Black initially saw it as an obscure collector’s item from his favorite band. Now...
Read MoreThe U-M made out like a bandit on its purchase of the former Pfizer research complex. In 2001, the university sold fifty-five vacant acres near North Campus to the drug giant for $27 million, and the company announced plans to...
Read MoreSurely Sam Breck has helped many thousands of people over his long and varied lifetime. My ex-husband, Don Hunt, and I were among the multitudes. In 1976 we started the Ann Arbor Observer.During the preceding year I had been the...
Read MoreInexpensive restaurants beckon powerfully in hard times. But fast food isn’t as cheap as it looks, once you add the ultimate price exacted by sugar, fat, and carbs. Middle Eastern food, with its emphasis on wholesome...
Read MoreThe first weekend of April is pay dirt for pagan celebrations. The Hash Bash and the Dance for Mother Earth Ann Arbor Powwow (this year being held at Saline Middle School) have been around since the 1970s, and they were joined...
Read MoreAt first glance, it’s like any other league at Bel-Mark Lanes in Scio Township. But look more closely, and you’ll notice a few people need their shoelaces tied. Some speak haltingly or in three-word sentences. A few...
Read MoreForeclosures reached record levels throughout Washtenaw County last year—and the biggest increases were in the Community Observer’s backyard. In 2008, the number of homes sold for delinquent mortgages doubled in the...
Read MoreJamie Westcott grew up in a poor family in Chelsea. She remembers the day in high school that she discovered thrift shops. “My friends and I drove to Value World in Ypsi looking for stuff for Halloween,” says...
Read MoreAfter two years, Smarty Pants new and used children’s clothing store still hadn’t turned a profit. But that’s not why Shannon Lewis closed it. Her husband Lee lost his job and found a new one in Texas, so she...
Read MoreCarolyn McNagny didn’t intend to name her new store Bumble’s Dry Goods—until she found out there were seventeen Bumblebees already in Michigan. She didn’t set out to focus on American-made crafts, either. Her...
Read MoreThe Bell Road Bridge in Dexter Township is on the National Register of Historic Places. The plaque so designating it, however, is sitting in neighbor Bill Klinke’s garage—because for twelve years the nineteenth-century...
Read More“He’s always liked guns.”Seventeen-year-old Benjamin Lucas is sweating bullets. He’s on the witness stand at the 14A District Courthouse in Pittsfield Township, testifying for the prosecution at the...
Read MoreSeventeen years after Jeff Daniels named a community theater after a Woody Allen film, Allen still contributes money to the Purple Rose—but not a lot.The director of The Purple Rose of Cairo, who gave Daniels a wonderful...
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