2009 March

The late activist attorney Art Carpenter came up with the idea of Kitchen Port forty years ago, when he and a bunch of his friends got tired of going to New York and Chicago to buy high-end cookware. It worked well for a long...

In January Ben Falk opened Beagle Brain in the spot Ana Banana recently vacated in Nickels Arcade. Falk, one of those lithe, T-shirted, deceptively youthful-looking (he’s thirty-seven) technogeeks, thinks of it as...

Circuit City closed its Arborland store in March. The company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November but announced in January that it was unable to work things out with its creditors and would be closing all stores.Chris...

Matthew Hoffmann presses one of his designs into the hands of a customer with such intensity that if you didn’t know he was a jeweler showing his wares, you might mistake him for the kind of nineteenth-century seducer who...

The new McDonald’s that opened on Washtenaw—replacing Boston Market—is not your mama’s McDonald’s, or your toddler’s either. Outside, it’s the familiar golden arches—but inside, the booths are...

The late adolescent male is a marvel of nature, with a hypercharged appetite and the metabolism to go with it. One Saturday afternoon at Maru, the new Korean place on East William, we watched in awe as a quartet of athletic...

Thirty years ago this fall, the U-M celebrated the 100th anniversary of its football program. In February an eBay auction offered an original ticket to the kickoff of the centennial festivities, held September 8, 1979, in...

A lost dog found shelter at Motte & Bailey, Booksellers.”We had the door open on a warm day, and a dog without a leash wandered into the store,” recalls co-owner Gene Alloway. “He ended up curled up under...

On a Friday night in January, the young crowd at Blue Tractor stood three deep at the bar, their puffy down coats bulking up an already beefy mob and presenting something of an obstacle to the newcomer. But on closer...