Shirley Clarkson is leaving Courthouse Square. Packing boxes are stacked from floor to ceiling in her tenth-floor apartment, along with a few remaining pieces of furniture and a framed print of ancient Pompeii–Clarkson, a...
Read MoreAmong the cognoscenti of Michigan football lore, it is well known that there was not a single African American letterman at U-M between George Jewett in 1892 and Willis Ward in 1932. This forty-year gap is commonly attributed to...
Read MoreAt the beginning it’s ordinary–a video of a Santa Monica street musician, a bluesman named Robert Ridley, singing the Ben E. King evergreen “Stand By Me” with a few words of inspiring introduction. Then,...
Read MoreOn Sunday night, I was riding an Amtrak train from Chicago to Ann Arbor that struck and killed a person in Jackson shortly before midnight. A bit earlier, closer to Kalamazoo, the train had stopped abruptly between stations for...
Read MoreRed Hot Lovers, closed abruptly earlier this year. At the time, RHL owner Troy Slade, a 2003 U-M grad, blamed landlord Dick Johnston, who, he said, had refused to give him a multiyear lease. Slade vowed to be back in a new...
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Q: Fifth Avenue has always been a quick way to cross town. Now there are meters taking part of it from three lanes to two lanes. Who made this decision, and can it be changed back?A: The changes to Fifth (and to Division, its...
Read MoreAt the start of the fall semester, two months before the annual Gypsy Pond Music installation goes up at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, no one knows what it will look like, sound like, or be like. Not...
Read MoreMarco Wong Baez; his wife, Jen; and business partner Khai Lee bought Sabor Latino from longtime owner Roberto Candelaria in July. They’re keeping most of Candelaria’s Mexican items, but adding more dishes from...
Read MoreThe Grange Kitchen and Bar has been the hot dining ticket in town from its first service on Thursday, August 6. We managed to snag a seat at prime time on its inaugural Saturday. It was intended as a curiosity...
Read MoreYou may have read about the impending death of classical music, but many segments of its long tradition are actually flourishing. The music of the Renaissance era was not so long ago largely the province of cloistered graduate...
Read MoreThe swarms of maize-clad football fans weren’t the only ones stopping traffic around Michigan Stadium after the U-M’s win over Western Michigan in September. Ann Arbor’s most notorious photographer, Harvey...
Read MoreLast month, Dick Schubach said that he and his partners closed Zanzibar because it was “a destination restaurant in a nondestination neighborhood.” As if to confirm his observation, its successor, Sava’s, aims...
Read MoreThe Herrick family is back on top at Tecumseh Products after their candidates won four of seven places on the company’s board of directors in August. Two opposing board members then resigned, leaving only one non-Herrick...
Read MoreWhen the Pioneer girls’ swimming team won the national championship in 2006, Speedo outfitted the team with high-tech LZR (“laser”) suits and has sold them to subsequent team recruits at deep discounts. But as...
Read MoreAs an eight-year-old growing up in Buenos Aires, Claudia Leo learned English so she could understand the words to the Kiss song, “Detroit Rock City.” Now she’s nurturing a new scene at the Heidelberg’s...
Read MoreLate summer had me ping-ponging between the Grange Kitchen and Yoshi’s, three blocks east on Liberty, and the contrast was stark. Though Yoshi’s opened a month earlier, during most of my late lunch-hour visits there...
Read MoreAnn Arbor’s new downtown zoning plan could finally be adopted this month. Dubbed A2D2–for Ann Arbor Discovering Downtown–it’s intended to encourage downtown housing. Along with quantitative rules such as...
Read MoreWhen a pet dies, most people hold a brief service and bury it in the backyard. But when local haute couture designer Rebecca Lambers had to put down her rooster, Taver Ishima, she turned him into high fashion.Taver had attacked...
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