No Boy
In early August, the Big Boy franchise on Zeeb Road was closed, eight months after the franchisee, Berry Brothers LLC, stopped paying rent. After an unsigned eviction notice was posted over the weekend, the restaurant was...
Read More2009 September
Beloved Beer
Germans have long enjoyed and venerated alcohol. When the Irish missionary Columbanus first encountered Germans in the early seventh century, he happened on a ritual sacrifice of beer. Even after the Germans became Christians,...
Read MoreTheater in the Raw
I still can’t get over it sometimes—Performance Network is a real Equity theatre. Founded in the early 1980s, it lived on table scraps in that little black hole over on Washington for years and now it’s a polished,...
Read MoreDisappearing Dioramas
Miniature scenes of Native American life are among the most popular displays at the U-M Exhibit Museum. But now they’re being removed–because Native Americans say they’re outdated and hurtful.For nearly half a...
Read MoreMosaic Sphere to Mended Pieces
“I have a lot of people walk in here and say, ‘I’m sorry you’re going out of business,'” says Mosaic Sphere owner Yulia Hanansen. It was an easy mistake for shoppers to make: she had put everything...
Read More
All About Blue
Great Lakes Team Apparel on State Street is all about blue. Literally. When Bob and Mary Duerksen doubled the size of their eight-year-old clothing store by taking over the former Earl of Sandwich space next door in July, they...
Read MoreThe Hot Club of Cowtown
The Hot Club of Cowtown first came to Ann Arbor from their home base of Austin in 1998. As the name suggests, the trio (fiddle, guitar, and bass) combined gypsy jazz with the 1930s Texas country-jazz fusion now known as Western...
Read MoreSwirlberry froyo hits A2
In the rest of the world, a dessert that’s good for you is an oxymoron, but in the United States it’s a perennially reliable business plan. Frozen yogurt has come roaring back into the picture after a few decades of...
Read MorePianist Joel Schoenhals
I was listening to a fairly random selection of classical CDs when suddenly I heard a disc that was anything but random–a collection of trios for clarinet, viola and piano by Mozart, Beethoven, and Bruch. Every performance...
Read MoreAsian Niches II
I hadn’t been to China Gate on South University since sometime last century. No matter. The decor hasn’t changed, but in fact I love this retro room: the dual rows of tiny lanterns, the comfortable booths, the...
Read MoreHot Club of Detroit
Jazz has always been popular in Europe, but for decades all that the best Europeans musicians could do was to imitate, with only partial success, their heroes from across the ocean. Today, jazz is an international style, played...
Read MoreAsian Niches
The back-to-school season has me thinking again about campus-area eateries, which in more and more cases means Asian food. Of Ann Arbor’s more than seventy Asian restaurants, roughly half are within walking distance of...
Read MoreDrunken Angel
Akira Kurosawa once said, “A truly good movie is interesting and easy to understand.” His 1948 film Drunken Angel fits that description. Its plot is easy to understand: An old gangster gets out of jail and takes over...
Read MoreGambling for good
The reborn Full Moon Restaurant and Saloon on Main Street may become a magnet for cash-strapped nonprofits, now that it’s hosting charity poker nights. Texas Hold ‘Em earned money for Huron High athletic boosters in...
Read MoreMo Mo Bubble Tea
The bubble tea battle that’s been quietly brewing on South University since Yogo Bliss opened across the street from Bubble Island this spring is coming to a boil now that Hsing-Chen “Angie” Tsai has entered...
Read MoreParking lot living
“This is a nice area compared to Detroit,” says John Andrew Gonzales, Jr., sitting on his crumpled sleeping bag in the parking lot of 200 South Ashley, a few blocks from the Delonis Center homeless shelter....
Read MoreYoshi’s Opens, at Last
Yoshi’s, the long-awaited successor of Dinersty, has finally opened. The nominal owner is twenty-nine-year-old Yasir Kaskorkis, an M.B.A. His benefactor is his father Aboud, a courteous, dapper man who speaks with a heavy...
Read MoreFrom Ave to Cooley
The departure of Ave Maria School of Law for Florida spelled opportunity for the fast-growing Thomas M. Cooley Law School.Ave Maria’s former building on Plymouth reopens this month as Cooley’s Ann Arbor campus....
Read MorePure Coffee
David Myers has been roasting premium coffees on the city’s north side for three years. He’s perhaps best known for his “Obama Blend” of Kenyan, Indonesian, and Hawaiian beans. Now he’s opened...
Read More