The Title Insurance Crisis
Tom Richardson says Liberty Title’s “big white-knuckle moment” came in the fall of 2008. Richardson and his wife, Michele, had just purchased LandAmerica’s Ann Arbor branch when lending froze that...
Read More2010 December
Hollywood Workouts
“I was screaming like a kid at Christmas!” says Heather DuPuis. DuPuis, co-owner of Vie Fitness and Spa, is naturally a calm, cool, and collected kind of woman. But she went bonkers in October 2009, when she learned...
Read MoreUniversity Symphony Orchestra
When it comes to classical music in the twentieth century, some countries had the mojo, and some didn’t. After ruling classical music for nearly three centuries, Germany and Austria lost their mojo with the rise of Fascism...
Read MoreChatty Plumbers
We received 146 entries correctly identifying last month’s Fake Ad for a plumbers’ discussion group on page 74 of the November issue. Evalyn Yanna’s entry was chosen as our winner. She’s taking her gift...
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Holiday Cheer
Maher Jaboro of A&L Wine Castle says his sales “easily double” at year-end. “Christmas is bigger in liquor,” he says. “Thanksgiving is bigger in wine.” “We typically expect the day...
Read MoreYour Tax Dollars at Work
Whether you hate it as a boondoggle or hail it as a blessing, there’s no question that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was good to Ann Arbor. Between February 2009 and May 2010, the financial stimulus gave local...
Read MoreThomas Lynch’s Walking Papers
Earlier this year Thomas Lynch came through town to celebrate the publication of Apparition & Late Fictions, his first collection of stories. And now, at the end of the year, the ever prolific Lynch comes back to introduce...
Read MorePassages on South U
“I haven’t even started looking for another job yet,” said a multiply pierced Village Corner cashier the week before the VC closed in early November. She was talking to a former employee who’d moved on to...
Read MoreOrion at UMMA
“That’s the sculpture in front of the U-M Art Museum!” exclaims Judy Steeh, adding that her husband urged her “to put ‘sculpture’ in quotes.” Judy Sorensen apologizes to the artist for...
Read MoreCities vs. Townships
It’s official: a sheriff’s deputy costs Washtenaw County $176,108 per year. That includes $74,000 in salary and $45,000 in fringes, plus indirect costs like $20,000 for central dispatch—but not the average $10,000 in...
Read MoreThe Carolina Chocolate Drops
The Carolina Chocolate Drops, young African American musicians from North Carolina, renew a fairly arcane tradition, the old-time black stringband music of the Carolina Piedmont that they learned from its handful of surviving...
Read MoreA worrisome spate of robberies
That’s what AAPD chief Barnett Jones calls the recent rash of armed robberies at local businesses. Between the stickups at Schlanderer’s jewelry store, a second-floor marijuana clinic downtown, the Bank of America on...
Read MoreBest of Friends
Curious thing about the word “playwright”—it has nothing to do with writing. “Wright” is a word from the manufacturing arts (wheelwright, shipwright), not the arty arts, and Jeff Daniels is a skilled...
Read MoreThe Chelsea Antique Mall Rolls In
Ed GreenLeaf Jr. says he never imagined he would be selling antiques in the space adjacent to Chelsea Lanes bowling center—a community fixture GreenLeaf opened in 1962. But when Aberdeen Bike & Fitness moved to a new...
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