What to do with an outdated downtown filling station? Garth Bolgos has a plan: give it a new identity, put up a sign, and open a medical marijuana dispensary.Bolgos owns the dilapidated gas station at the corner of Liberty and...
Read MoreGladys Ponce opened Burrito Borimex on South State last summer under difficult circumstances. Several restaurants had failed there already, and South State was being resurfaced. She closed December 2. After State Street was...
Read MoreThe Washtenaw County Road Commission’s budget was reduced 10 percent this year. Roy Townsend, WCRC director of engineering, says that’s meant less maintenance on county roads and delayed construction projects. And...
Read MoreTours of the Jiffy Mix factory are by far Chelsea’s top attraction. That’s partly why the Chelsea Milling Company is spending $6 million on a new addition–in the shape of three small grain silos.The...
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The day after Christmas, diners at Senor Lopez, the Mexican restaurant on West Stadium, were treated to an impromptu concert. A private party had gathered at one end of the dining room. Most of the guests appeared to be from...
Read MoreMore than twenty years ago, I met a new neighbor while we mowed our back yards. We were amused to learn that we both were editors (not a common occupation, even in Ann Arbor). I’d recently taken over the Ann Arbor...
Read MoreDiane Rose’s eponymous jewelry store on West Stadium (a red brick house she owns with her husband, podiatrist Leo Santoro) has sprouted another bloom: a tiny 400-square-foot annex called the Rosebud Gallery....
Read MoreIn mid-February, forty people were waiting their turn to check out a 60-year-old novel from the Ann Arbor District Library. Of course it’s not just any novel–it’s the high school classic Catcher in the Rye. The...
Read MoreQ. How does the pay for Ann Arbor’s mayor and city council people compare to other cities in the Midwest?A. These comparisons can be tricky, because job descriptions vary–some cities employ a city administrator in...
Read MoreEuropean jazz truly came into its own in the 60s, when musicians in the Netherlands, England, and Germany, long inspired by models from the U.S., programmatically sought to develop indigenous forms of expression. The music they...
Read MoreIt’s 3 a.m., and all the retail outlets along North University are dark and deserted–except for one. In the kitchen of Silvio’s Organic Pizza, manager JesRose Miller is preparing a batch of gluten-free pizza...
Read MoreWhen Steve Shipps stepped down as concertmaster of the Ann Arbor Symphony six years ago, he’d held the job for fourteen years and helped take the orchestra from amateur to professional status. He’d been with them...
Read MoreWhen a female sports star visited Ann Arbor last September, dinner at Zingerman’s Roadhouse was high on the agenda. But while her coach dined, Sadie and her fellow competitors spent the evening in a van in the...
Read More“It’s a one-stop shop for those that have a sweet tooth,” says James Kimble, who opened Gji’s Sweet Shoppe on Washtenaw with his wife, Pamela, last fall. Gji (pro-nounced “Gee”) is the...
Read More“We know what it is like to be forgotten,” says John Kinzinger. In 1966, at age nineteen, Kinzinger was drafted into the army. Leaving behind his wife and young son, he spent a year in Vietnam as a battalion radio...
Read MoreDr. John, born Malcolm John Rebennack Jr., and the four Neville Brothers have been making music in and away from New Orleans for about fifty years now. They’re not household names, but most people with an interest in...
Read MoreAnything having to do with our homegrown big box retailer is news, so when the Borders Group announced that it was closing 200 of its small Borders Express stores, including the one in Briarwood, we headed down to the mall. Once...
Read More“When I was growing up, the music that I liked, like Zeppelin, sure wasn’t played in church,” says Jeff Boriss, director of communications at the 2|42 Community Church.Founded in Brighton in 2005, the church...
Read MoreSteve Gutterman paid $80,000 at a November foreclosure auction to buy 715 Miller, aka the RAW Haus (“Punk Paradise Lost,” November). The former musicians’ and artists’ collective was missing its front...
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