Island Hopping
“College towns are unlike other places, but that’s a good thing.”–Blake Gumprecht,The American College TownYou can’t live in Ann Arbor long before someone tells you that the city is...
Read More2010 March
The Masters of LTL
Here’s Con-way Freight’s problem: pick up 60,000 small consignments of freight from separate locations around North America–anything from a generator to half a dozen pallets of flooring. Bring them to one of...
Read MoreFrom Teacher to Terrorist
Diana Oughton’s death still makes no sense, even after forty years of pondering. She was a bringer of light, of joy. Yet the FBI found the tip of her right little finger in the rubble that was left of a Manhattan...
Read MoreThe Census in Ann Arbor
Sunny or stormy, a group of people will work from midnight to 7 a.m. the last day of March, searching for the outdoor homeless–in tents, under bridges, in sleeping bags near churches. Yep the census bureau strikes...
Read MoreAnselm Berrigan
Early in Free Cell, Anselm Berrigan’s most recent book, he writes: “I didn’t come writing/out of the womb/you know.” If that sounds just a bit too insistent, consider the familial weight this poet...
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Out of Gas
Two prominent Marathon stations, Buddy’s Mini Mart at Packard and Platt and Washtenaw Mini Mart in front of Arborland, closed last fall. Is there something going on with Marathon? Or is this just the recession taking its...
Read MoreReplumbing Washtenaw Heights
Any way you lay it, 30,000 feet is a lot of pipe. In fact, it’s 5.7 miles–exactly the distance around the subdivision bounded by Packard, Washtenaw, Carpenter, and Golfside. Called Washtenaw Heights by its...
Read More“Uncle Vanya” at Power Center
When my book group did the big Chehkov plays last year, I felt disappointed. I’d read somewhere that Chekhov was second only to Shakespeare as a dramatist, but these kvetching bourgeois seemed a far cry from the...
Read MoreHold the Parchment
As surely as a crocheted cupcake or a photo of a bear nuzzling with a kitten, Pilar’s Tamale Shop is calculated to charm. Everything about the compact storefront eatery, from its brightly colored walls to its smiling crew...
Read MoreHarpsichordist Ed Parmentier
Ed Parmentier has been here so long we sometimes take him for granted. But given his talent and stature, that is something we ought never to do. Since he joined the U-M School of Music faculty in 1976, the long, lean...
Read MoreDrug (Store) Madness
The west side is bulging with pharmacies. A derelict Kentucky Fried Chicken went under the wrecking ball in January (along with adjacent Schlotsky’s, vacant since 2003) to make room for a Walgreens. Walgreens will join...
Read MoreJust Baked
Pam Turkin opened her first cupcake store by accident. “I overbaked,” she says.She’d been happily making cupcakes in her bakery in Livonia for resale to retailers for months–until the day she made too...
Read MoreAlumni Abroad
Lisa R. Tucci is a 1985 U-M grad who runs her own company offering audio guides of Italy. Although she’s lived in Italy since 1992, her connections to Ann Arbor run deep–her grandfather emigrated from the mountains...
Read MoreFiltering the Film Festival
Donald Harrison wants “to get Ann Arbor where its reputation is” as a center of avant-garde culture. As director of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, it’s Harrison’s job to figure out how to keep the flame...
Read MoreKroger Chaos
The ongoing makeover of the Maple Road Kroger is leaving customers confused. As departments hopscotch around the store, disoriented patrons roam the aisles with stricken looks on their faces, beseeching employees to tell them...
Read MoreFrom La Shish to Sheesh
When Talal Chahine fled to Lebanon in 2005 to avoid charges of federal tax evasion and in 2006 was indicted for allegedly funneling money to terrorists, the La Shish Middle Eastern restaurant chain he’d founded went...
Read MoreMarrakesh and Back
In more than six decades of public performance, pianist Randy Weston has followed his own singular path. Never one of the more popular entertainers, he has, nevertheless, created a very personal musical approach that transcends...
Read MoreLisa Reardon Pleads Guilty
The woman calmly walked to the podium, dressed in her green prison jumpsuit. She smiled and joked with the bailiff as the attorneys conferred at the bench. She was handcuffed, so she used her left hand to help raise her right to...
Read MoreThe Joy of Wheatgrass
“No way am I going to eat four spinach salads,” Maureen Policella says emphatically–not when she can get the same nutrients by drinking a glass of freshly blended spinach juice. “Depending on what you...
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