On a Roll
The Ann Arbor Skatepark Action Committee is picking up speed. They’ve mobilized the base: 120 kids showed up at a city council meeting in May 2008 to voice their support. They’ve enlisted the Ann Arbor Area Community...
Read More2010 March
Dixboro Pure
What’s in those big blue bottles sprouting at the base of the trees surrounding the Dixboro village green and the old Dixboro School on Plymouth Road? Gallons and gallons of sap that will be reduced to maple syrup by five...
Read MoreGas for Less
So far, there are two Gas For Less songs that choke me up. I’m not alone. Someone posted on front man Ryan Racine’s Facebook profile, “FU for making me cry into my whiskey…Shut your guitar.”Racine,...
Read MoreShoe Trade
For twenty-five years Ann Arbor had two running stores within a block of each other downtown. Running Fit, which traces its origins to 1984, now has a half dozen other locations, including a megastore that opened last year on...
Read MoreCleaning up Allen Creek
Since late November, drivers passing Pioneer High School have been puzzled by enormous mounds of dirt at the southwest corner of Stadium and Main. The “Allen Creek Stormwater Project at Pioneer”–a joint venture...
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Seva reviewed
Ann Arbor has hundreds of restaurants, but only one boasts an open-face cheese melt piled with fresh veggies (including alfalfa sprouts) that has been on the menu since the 1970s. At Seva, this guacamole-topped time machine is...
Read MoreWest Park Art
About a dozen people–glass artists, installation artists, muralists, interior and graphic designers–turned out at West Park on a cold, snowy February morning to hear city landscape architect Amy Kuras explain the...
Read MoreLefty’s Lessons
This story begins like a third-grade math problem: you enter a room and count thirty-six limbs. Nine people are in the room, right? Wrong. You should have said eleven humans and a dog. Two people in the room have all their...
Read MoreA Builder Keeps Busy
“I was just tired of seeing empty buildings,” says Joe Grammatico. The veteran local builder opened Westside Furniture Consignment Emporium last month in his Scio Town Center on Zeeb. After Kitchen Port closed last...
Read MoreA Home for Handicapped Riders
“It’s kind of the final leg of the race here,” says Jan Vescelius, director of Therapeutic Riding, Inc. TRI wants to build a new arena where people with handicaps can ride horses year round–and more of...
Read MoreAndrew Kratzat Quartet
The band’s lineup is your first clue. When the Andrew Kratzat Quartet performs at the Kerrytown Concert House on Wednesday, March 10, they won’t be offering a night of conventional or traditional jazz. Aside from...
Read MoreAnn Arborite Gregory George
Gregory George was doing carpentry work at a friend’s house when the friend’s college-age son walked in. “He knew that I danced, but he didn’t know I knew how to build a house, and he [had never seen] me...
Read MoreFusion on Thayer
When Mercy Kasle was attending Cal State in the early seventies and needed a job, she answered an ad placed by a woman looking for someone to cook and do light housekeeping. During the interview, she recalls, the woman...
Read MoreMoney-Saving Merger
When Jesse Bernstein became president of the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce in 2006, it had between 1,300 and 1,400 members–a figure he aimed to double: “My goal was to get to 2,800 to 3,000 members as quickly as...
Read MoreThe Eye of the Beholder
Visitors to the University of Michigan Museum of Art this month have the opportunity to see a stellar temporary exhibition of works on paper by some of the leading figures of the German and Viennese Expressionist movements of...
Read MoreJohn Leidy Closes
After nearly sixty years as Ann Arbor’s premier purveyor of fine china and crystal, and for decades the first stop for many Ann Arborites looking for the perfect, high-end gift, the John Leidy Shop planned to close its...
Read MoreJanuary 2010 Crime Map
Click here to view of zoomable map of January, 2010, crime reports from the Ann Arbor Police Department and the public safety departments of the U-M and Pittsfield Township.Burglaries declined compared to January, 2009, and,...
Read More“Women of American…”
We received 173 entries to our little contest last month, of which 169 correctly identified the Fake Ad for International Introductions on p. 30 of the February issue.Most Fake Adders thought the ad, which offered to match...
Read MoreCafe Verde
“I Spy Cafe Verde (or at least the floor above…),” writes Noah Levin. The building on North Fourth is “all of 200 feet from the Observer’s door,” points out Ross Orr. “It’s the...
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