I admit to a prejudice against campus eateries. Often plagued by uninspired decor and inexperienced, hapless crews, most restaurants targeting Ann Arbor’s students offer boring menus of subpar food. But prejudice can blind...
Read MoreThere may be hope for this generation of young people. That’s the thought that kept going through my head last fall when I first saw the White Ravens. Though still (barely) in my 20s, I was one of the oldest members of the...
Read MoreArchie Crawford is gearing up for his seventeeth consecutive season of attending every University of Michigan football game–home, away, and bowl games. Crawford’s streak started with the opening game of the 1994...
Read MoreDonald Snider has an intriguing resume. He owned five Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Illinois and Georgia from 1986 to 1989, sold them to move back home to Detroit to raise his two children as a single parent, and took a...
Read MoreThey’ve been sighted coming out of the woods at dusk and dawn looking to chow down on rabbits, rodents, and other small mammals–like, say, cats.This spring, a neighbor spotted one “coming out of or going into...
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Kildon Chon was a sushi chef at Miki for eight years, but, he says, “everyone who works as a chef wants to own a restaurant.” And Kevin Choi, owner of Miki downtown and its more recent spinoff, Miki Campus, was happy...
Read MoreIn her first novel, Rich Boy, Sharon Pomerantz has gone after a large American theme, one many recent writers have been reluctant to address. In this big book, Pomerantz writes about class–that often unspoken division in...
Read MoreWith its hypermodern skyscrapers, robots, swarms of extras–almost 38,000 of them–and lumbering political ideas, Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction film Metropolis is the original blockbuster. The film shows...
Read MoreMukesh and Bharti Patel opened Bombay Grocery on Packard eleven years ago, and they’ve had an eye toward expansion for some time. They bought a vacant lot a few doors down in 2007, but then, in a deal too good to pass up,...
Read MoreFor the third time in seventeen years, armed robbers hit Schlanderer & Sons jewelry in August. A worker at the downtown Sweetwaters took out the trash one afternoon and found a Schlanderer’s employee in the alley, her...
Read MoreIn the Dakota building on West Stadium, nine-month-old twins Alexander and Sadi Jacobson sit, wide-eyed, on their parents’ laps, while mom and dad sway enthusiastically from side to side and belt out a song about driving...
Read MoreWith its large sign at I-94’s State Street exit and full-page ads plastered across prime space like the back of the 2010 Ann Arbor Summer Festival program, Graham’s Restaurant is hankering for attention. Marketing...
Read MoreThis March, Billy Bragg took the stage at a festival in Florida, alone with his electric guitar. He tore into “To Have and To Have Not,” an explosive song from his first album about a working-class British kid trying...
Read MoreThe summer of 2010 has been one of discontent for Michigan football. On the heels of 3-9 and 5-7 seasons (with a combined 3-13 in the Big Ten) new athletic director David Brandon proclaimed that “Rich Rodriguez is our...
Read MoreTo the frustration of Ann Arborites who fixed their sidewalks under orders from the city, many of their neighbors’ walks remain tilted and cracked. By law, if homeowners don’t make repairs, the city can hire...
Read More“This is going to be a popular one!” wrote Greg Napoleon in his entry that correctly identified the “Strippers Wanted!” Fake Ad for Millar-Borweb painting on p. 53 of the August Observer. He was right....
Read More“This World War II Holocaust Memorial of a grieving figure represents the shock and sorrow over the loss of millions of lives,” writes Bethany Hellmann, identifying August’s I Spy (below). “A memorial to...
Read MoreWhen the Observer asked local politicos to guess the results of the August 3 Democratic primary, Lesko responded that her phone survey of 100 local residents showed her beating incumbent John Hieftje by a 60-40 margin. If her...
Read MoreThe sun is starting to set as we drive down the dirt road deep into Stinchfield Woods north of Dexter to U-M’s Peach Mountain Observatory. My eleven-year-old son and I have come for a closer look at the night sky with the...
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