Storm Warning
With a rare “blizzard warning” in effect, the Midwest is bracing for heavy snows and high winds. At 4 a.m. on Tues. Feb. 1, the storm was expected to hit Ann Arbor at 7 p.m. To follow the storm, click here to see the...
Read More2011 January
Local Families’ Balancing Act
Joe Wywrot’s weekday morning essentials—crayons and coloring books—might seem unconventional for a civil engineer. But they sure come in handy on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays: Wywrot is also a husband and father of...
Read MoreKnow Your Fire Hydrants
Last fall, the sidewalk in front of Fire Station No. 1 on Fifth Ave. sprouted a row of seven fire hydrants. Though set in concrete instead of being hooked up to water mains, the exhibit is otherwise typical of the nearly 3,600...
Read MoreMore Need, Less Money
How bad is the rise in homelessness in Washtenaw County? “We served 1,200 people last year, and we still have a waiting list of three people for every bed,” says Ellen Schulmeister, executive director of the Shelter...
Read MoreWhat Price Health?
The 2009 merger of Chelsea Community Hospital with the Saint Joseph Mercy Health System brought an unexpected thank-you gift to area residents: a staggering $25 million was set aside in a perpetual fund to improve their health...
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Cozy without coffee
TeaHaus, the purveyor of bulk teas on Fourth Avenue, recently pushed through a wall to add a distinctive eatery. TeaHaus’s new parlor is pleasantly decorated with IKEA-esque furniture and antique accessories, but the big...
Read MoreFlat Top Grill arrives
Though Flat Top Grill doesn’t like to be compared with bd’s Mongolian Grill, that’s the short-cut explanation that’s going to resonate with Ann Arborites. What’s now bd’s has been around so...
Read MoreUpside-down Winter?
Jeff Masters, guru at Ann Arbor’s Weather Underground, thinks we’re in for another cold winter. But don’t count Masters among the global-warming skeptics–on the contrary, the U-M meteorology Ph.D. has...
Read MoreSuch a Find now in resale row
The recession’s been good for Melanie Diana and Such a Find Antiques–so much so that in December she was moving her shop from a house on Packard to a storefront in Colonial Lanes Plaza on South Industrial in the...
Read MoreSprint Store
“If you’re a cell phone company, why wouldn’t you want your product in a cell phone store?” asks John Jabero, who along with his brother James, owns the Wireless Toyz franchise on Fourth and Washington....
Read MoreProject Attic
My house is getting lighter. Any day now it may lift from its foundations and float away.For a couple of years I have been working on what I call “Project Attic.” My goal is to get rid of everything that I...
Read MoreBright Lights, Small Town
When professional actors based in New York City started coming to Dexter to perform musicals, some wondered: why? After eighteen months, the answer seems clear: the Encore Theatre is something like a cultural exchange program....
Read MoreWorkers in Transition
Jan Emmons was laid off in December of 2008. “I’d worked ten years as office assistant at a trucking company,” remembers the fifty-something Emmons, “and gone through school part-time–first...
Read MoreNowhere to Hide
“We’re very aggressive about collecting taxes during bankruptcy,” says county treasurer Catherine McClary. “We get virtually 100 percent of the money owed–and we work closely with cities and the...
Read MoreSquares opens
One of the shortest-lived restaurants ever to hit Ann Arbor was Yoshi’s, which lasted for less than six months last year in the Liberty Street spot Dinersty occupied for years. Yoshi’s didn’t close because of...
Read MoreGood footsteps
Members of Joan Zald’s family tend to live long lives, but not happy ones. After watching a favorite aunt begin to “socially withdraw” in her late sixties and become obsessed with her health, Zald worried that...
Read MoreWheelchairity
Jack Spack’s Septic Services on Carpenter Road is in farm country, with chickens clucking noisily in a nearby pen and peacocks out back. But neither the business nor the setting prepares a visitor for the work going on...
Read MoreLife, Death, and Madness
This September, 2002 Ann Arbor Observer feature addresses some of the questions raised by the January 8, 2011 shootings in Arizona. For a more recent, and encouraging, account of the local response to mental illness, see this...
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