Our Deer
Seeing more deer lately?My Newport Road place has a doe and two fawns, who ate all my hostas, roses, and lilies; the Arboretum houses a herd of six to ten, foraging away trilliums and rubbing the bark off trees; fifteen marched...
Read More2012 January
From Briarwood to Costco
When Briarwood Mall opened in 1974 it looked less like a shopping center than a museum. Its cast-concrete exterior was carefully sculpted, and art installations and fountains adorned its broad, polished corridors.Now those...
Read MoreThe Un-Fab Two
It was obvious at the beginning what Zack Novak and Stu Douglass were not.They were not highly recruited. Neither was big, fast, or particularly athletic for his position. They were not going to play in the NBA.They were...
Read MoreThe Big Clean-up
From the east side of the Broadway bridge, a sidewalk winds down into Broadway Park, a peaceful pocket of lawn and trees tucked between the train tracks and the Huron River.From the bridge’s west side, there’s also a...
Read MoreUpdating the City Club
The Ann Arbor Women’s City Club was founded in 1951 out of necessity: the crush of students at the U-M after World War II had made it difficult for women’s groups to find meeting space at the university. “There...
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End of the Flim Flam
Chris Klademenos quietly closed the Flim Flam Family Restaurant & Deli in the Plymouth Road Mall for the last time on Sunday, November 5, at the end of the regular business day. The next day he met with the landlords....
Read MoreKappa Koney Closes
Kappa Koney, tucked into a tiny plaza on the corner of Maple and West Liberty, closed in November. “It was good food,” says Jon Hannawa, working behind the counter at Buster’s convenience store next door....
Read MoreWooden warehouse on Ashley
Q: There’s an old wooden warehouse on Ashley near Madison that has loading doors on its second floor. How did they get stuff up there?A: The warehouse was built after WWII by Gill Lumber. The company had its own railroad...
Read MoreDragon’s Lair Futons
Sandy Cadotte-Keys, owner of Dragon’s Lair Futons and Organic Mattresses, claims it is the oldest extant futon store in the country. If she seems to have dropped off the map for a few years, that’s not her fault....
Read MoreAnn Arborite Evelyn Neuhaus
As Evelyn Neuhaus sits in a coffee shop talking about her latest film project, her wheelchair is hardly visible behind the table–and she seems to prefer it that way. “It changes the way a person is perceived in the...
Read MoreAnother Cafe Zamaan
Ali Hijazi opened his third Zamaan Cafe in the Colonnade in October, but he had to close his first location on Packard to do it. It was a question of manpower. “There’s just too many things going on to do it all...
Read MoreDenis Matsuev
There’s a thin line between staggering virtuosity and stunning brutality, and Russian pianists tend to lean toward the latter.Even the greatest Russians (Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz spring to mind) are...
Read MoreCity slays dragon
Sandy Cadotte-Keys of Dragon’s Lair Futons is the latest merchant frustrated by the city’s draconian sign ordinance, which she believes unfairly hobbled her for the two years she tried to do business from a warehouse...
Read MoreVerve Pipe
Many of us fondly remember the musicians who recorded the songs we listened to and sang along with when we were kids. The senior set may recall Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger; others might think of Peter Paul and Mary...
Read MoreBill and Ted Open a Bar
A single shadeless red light bulb illuminates the front porch. There is no business sign. The street-level windows are dark, unless there’s a movie being screened inside. But if you look up at the second story,...
Read MoreEnergetic Ingenue
After director Luna Alexander’s production of Fugue for The New Theatre Project (TNTP) at the Mix Studio Theatre in Ypsilanti closed in December, Sarah Lucas’s production of A Body of Water prepared to open in the...
Read MoreEileen Pollack
Eileen Pollack, former director of the U-M creative writing MFA program, has never been afraid of taking on big themes and big subjects. Among her former students–including several who have gone on to enjoy large...
Read MoreReturn of an icon
No one has yet written a comprehensive history of jazz in Ann Arbor, but when someone does, a major chapter will have to be dedicated to the Ron Brooks Trio. The bassist leader has for decades played a central role in the music...
Read MoreFrom Leather to Skin Care
Lily Grace is the name of Cyndi Clark’s granddaughter. Like all babies, she has beautiful skin and makes a good mascot for a skin care store–a framed six-by-nine-inch photo of the luminous-skinned toddler is parked...
Read MoreExotic Bakeries/Syrian Cuisine
When I worked in northeast Ann Arbor more than a decade ago, I enjoyed occasional lunch-hour trips to a Middle Eastern deli/diner in the Courtyard Shops. I remember being puzzled by its name, Exotic Bakeries, since I always...
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