Greenback Dollar moves
Lee Hanna’s Greenback Dollar, which opened on the corner of Liberty and Stadium in 2001, should be moved into its new home around the corner on Stadium, next to Dimo’s Deli and Donuts, by the end of March. Dollar...
Read More2013 April
Catching Fireflies
The new gift shop Catching Fireflies, across the street from Zingerman’s, takes the place of Emerald Dragonfly. Despite the similarly buggy names, the two stores are entirely unrelated, a fact that Catching Fireflies owner...
Read MoreThe Water Carriers
Those of us living on the periphery of Ann Arbor sometimes suspect that urbanites, with their connection to the city’s water mains, are missing the satisfaction of self-reliance and even the potential excitement that comes...
Read MoreCraftsperson’s Paradise
Tom Root says Maker Works is run much like a health club–with laser cutters and metalworking mills replacing treadmills and weight benches.Across 14,000 square feet of shop space located near the Ann Arbor Airport, the...
Read MoreMichigan Pops Orchestra
As U-M students stream into the Michigan Theater on a Sunday evening to attend a Michigan Pops Orchestra performance, the space is alive with chatter and laughter. Known for peppering its semiannual themed concerts with videos,...
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The Fab Faux’s White Album
The Fab Faux are to Beatles cover bands what the Vienna Philharmonic is to Beethoven cover bands: the best in the business.Some may laugh at that comparison, though few would deny the need to cover Beethoven. The deaf...
Read MoreThree Marketplace Closings
Famous Hamburgers closed in February. It opened in Plymouth Courtyard in 2009, a defiant slow food alternative to the Wendy’s at the other end of the parking lot (and had the bad luck to open at exactly the same time as...
Read MoreGro Blue Moves to Packard
Gro Blue, the hydroponic gardening store formerly on the fringe of downtown, has moved to the fringe of Ann Arbor, and the ownership has passed from Kriss Pullen-Gideons to her daughter Gigi Bennett.In February, Bennett, mother...
Read MoreUnemployment Eases
After a three-year search, Priscilla Gillespie found a job in December.When the Observer wrote about the “Ragged Recovery” in March of last year, Gillespie represented the “ragged” end: she’d been...
Read MoreResearch Shortcut
A drug developed in Japan in the 1980s could be the long-awaited answer to the obesity epidemic.The drug, amlexanox, has been found by researchers at the U-M’s Life Sciences Institute to be effective in reducing fat...
Read MoreIrrational traffic signals?
Q: Normally, at a stoplight with left turn arrows, those left arrows turn green for both directions at the same time. However, at certain lights–Stadium and Liberty and Stadium and Pauline are examples–you get a...
Read MoreA. Van Jordan
In the very first poem in A. Van Jordan’s new collection, The Cineaste, the poet describes a moment during a showing of the old German expressionist film Metropolis at the Michigan Theater in 2010:Movies provide my last...
Read MoreHash Bash, 1977
In 1977, when I was fifteen years old, I sat on my porch in Ypsilanti with one of my neighbors, watching six of my friends pile into Bo’s sweet 1969 black-on-black ‘Cuda. They were as excited as if they were headed...
Read MoreDance for Mother Earth 2013
There are people everywhere, but the first person I hear is Richard Snake. His laugh is so distinct: loud and powerful. It echoes down the hall, reaching above the distant powwow drums. Prayers and laughter fill the...
Read MoreTrivia at the Coffee House
Last month’s Fake Ad, for the ’80s trivia contest at the Washtenaw Coffee House (page 88), was particularly tricky. Our new-format ads have all contained the previous winner’s name. But this time we made that...
Read MoreThe Klothes Kloset
“I love those … silhouettes!” writes Sharilyn Keller. The “cool and eye-catching Red Ladies are walking in front of The Klothes Kloset” at 2401 S. Industrial, adds Marjorie Uren, while Margaret...
Read MoreApril Verch
Not so long ago, old-time music was mostly the province of urban refugees living the pastoral dream in rural New England. But it’s benefited from a modest yet definite revival. The twenty-something California singer and...
Read MoreCass Corridor Revisited
The current EMU exhibit Subverting Modernism: Cass Corridor Revisited 1966-1980, reintroduces some of the manifold art to emerge from that restless place and time. Detroit’s violent, post-industrial collapse is easy to...
Read MoreHerb David Retires
Herb David is closing?” said former Ark manager David Siglin, stunned. “No, I didn’t know. My guitar is in there. I’ll have to go get it.”Actually, it turns out, he won’t. Even though Herb...
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