Dec 15, 2013 | Marketplace |
A year ago, Susan Thomas and Khaled Houamed said they would shortly be opening their El Harissa Market Cafe in Maple-Miller Plaza. Finally, they’ve achieved liftoff: the gelato counter opened in October, followed a few...
Read MoreI was working in our office studio above the garage one evening when my husband, Miles, came back early from a bike trip to Kroger.”How was your ride?” I asked, without looking up. He didn’t reply....
Read MoreDec 13, 2013 | Marketplace |
“Thank you for coming out today. We need all the help we can get,” said one cashier fervently, shortly after GFS Marketplace opened. She had clearly been instructed to thank customers for their support and left to...
Read MoreDec 13, 2013 | Marketplace |
Briarwood’s message to Arbor Hills Crossing is a loud and clear “Bring it!” Its new leases in the last year seem to be a point-by-point rebuttal to the fancy new shopping complex. Arbor Hills has lululemon?...
Read MoreDec 12, 2013 | Uncategorized |
Bill Martin says he just wanted to find a way to support local artists.Back in 1987, the developer worked with Marsha Chamberlin, then president of the Ann Arbor Art Center, to commission fourteen paintings of local scenes. A...
Read MoreDec 11, 2013 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
“Zero!” the coach yells out with a tone of profound indignation. “Zero points in the fourth quarter! Zero! None! In eight minutes! Eight minutes! Eight minutes! Zero!” Thus begins “Medora,” a...
Read MoreDec 11, 2013 | Community |
“If you ever buy a box of granola bars and you don’t like the flavor, bring them by,” says Jennifer Martin, social worker and director of the Education Project for Homeless Youth. On shelves around the...
Read MoreDec 11, 2013 | Community |
On a brisk October day, more than 100 volunteers helped Waterloo Recreation Area staffers fill three enormous dumpsters with debris, old bunk beds, damaged wood, and overgrown vegetation and removed stacks of old...
Read MoreDec 10, 2013 | Dine, Marketplace, Restaurant Reviews |
In less than a year since Juicy Kitchen Cafe opened in the small strip mall at Maple and Miller, a variety of regulars have made it their own. Skyline High students and M-14 commuters dash in at sunrise for coffee, banana bread...
Read MoreDec 9, 2013 | Marketplace |
Arbor Hills Crossing at Washtenaw and Platt shuns the big-mall paradigm of anchor stores flanked by smaller, more transient shops. But Zola Bistro, if not the anchor, is the nerve center for the complex. Smack in the center and...
Read MoreDec 8, 2013 | Marketplace |
Elaine Selo says the offer on the three-story building on the corner of Main and Liberty that she and partner Cynthia Shevel own came as a surprise. She had ordered plenty of Christmas stock for her first-floor Selo/Shevel...
Read MoreDec 8, 2013 | Marketplace |
“All we have now are frozen clams,” says Oliver Vallier to a customer asking about brine shrimp in the closing days of University Aquarium, the Westgate pet shop specializing in fish. It opened forty-five years ago....
Read MoreDec 7, 2013 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
In 1974, the great tuba player and educator Harvey Phillips organized a concert of tubas and euphoniums playing Christmas carols at the Rockefeller Center skating rink. It was the beginning of a tradition that’s been...
Read MoreDec 6, 2013 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The lobby of the Ann Arbor Ice Cube is overflowing with girls and young women dressed in matching athletic suits. They move in packs, the color of their bright scarves differentiating each team. Their hair pulled back severely,...
Read MoreDec 5, 2013 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
As American schools de-emphasized music over the last decades, Chelsea and Saline high schools went in the other direction, forming and marshaling community support for fiddle ensembles that are a great deal of fun and get a lot...
Read MoreDec 5, 2013 | Community |
A year ago, who’d have guessed that Ann Arbor might become a basketball town?Last fall, no one anticipated Brady Hoke’s football team would look so woeful this season. And certainly no one predicted Michigan...
Read MoreDec 4, 2013 | Marketplace |
We received 148 entries correctly identifying the Fake Ad for Combat Zone Paintball on page 78 of the November Observer. We loved each and every one, but we had one favorite.The ad’s quote about keeping your friends close...
Read MoreDec 4, 2013 | Community |
“These two barns are on Ellsworth, just east of Stone School,” says Judi Taylor. Her husband works nearby and “recognized them instantly.” “The driveway to the city garage runs behind” them,...
Read MoreDec 3, 2013 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
For months, friends had been telling me to check out Captain Ivory, and, when I finally caught up with the band, it more than lived up to the hype. Formed in August 2012 from a series of Basement Tape-inspired jam sessions,...
Read MoreDec 3, 2013 | News |
The tide has gone out on the council majority of seven-term mayor John Hieftje.When Republican Ingrid Sheldon decided not to seek reelection in 2000, Hieftje, a first-year councilmember, ran for mayor and won. Within five years,...
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