Bernhoft
Norway’s Jarle Bernhoft, who lately has used only his last name, takes the stage with a looping machine at his feet, a guitar or a small keyboard hanging from his neck, and a microphone. He’s a twenty-first century...
Read More2013 November
A star architect’s vision
When I worked at the Chelsea Standard in the 1980s, I often covered events at Chelsea High School. It was not a single building, but a campus of one-story structures that students scurried between in all types of weather. I was...
Read MoreV2V Expands and Arhaus Moves
Stores continue to open at Arbor Hills Crossing.V2V is the second Ann Arbor location of Tes Haas’s clothing and “lifestyle” store that originated at Kerrytown in the 1980s. Haas’s store was originally...
Read MoreAndy McKee
Google says there are an estimated fifty million people worldwide who play guitar, twenty million in the U.S. alone. Acoustic guitarist Andy McKee’s 2006 solo live performance of his composition “Drifting” has...
Read MorePothus Buys Van Boven Shoes
“We have a lot of denim-driven brands,” says Rich Bellas, manager of Van Boven Shoes. The tiny eighty-year-old campus store specializing in quality leather footwear changed hands over the summer. When did denim learn...
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Toppers Bows Out
News from the department of What Were They Thinking?–Toppers Pizza closed. One look at the empty storefront that set up shop nine months ago next door to NYPD on William is all you need to figure that one out. NYPD, a...
Read MorePets in Peace
“Boots was the first pet at the Majestic Pathway Garden,” Wanda Hagan says. “I wanted him near me.”Since opening in 1928, Ann Arbor’s forty-acre Arborcrest Memorial Park on Glazier Way has been...
Read MoreWashtenaw Airport
After World War II, many Washtenaw County veterans returned home with a strong craving for adventure. In awe of the pilots they watched help win the war, a good number were attracted to daring pursuits like flying. Lucky for the...
Read MoreCharter Countdown
Dexter Village voters will soon make their biggest political decision since the town was settled in 1824: to be or not to be a city. And the clock is ticking: as the Community Observer went to press, voters were selecting nine...
Read MoreErnsting’s Second Crusade
Kate Ernsting spent seven years on a crusade she didn’t seek. In 2003, as an administrator at Tom Monaghan’s Ave Maria College (now Florida’s Ave Maria University), she was fired after cooperating with a U.S....
Read MoreBadass Wheelchairs
The 338th Army Band is playing triumphantly as we walk into the Crisler Center. We buy our requisite pretzels and sodas, notice that the wheelchair seating is completely full, then walk all the way down to the floor to find...
Read MoreFrank’s Pete Poulos Retires
Pete Poulos is fine, says daughter-in-law Sharon Poulos, but he’s enjoying a well-deserved retirement after more than forty years of flipping burgers at Frank’s Restaurant. The diner is named for Pete’s...
Read MoreSteve Lehman
There are days when it seems that modernism and its descendants have become exhausted and that the arts can strive only to reinvent the past. That is certainly the impression one gets from the work of some of the more publicly...
Read MoreKeeping secrets
In May, Michigan’s women’s basketball coach Kim Barnes Arico flew to a Big Ten coaches’ meeting in Chicago at the last minute. Afterward, the second-year Wolverine coach showed her practicality by asking MSU...
Read MoreApple Rebound
“Apples are pretty tough,” says Dale Lesser, who’s grown them commercially for more than forty years at Lesser Farms in Dexter Township. “It’s amazing that you can have an apple tree with...
Read MoreMaking an Arborland Left
Q: We exit our neighborhood at Pittsfield Boulevard and Washtenaw Avenue. For as long as I can remember, cars stopped at that light (going west toward downtown Ann Arbor) are turning left from Washtenaw onto Pittsfield, then...
Read MoreThe Vast Difference
The Purple Rose’s Vast Difference marks the second time the theater has remounted an early play of its benefactor, Jeff Daniels–the first time was 2008, when it gave Apartment 3A another whirl. Why do they do this?...
Read MoreThe Tooth Fairy
“The building … in the background is unmistakable!” writes Alexandra Burja. “I can spy those teeth-like pillars of the dental school anywhere!” adds Gaia Stenson–the sculpture shown last month...
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