Attic Boutique & Bella Gallery
It’s a climb to the new women’s clothing store and art gallery upstairs from Seitz’s Tavern, but Deborah Coy’s done everything she can to make it a “happy and welcoming” one: She decorated the...
Read More2013 October
The Sweet Smell of Success
The city’s costliest building project has a fresh-air payoff. If you take the Border-to-Border trail past Geddes Dam, or walk the grounds at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, you might have noticed that the air is pleasanter...
Read MoreHistory on the Move
A small sign saying “Closed for Renovations” is taped to the enormous front door of the U-M’s Clements Library. Kevin Graffagnino unlocks it and leads the way into the Great Room. It’s not looking so...
Read MoreChristmas in September
Just as apple orchards and pumpkin recipes started to surface, it’s Christmas at Kohl’s! The department store set up their seasonal display in stores as early as the second week of September. The holidays seems to...
Read MoreA Tale of Two Buildings
At the fibrillating heart of hard-partying undergrad-ville rises University Towers, a well-worn apartment building that until a few years ago loomed unchallenged over its campus neighborhood.”Did you know Madonna lived...
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ReStore Resale
Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore resale shop has closed its strip-mall outpost on Jackson and consolidated into the mother ship. All sales are now made at the less visible, but much bigger, location on Aprill Drive.ReStore,...
Read MoreMusical Farm
Local folks have known and loved the King family’s Frog Holler organic produce for decades.”It’s the best,” gushes Dexter resident Barry Lonik, land preservation activist and President of Treemore Ecology...
Read MoreAn Area in Flux
Packard near Platt is, as always, slightly in flux, but the shopkeepers in this multicultural hive of activity don’t devote a lot of time to massaging the media. So the media must massage them. A walk-around and some door...
Read MoreGeorge Bedard
Guitarist George Bedard has been one of the brightest stars in the Ann Arbor music firmament for nearly forty years, and the Kingpins, the trio he formed with bassist Randy Tessier and drummer Rich Dishman, has been serving as...
Read MorePrivate Sector Public Art
A sleek new structure at the entrance to Plum Market is creating quite a stir.”Is it the start of a kids’ playground?” a customer asked store team leader Aaron MacLeod. Another wondered if it was a...
Read MoreBumps of Steel
West-side resident Kent Burkhart was incredulous: shining through a lumpy asphalt patch on Jackson Road were a pair of steel rails. Just east of Grandview, the old interurban railroad had resurfaced. “It’s...
Read MoreEvil Dead: The Musical
I’ve got nothing against kids, exactly, but they do seem to be gaining ascendancy over the darker months of the year. They’ve already got Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hanukkah, the original family-values holidays, sewn...
Read MoreNickels Arcade
At Nickels Arcade, the upshot is: Beagle Brain moved and downsized, Johnny closed, and Wendy stayed put, but here’s the more complicated backstory.Wendy clothing store had briefly split into two stores in Nickels Arcade,...
Read MoreBassist William Parker
The early seventies were a time of transition for improvised music in New York City. The first generation of rebels against the standard jazz order had already made its statements, and a new crop of young musicians was trying to...
Read MoreThe Lousmas Say Good-bye
The couple both graduated from Ann Arbor High in 1954–Jack was football captain, and Gratia Smeltzer was homecoming queen. They married two years later, when Jack was an engineering undergrad at the U-M. His mother...
Read MoreMiniature Log Cabins?
Q: There’s a cluster of miniature log cabins on Carpenter Road just south of the I-94 overpass. Who built them, and do people still live in them?A. The three cabins and two houses share a surprisingly tranquil...
Read MoreChanges on Liberty
Around the corner and up the block, the retail options at 311 E. Liberty have shrunk slightly in the last year.First, Avtomobile moved out of the basement. The young owners of the eclectic little gallery and craft shop, Maris...
Read MoreTom Kundrak Sells Wenk’s
Wenk’s Pharmacy actually ceased to belong to Fred Wenk about seven years ago, when it was bought by the Prescription Shop’s Tom Kundrat. Kundrat needed a new home after the Prescription Shop’s building on...
Read MoreChris Thile
Mandolinist Chris Thile’s recent recording of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin makes him one of just a few contemporary pop performers to have both hit the pop top twenty and released a major classical...
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