In April, lifelong Chelsea resident Stephanie Merkel became the new owner of Shabby Chic Consignments, an upscale women’s resale shop in Oak Tree Plaza. Former owner Kris Vermilye–who built a following of more than...
Read MoreThis summer, ACO Hardware–next door to the Chelsea TreeHouse on the city’s south side–will become Great Lakes Ace Hardware, one of forty-nine ACO stores to make the change statewide. The Michigan chain...
Read MoreThe entire southwest corner of South U and Forest shut down in mid-December when a pipe burst in a second-floor office. In mid-April, the Blue Leprechaun and its related underground bar, the Study Hall Lounge, opened again....
Read MoreIn the spring of 1964, the unmistakable sound of a bulldozer emanated from the small wooded area west of Haisley Elementary School. My family lived three houses away from the woods on Haisley Dr.The city’s bulldozer had...
Read MoreJulia Owdziej was in the middle of a phone interview about her campaign for probate judge when her other phone rang. She politely excused herself. A few minutes later she came back on the line and said, “They’re...
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It looks like Will Hathaway and his mom, Mary, will finally get what they’ve dreamed of for years: a park on top of the underground Library Lane parking structure next to the Ann Arbor District Library. “My mom has...
Read MoreWestern civilization turned a corner in July 1914, with the start of the Great War.Ann Arbor was a cozy college town of 15,000. “A hog which was being pursued by a dog ran into Miss Staebler, knocking her down so...
Read MoreQ. Currently, Carpenter Rd. is dug up, and there is a long, light blue plastic tube, maybe six inches wide, lying on the sidewalk on one side of the road. A couple of years ago, I noticed the same thing when they were working on...
Read MoreJesse Shepherd is an expert woodsman. In season he hunts wild turkey and deer, traps muskrats, and hunts small game. In summer he enjoys fishing the lakes in the Waterloo State Recreation Area between Jackson and Chelsea. And...
Read MoreAnna Lee’s Company, a funk/bluegrass/folk-rock band with a name derived from a lyric in the Band’s iconic “The Weight,” formed early in 2013. The four core musicians all previously played in other popular...
Read MoreSubway may be leaving Parkside Plaza, but a Radio Shack franchise just moved in. On a May morning, owner Ray Gammo and manager Ralph Paige were busy stocking new Radio Shack merchandise; Gammo, a gregarious man with a big build,...
Read MoreDid you know that Muskrat once had a flat, broad tail? That tail was much admired by Beaver, who asked to borrow it in order to try it out. Muskrat agreed and lent Beaver the tail. Beaver must have really liked it, because he...
Read MoreTraditional library summer reading programs reward children for reading a prescribed number of books while school is out. The AADL has followed that model for decades and still does–children, teens, and adults can track...
Read MoreElsewhere in the former Borders space, Sheila Li hopes to open her Sweetwaters franchise in time for the Art Fair. Li’s husband, Roy Xu, owns the environmental company GreenBright, says Sweetwaters co-owner Lisa Bee, so...
Read More“Billy Strings & Don Julin play traditional American string band music with energy levels usually associated with extreme sports,” says the website of this northern Michigan duo. The line sounds good for getting...
Read MoreIn the summer, birds are said to sing, as are crickets and cicadas. Wolves and whales have songs to which we’ve never managed to learn the lyrics. For people, song is where words and melodies like to meet. The air fills...
Read More“Sorry We Close” said a handwritten sign on the door of the Westgate BP. One of those increasingly rare gas stations with a repair shop, it had also been a popular stop for people needing a U-Haul truck on the west...
Read MoreIn weather fair and foul, Noel Roach’s feathered friends find sanctuary in the growing number of birdhouses–sixty-six in June–that decorate the lawn, fences, and flowerbeds of his modest home on Central Ave....
Read MoreAt one point in Celeste Ng’s new debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, a Chinese American father imagines saying to his white wife, “You’ve never been in a room where no one else looked like you....
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