Canvassing Kemnitz
For many, he’s to Ann Arbor what Toulouse Lautrec is to Pigalle, what Al Hirschfeld is to Sardi’s, or what Norman Rockwell is to romanticized Americana. His renderings–signature views of State St. and the...
Read More2015 January
Seventh St.’s Prophet of Sustainability
Matt Grocoff foresees a future Ann Arbor where homes and neighborhoods produce their own energy and drinking water, retain their storm water, and recycle their wastewater.”They call it sustainability,” he says with a...
Read MoreHeavy Traffic 2015
Marilyn Tower started her campaign to slow traffic on Covington Dr. on the city’s southwest side in the spring of 2012. For two years, Tower stood outside her house many school days, carrying homemade signs reading...
Read MoreMozart Birthday Bash
In October 1902, after attending a performance of Mozart’s singspiel Zaide, aspiring composer Anton Webern confided to his diary that what he’d heard sounded “lovely and tender, so clear and simple, like a...
Read MoreFolk the Police
Most of the year, hip-hop is sorely underrepresented on the local music scene. But at the annual Folk the Police showcase, the genre takes center stage in the most Ann Arbor way possible: wrapped in folk’s...
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It’s Never Too Late
Need a little inspiration to keep your resolution for regular gym visits? Meet seventy-seven-year-old ball of fire Joan Berman. U.S. Track & Field ranks her as the third-best discus thrower in the nation in her age...
Read MoreU-M Health Center’s TVs
Q. Why does the U-M Health System have all its TVs in its waiting rooms set to Fox News, of all channels?A. The choice of television channel is left to the staff in each area, and patients can ask for changes. An Observer...
Read MoreFlash and Friends
At 2781 Packard Rd. is a barnyard, set back sufficiently from the road so that it may routinely be passed unnoticed by motorists.In the barnyard is Flash! Well, actually, the exclamation mark is an exaggeration. Flash is a Welsh...
Read MoreKickshaw Theater
As she headed from her home on Ann Arbor’s west side to the Williamston Theater, where she was appearing in a one-woman play, she thought about a theater in New York City she’d started and worked in when she was in...
Read MoreWelcome, Mahindra!
India’s Mahindra Group is best known globally for its tractors, but the company has set up shop in Ann Arbor to build an entirely new American product. From a manufacturing and engineering facility on Ellsworth Rd. (once...
Read MoreLiving in Their World
“A lot of people aren’t informed about what architects really do,” says Wayne Chubb, who works at Hobbs + Black and is president of the Huron Valley Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “We...
Read MoreArgus Farm Stop
A visit to the Argus Farm Stop can feel like you’ve stepped onto the set of the TV show Portlandia, but if you overhear conversations about “nice” cheeses and “lovely” tomatoes, have faith: the aura...
Read MoreWater Hill’s SnowBuddy
Paul Tinkerhess and his wife, Claire, walk daily from their home in the Water Hill neighborhood to their Kerrytown area business, Fourth Ave Birkenstock. Last winter’s harsh weather gave him plenty of time to think about...
Read MoreCUBS’ AC Gets an Update
Colonial Lanes and its attached sports bar CUBS’ A.C. were created in 1964 by ten families, including that of the legendary Michigan radio voice Bob Ufer. The other nine families gradually dropped out, and now it is solely...
Read MoreThe Hedron Project
Ann Arbor has a long tradition of what might be called “people’s art”: outdoor pieces that are often ephemeral and anonymous and sometimes literary or intellectual in nature. Aside from the predictable...
Read MoreDobet Gnahore
The Ivory Coast singer Dobet Gnahore is the daughter of a master drummer in Abidjan. She fled civil war in her native country in 1999 and landed in Marseille, where she acquired a French guitarist husband and musical partner,...
Read MoreRagtime Extravaganza
The dictionary defines ragtime as “a kind of American dance music, characterized by highly syncopated rhythm,” and extravaganza as “a lavish, spectacular theatrical production.” You won’t find the...
Read MoreMulticultural Minimall
The newly built small shopping plaza on the corner of Platt and Ellsworth is filling in. It doesn’t have a name yet: “I’m working on it,” says its owner Ehab (“like rehab without the r”)...
Read MoreTuesday Morning Is Back
Tuesday Morning is back in town. An 800-store chain out of Dallas, Tuesday Morning specializes in manufacturers’ closeouts, and like closeouts, its stores come and go–it had one in Woodland Plaza in the 1990s, and in...
Read MoreTwo Slider Shops
Drive past Blimpy Burger’s new location on Ashley next to the Fleetwood Diner, and you might see a line of people snaking outside the front door, as it was almost every day of the frigid Thanksgiving break. It’s a...
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