Two new businesses are open at Briarwood and one of them is the locally owned, independent Sock World, selling wildly colorful socks and leggings. At the moment, they’re mostly for women, but eventually the store hopes to...
Read MoreFor much of the last century, Detroit has been fertile ground for poetry, which has grown out of the industries, the struggles, the tragedies, and the resilience of the city. None has been more successful on the national poetry...
Read MorePowers steps down as city administrator on November 18. Two weeks later, he’ll step into his next job as city manager of Salem, Oregon.Is he leaving for a better job, more money, a step up in his career?”Yes to all...
Read MoreLegion, N. Main retailer of street wear and of Michael Kao and Jay Tiempo’s own design brand, Chief, was open for business in mid-October, but there was a large “For Lease” sign in the window, and the store...
Read MoreBake Me Crazy, the little cinder-block shoe box perched between Fingerle Lumber and the railroad tracks on Madison, appears to be closed. Last year, Harold Solomon opened the spot, where he dreamed up his bizarre pizza flavors...
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That’s what the Performance Network Theatre needs to raise to complete its seven-play season.The theater was more than $450,000 in debt when it reopened under new management in August 2014. Executive director John Manfredi...
Read More“For as far as the eye can see, tanker cars sit idly on the east-west railroad tracks adjacent to Payeur Road (near State),” Dale Leslie wrote in an email to the Observer’s Question Corner (see p. 22)....
Read MoreThe shadow of Terry Gilliam’s darkly humorous sci-fi hangs almost as heavily over the 2014 Brazilian film White Out, Black In (Branco Sai, Preto Fica) as the specter of real racial violence. The film, which shows November...
Read MoreAnn Arbor is where I started and stopped drinking. Well, OK, there was a pleasant but junior varsity introduction to the alcoholic arts in college in the early Eighties before I got here, but, once I got situated within its...
Read MoreWhistle-pigs seem like such unassuming, innocuous animals to threaten my environmental bona fides. My husband noticed the pair of groundhogs, each about a foot-and-a-half long by half-a-foot wide, as they ambled across our...
Read MoreA long letter posted in the window of the closed Village Pub was signed “Love always, Mo, Lisa, Rafe, Josh, Matt, Pat and Beth.” Lisa is Lisa Rasak, who opened the pub in late 2011. From the beginning, she said she...
Read MorePetPeople held its grand opening in October, kitty-corner from the Washtenaw Whole Foods in the former Wright & Filippis store. Marketing manager Terri Montigny, who traveled to the opening from the company’s home...
Read MoreJay Stielstra is one of the most humble, self-effacing guys you’ll ever meet. Which just goes to show that it is possible for ego and talent to co-exist in an inverse ratio. Once you hear a Stielstra song, you quickly...
Read MoreThe building at 210-216 S. Fourth Ave. has had a tragic history, rife with fires, neglect, foreclosure, and at least one shady owner. The latest chapter in the story is beginning to look far more promising, however. Built in...
Read MoreBinod Dhakal and Becky Winkler-Dhakal opened Cardamom in a hurry in 2013: a hasty paint job and some reupholstering was about all they could afford for the former Famous Hamburger in Plymouth Courtyard Shops. In fact, there...
Read MoreTom Fitzsimmons just finished eighteen condos at the former site of St. Nicolas Greek Orthodox Church. A block away, his company, Huron Contracting, is demolishing two rental houses that he’ll replace with four condos...
Read MoreWow, how about that mammoth west of Ann Arbor! No, no, not the woolly mammoth, but that place called Menards. The gigantic store that makes other big-box stores feel like shoeboxes! It’s like a Walmart mated with a Home...
Read MoreWhat’s a new restaurateur to do once it becomes clear the public isn’t interested in their enterprise? Changing concepts is hard and expensive and often means forfeiting a dream. Naturally enough, many instead try...
Read MoreMichigan has become a craft beer hot spot, and its southeast got another pin on the map when Salt Springs Brewery opened in Saline in July. A local partnership, backed by fifty citizen investors, built the brewery and artisanal...
Read MoreThe wild turkey is a klutzy-looking thing, but don’t be fooled; it can run almost as fast as a human and can fly up to fifty-five miles per hour. No wonder, then, that the bird has been around a long time: fossils have...
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