A Raise and a Request
Angry at a breakdown in communication, Washtenaw Community College’s faculty union voted “no confidence” in WCC president Rose Bellanca last year. The union also filed a complaint with the commission that...
Read More2015 October
Gun Protest
Gun rights group Michigan Open Carry (MOC) has hosted several events at Holiday’s Restaurant on West Stadium, but the organization’s most recent plan ignited an escalating series of controversies. Holiday’s...
Read MoreRhiannon Giddens
Rhiannon Giddens clearly didn’t have fame and fortune as her primary goals when she began her musical training studying opera at Oberlin, or after she graduated, when she helped found the Carolina Chocolate Drops: even if...
Read MoreI Was the Dope
Shortly after I became the arts and entertainment editor of the Ann Arbor News in September 1983, Brian Malone, then the paper’s editor, came to me and said, “Of course, you’ll continue to do Dump the...
Read MoreVillage Apothecary
Pharmacist Garry Turner, who owns the Village Apothecary on South U, closed the pharmacy in the back of the store several months ago. He’s also closed his Longe Pharmacy in Jackson. Because he owns the South U building, he...
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A Bigger Art Center?
The Art Center has been making, displaying, and teaching art for 106 years and owns its double storefront on W. Liberty downtown. From the mid-1990s to 2009, it also ran classes off-site at an “Art Factory” on Felch....
Read MoreMaize & Blue Comes to Main St.
Of all the pastrami joints in town, how did Maize & Blue, a low-profile deli on the outer fringes of the South University business strip, end up playing Park Place to Shinola’s Boardwalk? Omar Sukkar won’t say...
Read MoreA New Home for SASS
As the sun arcs higher into the noon hour on a midsummer day, painters brush a new coat of white onto a handsome two-story house. They’re among dozens of volunteers readying the 103-year-old property for its new owner:...
Read MoreResurrecting Robin Hills
Roy Xu has fond memories of his great-grandfather’s farm in China. He has also long been interested in connecting others with nature and inspiring them to live a healthy, sustainable life. Now Xu, a partner at GreenBright...
Read MoreMasked Bandits
A backyard mystery is solved. Every night our tube birdseed feeder was half full. But every morning the same feeder was empty. We had our suspicions, of course. Then one evening we caught the culprit in flagrante delicto. Our...
Read MoreMichigan Department of Environmental Quality
“I knew there was something fishy about it,” Jacqueline Qiu wrote about the Fake Ad from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality on page 93 of the September issue.The ad asked fishermen to help fight the...
Read MoreTreetown Murals
“Way to help all of us reading the Observer keep up with new art around Ann Arbor!” says Melodie Marske. “This painting was just finished” writes Xue Dietrich. “I was watching that mural get made a...
Read MoreGhosts of East Ann Arbor
On Platt Rd. south of Packard, a two-bay cinderblock garage stands forlorn and abandoned, with a “SWISHER REALTY: For Lease” sign plastered on its front. “No one looking at it now would know that it was once an...
Read MoreVacant Village
Developer Peter Allen assembled the property in 2000. He sold it to East Lansing-based Strathmore Development Company, which after years of negotiations with the city, county, and state won approval to build a grandiose retail,...
Read MoreAbdullah Ibrahim
Soon after World War II, jazz became truly international, with homegrown flavors developing all over the world. In Africa the most potent center of such musical development was the port city of Cape Town, South Africa. One of...
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