2016 April

No Guts, No Glory

Hollis Wyatt lets the menu sit untouched on the table—she knows what she is going to order. She heard from a friend that the Grange Kitchen is serving an unusual dish that is not to be missed. A twenty-one-year-old...

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From Ann Arbor to Macau

Franz Harary is levitating a paper napkin over my kitchen table. No strings or props, just a napkin that was sitting on the counter and now is floating above his hands, with me sitting two feet away. I have no idea how...

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Backstage Dramas

Opening night, winter 2013: Spectators pour into the lobby, enjoying complimentary champagne as they engage in animated conversations about the play they just saw. They cluster around the buffet, helping themselves to shrimp and...

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“I Love the Deer.”

City council directed staff to study culling the city’s resident deer herd in May 2014. It voted to create a “deer management program” in August 2015. But David Silkworth and Tanya Ridella-Mehlos didn’t...

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Spencer

Salads–every menu includes them. Every restaurant has to cater to healthy eaters and dieters, vegetarians and the vegan, and diners who view any vegetable but potatoes or head lettuce as a source of horror. But few chefs...

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Fish Out of Water

In 2011, R.J. Fox, who teaches video production and English at Huron, began sharing chapters from his humorous memoir, Love and Vodka: My Surreal Adventures in the Ukraine, on Facebook. The unpublished book described Fox’s...

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Fire Trucks and Fire Engines

Fire was an ever-present peril in early Ann Arbor. During the city’s first century, volunteer firefighters manning hand pumps gave way to professionals tending horse-drawn steam pumps and then to the first motorized fire...

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Spoon O’Prune

Well, if he’s Om Goel, he doesn’t ride off into the sunset. He launches his own company, develops products, and then teaches himself manufacturing, packaging, marketing, advertising, and business practices so he can...

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Three Cranes Find a Home

Three sandhill cranes make their home on ten acres of rolling land bordering Werkner Rd. Once the site of the Chelsea Free Methodist Church, today the property belongs to a Buddhist monastery. The birds inspired its name: Triple...

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Local Voices

Ann Arbor is well represented in season 10 of The Voice, NBC’s popular singing contest, with competitors Laith Al-Saadi, Daniel Passino, and Jonathan Bach all currently calling the city home.”It’s pretty...

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From Pop-up to Permanent

When Michelle Ingalls closed Reincarnations Resale last summer and relocated to Texas, it left a gap for those who relish an afternoon of thrift and consignment shopping in downtown Saline. Enter Donna and Lisa Southwick....

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Common Grill

“I’m still having fun,” says Craig Common, whose Common Grill is celebrating a quarter-century on Main St. in Chelsea: “It has been phenomenal, a great run, with lots of people who have been with us a...

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Hotel Hickman Buys a Building

“She started talking about retirement last summer,” said Scott Thomas, of his neighbor Theresa Bell, who owned Main St.’s Dexter Flowers for a number of years. Thomas owns the barbecue joint next store, Hotel...

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Kroger Drops Godiva

On March 1, Kroger closed Godiva Chocolates inside the Maple Rd. store. Ken McClure, from Kroger customer communications, says this store was a pilot for what they hoped would be others, but “unfortunately it just...

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Store Shuffle on Washtenaw

The Ann Arbor Thrift Shop celebrated its reopening in a slightly different spot in Washtenaw Commons across from Arborland March 16. Casual Male XL also moved a few doors down in the renovated center, at the same time changing...

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Not Landmarks

Tim Hortons and Dick Tyler’s Tavern, both in the Landmark apartment building on the corner of Forest and South University, are closed. Celecia Jones, an employee at 7-Eleven, also in the building, says she doesn’t...

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Garden Mill Gets a Makeover

“In retail, you can’t sit still too long,” explains Jennifer Fairfield, owner of the Garden Mill, who reopened her Main St. shop February 6 after a month-long renovation. A handcrafted twig arbor now greets...

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The Scrap Box Adapts

The Scrap Box is a scrappy fighter. It’s been around over thirty years, and we’ve neglected to chronicle its many moves and its ups and downs (though a 2001 Ann Arborite column about its founder Karen Ensminger,...

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