Coyotes and Deer
“I didn’t see when the deer first went down,” recalls Christine Stead. “It was dark in the morning. My husband and I could hear the noise–[coyotes] howl a lot when they’re in a pack and...
Read More2016 August
Crossing Water
Shopping at Meijer recently, Mike Hood saw pallets stacked with bottled water–and began to cry. The bottles, he says, “represented so much trauma and pain I couldn’t even talk.”Until last fall, Hood,...
Read MoreCompressed Natural Gas Stations?
Q. I recently drove past W. Summit near N. Main where there used to be a compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station. All that is left is an assortment of abandoned fittings.Why was it removed? How many CNG filling stations are...
Read MoreAaron Burch
Ann Arbor fiction writer, editor, and teacher Aaron Burch has written a rare book. Neither exclusively criticism nor memoir, Stephen King’s The Body recounts Burch’s deeply personal, even intimate, engagement with a...
Read MoreMargaret Schankler
Four years ago, Margaret Schankler was just another anonymous Internet retailer. When competition killed her business selling cool kids’ clothes and toys, she bought a streamlined vintage delivery truck and started Hello!...
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George Bedard
George Bedard is soft-spoken, dead serious about the music he loves. There is a lot more to him than the crowd-pleasing Duane Eddy-style guitar rock for which he is justly famous. While uncommonly adept at that kind of...
Read MoreBroadway in Dexter
Broadway in Dexter: Tony and Academy Award-winning designer Tony Walton says Jessica Grove is his “muse in my directing adventures, and she has called my wife and I her ‘New York parents.'” So last year, when...
Read MoreBlue-Eyed Painted Ladies
“It is astounding how little the ordinary person notices butterflies,” mused Vladimir Nabokov, a novelist who may be remembered for Lolita, but who also enjoys enduring fame among entomologists and butterfly...
Read MoreNo Thai! No. 4
The No Thai! guys found a formula that works, and they’re sticking with it. They seem to have effortlessly cloned another restaurant at Woodland Plaza (near Busch’s–it replaced Damas). As at the other No...
Read MoreBell’s Pizza Closes
Bell’s Pizza–or Bell’s Greek Pizza, as it was properly called–on a pizza-slice of land at Packard and State has closed. Until recently, the property, though not the business, was still owned by...
Read MoreOccidental Gypsy
If it’s true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Django Reinhardt, were he still living, would feel very flattered indeed. Since his death in 1953, a whole jazz subgenre devoted to Reinhardt’s...
Read MoreCultivation Station Finds a Sunnier Spot
The Cultivation Station moved from a spot on Jackson Rd. in the shadow of the I-94 overpass to the West Stadium Shopping Center. Though the Cultivation Station looks small, neat, and inconspicuous, it is, according to a Detroit...
Read MoreBrenda Brown, Meet Annie Sloan
Brenda Brown’s Annex of Paredown is in what she calls “the strip behind Mallek’s,” which is as good an identifier as any–the small shopping center doesn’t seem to have a name. Open for a year...
Read MoreWill McEvoy’s Third Coast Quartet
About a month or so ago, jazz night at the Old Town bar was packed. As a trio played an Ornette Coleman tune, my attention was drawn to the bassist who was driving the music, feeling the groove but constantly shifting his lines...
Read MoreBennett Optometry at Traver Village
“People like lightweight frames. They like them durable, and they like them stylish,” says owner Steven Bennett. That is the significance of the OVVO frames in the window of his new Bennett Optometry location in...
Read MoreMatthaei Farewell
The parcel at 4540 Geddes appears small and unassuming from the road, with just an old farmhouse between Dixboro Rd. and Parker Mill County Park. But it’s much bigger than it looks. The house sits on thirty-one acres just...
Read MoreTexas Roadhouse and Outback Steakhouse
Our Outback Steakhouse visit was far enough behind us to allow for digestion to fully occur. Texas Roadhouse was on the current day’s agenda.Each named for a distant land, these two chain meateries face off across Ann...
Read MoreHOMES Brewery Takes Shape on Jackson
Tommy and Melissa Kennedy’s HOMES Brewery is beginning to materialize on the corner of Jackson Ave. and Collingwood, formerly a Culligan office and more recently Launch skateboards. HOMES, says Tommy, is spelled in all...
Read MoreWhere’s Greyhound?
The company’s Art Deco-style storefront and “BUS” sign are still prominent landmarks on W. Huron–but they’re now just a skin on a new Residence Inn. Behind the facade, Zingerman’s is building...
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