Apr 11, 2014 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
More than thirty years ago, musicians employed by orchestras in Soviet-controlled East Berlin began a clandestine collaboration that led to the formation of a collectively run early music ensemble, operating in defiance of state...
Read MoreApr 10, 2014 | Community |
Mark Reddock, a Getaway driver since 2000, says U-M Greek groups often charter buses to take members to drinking parties as far afield as Comerica Park in Detroit and Clutch Cargo’s in Pontiac. Getaway gets fifteen to...
Read MoreApr 8, 2014 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Ann Arbor may be a mecca for folk and indie rock music, but one often has to make a pilgrimage to Detroit for some old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. Ann Arbor musician Chris Taylor is aiming to change that this spring...
Read MoreOver coffee one morning last October, Martin Contreras, fifty-four, and Keith Orr, fifty-six, discussed whether they should get married that day. “Let’s do it,” urged Contreras. They had been a couple for...
Read MoreApr 6, 2014 | Marketplace |
“A lot of people in my program wonder why I’m still going to school,” says Michael Kao, who’s about three semesters away from finishing his degree at EMU in apparel, textiles, and merchandising. The...
Read MoreApr 6, 2014 | Marketplace |
Alice Liberson plans to close her Kerrytown-area store for the soigne dog or cat, Dogma Catmantoo, sometime in April. Liberson says she turned sixty last year, and wants to “retire, take classes. This is the longest...
Read MoreApr 5, 2014 | Community |
Turtles survived the comet that killed the dinosaurs, only to be imperiled by sand volleyball players. The volleyball court is where a snapping turtle laid her eggs a couple of years ago in Scheffler Park. The year before, one...
Read MoreApr 5, 2014 | Marketplace |
In early March, Sic Transit Cycles was on track to open its new store on Pontiac Tr. behind St. Vincent de Paul on March 15. Michael Firn and Joe Bollinger are expanding the bicycle restoration and sales business from its...
Read MoreApr 4, 2014 | Uncategorized |
The plane didn’t have an entertainment system, his computer battery was spent, his iPod was empty, and he hadn’t brought a book or anything to write with. With nothing to distract him for the eight-hour flight, he...
Read MoreApr 4, 2014 | Community |
“I Spy Winter’s redbud at 838 South Main Street,” writes Lori K. Wintermeyer, “at the Arcadian II Boutique”–which used to be Wintermeyer’s Ann Arbor Framing Co. It’s...
Read MoreApr 4, 2014 | Community |
We received 90 entries correctly identifying the Fake Ad for “Pleya del Sol” on page 95 of the March Observer. That was an unexpectedly low number for an ad that our nemesis, Dean McLaughlin, dismissed as...
Read MoreApr 3, 2014 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The word fusion, when applied to music, is sometimes used dismissively or pejoratively. It implies that two or more genres have been mish-mashed for no good purpose other than that they can be. The resulting hodgepodge is...
Read More“Just paint ‘sucker’ across my forehead,” I told my husband. I had just agreed to be the fifty-fifth president of the Ann Arbor City Club.It’s going to be a lot of work, for no pay, for twelve...
Read MoreApr 2, 2014 | Marketplace |
Middle Eastern restaurant Damas opened in Woodland Plaza (south-side Busch’s) in February. The turnover from Biwako Sushi was quick: “We bought some machines: a food processor, a blender for juice,” says Lamis...
Read MoreApr 1, 2014 | Marketplace |
What’s not to like about reusable shopping bags? “People put things in them, and then at the register, they’ll pull out a third of the stuff to pay for. That’s one trick,” says Bob Sparrow, owner of...
Read MoreApr 1, 2014 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Venus in Fur by David Ives made a big splash off Broadway and an even bigger one on Broadway when Nina Arianda won a Tony in 2012 for playing the role of Vanda in this two-hander based on a nineteenth-century erotic novella....
Read MoreMar 31, 2014 | Featured |
When you walk into a U-M a cappella event, the audience’s deafening cheers and raucous cries of adoration might lead you to expect a rock god on stage. But the performers are all U-M students, and the performances are...
Read More“The situation was going downhill rapidly,” Dan Ezekiel remembers. It was the spring of 2009, and the Forsythe Middle School science teacher had gone out to 3013 W. Huron River Dr. to meet the property’s owner,...
Read More“I did everything I set out to do,” says mayor John Hieftje of his seven terms in office.Sitting in city hall’s south-facing first-floor conference room the day after the winter’s heaviest snowfall, Ann...
Read MoreMar 28, 2014 | Community |
Q. I could swear that when I first moved to A2 in 1960, there was a road named Glacier Way that is now known as Glazier Way. Am I hallucinating or was the road that was named for a geological phenomenon at some point changed to...
Read More