Jan 22, 2009 | Marketplace |
With one master’s degree in clothing and textiles and a second in the history of clothing, Monica Ladd is uniquely qualified to run a costume shop. But after twenty-three years of dressing people up, Ladd’s ready to...
Read MoreJan 21, 2009 | Community |
Like a flashy lure, Liberty Street Robot Supply and Repair demands attention. From the street, large windows give an unobstructed view of comical, lounging robots and kid-friendly shelves lined with boxes of mechanical arms,...
Read MoreJan 19, 2009 | News |
The day after Barack Obama was elected president, Stefanie Thacker made plane and hotel reservations for herself, her husband, and their two daughters to be in Washington, D.C., for the inauguration. As an African American,...
Read MoreJan 19, 2009 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
There’s a new fusion genre emerging in folk music, so far without a name. You could call it chamber folk, by analogy with chamber pop, a streak of quiet indie rock that uses orchestral instruments. Some of it turned up on...
Read MoreJan 19, 2009 | Community |
Its time for Mattie to share her story with the world, says Gratia Lousma. Mattie King, eighty-seven, moved to Ann Arbor from North Carolina in 1950, escaping the humiliations of Jim Crow. Gratia was just thirteen when they...
Read MoreJan 18, 2009 | Marketplace |
Lisa Pearce’s dog, Pepper, sleeps on a bed made of pop bottles, and it’s a lot more comfortable than it sounds. The bottles have been recycled into a soft, fluffy fiberfill called IntelliLoft that cushions dog beds...
Read MoreJan 17, 2009 | News |
After nearly forty years of independence, Chelsea Community Hospital is giving up its autonomy for the safe harbor of a giant health care empire.The impending sale to Saint Joseph Mercy Health System, part of Novi-based Trinity...
Read MoreJan 16, 2009 | Marketplace |
All 250 Steve & Barry’s stores, including the Ann Arbor location on State Street, were scheduled to close by early 2009. The twenty-year-old chain’s rapid growth was based on a single idea: selling...
Read MoreJan 15, 2009 | Marketplace |
“It’s kind of like a miniature Bed Bath & Beyond,” manager Debra Cook says of the Village Attic, the new second-story annex of the Village Apothecary on South University. Garry Turner owns the building as...
Read MoreJan 14, 2009 | News |
On an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon in October, seventy-three-year-old Bob Miller is in a bold mood. A descendant of Freedom Township’s early German settlers and a volunteer local historian, he’s bent on...
Read MoreJan 13, 2009 | Marketplace |
Ulta Beauty, a fast-growing cosmetics and (mainly) hair care superstore, has opened in Cranbrook Village next to David’s Bridal. In an email, manager Gena Juncaj described Ulta as a “comprehensive beauty shopping...
Read MoreJan 13, 2009 | Marketplace |
The restaurant business attracts plenty of passionate, food-obsessed dreamers who quickly discover they’re in over their heads. Maybe the industry needs more computer scientists.Here’s how Umi Sushi, a...
Read MoreJan 12, 2009 | Marketplace |
“It’s the weirdest thing,” says Cake Nouveau owner Courtney Clark. “There I am in Disneyland surrounded by all these kids—fans with Hannah Montana shirts on—making a birthday cake for such a big...
Read MoreJan 12, 2009 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
A young, hip Japanese couple arrives in Memphis on a pilgrimage to Sun Studio, where Elvis Presley recorded his first hit. An Italian woman, stranded in Memphis while her husband’s corpse is processed through customs, sees...
Read MoreJan 10, 2009 | Marketplace |
Peter Shipman was a couple of years ahead of the fresh-Mex curve when he opened his first Qdoba Mexican Grill on South Main in 2003. Today, Ann Arbor is awash in salsa as chains like Chipotle and Moe’s Southwest battle it...
Read MoreJan 9, 2009 | News |
Beginning in the parking lot below the U-M Hospitals, Nichols Drive runs along a steep, curved bank of glacial moraine that rises at a forty-degree angle to a height of eighty-five feet. And it runs right alongside a wicked...
Read MoreJan 8, 2009 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
As I walk with my four kids into the U-M Center for Japanese Studies, we are heartened by the thump thump thump of the kine hitting the rice in the usu. It reminds us of the burly farmhands with whom we used to celebrate...
Read MoreJan 7, 2009 | Marketplace |
For anyone who remembers the last fondue craze, the Melting Pot on Main Street gives off a surprisingly elegant vibe. Discard those images of thatched Alpine quaintness and 1970s retro kitsch. Instead, you’re met with...
Read MoreJan 5, 2009 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Steven Rinella is one of the excellent writers associated with Outside magazine, which over the last couple of decades has carved out a niche as the place that publishes smart young writers who have polished prose styles and a...
Read MoreJan 5, 2009 | News |
For most of this decade, the Ann Arbor News spent money freelyeven as it lost readers. Ann Arbors daily paper spent $14 million to build new presses in Pittsfield Township. It launched a Livingston County edition, expanded its...
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