32 new of 81 responses total.
When is Drake's closing?
From what I read in the Ann Arbor News, I got the impression it was already closed.
They've stopped serving food, but they have a big candy inventory to get rid of.
Another piece of our culture and history dies. It's too bad America ties up so much of its development of tradition in places of business, because then all it takes to end it is an economic decision made by someone who has better things to do.
I really like the Barnes & Nobles store! Beats Borders cause it's got convenient parking! I've never had trouble parking at Barnes & Nobles, while the Borders in downtown doesn't offer any parking at all. Apparently, Borders is moving their headquarters from the big office building on State Street, past the airport on your way to Saline, into the old Jacobson's building on Maynard. Yeck. I won't be shopping there ever. Another thing I really like about Barnes & Nobles, they carry CONNECT! And a goodly number of them too!
Anyone know what's going on with the sites of the former 'downtown holes in the ground' on Main near Packard? I thought I saw some new construction going on there. On Friday getting off I-94 west at AA-Saline road I was pleased to see that poles are going up that seem to be ready to become traffic lights. I was hoping not to be the person to cause an accident waiting to get off the ramp while the AA-Saline road traffic is flying by.... Now if we can just get rid of the useless traffic light at Hewitt and Michigan, I'll be all set. .
That's one tough intersection. Sunday I went to Best Buy for a long awaitied piece of software that had come in. Traffic was all backed up because of an accident involving three cars. By the time I was on my way home, maybe an hour later, there was another accident at the same intersection, this time it was a car and a pickup waiting for the police to arrive. It's criminal that it has taken so long to do something about that site.
It's criminal that development took place in that area in such a poorly planned way that such an intersection ever happened
The Manikas Steak House is about to turn into the Shalimar Indian restaurant. That will make three Indian restaurants downtown.
Manikas Steak House is gone??? Oh no! Not that I ate there much, but Manikas was just about the only restaurant left that was here when I moved to Ann Arbor in 1963. It didn't change much in all that time except for the acquisition of a liquor license. One more link to the past bites the dust.
Ohmigosh. The Manikas Steak House is gone before I even heard of it!
The Diamond Head Cafe in Kerry town has been replaced by Exotic Bakeries (their second store- the one in North Campus Plaza is still there), a very good middle eastern resteraunt that also sells homemade french pastries.
How multicultural-sounding. I'll miss Diamond Head though -- nice place to stop for lunch when Kerrytowning.
indeed. much as I like EB, I was surprised to see Diamond Head gone.
Despite going to school accross the street from it, I've never been to Diamond Head. I have gone to EB a couple of times, abnd it's quite good.
While walking from Kerrytown to the library this afternoon I notice that a rubber stamp shop is due to open soon on Fourth between Washtenaw and Washington. ..
<He probably meant Huron rather than Washtenaw>
I did!
I understood that Toomuchfun Rubberstamps in East Lansing was about to open a badly needed branch office in Ann Arbor. This must be it!
I dropped by Tower Records today, and was surprised at how much they've expanded. They now occupy the whole top floor of the Galleria, and now carry books, video, and a have a great selection of magazines. They're not going to challenge the new Border's for books, but the newstand is pretty nice. Unfortunately, I also noticed that Cafe Fino, the coffeehouse in the rear of the Galleria has closed. Of all the capuccinos in AA, I thought theirs was the best. I guess the location was just too out of the way and the competition too fierce.
The UGLi construction is almost finsihed, and it has been renamed the Harold and Vivian Shapiro Library. I wonder it the new name will ever stick, or if the best the University can hope for will be the Harold and Vivian Shapiro UGLi.
HarVi
Reading through this was rather interesting, a sort of time capsule. In the last six years, much has changed, including, but not limited to: Crazy Wisdom leaving 4th Ave for fancy new digs on Main st, The advent of A2's second Borders Books and Music, The slow decay of the Chamber arts series from the University Musical Society About 5 billion different failed restaurants in the old Howard Johnson's space on Carpenter near Washtenaw, The rise and fall of the halo from hell, And the feeling that Ann Arbor is losing the character of a Midwestern college town and becoming just another overcrowded place to live, commute and otherwise deal with being too close to too many other people.
Interesting observation - I've noticed that the Chamber Arts series is getting poorer (it is the only series we subscribe to), but didn't know others were noticing this - nor why.
I have been attending the Chamber Arts series since about 1979. Through the decade of the eighties, you could count on at least two concerts a month from September through May, with several top-tier concerts each year. The Guarneri, Tokyo and Borodin string quartets were fixtures, along with others. As the nineties came in, the fare began disappearing, to where I think there were about ten concerts in the series last year. There are still top performers, the Emerson Quartet and Beaux Artes trio etc, but it's awfully slim pickings anymore. In particular the reign of Ken fisher, while it has perhaps resulted in revitalization of other parts of the Musical Society's programming has meant a slow and inexorable withering of the content of this formerly formidable series. It's a matter of demographics. The people I went to chamber music concerts with twenty years ago are still the ones that I co-attend with now, except for the ones who've died or moved away. Even now I'm still under the median age of attendees. Sad, but inevitable I suppose.
Soeaking of restaurants failing, yet another business (remember Steve's Ice Cream?) has now failed at the corner of William and State. Domino's is closing the store because its pizza drivers could never find a place to park.
Another restaurant location that can't seem to support long-term success is the corner of Liberty and Stadium. La Pinata was replaced by Watercress, and now it's UpSouth. No one seems to be eating there, though, so I fear it will soon go away too.
(And now it's a bank.) We tried UpSouth before it closed. Yes, 'twas indeed Southern cooking, but the place was too smoky for regular visits.
William and State's curse is, of course, continuing. I'm told Famiglia has recently gone out of business; credit for that failure is given to the proximity of NYPD down the block, which is a fairly similar pizza place (I'm told; never been to either), but with better food, and with a more firmly entrenched position in the student body's stomach.
I think Famiglia moved in several years after NYPD opened. It's always harder to compete against an established business if you don't have a seriously more-in-demand product.
Er, yes, that's what I meant to say.
Famiglia was gone at the end of last school year, I believe; certainly it was gone by the time I left at the end of the summer. NYPD was better, bigger slices, and cheaper, I think. . . . re resp:70 -- when i worked there (summer 2002--summer 2003), supervisors called it Shapiro Library but everyone else called it the Undergrad or the UGLi.
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