By Mark | September 25, 2017
A few days ago, while walking aimlessly through downtown Ypsilanti, I found myself trying to remember what Pears, the men’s clothing store that used to be 100 West Michigan Avenue, in the space now occupied by Dalat, used to sell. All I can picture is a rack of very old, wide-collared “Playboy” brand pajamas, all […]
Posted in History, Photographs, Ypsilanti | Also tagged Black Stone, cameras, daily life, Dalat, First Fridays, Go Ice Cream, Haab's, International Village, oral history, pajamas, participatory democracy, Pears Clothing, Playboy, privacy, Retail, Riverside Arts Center, time capsule, Water Street, Ypsilanti |
By Mark | August 12, 2015
My never-ending search for our region’s most enigmatic super villain, the Ypsi Tooth, led me a few nights ago to a long-closed-up building in downtown Ypsilanti. [You can enter said building by way of a manhole downtown.] While I don’t want to get into specifics concerning what clues I may have found, I did want […]
By Mark | August 24, 2013
Long gone are the days when A-list Hollywood celebrities like Robert DeNiro, Drew Barrymore and Milla Jovovich would flock to Ypsilnati and cause a stir. Today, things are different. Now that our overly-aggressive film industry incentives have dried up, and the steady flow of celebrities has slowed to a trickle, it takes a hell of […]
Posted in Local Business, Locally Owned Business, Uncategorized, Ypsilanti | Also tagged David Kabat, Detroit Institute of the Arts, DIA, Drew Barrymore, Dwight Burdette, food television, Haab's, home shopping, Huron River, Kevyn Orr, QVC, Rick Snyder, Riverside Park, Robert DeNiro, television, television production |
By Mark | January 22, 2012
For those of you who haven’t seen it yet on PBS, Ypsi was featured on the most recent episode of Under the Radar Michigan. The crew, as you may recall, was here in town this past October, shooting footage of people lined up down Michigan Avenue, waiting to partake of the 40¢ chicken dinners that […]
Posted in Detroit, Ypsilanti | Also tagged cities, copper, dismantling American cities, documentary film, Fishtown, Ford Foundation, globalization, Haab's, harbingers of things to come, Heidi Ewing, Leland, little people, manufacturing, Michigan's aging cities, Rachel Grady, ruin porn, scavenging, scrap, scrap metal, Tap Room, the future of American cities, threats to the middle class, Under the Radar Michigan, VIsteon |
While I appreciate the entrepreneurial chutzpah, and wish them all the best, I’m not confident that putting the Smarty Catz waitstaff in bikinis will bring in a booming lunch crowd… Here’s a clip from iSpy: …Because the bar hasn’t been attracting as many customers for lunch as he would like, Smarty Catz has been offering […]
