Unusual activity at former used furniture store: U-Haul, cars, folks going in and out. Has it been rented?
Liberty & First
» Want more items like this one? Visit the Stopped. Watched. page.
Archived by the Ann Arbor District Library
Update: The new establishment is called “Gro Blu” and specializes in “indoor gardening.”
Excellent use of quotation marks there.
Wasn’t that the business that was in the lower level garage-like building behind Fleetwood?
re #3: I think she’s referring to the NW corner, not the SE corner. That garage you mention was an Indian Motorcycle Dealership once upon a time.
re #3. Yes, Rob, that’s the same business. That location has had a few businesses since the old days when it was an Indian motorcycle repair shop. The owner of that Indian shop had an interesting story that I don’t remember now. Can anyone remember?
Indeed, the new location for “Grow Blue” is on the NW corner of West Liberty and First Streets in the building that last housed Obama Headquarters before the last presidential election. The outfit’s former site behind Fleetwood Diner was where the motorcycle repair shop mentioned above had been located for many years. I don’t know the interesting story about the owner, myself, but I remember that we always thought his name was “Mr. India,” although an old blog on “Ann Arbor is Overrated” calls him Muhammed [link]. I do know that after retiring from the motorcycle repair business, he spent the last years of his life at Lurie Terrace, where he was a very popular resident.
Ali Mohammed was an Indian Muslim who owned the Indian Motorcycle dealership. He stopped selling new cycles in the early 60′s when the corporation changed ownership. The Indian cycles were made in Massachusetts, and had nothing to do with an asian country, that was just a coincidence.
So he stopped selling cycles, but lived in the back of the shop, selling parts and doing repairs for many years after that. I did not know him personally, but he was a well known man-about-town, spoke with an Indian/British hybrid accent, and was often seen strolling in the Main and Liberty area wearing very natty suits of an old style with lots of buttons and a waistcoat and never without a well folded pocket square and a carnation.
Don’t know of any special stories about him, I think the A2 News did a profile once in the 70′s for anyone who cares to look though a lot of microfilm at the library.
nice