Neighborhoods Section

Demonstrators on the southeast corner of Liberty and Fifth in downtown Ann Arbor.

While out and about early Friday afternoon, The Chronicle noticed a Channel 7 News truck parked across from the Federal Building at Fifth and Liberty in downtown Ann Arbor. A little over an hour later, the news truck had disappeared. But according to one of the people demonstrating on the corner, before departing the camera crew had shot footage of the local protest prompted by recent and ongoing violence in Gaza. [Full Story]

Liberty Street busking with drum.

You’re standing at the corner of Main and Liberty streets in downtown Ann Arbor. An out-of-towner shows you his bleeding hands and asks, “Is there any place around here I can buy a Band-Aid?” The Chronicle had an answer. For readers who’d like see how their own answers might match up, it’s left to the end of this article.

What trauma led to the blood on Rick Hale’s hands? He’d spent the previous hour pounding out improvised rhythms on his djembe just outside the Parthenon restaurant. [Full Story]

TCF Bank on the northwest corner of South University and Church in Ann Arbor.

On Tuesday (Dec. 30, 2008) I noticed work on the front of TCF Bank on South University Avenue: some panels, at least, are being replaced with glass windows. [Editor's note: Cf. comments below.]

This completes a circuit back to fall 1969, when during an anti-war protest, bricks or other objects were thrown through the big glass panes of this bank building, then Ann Arbor Bank.

I left the march at that point, failing to see the connection. Shortly after, Ann Arbor Bank replaced most of the panes with paneling. [Full Story]

The long arm of Republic Parking.

Across from the surface parking lot where the City Apartments will be built, Republic Parking meter change collectors were making the rounds this morning. The holiday collection schedule meant that the meters were especially full, and the recent freezing rain had led to some coins freezing together.

But these guys are equipped with a tool to jam the coins through.

On spotting the change collectors in action, The Chronicle’s first thought was that the meters were being swapped out for the new kiosks, but this proved not to be the case. In fact, based on the planned initial … [Full Story]

Despite this graffiti, we're pretty sure Chuck Berry is still alive.

You never know how someone’s creative energies will be channeled in this town, and a shrine – or whatever it is – in Liberty Plaza is pretty good evidence of that.

The Chronicle came across this piece of urban art on Christmas Day. The day after Christmas, it was still there.

It is positioned on a snow-covered ledge on the Liberty Street side of the park, and includes a world globe, a coffee can with some Jesus literature inside, various plastic toy animals, some colorful Mardi Gras beads, playing cards and honestly, who knows what else is buried under that snow. Maybe we’ll find out after Saturday’s Big Melt. From yesterday to today, the number of pot-holder-sized crocheted squares has dwindled from three to one.

On the orthogonal ledge, someone has chalked “Chuck Berry RIP” and “Run Run Rudolf” onto the concrete. According to Dead or Alive, Berry is still with us. This may or may not be part of the same “installation” – we’d like to think it is, though we can’t even hazard a guess as to its meaning.

But maybe you can. More photos are after the jump. [Full Story]

Carsten Hohnke, who represents Ward 5 on Ann Arbor city council, attended Tuesday evening's meeting about The Madison. In the background is Laurie Blakeney, owner of the Ann Arbor School of Yoga and the mother of Newcombe Clark, who's a partner in The Madison project.

Many of the 15 or so people gathered in the downtown Ann Arbor library on Tuesday night were clearly neighbors. There were handshakes, waves, nods of greetings and, in at least one case, the delivery of a Christmas gift. And as the meeting unfolded, it also became clear that these people had another common bond: Opposition, or at least strong skepticism, to a revived apartment project called The Madison.

Developer Jeff Helminski and Newcombe Clark of Bluestone Realty plan to resubmit a scaled-down version of The Madison to the city on Dec. 29, and were holding this meeting to tell neighbors about their new plans and to get feedback on the project. Located on East Madison between South Fourth and Fifth avenues, the original proposal called for a 14-story building with 161 units. This new one has four stories, with 60 units.

That’s still too large for some. [Full Story]

The map below depicts the better part of the year in crime for Ann Arbor in 2008. The first two weeks of January and the last two weeks of December are not included. So the data presented here should not be considered complete or official. The zooming slider allows a closer examination of individual neighborhoods. Clicking on the markers causes a balloon to appear that includes the date and category of the crime. The map itself appears after the jump. [Full Story]

Temperatures at 3°F with winds out of the WSW put Accuweather’s RealFeel® at minus 26°F on Sunday afternoon. We headed out across the city to monitor the hills at Huron Hills Golf Course for any sledding action. Status: two pods of sledders, both decidedly international in flavor. Countries of origin that were represented included Israel, China, and El Salvador. Photos after the jump. [Full Story]

Eliana Moya-Raggio, a Wall Street resident and former UM faculty member, explains her objections to UM's proposed parking structure. She spoke at a Tuesday evening meeting held at the Kellogg Eye Center.

There were two distinctly different agendas on view at Tuesday’s Wall Street neighborhood meeting, hosted by University of Michigan staff. University representatives, led by Jim Kosteva, were there to deliver information about environmental and safety issues related to the proposed UM expansion in that area. The neighbors wanted answers to questions they’d been asking for many months – and their frustration was palpable.

[Full Story]

Ann Arbor City Council regular session, Dec. 15, 2008: City council heard extensive public commentary and suspended its own rules to allow for more deliberation on the topic of appointing a study committee for a new historic district possibly to be called Germantown. But in the end, the proposal garnered only one vote in addition to those of its two sponsors. In other business, council moved an anti-graffiti ordinance to a second reading (the next step for any amendment to the city code), and approved an intent to issue $9 million in bonds to fund the parking structure portion of Village Green’s City Apartments project. [Full Story]

No one violated the Bryant Community Center rules at a recent meeting there, though you could argue there was a bit of mild horseplay.

If you made a list of people who can get things done, you’d end up with one that looked a lot like the actual people attending a recent meeting at the Bryant Community Center. Two current city councilmembers and a former one. The county treasurer and chief deputy clerk. A school board member. A cop. Nonprofit leaders, city staff and residents.

They gathered on Thursday to talk about ways to improve this neighborhood on Ann Arbor’s southeast side, north of Ellsworth and east of Stone School Road. The effort is being led by the Community Action Network, a nonprofit group that provides support services to people in low-income neighborhoods. CAN was hired earlier this year to manage Bryant and Northside community centers, and also works with Hikone and Green Baxter Court neighborhoods. [Full Story]

Rose Marie Rimson-Brown leads the Fountain Church of God in Christ choir.

“Every time we walk through these doors, we think about how it used to be,” said Rose Marie Rimson-Brown on Sunday evening. “Amen!” came the response from several members of the Fountain Church of God in Christ.

Those doors now lead into the Fountain Street home of Tamara Real and Carl Rinne. The couple renovated the former church, which was originally built in 1907, and this is the fourth year they’ve held a holiday open house for neighbors and church members who used to worship there. [Full Story]

Jeff Gaynor gives a light to Majida R.'s candle from his own.

A young man who’d just purchased a copy of an old Life magazine from the Dawn Treader Book Shop asked The Chronicle, “What are they protesting?” So we clarified for him that the group holding candles and signs at the corner of Liberty and Main streets in downtown Ann Arbor were there to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly. [Full Story]

David Menefee serenades shoppers at Sunday's Art in the Barn.

Off of West Huron, just west of the railroad tracks, is a compound of buildings that houses an eclectic mix of businesses. And on one day for each of the past eight years, a building within this compound known as The Yellow Barn transforms into a venue for local artists and holiday shoppers.

On Sunday, 17 artists gathered for this year’s show, many of them regulars from previous years, plus some first-timers. Despite the crappy economy and threat of this season’s first major snowstorm, there were a steady stream of customers when The Chronicle dropped by around noon. [Full Story]

Angeline Hazime saw even the performance artist (?) outside Hatcher Library as a prospective recruit for her Take the Walk campaign.

Outside Hatcher Library, a guy decked out completely in black and dark gray – from his patent leather dress shoes, to his overcoat, to his fedora, to a black knit face covering – stood silently, paging every once in a while through a USA Today newspaper. It was the day after Black Friday, and The Chronicle was beginning an afternoon walk from the UM Diag westward along the Liberty Street corridor.

Outdoor performance was the common thread of the walk. The theme started with that apparent performance art piece, continued to a standard bell-ringing number at a Salvation Army kettle, was punctuated by the “Michael Jackson guy” in the alley adjacent to the Michigan Theater, and finished with news of an appearance next Saturday at Downtown Home & Garden by Santa and Mrs. Claus. [Full Story]

A mailbox for letters to Santa, on South Ashley Street in front of Red Shoes.

The Chronicle has been known to send a letter or two to Santa, back in the day. But our recollection is that they were whisked up the chimney or something – actually, that memory is pretty fuzzy.

Ann Arbor kids have a more direct alternative: A mailbox on South Ashley specifically for letters to Santa.

The mailbox is red, naturally, with Christmasy images painted on all sides. A note near the letter slot makes its purpose clear: “North Pole Only!”

According to Maura Thomson … [Full Story]

Look for these signs to guide you to the Chapel Hill clubhouse, off of Green Road.

This year, Judy White organized her first holiday craft show, held today and Friday at the Chapel Hill Clubhouse on Ann Arbor’s northeast side. Here’s a quick Chronicle guide to how she pulled it off – we’d also encourage you drop by and check out the final result, where 15 local crafters will be selling wooden bird houses, jewelry, aprons, photographs, scarves, ornaments and other handmade items.

[Full Story]

Supporters of marriage equality line the plaza in front of the post office on East Liberty. The group later marched through downtown, then headed over to the Diag for a rally.

The chanting was faint but audible from about two blocks away, growing louder on approach to the post office plaza at Fifth and Liberty: “Love, don’t hate! Don’t discriminate!” Drivers honked as their cars passed the crowd of about 250 people who came out on a miserably wet and cold Saturday afternoon to support marriage equality.

Many held umbrellas, rainbow-striped flags and handmade signs, including one that read “The weather sucks, but so does inequality.” [Full Story]

Downtown Ann Arbor outside the Ann Arbor Art Center.

The juried exhibition “Displaced Spirit” ended Nov. 11 at the Ann Arbor Art Center, but the following day, a small selection of pieces from the show lingered briefly for a few minutes outside the center on Liberty Street. As Cathy Jacobs loaded up a van for transport of her work back home, The Chronicle happened by and had a chance to view her contributions to the show.

The exhibit was meant to celebrate the creative spirit that survives war and genocide. Works for the show were selected from 14 Michigan-based artists who endured forced displacement from their home countries whether directly through their own experience or that of their parents or grandparents. [Full Story]

Banner from the Obama campaign hung in the Downtown Home & Garden courtyard Thursday night.

By Thursday night, the imperative “Make History” on the Obama campaign banner could have well been changed to the past tense “Made.” But along with a second banner reading “Hope,” it made a nice backdrop for a party pitched for the folks who worked on the Obama campaign at the First and Liberty headquarters.

The post-election celebration was held just down the block from Obama headquarters in the courtyard area of Downtown Home & Garden, which owner Mark Hodesh had made available.

One take-away from the event for The Chronicle … [Full Story]

The petting zoo on Kingsley goes for a walk. Photo by Ari Sussman

Ted Kennedy bought his house on East Kingsley in May, and is interested in how people react to the stuff he puts in his yard. He’s hung empty picture frames from trees – you know, that kind of thing (more on that later). On Wednesday, he did a performance art piece that involved a petting zoo, which looked a lot like … just a petting zoo.

Now, if you’re driving or walking through downtown Ann Arbor’s residential streets, you might not expect to encounter, say, a Clydesdale – especially not in someone’s front yard, with an alpaca, two goats, a duck, chicken and Shetland pony named Bronco. You’d probably stop to look. You might think, “Huh?” Or you might take some photos and send them to The Chronicle, which is what Ari Sussman did.

People were pretty confused by it, Kennedy says. Which was sort of the point. Plus, it was fun. [Full Story]

Peg Kohring of The Conservation Fund talks to members of the Ann Arbor Greenbelt Advisory Commission on Wednesday, as commissioners Gil Omenn and Peter Allen (far right) look on.

The Greenbelt Advisory Commission met Wednesday, spending about 45 minutes in their public meeting before going into a closed session to discuss land preservation proposals.

Field trip: The first major item on the agenda was a presentation by Peg Kohring, Midwest director of The Conservation Fund, which manages the city’s greenbelt program. She gave a brief talk about the Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy, describing it as a think-and-do tank focused on local land use and food systems. Kohring said that she, city staffer Ginny Trocchio and Susan Lackey of the Washtenaw Land Trust made a trip to northeast Ohio to take an up-close look at this organization, and glean ideas that might be applicable to the Ann Arbor area. [Full Story]

Alert from someone in line who observed Stephen Postema inside on Election Day as I was standing outside Slauson Middle School.

City attorney Stephen Postema visited around 25 different polling places on Election Day in his capacity as election commissioner. First off, I’d like to thank Stephen for allowing me to tag along with him all day as he checked in on various polling places. One point we had addressed the previous day when discussing logistics was what kind of access I’d be afforded at the various precincts: I would at all times avail myself of exactly the privileges afforded the general public. Every polling place has a public viewing area.

From those public viewing spots there’d be no talking to people waiting in line, no photography, nothing to disrupt the ritual of democracy. (I don’t think lending my pen to Dave Boutette, who asked me for it to fill out his voter application, broke the spirit of the rules.)

Postema and I had agreed to meet at Slauson Middle School to start the day. I wasn’t sure where exactly he’d meant, and figured it would not be smart to just barge into the polls asking, “Anybody seen Stephen Postema?” At 6:58 a.m., two minutes before the polls opened, I received a text message clarifying the situation: “Postema is in here conducting the masses.” [Full Story]

Unofficial results from the Washtenaw County website indicate a victory for Easthope. Easthope, 21,099; Gutenberg 18,825; Write-in, 480. Miss Saigon was not officially registered as a write-in candidate, so any votes cast for her will not be tallied.

At various polling places around the city of Ann Arbor, the colorful campaign signs for candidates stuck into the ground provided a nice complement to the spectacular fall foliage still stuck to the trees. But it wasn’t signs that impressed The Chronicle most – it was the live human beings offering literature in the 15th District Court judicial race. Many of them were family.

We met Eric Gutenberg’s parents, Erwin and Barbara, at Bach Elementary. At Thurston Elementary we met Christopher Easthope’s mother, Mary. And at Tappan Middle School we chatted with his sister, Tracey Easthope, and his nephew, Luke Desprez. And we met plenty of other Gutenberg or Easthope supporters at other polling places as well. [Full Story]

To capture the experience of Ann Arbor voters today, The Chronicle is tagging along with city attorney Stephen Postema as he drops by polling places around the city, filling his role as one of three election commissioners. The Chronicle won’t be given special access to areas reserved for election inspectors, but we will be covering a lot of territory. Check back for periodic updates throughout the day – with the most recent posts at the top of this article – and add your own observations in the comments section.

9:30 p.m. Still at Slauson, where results from Ward 5, Precinct 4 have now come in. The 15th District Court judicial race remains tight: Easthope 623, Gutenberg 648. For city council, Hohnke drew 1,259 … [Full Story]

"You'll need a partner for this one." Bob Schoeni and Gretchen Spreitzer demonstrate a stretch during the group warm-up session.

On Sunday, the northeast corner of Burns Park was already teeming with humanity at 1 p.m. That was the start time that Ann Arbor Active Against ALS [A2A3] had scheduled for its kickoff fundraiser: a family field day. David Lowenschuss, one of the organizers, pointed out Bob Schoeni for us among the crowd waiting for the formal start to the festivities on a crispy overcast day. Schoeni had provided the impetus for the formation of the A2A3 nonprofit, when he was diagnosed with ALS in July.

A few minutes later, when Christopher Taylor took the microphone to help get the field day fun started, the gray skies had gone from spitting a few misty drops of rain to a steady sprinkle. It was hard to escape the conclusion that it was really raining. Added to a breezy day that saw temperatures in the low 50s, the rain meant that Taylor’s declaration, “It’s a beautiful day!” easily drew the chuckles it deserved from the crowd. [Full Story]

You’re driving along I-94 and you see a McCain-Palin campaign sign lying in the middle of the road. For the sake of argument, let’s say you pull over and pick it up – because it’s a safety hazard. Or else because you don’t think McCain and Palin are in the middle of the road on the political spectrum and you don’t want people to get the wrong idea. Whatever the reason, let’s say you’ve got a McCain-Palin sign in the trunk of your car. Now what? [Full Story]

Editor’s note: You’ve seen The Chronicle’s photos of Halloween on Main Street in a previous entry. Now forget that and take a look at the event through the eyes of a professional photographer. Myra Klarman, who was the official photographer for this year’s Ann Arbor Summer Festival, has graciously allowed The Chronicle to publish some of her work documenting today’s festivities. Enjoy.

Number 1

[Full Story]

This little airplane was puttering up and down Main Street, diving into stores to fuel up on candy.

If you happened to be in downtown Ann Arbor today, well, chances are you were either giving out candy, wearing a Halloween costume or walking past any of the dozens of trick-or-treaters who were exponentially increasing the Main Street area’s cuteness quotient.

The Chronicle was there too, capturing on camera a few of the spooks and spiders roaming the streets with their parents on a glorious autumn afternoon. We also stopped by Mrs. Lovett’s Meat Pies, usually known as Arcade Barbers, to check out the amazing Sweeney Todd transformation that was previously noted by one of our Stopped.Watched. correspondents. [Full Story]