The long-closed Ann Arbor Cyclery, at Packard and Wells, has recently seen some freshening up. Photo below taken yesterday morning during my commute:
The new issue of the Ann Arbor Observer, which you should seek out every month for actual reporting on openings and closings, reports that this will be a second location for Argus Farm Stop, a locally-grown produce/meat/dairy store. That’s simplifying it a lot, you might want to hit the link for details.
Here’s the space in 2011 when Ann Arbor Cyclery was still open:
At the other end of the block, Real Baked Goods is becoming Coffee Works Ann Arbor:
This is an Ann Arbor location of Coffee Works (in Milan). Roos Roast calls their original Rosewood location Roos Roast Coffee Works but are a separate concern. “Coffee Works” just sounds cool. It implies craftsmanship.
When we were kids this little flatiron spot was a Chinese takeout/delivery place called China on the Run, then Bev’s Caribbean Kitchen, and then Wise Guys, who specialized in Chicago hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches. I am sure I missed some things between Bev’s and Wise Guys when I didn’t live here. (Thank you FB friend Melissa for the heads-up!)
There’s also a vacuum store, that was here before I was born and will probably be here after I die, because vacuums are a perpetual need. I often remark that I should have become a database administrator, but real talk — this vacuum place is still there! Do you remember when there was a 7-Eleven at Carpenter & Packard? (You would have to remember quite a ways back.) It lasted a few short years, but that building has thrived ever since as, yes, a vacuum cleaner store! Possibly another branch of this store.
Internet shopping has laid waste to music/DVD and bookstores, electronics stores, mattress stores, but not vacuum stores. Yet. I’m sure there are engineers in Palo Alto right now figuring out how to store household dust in cloud arrays. They will monetize by offering affordable subscription plans and create the “Chore as a Service” market.
Wow, the Arbor Vacuum at Carpenter & Packard used to be a 7-Eleven? I was amazed after I moved to this area in 2009 that there was only a single 7-Eleven in all of Ann Arbor and Ypsi (at Hewitt & Ellsworth), before the downtown ones opened. My wife & I are partial to slushes/Icees/Slurpees and the like, so the lack of 7-Elevens was strange. We rely on Speedway a lot.
It’s funny because I just mentioned to my wife the other day that I thought it was amazing that the Arbor Vacuum stays open. They never seem to have much business. I guess there’s still enough of a market for vacuum repair and knife sharpening?
I remember that building being built on the corner, I remember there being a 7-Eleven in it, I remember going there for Slutpees a few times, and I remember it closing and becoming the vacuum place. In the annals of abrupt and dramatic changes it ranks right up there with the Mediterranean takeout place on the other corner of C&P that recently closed and reopened as a barber shop — because the proprietor was really a barber by training and got sick of running a restaurant? I think that’s what the Observer said.
Ha. Restaurant to barber shop. That’s a good story.
“Slutpees”: either a creative term or the best typo ever.
Ugh. Typing on a glass rectangle.