Pizza changes on Liberty

Big changes in a small world, Liberty between downtown and Scio Township: a sudden closing and an omen of things to come.

A reader reports that Pizza Pino is now closed on Liberty at First Street. Despite the name, Pizza Pino was one of those shops that had pretty much everything on the menu, including sandwiches and seafood. They were open until ridiculously late, which made them an ideal after-party destination for nearby bars and clubs.

Their single-slice sales were usually cold pizza under glass, which they would put back in the oven and warm up — not my favorite way to eat pizza, though for some reason I’m usually okay with it when NYPD does it. Still, I will miss this place’s garlic knots at 2am after a good show at the Blind Pig (just like, someday soon, I’m sure I will miss the Blind Pig).

“But their site is still up, B-Dub,” you’re saying. This seems to be a common malady among independently owned takeout shops. Bell’s Pizza has been gone for a year, and yet if you google, there are still sites that will gladly take your money to order from them. The end, no moral.

“Mobil Paint, 1967.” Ann Arbor District Library, CC BY-NC-SA

 

Pino’s location was apparently a house once upon a time, later a gas station. Eventually it became a paint store, which outlasted its beloved but bygone neighbor Schlenker Hardware on the block, but finally moved to South Industrial. This opened the space for Pizza Pino about ten years back, a harbinger of Downtown’s shift from service businesses to dining and retail.

Further west on Liberty, Buster’s convenience store is becoming Buscemi’s, a legendary Detroit area chain:

Store already open for liquor wine craft Beer (pizza and sub will open end of August)

Posted by Buscemis of Ann Arbor on Friday, August 4, 2017

Depending on how you look at it, Buscemi’s are either party stores with exceptionally good pizza, or very well-stocked pizza and sub shops. There’s been a convenience store here for years. When we were younger, it was called Liberty Market, but was eventually rebranded Buster’s after the owners closed the original Buster’s Market closed at Packard and Platt. (The site is now a Rite Aid.)

I would provide further details, but I have a problem. Every time I turn into this shopping center, I have to go to Chela’s. Sorry.

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