OCTOBER 2, 2026 ON MY CORNER MEET YOUR VENDOR SNOW Groundcover contributor It was a hot day. I sat down on Leon Odom, Groundcover vendor No. 500 In one sentence, who are you? I’m a person who is taking a direction with life that people don’t understand. If you were a character from a movie, book or TV show, who would you be and why? I don’t think I’d be anybody. I’d be myself. When you die, what do you want to be remembered for? Being myself and a good person. What book, show or movie that you have read/seen recently would you recommend, and why? Dictionary. You can learn a lot. If you could travel back in time, what time period would you travel back to and why? The 70s, everything was good growing up. If you could live anywhere in the world for a year, where would it be? Texas. If you could choose two famous people to have dinner with, who would they be? My mother and my grandmother. If you had to teach a class on one thing, what would you teach? Life. If you could give a piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be? Don’t be scared by change. Tell us about an experience or person that/who changed your life in some way(s). My mother. What is the reason you get up in the morning? God put me on the wake-up list, so I cannot make the same mistakes I made yesterday. What is something you would not want to change about yourself? My state of mind. What is your happiest memory from this past year? Change. the curb while waiting for the bus. Apparently, a bus that was going to be very late. At that moment, along came my next interviewee. The Uneasy Environmentalist presented a problem that became my focus for the entirety of a bus ride. She seemed frustrated about something. That was my feeling when I walked past her to wait for the bus. With a ten dollar bill in her hand, a mask on her face, and a firm set of pigtails, she whisked down the street past me in a melodramatic frenzy. As I was eating my salad, she waltzed over to me and asked me what was going on with the bus route. She then went on to vent a bit of her frustration to me, stating, “My phone and everything has been so messed up since I got back from Europe.” Now, I was curious! This lady just got back from Europe?! … I inquired, “Oh you were in Europe? What were you doing there?” We continued to dialogue and as I conversed with her, she began to expound to me about her struggles with being immuno-compromised, among other struggles, since returning to the States from Europe. I found irony and misfortune in this for her since she was such a brilliant lady, who had a very ostentatious career title that I honestly cannot recall in its entirety at the moment. In short, she is an environmental specialist whose line of work has led her to travel the world. She went on to tell me how she “has to leave her place of residence because it's infected with mold.” To which I responded, ”Oh, will you be able to find a new place on such short notice?” This seems like the only viable option for her regardless, because she is immuno-compromised so, of course, a mold-infested residence is not suitable for any extended amount of time in her current condition. Of course, in my inner dialogue, I am coming from a place of personally experiencing the housing limitation crisis in Washtenaw County. It's unfathomable to me GROUNDCOVER NEWS The uneasy environmentalist for someone to be struggling so profoundly. To be sick in the wake of a good cause. Adding a potential housing crisis to that makes the situation even more precarious for her. I resonate with the struggle I saw this woman having. Specifically due to how I emphatically experienced becoming very sick when first coming to Ann Arbor. In the waning stage of our elongated conversation, I expressed how I had gotten stranded in Ann Arbor and had COVID, a UTI and severe dehydration all at one time upon arriving in this city. This hit me like a flash flood, in parallel congruence to what she seems to have experienced upon arriving back. A talk with a stranger and a spontaneous conversation on a bus elicited attention that day for the everyday struggle we may all at times face. Be open; a precarious meeting may change your mind or life today to some degree or another. Or, if nothing more, you may make a difference just taking time to hear of the struggles someone else may face. 3 Heads up! Ann Arbor is changing TERRI DEMAR Groundcover vendor No. 322 Ann Arbor is going through growing pains. Although we are trying to modernize Ann Arbor like a bigger city, we might have to wait to see the direction it ends up in. They are making commercials to bring people back into the city. I’m going to treat Groundcover like it's the new Ann Arbor News. Because the Ann Arbor News will be strictly online starting in December. That’s what MLive announced. Ann Arbor is still in the process of growing. LIVE bar and the proposed 12-story development is a good example. They’re going to hold off on the development, for now. Watershed Hospitality Group, the restaurant group that owns Good Time Charley’s, Peridot and The Last Word, thinks that the lack of consistent foot traffic and flow of people coming into town for events could be a liability; it should be more consistent with traffic flow in the downtown area. It would be a bad look for the town because we are in the process of becoming a bigger city, and it is better to wait for more consistency. Surrounding businesses think that the building of the 12-story high rise will make prices higher until things stabilize. They will be back with serious consideration in one or two years when they break ground. Timing is everything. When they do build it, they’ll most likely have The Last Word on the top roof as a cocktail lounge, a coffee shop, Peridot might move there, and potentially other shops. Most of the building will be housing — Ann Arbor “affordable” housing (60% of Area Median Income) as well as market-rate apartments. The “affordable housing” is different from public housing; this will not be housing for people exiting houselessness but for people who have income but cannot pay market-rate rent for that area downtown. As far as Geezer Night, an event for seniors that have shaped this town to give them a place to go and chill and dance to rock’n’roll music by local musicians (now held at LIVE), there is a possibility that it will be at the Blind Pig if it has to move. This will be up to the booking manager. As of now The Blind Pig might not have the capacity to host such a large event, so they might have to make some upgrades. On September 8 the Ann Arbor City Council approved the sale of the “Kline’s lot” (S. Ashley and W. William) to a developer who plans to redevelop the lot for 450 market rate housing units and commercial space on the ground floor. One of my customers talked to me about how upset she is about losing the open parking. She told me that people who don’t live downtown rely on open parking lots as a safe place to park when they come to walk their dogs and enjoy downtown businesses. They don’t want to park in the parking garage. They like convenience and safety. Are we ready for these big transformations?
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