My Old Ann Arbor Loft:
Now a "Motor City Crib"
according to Metro Times
Metro Times featured my old roommate Chris Bathgate, rising star in the folk music scene in a recent article.

Bathgate's Ann Arbor home is a co-op and former dancehall located above Wazoo Records. In a time when downtown Ann Arbor is beginning to resemble Royal Oak, the Arbor Vitae co-op is one of the few remaining remnants of the city's freer times, circa the 1960s and early '70s. Arbor Vitae started off as a dancehall (there’s a half inch of sand under the floor to deaden sound), then it became a corset factory and even a miniature golf course until the late, self-proclaimed peace planner Rich Ahern turned the loft — with soaring, two-story wood ceilings! — into a community living space.

Check out the article. Great photos!

And here's the column I wrote about Arbor Vitae. (It should be "Soul of the City," not "Sould of the City", a column I wrote the summer before my year of "spiritual madness"). I wrote the piece after falling in love with Arbor Vitae and its inhabitants. I tracked down Rich and soon after he became my "spacelord." Cue dark, ominous music for anticlimax...Rich just rented the space, and didn't own the land, so he couldn't have been a landlord. Hence, spacelord.

More Arbor Vitae photos.

Labels: a2, Ann Arbor, Arbor Vitae, Chris Bathgate, Loft Living, Rich Ahern