This is the next house east from my last entry, also on the south side of Prospect between Clifford and Lathrop, also on the driveway apron. It would be nice to think that perhaps they were doing all the driveways around this time and therefore I could date the eternally undateable William Haskins, but sadly I find it doubtful. The style of the Haskins stamps just doesn’t suggest 1980s to me.
This stamp is on the ramp that connects North Aurelius Road to East Malcolm X Street, on the west side of Aurelius. This is the only way to get from Aurelius to Malcolm X now that they have removed the ramp that used to serve the northbound traffic.
There are a lot of L & L 2002 stamps in the vicinity of the Aurelius overpasses, probably all the result of the project that reduced Aurelius from four lanes to two.
The street sign makes the claim that this is the 1900 block of Malcolm X Street, which really stretches the definition of a “block.” It’s more of a service road between the two streets than a proper part of Malcolm X. Then again, very little of Malcolm X Street can be called “proper” given how disjointed it is.
This stamp is on a driveway on the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Leslie and Horton. It’s what I call a ghost driveway; the house it belonged to was demolished sometime between 2008 and 2011, along with another one next door. It was one of those old houses-turned-businesses that line so much of the Avenue here. The city has an account for a business called “Digital Photo Magic” at this address, indicating delinquent taxes for 1999 and 2000, so they may have been here when this stamp was made. I can’t find much else about the history of the house except that in the 1950s and early ’60s it was home to a real estate agency called Brennan Realty Co.
Nothing eventful today, just a nice L & L stamp from the east side of the 200 block of Regent Street between Michigan and Kalamazoo.
There are lots of L & L stamps from 2002 along the South Clemens/North Aurelius transition, in the vicinity of the 496 and railroad overpasses. I think they are probably connected with the project that reduced Aurelius to two lanes to four as part of a traffic calming measure. This one is in front of Half Barn Farm, an urban farm on the southeast corner of South Clemens Avenue and Elizabeth Street.
Half Barn Farm is one of many urban farms in the Urbandale neighborhood. It replaced a demolished house in the 2010s.
This one is in front of the vacant lot at the southwest corner of East Michigan Avenue and Charles Street, which puts it just outside the Lansing city limits in Lansing Township. It’s on the apron of one of the two driveways that used to lead into the parking lot of Theio’s diner.
Most people interested enough in Lansing to read this blog probably already know all about Theio’s, but for the sake of anyone else, it was a 24-hour diner that had been a neighborhood fixture since the 1960s. It was the only 24-hour diner in this part of town and for at least some part of my time in Lansing it might have been the only one, period. I was in there countless times, probably starting in 1999, when this stamp was still pretty new. My visits there spanned two husbands and several circles of friends. It was at its best in the earlier years, though there was an especially happy period for a few years in the 2010s when a crowd of people from the Lansing Pinball League would usually go there for conversation and hijinks after league got out.
In 2017 a new owner bought the place and it went very rapidly downhill. After a short time it was sold again, and things got even worse. The newest owner fired most of the longtime employees (and apparently forgot to get the social media passwords first, because their official Facebook page started to post angrily and entertainingly against the new ownership for a little while), the service got worse, and they started to cut back on offerings (one of the league folks tried to order a waffle and was told they had sold the waffle machine). At some point they turned around and sold it to yet another owner; Then the really unfortunate change happened: they quit being 24 hours and switched to serving breakfast and lunch only. A good chunk of their business came from the post-bar crowd and other night owls, so this was a bizarre move. Once that happened, it ended our pinball league after-parties and I never went there again. The end was very near at that point.
In March of 2018, Theio’s was condemned by the township building inspector for electrical issues. It never reopened. In October, the owner, probably encouraged by the real estate speculation that has been going on in this neighborhood, demolished the venerable restaurant and tried to put the land up for sale for something hilarious. I seem to recall it was listed for something laughably high, like $400,000, but don’t cite me on that. It’s not currently for sale as far as I can see, so it just sits there looking sad and reminding me of what I’m missing – what everyone around here is missing.
RIP Theio’s. Your coffee was as strong as a day-old kitten, but your French toast was faultless.
This stamp is at the edge of the street, on the driveway belonging to Innova Salon and Day Spa, on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Allen and Shepard. L & L stamps are plentiful; I am more interested in the building this is in front of. Like several of the businesses in this stretch of Michigan, it is a big old house that has been converted into retail.
It has an impressive second floor porch, and the surprising part is that it isn’t original to the house. Google’s street view of the house taken in 2007 shows it with no porch on the second story (and thus looking like a more standard-for-the-neighborhood American Foursquare). No windows on the second story either; they apparently got covered over at some point in its retail history. The street view from 2008 shows it being renovated, with windows reappearing on the second floor and the previous first-floor storefront addition now absent. It looks much handsomer now than it did before the renovation.
I’m not sure when it went from residential to retail, but it spent a few decades as MacLaughlin’s Piano Mart (later MacLaughlin’s Piano and Organ Mart). On November 30, 1980, a Lansing State Journal ad reads, “DOUG BROWN MUSIC (formerly MacLaughlin) – serving Lansing over 30 years.” By 1997 the address was home to Print King. There really does seem to have been a time when this stretch of Michigan Avenue was the print shop district. I can think of at least four former print shops in the vicinity. A photo in the city’s property records dated March 2001 shows the Print King signage in place but a “FOR SALE” sign in the window. The 2007 Google street view shows Rapid Appliance Service here instead. Innova Salon moved in soon after.
Here is a pair of L & L stamps, on the west side of North Holmes Street between Jerome and Vine, in front of a parking lot. They are side by side, one facing the sidewalk and one facing the street, on what probably used to be a driveway. There is a fence in front of it now.
This stamp is in front of the large building on the southeast corner of East Michigan Avenue and Regent Street. The building was originally an A&P, but I know it best as H.C. Berger, a photocopier dealer. I cut through their parking lot countless times heading home from the bus stop after grad school classes. According to the City Pulse “New in Town” column on November 27, 2013, H.C. Berger had been there since 1973.
In 2013 the Berger family sold the building and H.C. Berger moved to Okemos. Today they seem to have either merged with or been bought by A.B. Dick Document Solutions of Grand Rapids. Their Web site has both names in the logo, but most of the text including the “About Us” page just refers to them as A.B. Dick.
At that time, a convenience store from down the street called Michigan Mart moved in. As reported in the above “New in Town” article, the new owners talked big about expanding it into a local grocery store with produce and a deli counter and the whole bit. Instead, disappointingly, it limped along with largely bare shelves as a party store in a way-too-big building before closing again. It has had a “for lease” sign in the window for ages now gathering dust. (The back of the building and its ample parking is used by Michigan Motors, a very odd supposed used car lot that does not actually appear to sell any cars.) One beneficial thing Michigan Mart did was to remove part of the corrugated siding from the building, allowing the nicer flat stone siding to surface.
I’m surprised I haven’t done this one yet. It’s out in front of The Avenue, the bar where my pinball league met when there were pinball leagues, which is on the north side of Michigan at Fairview. Not sure why L & L is just “L L” this time, but I’m sure it’s them. There’s a lot of variety in their stamps.
I spent several hours in the emergency room today for what turned out to probably be food poisoning, and I still don’t feel too great, so this is going to be a short entry. I’m thinking to do a bit more research on this location later on.
For now, though, I’ll just note that in 2000 this was still Raupp Campfitter, the last remaining location of what had once been a small Michigan chain of camping supply stores. I never had reason to go there, but I get the impression that it was well loved by those who did have reason to go there. At this time of year, when the ivy has died back, you can still see the RAUPP letters over the rear entrance. It closed in 2004 and was replaced by a cybercafe called Girls Gone Wired, which rather quickly (fortunately) became just Gone Wired. My grad school buddy and I used to meet up there for “grading parties.” Eventually, under the same ownership, it evolved into The Avenue Cafe, which at first was a cafe by day and bar by night, and eventually just gave up on the last vestiges of the cafe aspect and became a straight up, evening-hours-only bar and live music venue. And, of course, the best pinball venue in Lansing.
