One of the first shops to unionize was on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. Starbucks recently announced a number of closings and surprisingly enough, that shop is one of the stores being closed. Corporate swears the closing has nothing to do with the union.

Apparently a shop operating successfully for over 20 years in a high visibility, heavy foot trafficked area of a college town is just a recipe for failure.

To be fair, Indiana basically is Florida, just minus a few alligators.

Planted three paw paw saplings this spring and it looks like they're going to make it. If all goes well, I'll have fruit to share in ten years or so!

That's a first class joke. I could use a coach like you to help me keep people in their seats and not heading towards the emergency exits!

"When they finally dragged the ‘corpse’ out they realised the blunder. The officers had a big laugh about it. It was a very dirty, broken and overused sex doll.”

Um, ewww?

It's a birch, I think a European white birch. It shouldn't be losing leaves this early. Look closely at the bark and see if you see a series of holes. If so, it's infested with Birch borers, and the tree is probably a goner. With all of that being said, the best thing the homeowner can do is hire a certified arborist to evaluate the tree.

Sounds like clubs wanted more clarification on what exactly they were voting on, which is a good sign. I'm glad to see they're doing their due diligence before moving forward, regardless of which way the vote goes.

Traverse City, up at the tip of the Lower Peninsula, holds a Cherry Fest every year and also produces some of the best wine in the country. The Great Lakes (Lake Michigan in particular) help to moderate temperatures, and we get a good amount of precipitation every year. Our cherries and apples are outstanding.

source: born and raised Michigander

Dammit, first unique post on this sub and it had to be about the creek puppies beating Le Rouge?!

Seriously, good game. You guys are really tough this season.

a big part of the hesitation is exponentially increased cost as travel moves from small regional “bus” leagues to more frequent long distance travel.

I think that can be addressed by profit sharing from the league. One of the things I learned from "Welcome to Wrexham" (which of course makes me fully qualified to be a club manager), when you're promoted in the English system, your club gets a higher "allowance" which you can use to offset higher salaries, travel costs, etc. I'm not sure where that income comes from (TV revenue, maybe?), and clearly the USL isn't making squat from it's current deal, but in the future that might be a way to help the smaller clubs handle the higher expenses.

if Madison moved up, they wouldn’t be able to increase attendance much without a bigger venue

Even the popular clubs like Forward Madison don't sell out every game, so you have to figure there's room for improvement in attendance and moving up would attract new/casual fans. Look at Cincinnati or Nashville as examples. They drew good crowds in the USL days, but really got big crowds when they moved up to MLS. Detroit has had consistently larger crowds since moving up from NISA, and that's without a change in venue.

That being said, I think every club should be looking to improve their housing situation until they have their own, high quality SSS. As much as I dislike MLS, I give them credit for their stadium requirements, and have to admit I'm jealous of some of their facilities. I love Keyworth, but would also love to see DCFC build their own place with some of the charms of the old stadiums.

So the TLDR response is I agree there would be major hurdles, but in the long run I think it can work. It'll be interesting to see how the vote goes.

"Should" is highly personal. Do you really want to have a conversation with them about it? If yes, then yes, you probably should, but you'll want to be careful about how you approach it. There could be a variety of reasons why they didn't tell you, and they may be very worried about how you would react to the news. If I were in your shoes, I'd open the conversation with something like, "I want you both to know that no matter what happens, I love you both dearly and you will always be my mom and dad. I'd really like to sit down with you both and find out more about my adoption."

They might need a little time to gather their thoughts, but as long as you reassure them up front that you aren't interested in replacing them with your biological parents, it should go well.

Agree 100%.My only concern is that I just don't have much time to post on here, let alone truly moderate things, and I'd hate to see it die as a result of me not putting in enough content.

That being said, I should really post the power rankings, even though I shudder to think about how low DCFC has to have sunk by now...

That's always a possibility. I get the feeling that there's strong interest in some of the ownership groups, and the "unnamed source" specifically said that the vote isn't dead, just delayed. I'm still hopeful it will happen.

Yeah. I'm sure most will just shift over to the MLS squad. I hate to imagine if the same thing happened to my club.

That's what I get for trying to ID a tree on my phone. Glad you figured it out, though!

Playoffs are looking to be damn interesting this year. Every one of the top four in the east have looked like world beaters at one point or another, and the next four are all teams capable of beating anyone on any given day. Out west, there's virtually no drop-off between the top five, although the next three seem pretty vulnerable.

Really looking forward to it (assuming Detroit hangs on to that playoff spot, of course!)

Good to hear. I'm generally not a fan of CBS sports coverage, and Paramount+ is terrible (had it free for a few months and dropped it like a bad habit when the trial was finished) , but you're right that more exposure can only be good for the league. Guess I'll be swapping out the ESPN subscription in spring!

Gotta feel for Charleston... >

For the fans of Charleston, sure. But I get just a touch of pleasure seeing Pirmann lose...

Ah, I'm thinking of Memphis. Those southernish cities are all the same to me ;)

Considering the level of talent on that squad, it's probably legit for your coach to be on the hot seat. I don't know if I'd can him just yet, but if underperforming continues into next season, I wouldn't give him long.

Really great article. Someone needs to buy Michael a Pistons ticket!