I’m not at all complaining — or psychoanalyzing — that I got an ear hair trimmer for Christmas. That said, there is some evidence of Grinchlike behavior in Lawrence this holiday shopping season. Sales tax numbers for the key holiday shopping period were down in Lawrence — and more so ...
Crab and lobster are essential foods because I’ve been told it is uncouth to put that much butter directly into your mouth. In other words, I like a lot of butter on my shellfish, and a soon-to-open Lawrence restaurant is betting lots of other people will too. Signs have gone up for ...
There aren’t big business jets that land on the grass runway at the Vinland airport. But there sure are a lot of jobs landing at the country airstrip between Baldwin City and Lawrence. About every couple of years, it seems like McFarlane Aviation builds another 20,000-square-foot building, ...
After a more than 20-year wait for the completion of the eastern leg of the South Lawrence Trafficway, it was only natural to wonder what that bypass project would draw to the area. We are getting a pretty clear answer on one front now: large new apartment complexes. Plans have been filed for ...
There have been a few times that I’ve wished for a “reverse” St. Patrick’s Day Parade. (Reverse hitting “post” on that Facebook photo, reverse getting too close to the Sandbar float, reverse the hypothesis that all types of green dye are easily washable.) That’s not remotely close ...
I don’t care how cold it is, it is perfectly appropriate to plan for more ice cream. (I’ll have to put a bed on the porch, but I absolutely can fit another freezer in the house.) A Lawrence hamburger shop indeed is planning for more ice cream, and it will be moving to a new location to make ...
When somebody tells me their product is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I usually say: “Challenge accepted. Bring me a loaf of fresh bread and four pounds of butter.” But what do you do to improve upon sliced bread? A longtime downtown bread shop thinks it knows: Get a bigger space ...
While we are dealing with a multitude of problems related to living in a deep freeze, Douglas County homeowners soon may get a reminder that living in an oven can be challenging too. Indeed, Lawrence’s housing market is a bit like a rapidly heating oven, and property owners later this month ...
Everybody knows that the pandemic battered some of our favorite businesses in 2020. Now, we are getting one of our first glimpses at just how many. The answer in downtown Lawrence is: A historically high number. Downtown Lawrence’s retail vacancy rate at the end of 2020 was 12.5%, according ...
I don’t know what people are doing with so many candles during the pandemic. (They definitely present some challenges. I caught three masks on fire just trying to blow out my birthday cake.) Regardless, business is booming at downtown Lawrence’s Waxman Candles. It is banging and clanking, ...
It is rare that I ever remember the ending of a story that begins with the question "What are we going to do with those 30 bottles of wine on the shelf?" But Troy Clark remembers the end of his story, and it actually is on display as a new winery in downtown Lecompton. Clark and his wife, ...
There’s tough news on both the local television front and the local sports scene today. Lawrence’s cable company has confirmed that it is closing down its local sports channel that broadcasts everything from high school games to a host of KU sporting events. After word of the pending ...
January sure seems like it didn’t get the memo that 2021 was supposed to be a bounce-back year. Lawrence City Hall got its first sales tax check of the new year, and the best you can say about it is at least it didn’t bounce. It wasn’t that bad, but it also wasn’t anything to brag ...
There’s a joke circulating among Lawrence real estate agents these days: Tom Brady has been in more Super Bowls than Lawrence has houses for sale. “It is not quite that bad yet, but it is close,” said John Huntington Jr., president of the Lawrence Board of Realtors. Hopefully the next ...
About one out of every 10 jobs in Lawrence and Douglas County disappeared in 2020, according to the latest report from the Kansas Department of Labor. That’s already a pretty striking statistic on our pandemic times, but there’s an even more startling one if you dig deeper into the ...
Finally, I have found a piano I’m qualified to play. Its keys are frozen and its upper cabinet has been converted into a wine rack. It is one of the items in North Lawrence’s new secondhand shop, Reclaimed by Michele. Owner Michele Johnson says the shop at 628 N. Second St. will be a ...
I know one sure-fire way to grow the revenues of a glass company is to pay for my green fees, buy me a beverage and point me toward the fairway with the most homes. Evidently there are other ways too, as an East Lawrence glass company is undertaking a major expansion. I’ve also got updates ...
New efforts to fight COVID-19 appear likely to add more manufacturing jobs at a Lawrence-based plant. A local economic development official confirmed Tuesday that Plastikon Industries has won a key job that is expected to produce 50 new positions at its high-tech plant in the East Hills ...
When I’m at the Douglas County 4-H Fair watching my children’s badly behaved 4-H hogs, I take a special type of comfort in ordering a pulled pork sandwich from one of the food trailers along the midway. Now, I can report one of those longstanding food trailers has opened its own full-time ...
The idea of a food find in 2020 was a bit unusual. There were some days early in the pandemic that you were happy to find a crate of ramen and a bottle of ketchup on the grocery shelves. (With candlelight and a mask placed over your eyes, you would swear you were at the finest Italian ...