2008 Woodie Awards
Beyond the light of the streetlamp
Maria Schmitt
Issue date: 9/6/07 Section: Focus
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A row of parked cars line Broad Street and models stand watch in shop windows. In the distance a siren wails, echoing through the empty streets and alleys of downtown Hillsdale.
It is 9:30 p.m. and the damp atmosphere is broken only by the occasional passing car or cyclist streaking through the yellow-spotted blackness. Two clock towers stand watch over the city.
The whole town seems paused - waiting to resume play.
Streetlamps and window displays pierce surrounding darkness, and the few open businesse saffirm the heavy, absorbing truth: downtown Hillsdale is empty by night.
Despite it's emptiness, discoveries can be made.
Abandoned construction buckets and tools hide under scaffolding and a souped-up golf cart rests in a backyard.
The Gathering Coffee House and Coney's & Swirls shop fizzle out as the night continues.
A few dedicated souls mill around the Annex.
Owner Richard Wunsch attempts to bring life to the downtown night scene.
"For one thing, there's no more bars in this town," he said.
The Hunt Club and Savarino's restaurants serve alcohol, but neither draw crowds of people long into the night like the bar scene in Ann Arbor, Mich., he said.
Wednesday through Saturday nights, Wunsch's Annex hosts such activities as open microphone, karaoke and live band music, all which seem to draw less of a crowd as the years go by, he said.
During the Annex's first year of business there were always people at the shop but the number of students coming downtown has since dwindled, Wunsch said.
He sits cross-legged in a Global Wildlife Center T-shirt, wire-rim spectacles and fiddles with a mechanical pencil. His continued efforts at bringing students downtown at night compete with what he calls a self-contained campus.
"I know the college is very well self-contained," he said. "It's supposed to be that way. Here the college is up there, up the hill."
A more active nighttime bar scene would bring people to the city, Wunsch said.
It is 9:30 p.m. and the damp atmosphere is broken only by the occasional passing car or cyclist streaking through the yellow-spotted blackness. Two clock towers stand watch over the city.
The whole town seems paused - waiting to resume play.
Streetlamps and window displays pierce surrounding darkness, and the few open businesse saffirm the heavy, absorbing truth: downtown Hillsdale is empty by night.
Despite it's emptiness, discoveries can be made.
Abandoned construction buckets and tools hide under scaffolding and a souped-up golf cart rests in a backyard.
The Gathering Coffee House and Coney's & Swirls shop fizzle out as the night continues.
A few dedicated souls mill around the Annex.
Owner Richard Wunsch attempts to bring life to the downtown night scene.
"For one thing, there's no more bars in this town," he said.
The Hunt Club and Savarino's restaurants serve alcohol, but neither draw crowds of people long into the night like the bar scene in Ann Arbor, Mich., he said.
Wednesday through Saturday nights, Wunsch's Annex hosts such activities as open microphone, karaoke and live band music, all which seem to draw less of a crowd as the years go by, he said.
During the Annex's first year of business there were always people at the shop but the number of students coming downtown has since dwindled, Wunsch said.
He sits cross-legged in a Global Wildlife Center T-shirt, wire-rim spectacles and fiddles with a mechanical pencil. His continued efforts at bringing students downtown at night compete with what he calls a self-contained campus.
"I know the college is very well self-contained," he said. "It's supposed to be that way. Here the college is up there, up the hill."
A more active nighttime bar scene would bring people to the city, Wunsch said.
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