New kids on the block

Glen Arbor Sun

Glen Arbor now boasts pottery, Pilates, a ringmaster and Chinese dominoes

Here’s a vacation dilemma: Lets say you and the family have spent four days baking on the beach, soaking in Sleeping Bear Bay, dining at all the fine restaurants around Glen Arbor, and shopping for everything from t-shirts to cherry salsa. Your sunburned hide won’t let you return to the water’s edge. So what do you do next?

You visit Campfire Pottery. On the eastern edge of downtown Glen Arbor, across M-22 from Riverfront Pizza and Crystal River Outfitters, Katy Wiesen has furnished a colorful and eclectic, family-friendly paint-your-own pottery studio in the space formerly occupied by Maybings. This is Campfire Pottery’s third summer, but first in this ideal location.

Family reunions, ladies nights out, birthday parties — even teenagers who are too cool to visit galleries with their parents — will enjoy painting and decorating glasses, bowls, wine chillers, piggybanks or toy boats on the nearly dozen tables inside the shop or while sitting outside. And yes, you’re allowed to get messy. Paper napkin rolls at every table await your creativity.

Katy says that some customers paint for half an hour, others return day after day, before their work bakes in the kiln for 10 hours. Once cooled, Campfire Pottery will ship your new mug or bowl home for a minimal fee and guarantee a five-day turnaround.

The idea for Campfire Pottery sprung from her husband Matt’s trips as a child to visit his grandmother in Naples, Fla., where he and his siblings looked forward to visiting a paint-your-own pottery studio there. Now they’ve brought this dynamic form of family entertainment back home to Michigan, and they hope to make Campfire Pottery a destination to which people return over and over again, and one that will stay open on weekends during the winter holidays.

Matt owns Crystal River Outfitters across the street (they’ll supply, and transport, many of the kayaks used during this year’s M-22 Challenge), and the young couple hopes their ventures will increase walking traffic on this side of town.

Working the core

Considered fringe or at least relatively unknown until last decade, Pilates is now found in towns across America (and not just California, or New York City, where German immigrant Joseph Pilates landed in 1925). Pilates was born a sickly child but worked to become a gymnast and boxer. He opened his first Pilates studio in the Big Apple in 1926 and helped elite dancers recover from injuries. Not until his protégés fanned out across the country following his death did Pilates begin to be understood by the mainstream. The activity works the body’s core muscles, and unlike yoga, which stresses repetition, this workout calls for only six-eight reps through hundreds of different exercises, either on mats or on an elaborate wunda chair.

Lorie Osinski’s studio in Glen Arbor’s Village Sampler Plaza offers six classes per week: beginner classes on Mondays and Fridays at 8:30 a.m., intermediate classes on Tuesdays at 8 and 9:15, and resistance and core classes on Thursdays at 8 and 9:15 (private lessons are also available). Lorie recently sold her studio in Findlay, Ohio, and now teaches exclusively in Glen Arbor. Regulars at the Glen Arbor Athletic Club will remember her from past summers. Lorie holds a personal trainer certification from the American Council on Exercise. She recommends taking her hour-long classes twice a week to work on the body’s rings of powerhouse muscles, which she likens to a tree’s rings.

Don’t “Wear” it out

Sue Jameson isn’t really “new” in Glen Arbor. She just took a six-year hiatus, after selling her store, Bay Wear, in the Village Sampler Plaza, to David Marshall who renamed it Dune Wear. Marshall, now a Leelanau County Commissioner and President of the Glen Lake Chamber of Commerce, sold the store back to Jameson and her husband Wayne late last year. (David’s wife Christy officiated Sue and Wayne’s wedding last August.)

As a girl Sue worked for her dad’s store Harbor Wear in Petoskey and Charlevoix. He gave her the opportunity to expand the chain, which is known especially for its line of sweatshirts that sport the name of the given town. The company has had as many as 32 locations at one time, spanning northern Michigan, and today boasts 22 outlets, each owned individually by members of Sue’s family.

Compared to 2004, Sue says that Glen Arbor seems even more alive than it did then. She adds, the stores are nicer, and the public bathrooms at the Glen Arbor Garden are a great addition. Equally as important, the Glen Lake Chamber of Commerce’s desk remains at Bay Wear. “We’re pretty friendly about giving out directions anyways,” says Sue, “so we might as well distribute walking maps” that the Chamber desk offers visitors.

Lord of the ring

Bob Vertel’s departure from Becky Thatcher Designs after 23 years of making fine jewelry created a new opportunity for the 57-year-old craftsman. A connoisseur of the martial arts and of Zen Buddhism, Vertel moved into the shop formerly occupied by Hepburn Holt, on M-109 on Glen Arbor’s western edge, and named it Dokan — a combination of “Do” and “kan” which thus means to “the way of the ring”.

Bob is excited about his budding partnership with Paul Mihelcich of Eagle Harbor in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to make fine jewelry out of green stones that Paul harvests from abandoned mineshafts in the Kewana Peninsula. Bob had read in the Detroit Free Press about Paul’s unique venture and left him a message late this winter. Two months later, while shopping at Menards in Traverse City and unsure of what lay ahead for his jewelry career, Bob got a return phone call. The two men discovered they were the same age, boasted the same values and ambitions, and talked for an hour and a half. In Glen Arbor, Bob is currently working on prototypes with fiery green Chlorastrolite stones that Paul sends him.

Next door to Dokan, Grace Dickinson has teamed up with Shawn Ricker, a New Yorker who summers in the Glen Arbor area, to open a photography studio that displays and sells Grace’s father Frederick’s historic local prints. Shawn says that she and Grace put their heads together, spent the winter sorting and sifting through stacks of prints, and have now framed iconic pictures of dune buggies atop Sleeping Bear Point in 1939, a coast guard boat launching into the bay and Leland’s Fishtown in black and white.

The Padma Lakshmi-Glen Arbor connection

Big things are happening for Great Lakes Tea & Spice. Heather and Chris Sack’s brainchild, which started four years ago in a 12-by-12-foot shack behind Roger Vanderwerff’s veterinary clinic, has moved into the 700-square-foot space formerly frequented by ailing animals (Roger’s operation moved to nearby Maple City). Great Lakes Tea & Spice now sells its teas, herbs and rubs in two satellite locations: wellness-oriented Henry Ford Hospital in West Bloomfield, and the Cleveland Clinic.

But that’s not the best part. Last July at the Fancy Food Show in New York the Sacks met Padma Lakshmi of the TV show “Top Chef” fame. The stunning Indian-American actress, celebrity and cookbook author has twice advertised their products on the Home Shopping Network — albeit under an Easy Exotic Line but with “Great Lakes Tea & Spice” and “Glen Arbor, Michigan” written on the label. Heather and Chris visited Padma in her Manhattan apartment, and found her welcoming and down-to-earth.

In their new and improved location, the Sacks plan to offer tea sampling and demos on how to use their rubs. They’ll also sell chocolates and tea truffles from Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate in Empire. Great Lakes Tea & Spice will feature a garden in front of the store along M-109, and will provide outdoor seating behind the store where visitors can play mahjong Chinese dominoes. The tearoom will host a grand opening on July 3 from 3-9 p.m.

Speaking of celebrity chefs …

Just because Don Sielaff no longer owns the Foothills Café and Motel in Burdickville doesn’t mean that you can’t continue eating his delicious Norwegian Eggs Benedict. Sielaff is now cooking breakfasts at the Western Avenue Grill (every day until 2 p.m.), and the popular restaurant in downtown Glen Arbor all but brought Sielaff’s popular a.m. menu along with him. Foothills fans (that’s you, coach Don Miller!) still salivate over The Big Glen breakfast, the Huevos Rancheros, and the Farmers, Western, South Bar and Greek Omelettes. Or, if you didn’t get enough asparagus at the Empire festival two weeks ago, try Sielaff’s Veggie Omelette, packed with asparagus, tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms and cheese.

To complement Sielaff’s menu, the Western Avenue Grill also $6 breakfast cocktails, including fruit mimosas, margaritas and martinis. Manager Bill Skolnik says that Sielaff has already made the restaurant a small fortune in increased breakfast sales. Now doesn’t that sound delicious?