Right Here in Riverfront

“I was at art school: two years at Delta College and then one year at Western Michigan University as a painting major. But I enjoyed cooking more than anything, so I naively decided to go to culinary school. I thought ‘In two years I’ll get my degree and then I’ll be a chef!’After graduation, I worked at the Montague Inn Bed & Breakfast part-time as their pastry chef, and then my old chef referred me to a place in Ellsworth called Tapawingo. It was a Five Diamond property, James Beard-nominated and they needed a pastry chef.I got the job.I had to step it up. I had my own kitchen and got to work with a lot of great chefs. But when we had our first child, our family was still in Saginaw and we decided to move back to be closer to family. At that point, Patisserie had been open for about a year and I was fortunate to get a job there.While I was at Patisserie and Jenny was working at Home Depot, we were driving by this space one day and saw a ‘For Sale’ sign. Opening our own place was something we always wanted to do. The space was previously Richie Rich’s Deli, and it was perfect. We partnered with Jenny’s sister and brother-in-law and were able to buy it. They helped us get it going because they knew it was our dream.For the menu, I wanted it to focus on quality but still be accessible, and it's pretty much stayed the same since we’ve opened. Our specials are driven mainly by seasonality and Farmer’s Market produce. Peaches, blueberries, and strawberries are coming up so we’ll do something special with those.There is some carryover between art school and food. Food has to look good, it has to smell good, it has to be presented well. You’re working with all the senses.But the main thing is the taste. If it doesn’t taste good, you’re dead in the water.- Adam and Jenny Bolt, owners of fralias#artofthesandwichFralia's is open Monday through Friday from 10:30AM to 3:30PM, and Saturdays 10AM to 3PM. To place an order, call 989-799-0111.

“In Lebanon, my family has a home in the mountains. My two sisters and my dad’s family are there. I was born and raised here in Saginaw, traveling back and forth overseas once a year. I miss my sisters a lot. With the explosion in Beirut and with COVID, I haven’t seen them. It’s so sad, but they’re safe. Some scratches and some bruises, but they’re safe. I graduated from Arthur Hill and got my Associates Degree in Business from Delta. But then my mother became very sick. Doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her. Her lungs collapsed and she died in front of me three times. She was in a coma for five months. I brought my pillow and my blanket and slept on the floor of the waiting room, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for those five months. But I also met a lot of amazing people. The staff at St. Mary’s and even the patients were so amazing to me. You learn to love everybody. I grew to love being in a hospital setting so I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to go back to school to become a nurse.’ So, I got my Medical Assistant’s Degree and I worked in hospitals.A friend of the family was a fertility doctor in Dubai. They flew me out, and I ended up working for them for four years. Dubai is, like, 'WOW'. Imagine a 24-karat gold Lamborghini car on the street…that’s nothing. They have tigers on the passenger seat. It’s an amazing world, it’s beautiful. At the end of that phase, I said to myself, ‘I have to find somebody. I should get married. I want my child; I want a family. It’s time.’ So, I met somebody, got married, came here, and had my son Jude. He’s the love of my life. Mom and Dad were like, ‘You need to start your own business. You love helping people. You love giving your all to customers, and to everybody.’ Food was my passion. But I said no, I could never start a business, I don’t know anything about business. And they said, ‘Your food is gold!’ My dad, being a businessman, said, ‘There’s nothing like being an entrepreneur. You’ll grow, you’ll learn to know yourself better.’ And that’s exactly what happened. When I opened Falafel Hut, it was hard in the beginning! I’m not gonna lie. I didn’t know what I was doing except cooking. But I said, ‘I’m never going to give up.’ You shouldn’t hesitate on your dreams. It’s gonna be a lot of obstacles, and you might fall. But you’ll get right back up and become smarter, stronger. So, if you have a dream, you have to go after that dream.”- Nawal Hamd, Falafel Hut Middle Eastern CuisineYou can visit Nawal at The Falafel Hut inside the SVRC Marketplace Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10 AM to 6 PM.

On Sunday, July 12, Donald Simon left his house and walked to the truck parked outside his home.Inside the truck, he found a noose.Attached to the noose was a handwritten note: “Accessory to be worn with your BLM T-shirt! Happy protesting!”Instead of feeling shame or fear, they decided to love their city even more.

We talk to Saginaw's Mayor pro tem Brenda Moore. Moore is also the first African American woman to become president of the Michigan Municipal League.

"We've had to rethink what it means to bring art to everyone." - Thor Rasmussen, Saginaw Art Museum and The Temple TheatreHow is the Saginaw arts community adapting in the time of COVID-19? In a time when people are panicked and hoarding food, why do the arts matter?

For Matt Eich of Mule Resophonic Guitars, success started to happen after losing his job.After graduating high school and attending the Roberto Venn School of Luthiery, Eich worked at Huss and Dalton Guitars in Virginia, but ended up in Chicago having to work in a factory to pay the bills and was building guitars on the side.“Then in 2008, I lost my job during the recession and ended up back in Michigan,” he said.After seeing a musician play a metal-bodied resonator guitar, Eich went home wondering if the instrument was something he had to the skills to create.At the time, there was only a factory in California and a couple of other makers in the world building this kind of guitar, and he saw an opening in the market.“But it took me a year to make four of them and I didn’t think they were very good, so I ran out of money,” he said. He went to work at a temp agency but only made it two weeks before he had to quit, because over those two weeks he had received twelve orders and had to start a wait-list.Resonator guitars were developed by two brothers in the 1930s. Big band music was exploding in popularity and guitars needed a way to compete with the volume of brass instruments. Amplifiers hadn’t been invented yet, and so they built guitars out of metal with a thin, aluminum cone inside the body of the instrument designed to physically amplify the sound.Jazz musicians eventually took to amplifiers and electric guitars, selling off their resonators to blues musicians who would typically play in bars and needed a guitar loud enough to compete with a room of people.While many people still associate the resonator guitar with blues musicians, the different sound of a Mule resonator has attracted everyone from Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys to Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, and has shared the stage with Adele. “One of the most fun things about Mule is that the kind of musician buying our guitars is so varied. They’re songwriters who are looking for a different sound, something they can’t get someplace else,” says Eich.Looking back on the beginning of his business until now, Eich has a few thoughts on striking it out on your own. “I think if you get into it with the idea that there’s a set outcome, you won’t have the steam to make it successful. You really have to love the work itself. With guitars, to be able to take a sheet of steel and a block of wood and make it into something that gets strung up and you’re able to hear a musician playing it — to see them go inside that instrument and make songs come out that wouldn’t have come out if they’d had picked up a different instrument — that’s the part that I love, that keeps me in it.”Along with his love for the work, Eich places a high priority on creating a relationship with his customers, many of whom eagerly place a deposit on a wait-list that’s currently 12 months long.“Typically with makers, the goal is to portray themselves as doing the best work, using the finest materials, doing the most of something, and in the process overstating themselves and what they do. How is everybody making the best thing? It doesn’t make sense.”When it comes to a person making something for another person, it’s not so much about the assumed perfection of the thing being made, it’s about the connection between people. In an age where machines can make the most perfect objects, why would someone get an instrument from someone who made it by hand? It’s not because I can make something more perfect than a computer — that’s not true.But if you take the angle that two people are connecting, then the whole game changes."

Finding the perfect Halloween costume might require countless hours scouring Amazon or numerous big-box retail stores - or just one visit with an international costume championYes, there is such a thing, and Melodye Adomaitis, owner of Adomaitis Antiques and Theatrics, knows what it takes to have the best costume in the room. “You have to research the costume, know your history, know the right time period and how the things were made,” Adomaitis says. “We went to the competition and entered the authentic category. There are all different categories, but because our knowledge of history was so strong, we entered the Somewhere in Time category and won.” A staple in Old Town Saginaw, the shop began because of her love of clothes. “We opened the shop with vintage clothes because I loved and collected vintage clothes because I didn't want to look like everyone else,” she says. “We started selling vintage clothes, and we did style shows and photoshoots and all of the young people got into it and we just had a great time.”Adomaitis saw that many people were more interested in renting their vintage clothing than purchasing them, so she and her husband joined the National Costume Association.“That was wild. We had conventions - six parties a day that you had to dress for!” she says. “You have never met such interesting people as costumers. They’re just ready to party and they’re just the nicest, sweetest, most down to earth people you could ever meet.” Today, the shop supplies costumes to local schools, theater productions, independent artists and cosplayers.And, of course, people looking for the perfect Halloween costume. Adomaitis says it’s expertise that sets her shop apart from what people will find on the internet or in big-box retail. “We have higher quality costumes to begin with,” she says, “I have thousands of costumes in this shop, and we can help them, we can help them have things fit properly, accessorize their outfits, complete their outfits, and they'll walk out of here looking authentic to what they want to be, whatever they want to be; if it's a cowboy or a cop, or a nun or a priest or the pope.” Adomaitis Antiques and Theatrics is located at 412 Court Street, and is open Wednesday through Saturday, 11am to 4pm. You can contact Melodye by phone at (989) 790-7469 or through her website, https://www.adomaitis.com/.