Mighty Good Coffee has moved from its former location in front of the Workantile Exchange on South Main Street to a new home at 217 N. Main St., where it has consolidated its roasting operations. The cafe now seats about 20.

This isn't a review of the coffee (which is mighty good) or the pastries, but it is a look out the front window at what you can see on a Thursday morning. There's enough traffic that I could go on for days just noting the passers-by.

All cars eat gas: 300 N Main St.

At the left side of my view out the front window as a BP gas station, currently offering regular gas at $2.979 per gallon.

My favorite way to track gas prices in Ann Arbor is with Gas Buddy, an advertising-supported, user-driven service for reporting gas prices across the country. They track stations and prices, and you can zoom in with as much detail to individual stations or countywide price averages. This BP station is in the Ann Arbor Central area for them, and its price is $0.02/gallon less than the last reported price for the BP on South Main.

Goes Out Red Hot: 109 Catherine St.

Next to the BP on Catherine Street is Q Ltd, a "strategic design consultancy with a global reach."

The business's building, at 109 Catherine St., was described in a 1988 Ann Arbor Observer piece by Grace Shackman, subtitled "From humble garage to elegant office." Shackman writes In 1917, (Ed) Kuhn left the (police) department to become a partner at the City Garage, then at 300 North Main. He kept the name when five years later he bought the building next door at 109-113 Catherine. Kuhn evidently had a taste for promotion; the motto on his business letterhead was "Comes In All Shot/Goes Out 'Red Hot.' " The City Garage offered "general automobile repairing and storing" as well as oils and supplies and tire and tube repairing. Kuhn also operated a Dodge taxi service out of the shop. In 1927 he remodeled the building, adding a second story to be used as living quarters.

Q was recently engaged in the redesign of the website for the Ypsilanti District Library, according to a September press release.

US-23, M-14 this way

Directly in front of the cafe, there's a wayfinding sign that sends you to Ann Arbor City Hall, the Ann Arbor Police Department, and the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum

Across the street, on the east side of northbound North Main at Catherine Street, you see a directional sign that points you to US-23 and M-14. This sign is not a standard state highway sign, though it looks like it at first glance. Rather, it is part of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority's downtown wayfinding project. Those signs were manufactured by Fairmont Sign Company.

Other Michigan cities are considering similar projects for their downtowns; this account of the Fenton DDA consideration shows a comparable effort.

Neither rain nor snow: Washtenaw County Administration Building, 220 N. Main

Directly across from the cafe is the Washtenaw County Administration Building, home of a portion of Washtenaw County government.

The building is the old Ann Arbor main post office, built in 1909. In 1959, a new main post office was built on West Stadium; in 1977, the downtown post office moved to the new Federal Building on East Liberty. The Ann Arbor District Library's "Ann Arbor Architecture Archive" tells more of the story of 220 N. Main.

Buildings built in 1909 are not known for their accessibility to the public, especially those who are getting around in wheelchairs, parents pushing children in strollers, and others who have a hard time navigating lots of stairs. The front of the Administration Building has a large wooden temporary ADA ramp structure with an "OPEN" sign tacked to it.

New trees

Five City of Ann Arbor trucks were out on North Main this morning, replacing two street trees.

Truck 6611 did the heavy lifting; it has a Prentice 120E crane on top of it, allowing an operator to put the tree in place and scoop out the hole for the tree with its claw.

Prentice Forestry is part of Caterpillar Forest Products. The model in the current catalog I was able to find was the 2124 Loader.

The city's inventory of street and park trees is available for viewing online, with KMZ files ready to load into Google Earth. If you want to see precisely what tree was replaced and why, and what the condition is of the tree in front of your house, this is a place to start.

What I didn't write about

The bicycle locked to the parking meter in front of the cafe, the parking meter itself, the bricks on the sidewalk, the (art) bike rack across the street, and any of the dozens of commercial trucks that went past doing their business on the way.

Edward Vielmetti looks out the window for AnnArbor.com and writes about what he sees.