There was a time in Ann Arbor’s not-so-distant past when a part of town was widely known as the red light district. Adult bookstores, topless massage parlors, prostitutes, hoodlums, and bums—all just blocks from City Hall and Ann Arbor police headquarters. Cops were raiding massage parlors every few months, rounding up a dozen massage workers at a time, but the arrests never made a dent. Crackdowns on prostitutes and the johns who solicited them didn’t make much impact either. The red light district regenerated. Persisted. Grew stronger.
How did Ann Arbor become home to this kind of brazen adult fare? 
Music by FAWNN
Learn more in the AADL Old News Archives.

#25 Ann Arbor Stories: The Red Light District

Ann Arbor Stories features sometimes well known and sometimes obscure short tales from Ann Arbor's past. Everything from music, money, and murder, to the extraordinary people and events that have shaped Ann Arbor since 1824.
Ann Arbor Stories is presented by Richard Retyi and Brian Peters, in partnership with the Ann Arbor District Library.

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The shrill, biting staccato whine of a chain saw pierces the cold, night air. Thud. Another billboard falls to the ground along a highway in southern Michigan.
An estimated 167 billboards in all—cut, chopped, and chainsawed, along highways throughout Michigan, mostly in the vicinity of Ann Arbor. The papers called this group The Billboard Bandits. But they weren't the only ones terrorizing good old fashioned marketers in town.

Music by Hollow & Akimbo

#47 Ann Arbor Stories: The Billboard Bandits

Four nights of rioting, dozens of injuries to cops and citizens, and more than 70 arrests—it was an event The Detroit Free Press dubbed “The Battle of Ann Arbor”. What sparked this violence and how did the insane scene play out in the summer of 1969?

Music by FAWNN and ZShipps

#46 Ann Arbor Stories: The Battle of Ann Arbor

There wasn't a lot of traffic on M-14 on that last day of August 1981. It was 3am. Semi trucks bound for points in Michigan and throughout the Midwest, cars carrying people headed to work, cars taking people home after long nights. It was at this time on this day on this stretch of highway that more than 200 bullets rained down on speeding cars, trucks and semis, causing mass panic and chaos. This is the story of the 1981 highway snipers.

Music by Michna and Ben Benjamin, courtesy of GhoLicense.

#45 Ann Arbor Stories: Highway Snipers

This is the story of Thomas Clarkson Trueblood—the first golf coach at the University of Michigan, one of the most respected orators in the world during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and noted professor --- of lovemaking.
Get to know Professor Foxy Truesport.
Music by Tunde Olaniran

#44 Ann Arbor Stories: Professor Foxy Truesport

In 1970, one man tried to stop the University of Michigan and Michigan State from playing their annual football game. And he kind of had an argument. A story of rock music, drugs, sex, love-ins, college football and judicial precedent - fun for the whole family!
Music by Hollow & Akimbo
Listener Warning: Episode contains references to sex, drugs, and the Ann Arbor band The Seventh Seal which played music so mind bending that it drove people to riot.

#25 Ann Arbor Stories: The Red Light District

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