A Cultural One-Two Punch

continued

happening.”

Now, there’s a hole in the middle. Bella Ciao was scheduled to close on June 20 after twenty-two years under Jim Macdonald’s ownership. Macdonald, the tall, avuncular, and slightly sardonic Scotsman, stood on the pavement every night greeting customers and often delivering salty opinions about the weather, the economy, politics, child-rearing, or anything else that happened to come up.

The day the news of Bella Ciao’s closing broke in the Ann Arbor News, people on the street pointed and whispered gravely. One man in his mid-fifties who was married eight years ago in Bella Ciao’s upstairs private banquet room actually cried when he heard the news.