shopping

Birthstone jewelry or carvings may be the perfect gift for that difficult person on your list.

The small local meat markets still survive in the Battle Creek/Kalamazoo area, in their battle against the "big box" stores.

These new mini-carts at the Gull Road Meijer in Kalamazoo are awful, and should be returned to the depths of hell from whence they came.

If you visited a West Michigan Meijer store on Saturday, you were welcomed by a sign on the door stating, "We are currently experiencing issues accepting electronic payments... "

The rest of the nation must experience Meijer's superiority over every other department store chain!

What many people may not know about the Kalamazoo/Portage area is the fact that we were on our way to becoming the Mall capital of Michigan. During the 80’s Kalamazoo had a minimum of 4 malls. Today, there is only one. Is the Crossroads Mall going to be the exception, or will it too join these abandoned and demolished malls of Kalamazoo’s past?

While the day and age of buying almost everything online was yet to come, Crossroads Mall gave people from the surrounding townships a place to shop and entertain. Recently, the Mall has been repurchased by a company based in New York, which leaves me with the question of: What will happen to the Crossroads Mall?

This is a full service store with meat, dairy and high quality groceries you won't find at other stores.

If you've got a few more people to scratch off that shopping list, you can surely get it all done in Kalamazoo.

Procrastinators know they've got plenty of time left before Christmas. Some Southwest Michigan retailers are open on Christmas Eve and a few on Christmas day.