Last call @ Leopold's

Jude and I bid farewell to a good friend tonight. A friend that's been with us through countless birthdays, grad student visiting days and orientations; whose generous picnic tables will be sorely missed for "research meetings"; whose phenomenal jukebox plays better music than most radio stations we know; and it was the place where I had my first delicious- and till now, only- Pisco. Todd Leopold announced in February that Leopold Brothers is leaving A2 for Denver:

We’re moving our distilling operations to Denver, Colorado this spring, and closing our bar in Ann Arbor at the start of summer.

Our lease expires in the summer, and shockingly (note heavy sarcasm), our landlords asked for an obscene amount per month in rent, so we’re done. This move has zero to do with the economy, or sales levels, as we are coming off of our strongest year of sales at the pub since we’ve been open. We moved here in 1998, and since that time our rent has tripled, and our new landlords want even more….because, of course, that’s what the market will bear.

I hope to run into you all before we leave, and I wish Ann Arbor the best. The business climate isn’t one that we can survive, however.
- taken from ann arbor is overrated

To send the beloved brewpub off with a bang, there will be a performance there every weekend throughout the month of May. We were lucky today to bask in the boisterous awesomeness that is Great Lakes Myth Society, a local band made semi-big. When Leopold's first opened almost ten years ago, they were among its first regular customers and began playing shows there thereafter. So it was rather apt for them to start off the big farewell to this Ann Arbor institution.

Goodbye Leopold's. We'll miss you...