Circle Ypsi's Depot Town on Cruise Night Thursdays, and you'll see hula hoops are new on the scene. Trick hula hooper Brooke Wilbanks plans to offer hooping lessons near the DJ tent during the weekly
Cruise Nights. Wilbanks also makes decorative hula hoops for adults and kids, which will be for sale at OneLove Culture Shop, her new store in Depot Town.
"Hula hooping actually is a big sport around the nation. It just needs to be, I feel like, more recognized in smaller towns. I'm kind of trying to bring hula hooping to Ypsilanti a little bit," Wilbanks says.
Besides hula hoops,
OneLove Culture Shop has an array of fair trade and locally made items, including clothing, patches, stickers, hand made and hand-dyed wall hangings and tapestries, posters, lotions and body oils, and kitchen utensils, in a 900-square foot space at 27 E. Cross Street.
Wilbanks co-owns the store with her fiancee, Jonathon Doyle. "We've been building [display] tables and trying to go about doing things as frugally and crafty as possible," she says.
They have re-painted the walls and installed bamboo wall coverings. The bamboo originally hung in Ann Arbor's The Oasis hot tub garden and would otherwise have been discarded during a remodeling.
The diverse community and activities in Depot Town were enticement enough for Wilbanks to open her business there. "We're having an antique festival at the same time as Heritage Fest is down there. We just had the Color Run, we just had the Brew Fest. There's just a lot of stuff in Depot Town that would draw people to come to the area," Wilbanks says.
Source: Brooke Wilbanks, co-owner of OneLove Culture Shop
Writer: Tanya Muzumdar
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