Month: September 2001

Memphis is happening, you know? I mean, this city is really starting to kick it into high gear. What with downtown and the Redbirds and the Grizzlies, Memphis is really getting noticed, and not necessarily for the swivel-hipped wonder.

I was going to write about that this week, an how much I love South Main (as soon as my lease is up, I1m going to relocate on the trolley line and walk my dog in Tom Lee every night). But, instead (because, let’s be honest, this column is supposed to be based loosely around Memphis, but is more loosely based around, well, me), I1m going to write about me. Like usual.

It might come as a surprise to some of you, but I’ve been writing about me for about five months now. Yes, five long months of weekly Friday rantsabout my hair, my clothes, my apartment, my sad, pitiful lovelife.

However, you may have noticed — you see I flatter myself that people do actually read this space — that for the past two Fridays, I1ve been MIA (or you might not have noticed at all, and that’s fine, too. No offense taken). And I felt maybe I should offer a tidbit of an explanation

During my younger days, I was addicted to Salon.com‘s weekly blow-by-blow “Temptation Island” updates. And then, one week, I logged in to see which single gal had snagged Kaya’s heart, but Salon had no answer. It was the right time, the right day, but the regular feature was missing. I was heartbroken and angry; who knew a website could betray me like this?). I certainly don’t want to inflict any pain on my readers.

Honestly, I began doing this column as a quasi-favor to a friend. It didn’t hurt that it would help me, as well, but there you are. Unfortunately, my friend’s health has taken a turn for the worse, and though we miss him like crazy and no one can ever take his place, our little web engine has to keep soldiering on.

And it looks like in the fray of battle (just to keep the analogy going), my little Friday column got lost in the shuffle (either that or turned tail).

And honestly, again, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the oversight. On the one hand: how could anyone forget my wonderful and masterful writing? On the other … I think it was Socrates who said the unexamined life is not worth living. Obviously Socrates never had a weekly column about his life.

I guess I never realized before how boring my life was. I knew I wasn’t a gal who flew by the string of her thong, but really. It’ll be Wednesday or Thursday and I1m sitting in front of a blank white screen thinking, “Oh, my God, I am such a loser. What should I write about this week? What did I even do this week?” (The worst part is when I realize exactly how little I get to the gym. Or how much closer to credit card debt I’m skating with each passing day.)

Anyway, there you have it. Hopefully from now on I’ll be back on Fridays for good (or until I run completely out of things to say). I might even try actually writing about Memphis next week. Either that or my hair.

On Friday afternoon several downtown buildings, including the Criminal Justice Center at Poplar, experienced a complete, albeit relatively brief, power outage.

At the Justice Center, courthouse staff, office workers, and visitors attending to criminal justice matters were forced to navigate their way through the building using only the natural light that filtered in through windows and skylights.

At 2:15 employees and guards (as elevators and escalators were also not working in the 10-story building) advised civilians to exit the building, saying that court would be canceled and the clerks’ offices would be closed for the remainder of the day.

When the Flyercalled the Shelby County Jail Information Line, a breathless employee remarked that all the power was out and had been for a while. The same employee then set the phone down. Much commotion was heard in the background before another person picked up the receiver again and exclaimed, “We’re having a riot! Call back!” and hung up the phone.

Repeated calls to the information line were met with a busy signal. However, guards outside of the building did not appear frantic or concerned with the possibility of a riot and the correctional facility did not have the outward appearance of an emergency.

There was a leap-frog pattern of sites that were subjected to the outage, with unaffected buldings interspersed with those where a total blackout occurred.

Lawyer John Ryder, whose office is on the 27th floor of the National Bank of Commerce building, related how he was playing handball at the downtown YMCA, and at some point between1:454 p.m. and 2:15 p.m. hit an especially good shot, whereupon he saw the lights flicker. “For a minute there, I thought that was some kind of result of my shot,” Ryder said.

Ryder left the Y sometime between 2:30 and 3, stopped at a nearby sandwich and shop and picked up a carryout lunch, then entered the NBC building only to discover that all the power was out and that he would have to walk up the 27 flights of stairs just to get his car keys, which he’d left in his office.

A spokesperson for MLGW, Elizabeth McCune, was eventually reached upon the restoration of power in the area at approximately 3 p.m. McCune gave the beginning time of the outage as approximately 2 p.m.

The Flyer has been unable to confirm that there were any disturbances in the jail facility..

ABC Television, Southaven, Mississippi, and the Choctaw Band of Indians in Central Mississippi have something in common. They’ve discovered that amateur sports for kids can be profitable as well as popular — a fact that Memphis has been slow to grasp.

If you watched ABC in prime time Sunday night, you didn’t see a blockbuster movie or an NFL preseason football yawner. You saw a bunch of 12-year-old boys playing in the finals of the Little League World Series, with Brent Musberger providing the analysis and 40,000 people in the stands.

Southaven’s answer to the Little League World Series is Snowden Grove, a new 17-field lighted baseball complex on Getwell that hosted 10 age-group “World Series” of its own this summer plus 11 invitational tournaments, attracting a total of 1,300 players from 28 states. Scotty Baker, manager of the municipally owned complex, says it drew rave comparisons to Disney World and Cooperstown.

In Neshoba County, Mississippi, near Philadelphia, the Pearl River Resort, a casino complex owned by the Choctaws, plans to add a regional amateur sports complex with championship facilities for baseball, soccer, stickball, and swimming and seating for 10,000 spectators. No one who has seen the Choctaws’ phenomenally successful Silver Star Casino, two PGA-quality golf courses, and partially completed second casino and hotel sells them short.

Rusty fences, peeling paint, dim lights, and overgrown playing fields are a thing of the past — unless you’re talking about Memphis, that is. While Memphis builds yet another arena and mothballs the Defense Depot, Tim McCarver Stadium, and the Mid-South Coliseum, surrounding small towns from Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Collierville to Southaven have invested millions in bigger and better youth sports facilities.

And they’re having a Wal-Mart effect. Baseball isn’t just vanishing from the inner city, it’s vanishing from the city, period. The only sizable tournament held inside the Interstate 240 loop is the Pendleton Tournament at Colonial School, an unlighted complex of four small, uneven fields. Most competitive tournaments are now played at Snowden Grove.

The Mike Rose Soccer Complex near Collierville now attracts games and tournaments that used to be played on inferior (but more centrally located) fields at Shelby Farms, May Field, and various Memphis churches, schools, and public parks.

Jonesboro has poured $5 million into its new Joe Mack Campbell Park, consisting of 18 soccer fields and 14 baseball fields, most of them lighted. Jason Wilkie, interim director of parks and recreation, says, “We want to be a regional sports center” for teams as far away as Little Rock, Memphis, and St. Louis.

Young athletes who aren’t old enough to drive travel with their parents instead, staying at local motels and eating at local restaurants.

“We do see a benefit from tournaments in terms of rooms and number of nights booked,” says Lindy Frizzell, general manager of the Hampton Inn Southaven.

Parents spend so much time transporting their children to games and tournaments in the ‘burbs that it makes little sense to live anywhere else. The flight to quality in athletics is as much a factor in school choice as the flight to quality in academics. City and suburban schools are so unequal in baseball and soccer that they rarely play each other anymore.

Memphis has made its biggest sports investments in college and professional venues. But there’s a dawning awareness of the importance of youth sports to the civic psyche, evidenced by the recent BRIDGES Kickoff Classic which raised $10,000 for the charity. Kevin Kane and the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau are pursuing Spring Fling, the Tennessee prep spring sports jamboree that is up for bids in 2003.

“We think this is a huge opportunity for Memphis,” says Kane. “It’s something we desperately want.”

Clout and salesmanship will help. But it will take better facilities to put Memphis in the big time of small-fry sports.