A key member of the Fly team came rushing in recently with a message of great urgency. A product called Boudreaux’s Butt Paste was finally available at Memphis pharmacies. He didn’t know what it was, exactly, but was certain this was reason to celebrate. Boudreaux’s Butt Paste, we discovered to our great disappointment, was not actually bootie glue but rather a medicated diaper ointment. So what’s next? Thibodeaux’s Titty Tonic for nusing moms?
Plante: How It Looks
Looks like Downtown is going to be the best place to be today. Memphis in May, of course, kicks off its month-long celebration this weekend with the huge Beale Street Music Festival, which will honor the 50th anniversary of rock-and-roll with live music on four stage for three days, with such acts as Jerry Lee Lewis, Foo Fighters, the Bar-Kays, Sister Hazel, Indigo Girls, Free Sol, Lucero, George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, Chaka Khan, Three 6 Mafia, and dozens of others. It s also the last Friday of the month, which means tonight s South Main Trolley Art Tour, with all of the galleries and shops opened up late and free trolley rides. And with all the mayhem going on Downtown, this should be a fun one. Opening receptions and one-night art shows in the neighborhood include: D Edge Art & Unique Treasure for work by George Hunt; Memphis Heritage for a digital photographic essay by Fred Asbury; 493 S. Main for paintings by William Goodman; and Earnestine & Hazel s for work by Jeanne-Marie Kenny, Melanie Spillman, and Lindsay Palmore. Back on stage, Picnic opens tonight at Playhouse on the Square, and The Wiz opens at Theatre Memphis. And, as always, The Chris Scott Band is at Poplar Lounge tonight.
In an inconspicuous Circuit Court case LAST Friday, plaintiff Linda Taylor did her best to prove the age-old saying that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
Taylor, representing herself in Judge Karen Williams’ courtroom, received a final extension in her civil suit against her former attorney, Kevin Snider. The case stemmed from Snider’s representation of Taylor in a Chancery Court suit against Shelby County. That suit was filed against the county for violation of Taylor’s civil rights, which led to the termination of her job in 1995.
At that time, Taylor had been a speech pathologist for four years with the county-run Head Start child development program. When the Head Start director introduced a new fingerprinting requirement for background checks for employees, Taylor objected on religious grounds. She contended that the policy was instituted without a state law or child-care licensing regulation requiring fingerprinting and provided other documents proving her clear background, including a “No Wants” arrest record from the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. Administrators disagreed with Taylor, and she was subsequently fired.
“After I lost my job I was completely affected,” Taylor said. “Many people have asked me why I don’t just give up and get another job with my credentials, but I can’t let it go.” She estimated that she has lost $262,000 in salary as a result of her 1995 termination.
“I understood where she was coming from, because my father is a minister and I understand her religious background,” said Snider. “It’s a legitimate issue. Unfortunately, the [Chancery Court] judge didn’t agree. If we had been able to have our day in court, at least we would have been in the ballgame.” That case was dismissed in 2001.
Taylor felt that she had been misrepresented by Snider and then sued him for more than $600,000.
“He didn’t do his job,” she said. “I’ve been told by other attorneys that had he had my best interests in mind I could have won my case. At that time, I had only paid him a $500 retainer fee, and I guess he thought he had done $500 worth of work.” Her complaint states that Snider “made four sentences; he then just sat down and just sat there in silence” during the Chancery Court proceedings. She also accuses Snider of presenting no case law or supporting affidavits.
After battling almost two years in court with no lawyer, Williams gave Taylor 30 days to secure legal representation and file the necessary paperwork in the case. She is trying to raise $3,000 to retain a new lawyer.
“I have no ill will at all toward her, but I disagree with why she’s upset,” said Snider. “It’s kind of like, ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’ Would I represent her again? I don’t know. After someone sues you for a half million dollars, it’s hard to say yes, but then again, you can never say never.”
E-mail: jdavis@memphisflyer.com
If there is anything better than the smell of coffee brewing, it’s the smell of coffee beans roasting. It begins as a slightly acidic tickling in the nostrils. Then, over the course of a half-hour or so, it swells to a chocolaty crescendo so complex it makes the nuttiest, earthiest, plumiest, jammiest wine you’ve ever sniffed seem plain as tap water.
It smells like a lifetime of wonderful mornings and leisurely afternoons. It smells like Café Francisco on a Tuesday night when 125 pounds of coffee beans are roasted in a gas-powered contraption that looks like a cross between a pot-bellied stove and a Rube Goldberg device. Large windows look in on the roasting room at the cafe so coffee junkies can watch while the beans are roasted, and, although the door to the roasting room remains closed, the intoxicating smell permeates. Visiting Café Francisco on roasting night is like taking your nose to a day spa.
“When I went out to California, I was really stupid about a lot of things,” says Café Francisco owner Julie Ray, a native Memphian who learned to sling the mud while living in San Francisco. “I thought Folgers coffee was it, you know?” she says, sifting through a white plastic tub of sage-green coffee beans that look like fat split peas. “I thought Folgers was the best you could get.”
Ray was scrambling for temp work in San Francisco when she stumbled into the original Café Francisco. As it turned out, the owner needed someone to manage his books.
“I think the place was taking in something like $150 a day,” Ray says. “And that’s not good. There was so much money going into the business, but there was no business.”
“One day I told [the owner] that I’d always dreamed of owning a little café, and he gave it to me,” Ray says, still sounding surprised. It wasn’t exactly a gift, but the conditions of the sale were sweet. But owning a failing coffee shop in a city of renowned coffee snobs was another matter.
“I didn’t know what a latte was,” Ray confesses. “I didn’t know anything. Literally, the neighborhood taught us what we were doing when we took over. It was truly a community effort.” Eventually, she learned the ins and outs of the latte thing, as well as a thing or two about roasting beans. In 2001, she brought her expertise back home and opened a second Café Francisco.
“The thing I like best about roasting our beans here,” says Christen Sterling, Café Francisco’s master roaster and chipper barrista, “is when people ask me about the coffee, I can really tell them about it.” Sterling, like Ray, didn’t know beans until she started pouring coffee for a living. Now she works the roaster like a pro.
“There are different kinds of roasters,” she says. “It’s sort of like ovens: Some people like electric, some people like gas.” Sterling clearly prefers gas. She compares the difference to oven-roasted meats and barbecue. “With the electric roasters, you just pour in your beans and push a button,” Sterling says. Not so with gas. The roaster is pre-heated to between 450 and 500 degrees, and samples are taken out regularly to check the color and aroma.
“And you have to listen for the popping,” Sterling says, referring to the snap, crackle, and pop of coffee beans shedding their outer husks. “On lighter roasts, they may pop once,” she says. “For the darker roasts [like Italian and French], they pop twice.”
Café Francisco isn’t the only place you can sample Ray and Sterling’s work. The café supplies coffee to a dozen local restaurants, including Jarrett’s, Ronnie Grisanti, Elfo’s, Midtown Books, and Epicure.
“Now I’m a total coffee snob,” Ray says. “And it’s amazing to me that in America you can still get a cup of coffee for about a dollar.” She runs through the difficulties of growing coffee: the sprouting, the raking, the picking of every bean. “You would think coffee would just be outrageous, a luxury. You would think it would be like oil.”
Café Francisco is located at 400 N. Main, 578-8002.
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns. Even as the military situation in Iraq was moving from difficult to dire, our national news media chose this week to focus dramatically upon a “scandal” involving Senator John Kerry and, of all things, his Vietnam war-service medals.
“Big” questions about those medals have dominated the airwaves — particularly (are you surprised?) on the Fox network, where cackling and harrumphing about Democrats is standard fare. Did Vietnam veteran Kerry dump his medals when he became an anti-war activist in the early 1970s? Or did he throw away just the ribbons, not the medals? Or did he just say he was throwing one or the other away, being the kind of wishy-washy devil he is?
Yes, all this does sound like a bad Saturday Night Live skit, and, yes, it would all be downright hilarious were it not for the fact that this nonsense is eating up valuable news space that might be devoted to exploring real issues, such as getting the Bush administration to explain exactly who it will be “turning power” over to in Iraq in two months’ time. Or in-depth reporting on the real situation on the ground in Fallujah and Najaf. Or finding those oh-so-elusive WMDs.
Then again, Karl Rove and company are way more comfortable discussing Medalgate than any of these other, more touchy subjects. By now, as the Iraqi house of cards the neo-cons jerry-built collapses around them, the 2004 White House re-election strategy is clear: When in doubt, bash Kerry.
Perhaps they think Medalgate will play well in Peoria and bring patriotic Americans rallying around the president’s cause. But the Bush/Cheney campaign may well be barking up the wrong tree — in Peoria as elsewhere — if they really think they can continue capitalizing on the patriotism issue while Iraq unravels. The American people may be confused on some of the larger issues of the day, but we think they know good old-fashioned slander when they see it.
Whatever his faults — and we have pointed out many of them in these pages in recent months — Kerry is a genuine Vietnam War hero. Ask Senator John McCain, if you don’t believe us. Or Bob Dole. Like many Americans of his generation, Kerry’s attitude toward that war changed considerably in light of his own experience in Southeast Asia. There is no crime in that. Perhaps as much as anyone else of that era, Kerry had earned the right to change his mind.
Making the change from combat veteran to anti-war advocate was no easy process and took in its own way the same kind of courage that Lieutenant Kerry had already demonstrated on the battlefield. Events have since demonstrated that Kerry’s opposition to an ill-conceived and poorly executed military campaign was sensible and responsible.
The contrast between this candidate for the presidency and the current incumbent is striking. Medals or no medals, Kerry served this nation honorably and courageously in Vietnam. Our current “war president” never got within 8,000 miles of the place.Medals or no medals, John Kerry certainly fulfilled his military obligation with his Navy unit in Vietnam; the jury is still out on whether or not George W. Bush fulfilled his obligation with an Air National Guard unit in Alabama.
And yet now it’s Bush shamelessly beating the patriot drum. Last time we looked it took a whole lot more intestinal fortitude to pilot patrol boats in the Mekong Delta than it did to negotiate the country-club bars in suburban Birmingham. Voters should keep that in mind come November and not be fooled by flag-waving fools whose own past behaviors render them the ultimate hypocrites on the patriotism issue.
A bill that would have overturned the city’s prevailing wage laws and prevented a future living-wage ordinance is no longer a concern for the Memphis Living Wage Coalition.
House Bill 421, designed to prevent individual cities in Tennessee from mandating wage rates, died for lack of a second vote in a House of Representatives committee meeting on April 20th. A similar bill had already passed through the Senate in 2003.
“This clears the path for the City Council to go ahead and adopt a living-wage ordinance, which is what the majority have said they want to do,” said Rebekah Jordan of the Mid-South Interfaith Network for Economic Justice. “Some of the council members were hesitant to pass a law before because they thought the state might strike it down.”
A living-wage ordinance would require companies that receive tax subsidies and city service contracts to pay employees at least $10 an hour with health insurance or $12 an hour without. Currently, the city only has a prevailing wage ordinance, which requires certain wage rates for employees of companies that receive construction contracts with the city. House Bill 421 would have overturned that ordinance as well.
Jordan said the coalition is working on a draft of the living-wage ordinance to present to the City Council by late summer. At a recent public hearing for the living wage, councilwoman Carol Chumney said she had concerns about how the draft would be worded.
“We don’t want it to hurt small business, and we want to retain regional competitiveness,” said Chumney. “We need to see what’s working in other places [that have living-wage ordinances].”
According to Jordan, nine out of 13 council members completed a survey indicating that they were in support of such an ordinance.
E-mail: bphillips@memphisflyer.com
I know, I know. I harp on this all the time. And by the time this paper comes out all of the other writers in town will have said the same thing, but I am going to be gone from this page for a couple of weeks and must say, Grizzlies, you are tha team. Sure, we got swept by San Antonio in the playoffs. Lost the first four games. But damn it, we made it to the playoffs for the first time in this team s history. We won 50 games. Hubie Brown was named NBA Coach of the Year. Jerry West, NBA Executive of the Year. In our first season, Pau Gasol, NBA Rookie of the Year. Anybody out there at The Peabody the day he was given that award? The We Love Memphis was so thick in the air you could have cut it with a chain saw. There was the first Martin Luther King Game, where The Pyramid nearly fell into the Mississippi River with the thunder of applause when former MSU coach Larry Finch was escorted out in his wheelchair and managed a wave to the adoring and screaming crowd. There were the three defeats against the world champion San Antonio Spurs in the regular 2003-2004 before this recent round of first-time-for-the Grizzlies playoff games against them. Of course, Tim Duncan was out for those three games, which he should have been (thrown out, that is) during last Thursday s first Memphis Grizzlies playoff home game. You d think a seven-year veteran of the NBA while a great player would be a better sport and not such a big baby. You don t see much of that kind of thing with our guys. What you do see is Jason Williams visiting the kids at St. Jude alone and with no fanfare or press all the time because it makes them feel better. I believe it probably makes him feel pretty good too. If you weren t at the grand opening/press conference when the Grizzlies House opened at St. Jude, with $5 million from the Grizzlies majority owner Michael Heisley to make it possible, you missed the look on Jason s face when, at the end of the ceremony, each and every player on the team came down the isle to take the stage, accompanied by a St. Jude patient. Jason was carrying a particularly small child, not even a toddler yet. The smile on his face, I would imagine, would have out-smiled a playoff win this year. There was the day the Grizzlies announced a half-million grant to MIFA, to be used to help with transitional housing for the homeless at Estival Place. It was a beautiful day and the event was outside and there was a high school marching band and there were lots of little kids who got scared to death of the mascot Grizz and started crying, until Grizz cuddled up to them to make them feel okay and then they wrestled him to the ground. Yeah, the Grizzlies got swept in the playoffs. But the Grizzlies swept Memphis off its feet this year and in all of the days they have been here since moving from Vancouver. I think that s a lot more important than not winning four games out of seven games this past month. So there. There I go again. And here we go with a brief look at what s going on around town this week. Tonight is opening night at Rhodes College s Blount Auditorium of the Memphis Center for Independent Living s production of
If you blinked, you would have missed it.
In a move that didn’t take as long as getting all the interested parties inside the City Council chambers, the Public Works and Transportation Committee decided Tuesday to hold a public hearing May 18th on the Memphis Promenade Land Use Plan.
With staff from the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC), the group that commissioned the plan, and members of Friends for Our Riverfront (FfOR), a grassroots organization that sprung up in protest of the plan, filling the room, committee chairperson Janet Hooks made it clear that no one would be able to speak on the issue in the meeting.
FfOR president Virginia McLean said the group was told they would not be able to speak but they came prepared to anyway, just in case. The group made something of a nonverbal statement, however, with lime-green ribbons on their shirts to show exactly what side they were on.
“I thought the 18th would be a public forum on just this issue, and it sounds like it will be just one issue on the agenda,” McLean said after the meeting. “That bothered me a bit.”
Other members worry that a hearing during a regularly scheduled council meeting will mean they won’t get enough time to say everything they think needs to be said.
“That could mean anyone who has a comment could be limited to 60 seconds. Our group of 200-plus could be limited to 60 seconds or, more than likely, five minutes to plead our case,” said FfOR vice president John Gary.
The RDC’s plan includes a two-tiered public promenade along with private development of “active” uses, such as restaurants and shops. Funds from commercial and residential development will go to pay for the entire $292 million plan. FfOR’s plan — estimated by them to cost $7 million — would tear down many of the existing structures along the promenade and remake it as a public park.
“I think we need to have equal access to the City Council and we haven’t had that,” said McLean. “They haven’t had the opportunity to hear us. There’s a real need to look at this thing, to really study what’s going on instead of just looking at pretty pictures and PR.”
E-mail: cashiola@memphisflyer.com
The Grizzlies were 2-10 in April, Mike Miller couldn’t buy a basket in the first playoff game, and Pau Gasol couldn’t defend the pick-and-roll. Sometimes even pros mess up.
So do political pros. Four months into his fourth term as mayor, Willie Herenton is acting like a political novice instead of the most experienced and popular political leader in recent Memphis history.
For at least the sixth time this year, Herenton, who is tall enough to slam dunk, drove to the basket and got rejected instead. The Shelby County Commission said no to a proposed $17.8 million settlement of a lawsuit against the city of Memphis and the Memphis Cook Convention Center Commission. County commissioners made it clear they were unhappy about both the generous terms of the settlement and the fact that they had to take the heat instead of Herenton and the Memphis City Council.
How badly is Herenton off his game? Let’s review.
He started off the year with a New Year’s Day speech that insulted City Council members on a day that should have been dedicated to good will and new beginnings.
He followed that up with a list of nominees for city director jobs that was met with an unprecedented four rejections and two close calls.
He nominated finance director Joseph Lee to lead Memphis Light, Gas & Water, then was persuaded to withdraw the nomination. Then Herenton allowed Lee to again put his name in the hat for consideration by the MLGW search committee. After making the final cut, Lee withdrew once again — his third change of heart in two months.
In the midst of this mess, Herenton turned his attention to The Pyramid. First he said that in order to keep the University of Memphis Tigers at The Pyramid, the city would spring for $4.5 million worth of improvements to the building. Say what? replied City Council members. Scratch that.
Shifting directions, the mayor next proposed to subsidize the Tigers’ move to the FedExForum. He organized a news conference in the lobby of City Hall to announce that the Grizzlies and the university had come to an agreement. But the announcement was premature, and the participants — who did not include the county mayor or council and commission chairmen — were clearly uncomfortable. One of them, University of Memphis president Shirley Raines, has publicly stated that she would not have called a news conference at that time if it had been up to her. The subsidy was rejected.
Last week, the Flyer reported that Herenton spoke three times with former U.S. senator Jim Sasser about a settlement of the Clark Construction Group’s federal lawsuit against the city and convention center board. But board members had been under the impression that they were going to fight the lawsuit in court, with the blessing of the city and county mayors. When they learned of the surprise settlement proposal, some of them rebelled, led by the late Morris Fair.
To make matters worse, the county commission got stuck with the duty of making a tough public vote on the settlement even though Clark’s lawsuit names the city of Memphis. (The convention center is one of a number of jointly funded operations.) Only three members — Cleo Kirk, Michael Hooks, and Deidre Malone — voted for it. After several substitute motions failed, effectively blocking all avenues of retreat, commissioners Tom Moss and Linda Rendtorff said the city should have been on the hot seat. Moss said commissioners were being made to “look like idiots,” and Rendtorff suggested in vain that the city (which accounts for about 70 percent of the population of Shelby County) pay 70 percent of the cost of any settlement.
Uncharacteristically, Herenton declined to answer questions about his strategy because, according to his spokeswoman, “it’s in litigation.”
The mayor needs to get back on his game because there is major unfinished business on the table. He says there won’t be a property tax increase this year, but City Council members say that promise is premature when negotiations are still under way with police, firefighters, and other unions. After 12 budgets, Herenton knows that perfectly well, indicating the real purpose of his promise and his adversarial relationship with the council.
Five months after announcing that Herman Morris would not be reappointed as MLGW president, the job is still being filled on an interim basis by James Netters, a minister. The search committee has narrowed the field to four candidates. One of them, MLGW vice president of operations Larry Thompson, is from the very corporate culture the mayor blasted last year. Another, Gary Morsches, was fired two years ago from his job with Mirant Corp., an Atlanta-based energy supplier rocked by a financial crisis.
The Grizzlies need key players but their leadership is solid. The city can’t say that.
Hooked on reality TV: On April 24th, a man on Looney called police when he noticed he was being burglarized. He was sitting in his kitchen that morning watching video feed from the cameras he had set up all around his house when he noticed a man on one of the monitors with items in his hand. “He hollered out the window and told the suspect to come back because he had jumped the fence.” Surprisingly, he did come back and the resident detained him until the police arrived.
Hooked on reality TV, part two: A woman called police after she and her husband were driving near Poplar and Hollywood and got into a strange situation. An older man in a black Toyota Corolla first tried to run them off the road, then pulled beside them and in front of them “and started to videotape the activity.” The man did not issue any threats and the woman told police she had no idea why he was videotaping them.
Are four people really a “party”? Police responded April 25th to a theft on Countryside. The victim told them that while he was out of town, various jewelry and other items were taken. “There was no evidence of a burglary, but the victim’s son had a party on Friday 4-23-04. Besides the victim’s son, there were just three other people in the house while the victim was away.”
Just like Minority Report: On April 23rd, a school bus driver realized her purse, which had been sitting behind her seat, was missing. After she finished her route, she returned to a house where a set of twins live “because she believed that if anything happened on the bus, the twins would have knowledge.” Sure enough, one of the twins told her someone had looked into the purse and a suspect was picked up and taken to Juvenile Court.