The Dixon Gallery & Gardens’ annual Art on Tap event is tonight. You can sample more than 150 beers and groove to music by Dr. Zarr’s Amazing Funk Monsters.
The action starts at 6:00. It’s $40 for members and $50 for nonmembers. For info check the Dixon website.
Last week, 25-year-old Jacqueline McKee made local news after playing on a swing set in Bartlett Park.
It wasn’t because she’s an adult, but because she’s an adult “star.” A video of McKee exposing herself on various pieces of playground equipment was leaked to the media after someone found it on her pay-to-view adult website.
Along with John Ford, she’s earned the dubious distinction of having been mentioned by Jay Leno, and outraged mothers have said they will never let their children on that playground again.
Bartlett police have threatened to charge her with public indecency, but McKee says that won’t deter her from shooting in public places … she just may not do so in Bartlett. — by Bianca Phillips
To read this week’s Q&A with Foxy Jacky, click here.
By all accounts, Bob Berryman was a shady character. A rather notorious gambler and bootlegger, he served eight years in prison for murdering a bouncer at a downtown nightclub. Even so, his name brings back fond memories for many Memphians, for he was the owner and operator of the Silver Slipper …
Read more about one of Memphis’ first “no-tell motels” at Vance Lauderdale’s blog.
–video by Chris Davis
–video by Chris Davis
By all accounts, Bob Berryman was a shady character. A rather notorious gambler and bootlegger, he served eight years in prison for murdering a bouncer at a downtown nightclub. Even so, his name brings back fond memories with many Memphians, for he was the owner and operator of the Silver Slipper, one of our city’s most popular nightspots before it burned in 1958.
In 1937, Berryman embarked on another venture, a motel complex on Highway 61 South he called Berryman’s Tourist Court. When it first opened (above), the Memphis Press-Scimitar commented on the 22 “Oriental stucco” buildings (actually more like Spanish Revival), arranged in a horseshoe, with the manager’s office and residence in a two-story structure by the entrance.
Dormant since 2004 and in disrepair for many years before that, the once-proud Overton Park Shell makes a comeback this week. Rechristened the Levitt Shell — after the nonprofit, Los Angeles-based Mortimer-Levitt Foundation, which has helped finance the venue’s renovation as part of a bid to rehab classic band shells across the country — the venue that hosted Elvis Presley’s first paid concert, classic hippie-era blues and folk festivals, and other memorable events is being reborn as a family-oriented venue.
The Levitt Shell debuts on tonight when Amy LaVere performs to kick off a five-week, 25-concert fall season.
For more on the $1.3 million dollar rehab of the Shell and what’s in store for the historic venue, read this week’s feature story.
Response to Wednesday night’s speech by GOP
vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin drew unanimous raves from members of the
Tennessee delegation, both on the floor of the arena when the speech was being
given and afterward.
At Wednesday’s morning-after breakfast of the Tennessee
delegation, 7th District congresswoman Marsha Blackburn said Palin’s
address would help to make this “the reddest of red-state years in Tennessee”
and vowed to do what she could to defend Palin against expected attacks from
“the liberal media.”
Tennessee Republican chair Robin Smith saw Palin as “a
Ronald Reagan in heels,” and praised Palin for expressing “our values – he
values of family, God, faith.”
Speakers at the breakfast were also looking forward to
Thursday night’s acceptance-speech finale by John McCain, now the Republican
presidential nominee after Wednesday night’s official roll call.
In his remarks, 3rd District congressman Zach
Wamp focused on the unprecedented journey, “the most dramatic in our history,”
of McCain from his cloistered one-room cell at the “Hanoi Hilton” in Vietnam to
the White House.
And former U.S. Senator Bill Frist put a positive spin on
the non-conformist aspects of “the maverick, the radical John McCain.” Said the
former Senate majority leader: “I had to put up with John McCain every single
day, and it was hard.” But he professed himself to be in agreement with Palin’s
advocacy in her speech of “tak[ing} the maverick out of the Senate and putting
him int he White House.”
Frist also told some extended anecdotes about Democratic
presidential nominee Barack Obama’s tenure in the Senate, which overlapped with
his own. Frist characterized Obama a something of a self-aggrandizer more
interested in logrolling interplay with the media than with policy matters as
such.
As an ironic counterpoint to that, Frist predicted that
this year’s presidential contest between McCain and Democrat Barack Obama will
based more on personality than on issues.
–Jackson Baker
“Don’t tell anybody about this.”
The speaker was Memphian John Gary, and the “this” he was wanting me to keep secret is the Mississippi River. Yes, I know, you’re Memphians. You know about the Mississippi. It’s that wide, brown, roiling chunk of dangerous, dirty water that flows past downtown and sometimes floods Arkansas.
But the odds are you don’t know about the Mississippi River that Gary, my family, and I visited — lived on — last weekend. This Mississippi has sandbars bigger than Caribbean beaches, “blue holes” where the swimming is splendid, wood storks, great blue herons, petrified mud that comes in fantastic shapes, and glorious peace and quiet.
It’s the wilderness next door — our Rocky Mountains, our ocean, our natural treasure. Less than five miles above Memphis, we watched a bald eagle scout for fish in a shallow backwater as white egrets circled over his head. We walked a vast sandbar at sunrise and marveled at the fresh trails of coyote, deer, large birds, small rodents, and even the S-shaped track of a snake.
And here’s the other big news: You can float blissfully along in the Mississippi in a life-jacket, and you won’t get sucked down by giant whirlpools or get eaten by a huge alligator gar.
We were led by John Ruskey of Clarksdale, Mississippi, who runs a guide service called Quapaw Canoe Company that specializes in Mississippi River floats. We rode in — and occasionally paddled — a 23-foot hand-built canoe modeled after those built by the French Voyageurs 300 years ago. At 450 pounds empty, it was so stable you could dive off the side or the bow and barely rock the boat.
Ruskey is a good man, dedicated to making a change in his community. He has a contingent of youngsters he trains as apprentice river guides — the Mighty Quapaws. The two who accompanied us made lunch and dinner, did the heavy lifting and paddling, and provided lots of adolescent high jinks. They are much the better thanks to this program.
We camped on an island beach, ate catfish and steak and fresh vegetables, then sat around a bonfire passing a bottle and swapping lies until we ran out of both.
We discovered a new world just beyond our city limits. You should go experience it sometime. Just don’t tell anybody.
Bruce VanWyngarden