Susan Ellis gives a big thumbs up to Checkered Cow Burgers, a spin-off of D’bo’s wings.
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Month: June 2013
Memphis ranked 42 out of 50 in the latest ranking of most park-friendly cities by the Trust for Public Land.
The Trust uses a ParkScore system giving each city from one to five “park benches” based on park size, accessibility, the number of playgrounds, and park investment. Memphis earned one-and-a-half park benches.
Memphis actually scored well in the park size category (in the top 10 out of 50 cities) with a median park size of 10 acres. But the city’s score was hurt by a lack of accessibility into city parks. It was determined that only 40 percent of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park.
“The Trust for Public Land will be working with Memphis’ leaders to find the best way to use the park space they have and to develop a stronger park system,” said Rick Wood, area director in Tennessee for The Trust for Public Land. “Memphis is already working to provide greater park access in places like Fletcher Creek Park. Fletcher Creek currently has only one entrance, but soon it will be accessible from multiple locations and will have a walking trail right beside it.”
Memphis ranked at 31 last year, but the Trust for Public Land only ranked 40 cities last year instead of 50. So the ranking actually didn’t change much.
Minneapolis was the only city to score a perfect five park benches this year. New York City came in second, and Boston, Sacramento, and San Francisco tied for third place. Nashville came in at number 38.
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About Those Bass Pro Bonds …
John Branston looks at how the financial instruments in the city’s Bass Pro deal are faring.
The Checkered Cow Burgers is a burger joint within D’bo’s, a venture D’bos owner David Boyd started earlier this year.
The menu is long with some 25 burgers, with beef, turkey, and veggie options and prices starting at $5.99.
The menu starts with the Checkered Cow, a just-the-basics burger with a choice of toppings. Then things get very, very imaginative. The Firecracker includes a patty soaked in Tabasco and the Cowboy burger is topped with chilli. The Nacho burger is smothered in nacho cheese, jalapenos, and tortilla chips.
And then there is the ultimate … the Ultimate ($7.99). This is a burger topped garnished with French fries. That bears repeating: It is a burger topped with French fries.
I got the Nature Boy ($5.99), a veggie burger that was so good, I thought about getting one the next day.
One point worth mentioning is that everything is made-to-order so there’s going to be a wait involved.
More details to come regarding Checkered Cow in an upcoming Flyer.
Related:
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Investing in The Bass Pro Pyramid
Moved by mordant curiousity and a falling stock market, I called a local bond trader to see how those Bass Pro Pyramid bonds are doing now that the Bassmasters have admitted that this deal won’t be done until late 2014, if ever.
Bass Pro founder Johnny Morris has changed his mind again. The new details are, why bother, check the daily and its puff piece. Something about an elevator. Or an inclinator. Or two of them. This is his baby. It will probably change a few more times. Remember the glass band all the way around when he came here for the big announcement and fish fry a couple years ago? Here’s a less flattering piece from the national media.
All Memphis can do is wait and hope. And invest, if you’re brave enough.
Thanks to Johnny Lessley at Duncan Williams for the bond info. You’ll need a minimum of $5000 or more likely $100,000 to get in the game. These bonds are not widely traded. Mutual funds and insurance companies scooped up most of them in the initial offering. Some days they’re available and some days they’re not. It isn’t like buying cheeseburgers at McDonald’s except that a bad one can make you really sick.
There were three different bonds on this project, two of them taxable and one tax free, with different maturities as far out as 2030. A taxable 2030 will get you five percent interest if you can find one. A tax-free bond priced at $98.50 at issue, slightly below par, is $108 or $109 today. Not because Bass Pro’s prospects or the future of downtown Memphis has changed, but because interest rates have fallen since 2011. The bonds are rated “A.”
They’re backed by Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) revenue. A TDZ is a legislative creation to build convention centers in Nashville and Memphis, since distorted for all kinds of purposes and places. The Bass Pro bonds are not revenue bonds or general obligation bonds, which would be backed by the taxing authority of the city of Memphis. The interest payments come from TDZ funds collected downtown. MLGW is a big contributor. Nothing says “tourism” like “utility company” does it?
Bass Pro doesn’t start making payments until the super store opens. That will improve the debt service outlook because more state sales taxes will be rebated to the city.
Could Bass Pro Pyramid become another AutoZone Park, where the bond holders took what is called “a haircut” and didn’t get the payments they expected? Possible, but those bonds were backed by luxury suite revenue projections which turned out to be way too optimistic. That said, Bass Pro was supposed to be open late this year, so we’re talking about several million in lost sales taxes if this store is the retail monster it is touted to be. And Bass Pro, we have often been reminded, is just one part of the overall redevelopment of the Pinch District and Convention Center. Nothing is happening there, and nothing is likely to happen for at least another year in light of this week’s announcement.
So show your love and buy yourself a bond or two. If you can put your treasure in the promises of Johnny Morris and Robert Lipscomb and the retailing future of downtown Memphis for the next 17 years you’ve got a stronger stomach than I do.
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Cool Cars and Hot Crowd on Beale Street
America may not have been a better place but cars sure were a lot more interesting when they came with tail fins, 350-horsepower V-8 engines, air cleaners the size of charcoal grills, two-tone color schemes, and lots of chrome.
The best car show I’ve ever seen rolled through Memphis Tuesday and hundreds of cool cars were parked on Beale Street from end to end. It was Hot Rod Magazine’s 2013 Power Tour, which started in Arlington, Texas enroute to Memphis, Birmingham, Chattanooga, and the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Beale Street was packed. Somebody’s been doing something besides hanging out at Club 152.
A few personal favorites:
This 1959 Imperial convertible concept car got my vote as Best of Show. It was a scaled-down two-seater version of the land yacht that came with a 350-horsepower engine, weighed nearly three tons, and sold for a then unthinkable $6,000.
The 1959 Chevy Impala was famous for its gull wings. This model has a truck bed big enough for a piano or two.
The 1958 Chevy station wagon is decked out with a surfboard and a toboggan on top, a Sonic drive-in tray in the window, and Route 66 interior. Chevy made five different models of station wagons that year. None of them looked like this.
The Pontiac GTO was immortalized in a song “Little GTO” by Ronny and the Daytonas but there was nothing little about it. As a male fantasy, this muscle car was up there with Ursula Andress and Sophia Loren. Oddly enough, this orange one has no connection at all with the Tennessee Vols. The owner is from Colorado, and put a 1966 body on a 2006 chassis and changed the paint color. He said he gets asked about the Vols all the time. It drives like a dream and has never been trailered.
The cigar. The black high tops. Perfect. Nice cars too.
The muscles. The sleeveless t-shirt and tattoo. The inscription. The bald dome with the sunglasses on backwards. A classic of another kind.
A car watcher climbs the wall in front of Silky Sullivan’s for a better look.
A 1956 Chevy, with polished chrome and an engine so clean you could eat off of it. I rode from Michigan to Florida in such a car, although it looked nothing like this. It was dull blue with black sidewalls and a constant smell of unfiltered Camel’s coming from the front seat. Why my father did not opt for the two-tone red and white Bel Air rag top with whitewalls I will never understand.
This replica of a 1950s gas station is outside of Cleveland, Mississippi. Any one of these cars would look good in it.
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More on the Hollins Situation
Chris Herrington takes a long look at recent developments in the Lionel Hollins/Grizzlies affair.
A few hours after I posted my initial reaction to the Grizzlies’ granting Lionel Hollins permission to negotiate with other teams, Hollins himself took to local airwaves for a dramatic interview that bordered on public plea. In the two days since, I’ve been busy working on non-Griz writing and editing but have been keeping up with the reaction — on Twitter, on comment threads, on local sports-talk radio. A few freewheeling thoughts on Hollins’ public statement and the talk it’s generated over the past couple of days:
The Pain of Making it Personal and the Difficulty of Blame: I have no personal investment in whether Lionel Hollins returns as Memphis Grizzlies’ head coach. There are certainly those in the local media much closer to him than I am, but I think I get along with him fine. I’ve never cared much about his media-relations skills or perceived lack thereof. I think Hollins has strengths and weaknesses, like all coaches, but also think the scale tips more toward “strengths” for Hollins than for most. I’ve been pretty consistent in saying that I think the potential pitfalls of bringing Hollins back are less profound than the risks of letting him go. But a coaching change is unlikely to alter my projection for next season — at the moment, a slight step back from this past year’s regular and post-season achievements — and I do think this decision is about the future, not about the past; about what’s best for the Grizzlies not only next season but over the next several seasons. And, as I’ve written at length, I think that’s a more complicated situation than simply “Lionel Hollins has done a great job; he deserves to be back.”
But, listening to Hollins’ raw, candid interview with Peter Edmiston on Sports 56 Monday morning, I was most struck not by his blown-out-of-proportion comments about assistant Dave Joerger or even his passing mention of me, but by the personal aspect of it. When Hollins talks about his personal commitment to Memphis and about his now-deep family connections to the city, that’s real. And on those grounds in particular it would be painful — for Hollins most of all, but for the city and its fans too — for his tenure here to end, a tenure, by the way, that is more profound over multiple assignments than perhaps any figure in franchise history. But it will be similarly bitter in the very possible event that Zach Randolph — who has said Memphis is now his home, regardless — wears a different uniform before he retires. Change happens.
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Ace Atkins Signs “The Broken Places”
Oxford novelist Ace Atkins signs copies of his latest Quinn Colson book at Booksellers of Laurelwood Wednesday.
Live music fans in Memphis are in for a rather hectic, choice-filled treat tomorrow night (Wednesday, June 5), as there are no less than four high-quality shows taking place at various venues around Midtown – most of which are scheduled to take place concurrently.
The early-bird offering of the evening is an appearance by local soul-jazz trio the City Champs at the Levitt Shell. This show was originally scheduled for this past Saturday, but had to be re-scheduled due to the rain. The show starts at 7:30 and admission is free.