Month: October 2014

Categories
Music Music Features

Dan Montgomery at the Hi-Tone

Dan Montgomery worries that he may have an identity issue. He’s usually described as an “Americana” artist, which is fitting, although he’s better recognized in Memphis as a bearded denizen of area taverns and coffeehouses, toting an acoustic guitar and telling clever, edgy stories about love, loss, booze, and catastrophic debt. Over the course of three very good CDs, he has demonstrated that he’s all these things. His latest CD, Sin, Repent, Repeat, is a return to tube-amped electric guitars and rock-and-roll with 13 songs that find Montgomery wrestling with old demons and winning on almost every track.

“About two years ago, it dawned on me that I write based on the rhythm section I have,” Montgomery says. Problem was, he didn’t have a rhythm section. Eventually, he hooked up with Memphis bassist Jeremy Scott (the Subtractions, Reigning Sound) and drummer James Cunningham, who’s often found playing blues gigs on Beale or backing Nancy Apple and her Whole Damn Band.

Dan Montgomery

“We had a rate-a-record show at the Bucc,” Montgomery says, explaining his song selection process. “We handed out score cards with a comment section. This is to people drunk at the Bucc. So some of the comments are really funny, and some are really mean.”

Sin, Repent, Repeat opens with “The Drunken Mouth” and “Dirty Rotten Shame,” a pair of earworms that sound like Tom T. Hall got in a fight with Velvet Crush and the Ronettes. And speaking of meanness, the standout track “If You Were Mine” maps the distance between wanting and having.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Guantanamo Dilemma

As President Obama works to secure his legacy, the Guantanamo quagmire all but guarantees that greatness and Obama will never be synonymous. As president, Obama has the ability to close down our Caribbean prison camp, — where currently 149 individuals reside — but he has refused to do so. Leaving Guantanamo open demonstrates the limits of President Obama’s political savvy, but more significantly, Guantanamo irreparably damages our democracy and dramatically shrinks our ability to lead internationally.

In 1903, the United States leased the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base as a way to protect U.S. economic interests on the island of Cuba and refuel naval ships. The U.S. essentially “took” Cuba in a brief 1898 war with Spain. We continue to lease this territory from Cuba, and the arrangement can only be terminated if both parties agree. Since the 1959 Cuban revolution, Cuba and the U.S. have agreed on virtually nothing, so Guantanamo remains contested. But like all U.S. military bases on foreign territory, no one disputes that the United States holds “complete jurisdiction” within the perimeters of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.

According to the logic of the G.W. Bush administration — which opened the camp in early 2002 — “enemy combatants” (the term used by the Bush administration to classify detainees, which was dropped by President Obama in 2009) had no rights under international law. The U.S. Supreme Court challenged that view, and in a 2006 decision, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, declared that Article 3 of the Geneva Convention applies to all people, everywhere, at all times, including enemy combatants. Article 3

prohibits indefinite detention and torture and calls for access to fair trials.

The previous administration hoped to use on-site “military tribunals” to dispatch “justice” in Guantanamo, but, once again, they were stymied by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 2004 [Rasul v. Bush] that detainees had the right to challenge their detention in U.S. (civilian) courts.

President Obama, in early 2009, promised to shut down Guantanamo in a year, but politics intervened. Congress essentially defunded all efforts to transfer the detainees to the U.S. mainland, and many of the individuals held at the base have been renounced by their own nations. Thus, these detainees float in legal limbo, stuck on a contested U.S. naval base in the Caribbean while tenacious attorneys and frightened politicians determine their fates. Seven detainees have died in captivity, many have gone on hunger strikes, hoping to die as the world watches this national horror show with bitter derision.  

So the United States has found a way to imprison people indefinitely, on U.S. territory, while suspending the most important notions of habeas corpus. This happened because we allowed it to happen. We don’t like to compare our nation to Argentina, but our practices at Guantanamo are very much analogous to the worst behaviors of the military junta in Argentina during the dark days of that nation’s Dirty War (1976-1983). Of course, when the Argentine generals were elected out of office in 1983 and relinquished power, the most egregious abuses ended. With the current “War on Terror” mentality firmly ingrained in American society, we’re dug in for permanent war, and evidently we’re comfortable as a nation with infinite detention of certain individuals.

Since 2002, Guantanamo has cost U.S. taxpayers roughly $4.7 billion. The real cost, though, is to our reputation abroad. We wonder about U.S. power eroding internationally; part of the uncomfortable answer is found in Guantanamo.

Keeping that prison camp open keeps us less free and less safe. It also threatens our democracy. We try to ignore our contradictions and legal sins while living in a dangerous, collective amnesia, but the rest of the world remembers.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

On Madhatted; One Man Two Guvnors; and A Member of the Wedding

The Flyer‘s annual Best of Memphis issue is an opportunity to pay tribute to our favorite things. From where I sit, Overton Square developer Bob Loeb had the best idea anybody’s had in ages when he decided to build the entertainment district around the square’s most enduring creative culture: live theater. Few changes to the local landscape are as exciting as the new Hattiloo Theatre, a nexus for Memphis’ African-American creative class, that opened on the square earlier this year, just across the street from the Circuit Playhouse, which turns 45 this week with a revival of The Fantasticks. Theater tourists visiting the square this weekend can choose between that, the Hattiloo’s soul-searching production of The Convert, Madhatted, a manic take on Alice in Wonderland at TheatreWorks, and the madcap farce One Man Two Guvnors at Playhouse on the Square. I’ll be taking a closer look at these last two shows in the column below, in addition to Theatre Memphis’ slow but satisfying production of Carson McCullers’ A Member of the Wedding.

I wasn’t a fan of Madhatted when the show debuted at the Memphis Children’s Theatre Festival a few years back. The script felt insubstantial, and the manic non sequitur was exhausting. But Our Own Voice Theatre Troupe (OOV) saw merit in the piece, which makes complete sense since OOV’s founding director Bill Baker (the White Rabbit), is a master of absurd clowning, and his edgy fooling has become a company specialty.

OOV’s Madhatted is an improvement, although it still devolves from inspired nonsense into the ordinary kind, becoming strained as the act wears on. But the business is funny and themes relating to identity are clarified giving the revival much-needed heft.

Madhatted borrows lyrics from the Tom Waits musical Franks Wild Years, cultivating an air of Waitsian menace. It’s too much of a reminder that Waits collaborated with avant garde director Robert Wilson on a darkly majestic version of the same story.

Madhatted fluctuates between grand and grating, a curiosity custom fit for more adventurous theatergoers who like to dive down the occasional rabbit hole.   

Madhatted at TheatreWorks through October 11th

In addition to being a masterful clown show, One Man Two Guvnors is a romp through the soundscape of pendulum-swinging England circa 1963, as skiffle bands transformed into mop-topped rockers like the Beatles and Stones. Live music pulls double duty as sideshow and soundtrack, and the tone set is spot on.

Two Guvnors is a ball-kicking farce (literally), adapted freely but with care from Carlo Goldoni’s 18th-century Italian comedy, Servant of Two Masters. The original story is transformed into a slapstick extravaganza set in the UK underworld. Francis Henshall (an updated vision of the stock character Harlequino — a personification of the human appetite) has just been fired from his skiffle band and, being desperate for work, takes employment from two masters who keep him running. Hilarity ensues, as it will.

Cameron Reeves is completely brilliant as Two Guvnors‘ hungry, sex-starved clown of generous proportions. He builds his gags from the ground up, like pieces of classical architecture, designed to survive the ages.

One Man Two Guvnors at Playhouse on the Square through October 12th

Membership yields privileges not extended to those merely invited to party at the club. And if you’re serving, forget about it. These messages alone make Carson McCullers’ A Member of the Wedding seem prescient, if not positively up-to-date. The elegant novel and awkward, author-adapted play don’t tell a coming-of-age story so much as a coming-to-grips story. It’s unfortunate that some things that make the novel compelling don’t translate to the immediate medium of live performance.

Member tells of Frankie, the tomboy who has fallen in love with her brother, his bride-to-be, their wedding, and a dream of running away from the tedious, humid place where she’s excluded from clubs and ignored by her father.

Lauren Ledger makes a lanky Frankie, showing a real affinity for the role, and Holden Guibao is an adorable John Henry. The always-excellent Delvyn Brown is once again superb as Honey, the doomed jazz trumpet player, smelling of reefer and smoldering with anger and frustration.

As Bernice, the one-eyed domestic, Judi Bray is an understated force, knowing herself and the precarious position she occupies.

Echoing the novel, secondary characters are little more than scenery, and the play’s final tragic events drop like the atom bombs Frankie reads about in the newspaper. There’s good content here, but the form remains problematic.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Arepas Deliciosas and Nosh-A-Rye Deli

CREDIT: John Minervini

It’s always fun to order something that’s not on the menu. So when I heard Arepas Deliciosas owner Blanca Castaño-Simpson mention her top-secret Colombian tamales ($7), I had to try one.

I definitely wasn’t prepared for what showed up at the table. For starters, Colombian tamales are huge! They’re like plump iPad minis wrapped in dark-green banana leaves. And unlike most Mexican tamales, they are wickedly chunky. The masa (corn dough) is practically swimming with carrots, peas, and plantains — not to mention a whole, cooked chicken leg and an enormous chicharrón (fried pork rind).

John Minervini

Blanca Castaño-Simpson

These tamales are a hit. Castaño-Simpson grinds her own corn to make masa, and you can definitely tell. It’s got an amazing, fresh flavor, one that pairs perfectly with the savory-sweet filling.

Where did Castaño-Simpson get her culinary moxie? Why, in her mother’s kitchen (claro). She grew up in Pereira, Colombia, a medium-size town at the foot of the Andes Mountains.

“It’s like paradise,” she opines, with a far-off look in her eyes. “Like a nice spring day, every day, all year. The people are very friendly, and the food is wonderful.”

You can practically taste the fine weather in the bandeja paisa ($14.99), a signature Colombian dish. It’s a huge, oval-shaped platter, overflowing with pork belly, plantains, arepas (corn patties), white rice, and fried egg. Preparations vary from region to region, but Castaño-Simpson’s version also includes chorizo, ground beef, and avocado.

The beauty of this cuisine is its simplicity. Inevitably, whenever I asked Castaño-Simpson what was in a dish, the answer began the same way: tomatoes and onions and maybe two or three other ingredients. A good example is the salsa fresca: tomatoes, onions, cilantro, lemon juice, vinegar. It really is that simple! But if you know how to balance these ingredients, they pack a powerful punch.

Nosh-A-Rye — located in the lobby of the Memphis Jewish Home & Rehab — keeps kosher. In other words, they follow the rules of kashrut (Jewish dietary law). Rule number one: no mixing meat and dairy. Other forbidden foods include shellfish, pork, camel, and rock badger. Why would you want to eat in a restaurant if you can’t order rock badger? The answer, my friend, is simple. It’s geshmak — that’s Yiddish for yummy.

Case in point: the corned beef sandwich ($6.99). As sandwiches go, it’s pretty straightforward, just corned beef and fresh spinach on rye bread. No mustard, nothing. But taste it, and tell me if the meat doesn’t speak for itself. Flown in from a kosher butcher in New York, it’s moist and tender, faintly salty, with a subtle, spicy flavor.

The man behind the improvements is Nosh-A-Rye’s new manager, Kurt Abisch (and the Deli team of Chef Dovid Cenker, Bobbie Yarbrough, and Isreal Howard). Raised in Israel, Abisch spent the past 15 years working in kosher food service in New York City. Now he’s bringing that know-how — and a long list of kosher food distributors — to Memphis. “In New York, my first big order was for a Reform temple in the Bronx,” remembers Abisch, furrowing his thick eyebrows. “I brought in the kosher dairy, and they said, ‘Put it over there, by the shrimp.’ I was like, ‘Oh boy.”

Since coming on in April, Abisch has revamped the menu at Nosh-A-Rye, adding things like the knockwurst hot dog ($2.99) and Turkish coffee ($2). (“I tell the old ladies,” he adds, “it grows hairs on your chest.”) But he has kept customer favorites like the matzo ball soup ($2.59) and the fried chicken ($6.99).

I know what you’re thinking: fried chicken at a kosher deli? But if you happen to be an observant Jew, this is one of just two places in town where you can order the stuff. (The other is Holy Cow, in the lobby of the MJCC.) And come on, it just wouldn’t be Memphis without fried chicken.

Abisch has also started a series of international dinners, offering kosher takes on cuisines from around the world. The next is an Italian Feast on October 22nd, featuring beef carpaccio and sweet potato gnocchi. At that event, there will also be a performance by opera singer Stephen Len White, who will sing selections from The Phantom of the Opera.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Beer and Bacon Festival

People have been curing pork for centuries and using the phrase “bring home the bacon” since the 12th century when an English church offered a side of cured pig meat to any man who could swear that he’d neither fought nor quarreled with his wife for a year and a day. Beer has been a popular adult beverage since the dawn of civilization and is, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. In a stroke of absolute genius, 98.1 The Max radio personalities Drake & Zeke (with some assistance from their production team) came up with the brilliant idea to build a festival around these two tasty treats.

Drake & Zeke

The idea is basically this: Once upon a time people ate bacon with eggs for breakfast. Today it’s used as an ingredient in everything from gourmet entrées to dessert pastries. Drake & Zeke’s Bacon & Beer Festival at Minglewood Hall is a competition to discover the most creative bacon chefs in Memphis. Categories for the competition run the gamut from best appetizer to best cocktail and best dessert. And there will be lots of beer to wash everything down with. Couldn’t be easier.

Drake & Zeke host an annual telethon for Ronald McDonald House every October, and the new Bacon & Beer Festival is an opportunity to start the fund-raising early. The festival is family-oriented with a “pig pen” area for younger kids. Regional bands scheduled to appear include country rocker Rosco Bandana, 2 Mule Plow, Will Tucker, and Charvey McLemore.

Categories
Film/TV TV Features

Gotham

Gotham‘s story is bigger than Batman himself. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Caped Crusader as much as any middle-aged comic book nerd. But over time Gotham City has taken on its own life, especially since Alan Moore (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) penned the city’s rich backstory in a 1986 issue of Swamp Thing. Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One broke new ground by focusing as much on the hard choices made by Detective James Gordon as it did on the exploits of aspiring vigilante Bruce Wayne. Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker’s merciless police procedural Gotham Central, which pushed the Dark Knight even further into the background by focusing tightly on a few good cops bucking a corrupt system. Gotham Central wasn’t just a good comic, it was great crime fiction, and a TV show inspired by any one or all of these ideas could go in many fun directions, from classic noir to supernatural horror. But Gotham‘s pilot just confirmed the new FOX series is just another vehicle for something we don’t need more of: predictable origin stories.

Did we need to see the usual horror in the eyes of young billionaire-to-be Bruce Wayne as his mother’s mandatory pearls are ripped from her neck, sending beads bouncing across the blood-slick streets just as they’ve bounced across the pages of countless comic books and film adaptations? From secret societies, to scary asylums, to Golden Age superheroes like Green Lantern Alan Scott, there are a million stories in the city of ultimate corruption. Why rush to tell the one we already know by heart?

Gotham’s cast

Gotham‘s stylistic problems are probably best exemplified in an Episode 2 scene where two detectives are interviewing the Penguin’s mother, played by the ever-quirky Carol Kane. The cops look like they just walked out of an episode of Law & Order into a Tim Burton film. The trick of a show like Gotham is to make the more and less realistic aspects of the story make sense together. But Gotham can’t seem to decide if it’s an edgy crime drama or a campy romp through comic book history.

The overstuffed pilot episode introduced viewers to Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), a sexy crime boss looking to wrestle control from Carmine Falcone (John Doman), the Gotham City Godfather. There’s a parade of characters destined to join Batman’s rogues gallery: 15-year-old Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Camren Bicondova) scampering across rooftops; Edward Nygma/The Riddler (Cory Michael Smith), a creepy forensics expert who likes to phrase his answers in the form of a question; a pre-teen Poison Ivy (Clare Foley) growing up in an abusive home with lots of plants. There’s also a cameo by comedian with a morbid sense of humor. He’s a real joker, and Fish Mooney loves him.

So far Oswald Cobblepot/Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) is Gotham‘s best-developed character, and Taylor’s pitch-perfect characterization calls to mind performances by Crispin Glover and Peter Lorre. In Gotham he’s reimagined as a stool pigeon with a sadistic streak and delusions of grandeur.

Fish Mooney thinks Gordon assassinated Cobblepot to prove his loyalty. But Gordon faked it, and now has to share at least some responsibility for the psychotic killing and kidnapping the Penguin pulled off at the end of Episode 2. Although they may waddle, this storyline has legs.

Ben McKenzie and Donal Logue do their best to make the predictable good cop/bad cop relationship between Jim Gordon and his partner Harvey Bullock interesting. But there are other cops on this beat in Gotham with potentially interesting stories. Renee Montoya was created for Batman: The Animated Series and went on to become The Question, a conspiracy-obsessed super detective who was given her best life in the pages of Gotham Central. In “Half a Life” — one of the best story arcs the funny books have ever produced — Montoya’s life unravels after a photograph of her kissing another woman is posted on a bulletin board at the police precinct. Hopefully Gotham can eventually tell stories like these with the detail and delicacy they deserve.

For all of its tonal problems and self-inflicted wounds, Gotham is still probably the best effort so far to adapt the superhero universe to the small screen where serialized storytelling really belongs. Hopefully, like Bruce Wayne, it will eventually grow into something other than what it appears to be on the surface.

Categories
Flyer Flashback News

Looking Back at the “Best Of Memphis” List That Started It All

In 1994, five years after the first issue of the Memphis Flyer hit news stands, we launched the first “Best of Memphis” poll. Back then, votes were cast on paper ballots, and each and every vote was counted and tallied by hand, which was a lot of work considering the first poll had 72 categories.

Some things haven’t changed since we started the poll; Huey’s, Rendezvous, Seikisui, Buster’s Liquors, and even WMC-TV news anchor Joe Birch have reigned supreme as the “gold medal winner” in their respective categories since day one.  

To prep readers for the first poll, an editor’s note read: “We thought it would be fun to do a ‘Best of’ Issue. Our friends at Memphis magazine do one every year. Weekly newspapers from Los Angeles to the East Coast have been doing them for years. It couldn’t be that difficult, could it? We’d get about a hundred or so ballots back, count them, and put together a story.

We miscalculated a few things, not the least of which was the incredible volume of returned ballots. They came in boxes — hundreds per day. Tabulating the results took much longer than we had planned. And while we were very specific about our ‘one ballot per reader’ rule, we were still surprised at the number of businesses that tried to stuff our ballot box. Bars and restaurants were the main culprits. There was even a vain attempt made by a local deejay.”

The staff must have had their hands full with all of those ballots, but luckily the tradition, however tedious, carried on. The very first “Best of Memphis” Ballot also featured a Staff Picks section, complete with categories like: Memphian We’d Like to See Go Out In Drag (Mike Ramirez, George Klein, Bud Dudley), Most Overrated Memphian (Cybil Shepherd), People We’d Like To See Leave Town (“the pitchwoman for Hank’s 1/2-Price Furniture; the waving street corner anti-abortionist; the nut who put up those ‘Tobacco Kills’ signs all over the place; anybody who has ever spray-painted or has uttered the phrase ‘Meat Is Murder’), and even Worst TV Hairdo (Jerry Tate of Channel 3).

While some reader categories have remained a constant throughout the history of the “Best of Memphis,” others didn’t stand the test of time. In 1994, we had now-defunct categories for Best Fast Food (Wendy’s) and Best Place to Celebrate Divorce (Tiffany’s Cabaret). In 1996, we asked readers to rank the Best Place To Use Your Dog As a Chick/Dude Magnet (Overton Park) and Best Place to Cure a Hangover Without Alcohol (“my bed,” with CK’s Coffee Shop in a close second).

Twenty years later, the “Best of Memphis” poll is our biggest issue of the year. Local businesses proudly display their rankings, and readers argue over who should or shouldn’t have made the cut. It’s safe to say that the list has become an important part of local culture celebrating all the good things about life in Memphis. Except of course, Jerry Tate’s poor hairdo.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Central Station Celebrates 100 Years

CREDIT: Memphis Rail & Trolley Museum

Downtown’s Central Station may not be the passenger hub it was in the heyday of train travel, but it’s still chugging along.

This weekend, October 3rd through 5th, the Memphis Railroad & Trolley Museum, located inside Central Station, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the station’s 1914 grand opening with live music, a train memorabilia sale, special exhibits, and more.

“We want the younger generation to have an experience that shows them what it might have been like to be alive in Memphis in the 1900s,” said Joe Oliver, founding director of the museum. “Rail transport and travel is a big part of the Memphis story, part of our history, and our heritage is in danger of being lost because it isn’t as easy to see as it once was.”

On Thursday, October 2nd, the celebration will kick off with a show by country band the Grahams at 7:30 p.m.

On Friday, October 3rd, two train exhibit cars will pull into the station — one displaying the history of Amtrak and another displaying that of Norfolk Southern. Both will be open for tours from noon to

5 p.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Memphis Rail & Trolley Museum

Central Station in 1914

“The Norfolk Southern car will have a locomotive simulator. You’re the engineer. You’ll see the countryside pass and the tracks as you’re rolling down. You’ll have to blow the horn when you approach streets,” said Bill Strong, director of the Memphis Railroad & Trolley Museum.

On Saturday, October 4th, the official anniversary of the station, the Memphis Rail & Trolley Museum will be open for free. Guest lecturer Milton Winter will talk about the history of Central Station. A train show and sale will be set up in the building’s boardroom, peddling all sorts of rail artifacts and collectibles.

Double J Bar-B-Q will be served in the Amtrak parking lot from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Visitors can also board a bus headed to the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) trolley barn on North Main for a tour.

Central Station was constructed for around $1.5 million at the corner of Main and Calhoun (now G.E. Patterson) to replace another train station at that same location. In the station’s heyday, numerous rail lines operated passenger trains there.

By the 1960s, many rail lines began discontinuing passenger trains. On

May 1, 1971, Amtrak took over all inter-city passenger train service. Illinois Central, which was headquartered here, moved their offices out of the station by 1989.

“After Illinois Central moved out, the station became a hull. It was at one time referred to as the worst Amtrak station in America,” Strong said. “People were scared of the neighborhood, and there were drunks passed out in the street.”

In the 1990s, the station was remodeled, and the once-sleazy South Main area was transformed into a thriving arts district.

“In 1991, the Illinois Central railroad sold the station and all the property to the city of Memphis for $10. And the city said, ‘MATA, you’re going to run this building,” Strong said.

Today, Central Station still serves as the Amtrak hub, and it’s home to the Memphis Rail & Trolley Museum. The former Illinois Central office space on the upper floors is now apartments, and parts of the bottom floor is rented out for special events.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Downtown Memphis Leads the County in Growth Since 2000

CREDIT: Downtown Memphis Commission

Downtown Memphis sparked and boomed over the past 14 years, according to a new report from the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC), and more fireworks are on the way.

Downtown Memphis Commission

Downtown’s population grew more than any place in Shelby County from 2000 to now, the report said. The area is unmatched in the region for work and play, and it does all this in six square miles, only two percent of the county’s entire landmass. 

Downtown fell on hard times after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. in 1968. Businesses were boarded up, and residents raced to the suburbs. Signs of life returned in the 1980s; Beale Street was reopened, and some urban pioneers moved onto South Main. Progress was slow throughout the 1990s, but momentum mounted, the boom began, and that’s good news for the entire city, said DMC President Paul Morris. 

Downtown Memphis Commission

 “I really, truly believe that [the growth of] Downtown is one of the most efficient and effective ways to save our city,” Morris said. “I know that sounds like I’m exaggerating, but we strongly need new citizens in Memphis. And we need to retain the talent and the people that we have here now. Downtown is performing in that regard.”

And Downtown’s fireworks show isn’t over. The report says $294 million worth of new attractions have either just opened Downtown or are on the way. That list includes Bass Pro Shops, Beale Street Landing, and the Main Street to Main Street bike and pedestrian path. 

Downtown Memphis Commission

But a “tremendous amount of challenges” remain for Downtown, Morris said. 

“This report shows a lot of the successes, but [the DMC] spends 99 percent of our time focused on the problems,” he said. “That’s our purpose, to solve the problems, not just to celebrate the successes.”

Many blighted properties pock the city’s sprawling Downtown landscape. The DMC is trying to increase the cost of holding blighted property and decrease the cost of redevelopment. 

Downtown Memphis Commission

Downtown also shows a weak demand for office space, mainly because of competition from suburban office centers. Some of the vacant space Downtown has been successfully converted to residences, Morris said. But the Downtown market is also seeing organic growth from existing companies.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1336

Cool Things

“Jay,” artist Lance Turner’s mural depicting Memphis garage-rock hero Jay Reatard, is being installed this week as a part of the “Mosaic” public art project sponsored by the Downtown Memphis Commission. Turner, a photo realist of sorts, likes to show viewers the pixel grid because he thinks painting is an inherently self-referential form. This mural —like the musician who inspired it — goes in and out of focus depending on your point of view. If you’re standing right in front of the mural, it looks like this.

The farther away you move, the more things come into focus. It’s a nifty addition to the neighborhood, and just one part of the ambitious mural project.

Neverending Elvis

Speaking of art inspired by Memphis musicians, who wants to buy three 7-foot-tall Elvises? Andy Warhol’s “Triple Elvis” depicts the King (three times) as a gun-slinging cowboy and hits the auction block at Christie’s on November 12th. “Triple Elvis” is being offered for sale alongside another of Warhol’s celebrity portraits, “Four Marlons,” which depicts Brando as he appeared in the film The Wild One.  The estimated combined price is $130-million, which really isn’t bad for seven of the 20th century’s biggest stars.