Month: November 2016

Categories
News News Blog

Homebuyers Interested in York Ave House Residents Fear Church Will Demolish

CREDIT: Joshua Cannon

Joshua Cannon

Two separate homebuyers are interested in a near-century old midtown house that was recently deeded to The Church of the Immaculate Conception to be razed for the expansion of a parking lot and soccer field.

Joshua Cannon

“York had not been on our radar,” said one interested homebuyer who asked to remain anonymous. “We were driving through the neighborhood and saw ‘Save York’ signs. We enjoyed the possibility of what the house provided and liked what it could become.”

Those “Save York” signs represent what 40-year resident Candy Justice calls a “year-long grassroots effort” to preserve the home, located at 1722 York Avenue in the heart of the historic Central Gardens neighborhood. Though the homebuyer attempted to reach Ben Wheeler, a church member who bought and donated the property to IC, they were never contacted.

The homebuyer said he found out last week that the house had been officially transferred to the church, and that they haven’t discussed the possibility of selling. IC officials said in a statement they have “been blessed with a generous gift of the property” and “view this gift as an opportunity to grow our campus for the benefit of the Parish and for the children” of the school.
Joshua Cannon

“To explore all of our options and possibilities, we have engaged a team of professionals first to thoroughly inspect and evaluate the current condition of the property. Once the final assessment has been made, the team will provide the results to determine the best use of the property and outline the required process. The due diligence process will span the next two or so months. Rest assured, we will comply with the various governmental regulations,” the statement read.

Criticism of the church’s plans turned to protest Wednesday evening. About 40 residents and members of neighboring communities stood in front of the Cathedral along Central Avenue with flashlights and signs that read “IC, love thy neighbor.”

“We don’t hate IC at all, but we hate their efforts to destroy the residential integrity of our street,” Justice said. “York is a very close street. So many of us have been part of four or five generations of families living here and we love each other even more than the houses here.”
[pullquote-1]Richard Groff moved to York Avenue almost three years ago to live behind his church. Groff attended IC as a parishioner for eight years until two weeks ago — when he stopped due to a “lack of communication.” With a career in property development, Groff created a preliminary layout that would allow the church to expand parking and the soccer field without demolishing the house. He and a group of York residents met with IC on August 25 to discuss the plan, but were told a new bishop had been instated and no decision could be made.
Joshua Cannon

“There’s a lot of investiture from the neighborhood in this church and this school,” Groff said. “Up until the middle of the summer, I didn’t understand what the fuss was. But then I heard what had happened in the past.”

The house located at 1722 York Avenue would become the fourth of three previous neighborhood homes demolished for the church’s expansion. Eddie Hutchison, a board member on the Central Garden Association, said the Association signed a resolution in 1992 that says they wouldn’t oppose any expansions made by IC.

“Their hands are tied,” Hutchison said. “The feel [the resolution] is still in place. But things have changed since then.”

June West, the executive director of Memphis Heritage, said a large number of York Avenue residents were not aware the resolution was signed. West said her organization, a nonprofit advocacy group for historic Memphis properties, as well as the Midtown Action Coalition, have stepped up to bat for the neighborhood.

“In order to demolish the house, IC has to go before the local Landmarks Commission and get permission,” West said. “That process has not begun yet. Our hopes are that the neighborhood will be able to present the case to the commission and that it will be stopped.”

West said IC’s selling the home to an interested buyer would result in capital for the church.

“It’s a win-win situation,” she said.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Under Construction: An Early Peek at Ballet Memphis’ Midtown Dance Palace

Ballet Memphis’ enormous new Midtown home is all about nurturing and transparency — from its egg-shaped cafe to it’s courtyards, and glass walls. Almost none of that’s apparent yet, but the building’s bones are firmly in place, and construction is moving fast.

Architect Todd Walker took media on a tour of the 38,000 square foot, $21-million project, which will soon house five studios, including a large glass-walled studio with limited, retractible seating, and a similarly transparent costume shop, visible from the street.

Here’s a peek at what’s there.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Lil Buck Comes Home to Dance in New Ballet Ensemble’s Nut ReMix

The holidays are coming up fast and that means local institutions are breaking out the classics. For New Ballet Ensemble, that means something a little different. The Nut ReMix, which I’ve written about pretty extensively over the years, is a decidedly Memphis take on The Nutcracker, with a blend of musical styles, and a hearty mix of ballet and urban dance.

Global Jookin phenomenon Lil Buck — who broke into classical dance with NBE is coming home to show off his moves. He’s joined by fellow NBEer Maxx Reed, who’s spent more than a little time dancing on Broadway in Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark.

Want to know more about these guys and this nifty, MAF thing that’s probably way too family-friendly to use “MAF” even though it’s totally MAF? Here’s a fantastic interview I did with Lil Buck in 2014. There’s a shorter version of that interview here, where you can also scroll down to read about Reed.

If that’s still not enough to whet your whistle, here’s a rehearsal video I shot from a previous ReMix.  Lil Buck’s in white, Reed’s in red.

Check this good stuff out!

Lil Buck Comes Home to Dance in New Ballet Ensemble’s Nut ReMix

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Doctor Strange

I sometimes think it’s strange when people talk about a comic book character’s “true” identity. These characters were, and are, always changing to meet the commercial needs of the publishers. I mean, She-Hulk was briefly a member of the Fantastic Four! The only rules are a complete lack of rules.

Benedict Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange

And yet, there is something about the way Doctor Strange is drawn in the latest Marvel blockbuster that bugs me. I’m not a deep expert on comics. The number of comic book superheroes I have an emotional attachment to is not very large: Spider Man, Batman (90s animated series version), Rom The Spaceknight (that one’s never getting a $100 million movie), Dr. Manhattan, The Tick, and Doctor Strange.

Hiring Benedict Cumberbatch to play the Sorcerer Supreme was the perfect casting choice, which is keeping with the generally good decisions Marvel Studios has made under Producer Supreme Kevin Feige. And, as I’ll get to in a minute, Doctor Strange delivers big time on the visual front, and holds together reasonably well on the writing front. It’s the characterization that left me cold, which is surprising, because the promise of getting the characterization exactly right is what mustered the tiny bit of excitement I have left for Marvel-branded, extruded movie-type product.

After a perfunctory, McGuffin-establishing battle between reality bending mystics, we meet Dr. Stephen Strange, a brilliant neurosurgeon whose massive intellect is outstripped only by his outsized self-regard. And how do the trio of screenwriters and director Scott Derrickson choose to demonstrate his extraordinary brainpower? Turns out he’s a master of 70s pop music trivia. Sure, they reveal this character beat while Strange is in the midst of delicate brain surgery, but wouldn’t a complete mastery of classical music history be more consistent with the character than a fondness for Chuck Mangionie? From the first introduction, they have changed Doctor Strange into Buckaroo Banzai.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Buckaroo Banzai! Far from it. (Where’s my $100 million version of Buckaroo Banzai Against The World Crime League, Hollywood?) But I can’t help but get the feeling that the real reason Doctor Strange listens to dad rock is because everybody loved Starlord’s mom’s mix tape in Guardians Of The Galaxy. Just as Batman and Superman are essentially the same character in Batman vs Superman, so too are members of Marvel’s much more varied hero stable morphing into marketing driven sameness.

Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One shows Stephen Strange what’s up.

But at least Cumberbatch looks the part, and, as appropriate for an origin story, he gains gravitas as the story proceeds. Strange injures his hands in a car accident (don’t text and drive your Lamborghini, people!), ending his neurosurgery career. Medicine fails, so he heads of to Nepal (don’t want to piss off the Chinese market by using the original Tibet) in search of a magical way to restore the full use of his hands. Once there he finds Kamar-Taj, a monastery full of sorcerers led by The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton, hitting her marks with crisp perfection), who teaches Strange the arts of conjuring and inter-dimensional travel. When the magic starts flying, Doctor Strange’s real strength is revealed. There are clear visual references, like the wall- and ceiling-walking martial arts moves taken from The Matrix and the recursive, bending cityscapes from Inception. But like an original beat built out of samples, the visual synthesis feels fresh, even while it pays tribute to artist Steve Ditko’s psychedelic 60s phantasmagoria.

Strange’s journey from adept to master is hastened by the attack of Kaecillius (Mads Mikkelsen), a rogue student of the Ancient One who wants to summon a god of the Dark Dimension to Earth, offering the planet in exchange for everlasting life. Pretty standard stuff for a superhero flick, really, but at least it’s a coherent vehicle to keep the eye-popping visuals flowing.

Doctor Strange is the best superhero movie of the year, but it doesn’t do much to change my hypothesis that we reached Peak Comics with The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. The film’s sturdy competence offers a sharp contrast with the flailing nonsense of the DC filmic universe, which says to me that Disney and Marvel are the only studio today that has an actual good creative process in place. But there’s a thin line between “process” and “formula”, and despite all of its visual bravado, Doctor Strange’s reality bends too strongly towards formula.

Doctor Strange

Categories
Music Music Blog

Beale Street Music Fest Passes Available Friday

CREDIT: Sam Leathers

Sam Leathers

Neil Young at Beale Street Music Fest 2016.

Discounted three day passes to Beale Street Music Fest will go on sale this Friday, November 18th. Tickets go on sale at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow and are available through Ticket fly.

The lineup for Beale Street Music Fest will be announced in February of 2017, but the BSMF Facebook page usually gives a good indication of who might be playing.

The first run of discounted tickets are $95, and the second discounted ticket offer will have three day passes for $105. Check out a video of Neil Young playing Beale Street Music Fest 2016 below.

Beale Street Music Fest Passes Available Friday

Categories
News News Blog

Memphis Pets of the Week (Nov. 17-23)

Each week, the Flyer will feature adoptable dogs and cats from Memphis Animal Services. All photos are credited to Memphis Pets Alive. More pictures can be found on the Memphis Pets Alive Facebook page.

[slideshow-1]

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

AAC Picks: Week 12

LAST WEEK: 4-1
SEASON: 69-13

THURSDAY
Louisville at Houston

FRIDAY
Memphis at Cincinnati

SATURDAY
Tulsa at UCF
Navy at East Carolina
UConn at Boston College
USF at SMU
Temple at Tulane

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies 111, Clippers 107: Road Retribution

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

Grizzlies/Clippers made a comeback last night.

It was one for the ages, another chapter in a long rivalry between two teams who have a genuine distaste for each other that stretches back at least four years and two playoff series. Last night the Grizzlies and Clippers played in LA (after an uneventful and disappointing first matchup that the Clippers won handily) and played one of the most exciting regular season games I’ve seen in a while—and the Grizzlies came away with a win against what has so far been the best team in the NBA on their home turf.

Here are five unordered thoughts from my sleep-starved mind about last night’s 111-107 instant classic.

Five Thoughts

★ Andrew Harrison is starting to win me over. He’s gotten a lot better as the season has gotten underway, especially on the defensive end. He guarded Chris Paul with serious attitude last night, including this spectacular chasedown block:

(Not to mention his accidental wrestling takedown ot Luc Mbah a Moute.)

If he keeps this up and develops his offensive game to match is defense, Harrison is going (1) make me admit that I was wrong about him and (2) make Wade Baldwin look more like a project whose time might come next year instead of this year. Harrison’s slow start had me convinced that Fizdale saw something in him that wasn’t there, but he’s becoming more steady by the game.

★ Mike Conley shot extremely well. At one point Conley was 7/7 from the field and 5/5 from three-point range. He finished the game with 30 points… on 12 shots. It was an extremely efficient scoring outburst from Conley, and it happened against some extremely difficult defense from Chris Paul, who hounded Conley without mercy most of the night. The Clippers’ defense overall last night was good, but Conley was able to roast them pretty handily. At times he makes you believe what he said on Media Day: that this is the way he and Marc Gasol have always wanted to play.

★ Speaking of Marc Gasol, he hit his 4th three pointer of the night—he finished 4/5 from long range— and did this:

I don’t know what else to say about Marc Gasol other than what I said last night when it happened:

★ Chandler Parsons is still not ready for prime time, and I don’t care. Parsons clearly doesn’t trust his leg yet, and I don’t blame him. He’s not playing at the level anywhere approximating his peak ability yet… and I’m not really worried about it. It’s going to take time for him to get back in the swing of things physically, and even then let’s not forget he’s only actually played with these guys the last month or so. I’ll start paying attention to whether Parsons is looking like himself sometime in December.

★ I missed this. Game 6 of the 2013 playoff series against the Clippers was the most fun, profoundly “Memphis” sporting event I will ever experience. Someday, Chris Herrington and I should break down our top 5 or 10 favorite moments from that one game. When it’s played at the sort of violent frenzy that marked most of last night’s game, Grizzlies/Clippers is the best rivalry in professional basketball, and certainly the most fun to watch (though sometimes perhaps nauseating in its intensity). When the Clippers rolled into Memphis a couple of weeks ago and the Grizzlies didn’t even seem interested in the game, I thought maybe it was over. Everything ends at some point, right?

Wrong.

The Grizzlies still hate losing to the Clippers, and when it happens, they are set on a mission of retribution. Last night was the most physical game the Grizzlies have played all year, but it wasn’t the slow, methodical, plodding brutality of old, the kind that used to fluster the Clippers by never relenting even once. This new intensity came in waves, great spasms of defense as some of the young guys looked at the old guys like, “Wait, they’re gonna let me do that?”

They are going to let you do that, kid.

Throw that elbow into somebody’s gut while you’re trying to get position on the block. Slap Chris Paul’s hands away two feet in front of a ref while he pretends not to see you do it. This is the essence of Grizzlies/Clippers, and I missed it.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Why The Fuss?

Why The Fuss?

Last Tuesday night, as those of us who were charged with creating the Flyer cover story awaited election returns, a pattern became obvious: Donald Trump was winning in places he wasn’t supposed to win. This was a surprise to nearly everyone — pundits, pollsters, Democrats, and Republicans, alike. The Wall Street Journal later reported that even Trump and his top staff expected to lose.

As Jackson Baker wrote and rewrote the topper on his cover story, and as our print deadline of midnight approached, it appeared that Hillary Clinton’s path to the White House was almost nonexistent. We didn’t know Trump had won, but it sure seemed likely. For those of us in the Flyer newsroom, and indeed for much of the country, it was truly a “WTF?” moment. How did everybody get it so wrong? How did this already bizarre campaign get even more bizarre?

So, we went with the now-infamous “WTF?” cover and went home to bed.

The next morning, the calls and comments started flooding our phonelines and our Facebook page. We got dozens of emails. For the first few hours, almost without exception, the messages from our readers were overwhelmingly, even heart-warmingly supportive, the general sentiment being “Thank you for expressing exactly what I feel.” “Thank you for being a sane voice in the wilderness,” etc.

Then, as the papers began getting delivered to the outer reaches of our circulation — the suburbs, north Mississippi — the other side began to be heard from. “How could you put such horrible profanity on your cover?” “What about the children who see this?” And my favorite, variations of: “I’m a long-time, loyal reader, and I will never buy your publication again!” The irony of Trump supporters worrying about “profanity” was apparently lost in translation.

Then we started getting photos of Flyers being tossed into dumpsters and ugly personal threats. So it went for a couple days — back and forth — but overall, the positive reactions far, far outweighed the negative.

Trump’s election shook the great majority of our regular readers to the core. The Flyer‘s “base” is, and always has been, thinking, progressive people — accepting of racial, gender, and cultural diversity, environmentally aware, pro-women’s rights.

Though it’s possible he may surprise us, Trump represents the polar opposite of all of that. Indeed, his first announced staff appointment was Steve Bannon, an anti-Semite who runs Brietbart.com, a white supremacist website. His possible choices to head the EPA (a climate change denier), Justice (Rudy Giugliani), Immigration (a “build the wall” guy), Interior (Sarah Palin!) are a further indication of just how hard-line this administration may be.

Hispanics and Muslims are terrified of deportation and harassment. African Americans and Jews fear the legitimizing of alt-right racism. LGBTQ folks fear renewed discrimination and a repeal of their right to marry. Environmentalists fear a rollback to the era when corporations could pollute our air and water with impunity. Pro-choice voters fear the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The people who care about these things are our people — Flyer people. The Trump administration will likely challenge progressive ideas in ways we haven’t seen in decades, so we all had better be ready to stand up and be heard. It isn’t Democrat versus Republican anymore, it’s sanity versus a rollback to the Dark Ages.

And yes, it’s frightening to think what could happen to our country, but it’s also an opportunity to get organized and reconnect with our core beliefs. We won’t back down, and neither will our readers and supporters. Thank the folks who display our racks. Patronize and thank our advertisers. They’re a big part of this.

We’re Memphis progressives, we’re a community, and we need to recognize the inherent power we have if we speak out as one. So, onward into the breach, my friends. WTF.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Water Taxi Wet Dream

Many leaders have imagined the whir of outboard motors pushing water taxis through the Wolf River Harbor for at least six years, but a new state report douses that dream with a cool glass of muddy river water.

High capital costs and heavily subsidized operations highlight the report from the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT). But the death knell for the project, which Riverfront Development Corp. (RDC) president Benny Lendermon said he heard at least six months ago, was the disqualification of amphibious vehicles (or duck boats) from the project.

Water taxis first appeared in paper here in 2010, a part of the Mud Island River Park Land Use Study. They popped up again two years later in the Uptown West Master Plan. The very basic idea was to run the taxis up and down the Memphis riverfront, connecting key sites.

Riders, mainly tourists, would catch one of three water taxis (large pontoon boats with outboard motors) at Beale Street Landing, according to the report authored by national transportation consulting firm TransSystems. The taxi would make a stop at Mud Island and continue to a landing dock under the A. W. Willis Bridge for walkable access to Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.

Some leaders have long dreamed of having water taxis here.

This plan would require taxi riders to enter and exit the boats and traverse walkways, which would all have to meet standards set forth in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This, Lendermon said, increased the cost of the project considerably and put it out of reach.

He imagined a water taxi service that used large amphibious vehicles, commonly called duck boats. Using the boats would only require riders to enter and exit the vehicles once and without the need for dock landings. But the study said federal funds would not support the vehicles because they are considered tourist vehicles and not strictly for transportation services.

“The bottom line is if you’re going to say amphibious vehicles are not allowed and not funded by the Federal Transit Authority, then there’s no way a water taxi system is feasible in Memphis,” Lendermon said.

The study projects about 21,000 one-way trips per year. One-way tickets would cost $5. Round-trip tickets would be $7.

Here’s where the report drops a cold bucket of reality. Building the dock landings, buying the boats, and more would cost between $4 million and $12 million. That kind of money would get the project off the ground, and then it would cost about $660,000 a year to run it.

Furthermore, the study says the water taxi service would never become a self-sustaining business venture. Each one-way trip (from Beale Street Landing to Bass Pro or back the other way) would require a subsidy of $26.63, or about $580,300 annually.

If fares from taxi riders were to cover the project’s entire cost, one-way tickets would have to be $31, and there would be no round-trip tickets available, the study says. This, of course, would severely limit ridership and would likely make the project unfeasible.

Lendermon said the study, which took 18 months to complete but no local money, ends the conversation of a Memphis water taxi service.