Month: October 2017

Residence Revamp

Post author By Maya Smith
Post date October 26, 2017

Students are helping to bring a vacant apartment complex in Frayser back from the brink of dilapidation.

The two-year renovation of the Peachtree Apartments on Steele kicked off in August when art students from nearby Martin Luther King College Preparatory High School collaborated with the UrbanArt Commission (UAC) to install colorful murals on the building’s exterior.

Quincy Jones, project manager at ComCap Partners, one of the groups collaborating on the project, said this first step was important for two reasons: It showed the community that vacant buildings can still be “vibrant and appealing during its time of transformation,” and it got “residents to feel invested in the outcome.”

“We thought it would be a good opportunity for students there, and it was a logical idea to involve them,” he said.

ComCap, along with Neighborhood Preservation, Inc. (NPI), another organization driving the effort, focuses much of their work on rehabilitating the environments near schools to improve housing stock for students and their families and to enhance students’ academic performance.

Murals at Peachtree Apartments

NPI president Steve Barlow said solving the housing insecurity problem is the key to neighborhood revitalization.

“High-quality, well-managed, truly affordable housing options for families are in short supply in Frayser and many Memphis neighborhoods,” Barlow said.

The result is housing insecurity, causing people to move many times a year “from one bad situation to another,” he said, which “hurts neighborhood schools and generally destabilizes the community.”

Inside the six buildings of the Peachtree apartment complex, renovations began by gutting the buildings, to remove mold, lead, and asbestos. But Jones said more funding is needed to complete the nearly $6 million project.

To secure more funding, he anticipates that existing, private funds will be matched with tax credits granted by Tennessee’s housing agency in the spring. Once funding is in place, the project will resume with interior remodeling, including the installation of new fixtures, floors, and walls.

When complete, the apartment complex will offer about 51 two-bedroom and three-bedroom units available for rent at prices comparable to those in other nearby apartments. Although necessary, Barlow said these types of affordable housing projects can be “very, very challenging.”

“Developing affordable rental housing in Memphis — whether it’s new construction or renovation of a blighted vacant building — is virtually impossible from an economics-only perspective,” he said, citing the high tax rate on multi-family real estate in Tennessee. He adds in “transitional” neighborhoods like Frayser, that have relatively low real estate values, it is harder to get funding.

“Returns on investment in affordable housing development in Memphis just can’t compete with returns in other markets,” Barlow said.

The revitalization of the Peachtree Apartments is a part of the larger Frayser Neighborhood Initiative, which, in part, is committed to improving the Dellwood corridor, or the “MLK Success Zone,” where the apartment complex and MLK Prep sit.

Overall, the initiative aims to end blight and advance economic development in the community.

Editorial Opinion

Trump’s “Achievements”

Post author By
Post date October 26, 2017

We have now reached the final quarter of the calendar year, and one of the modish political commentaries of the season is a lament, usually delivered with utmost solemnity by a talking head on cable TV, that President Trump has failed to deliver on his legislative agenda — the idea being that is a seriously unfortunate mischance for the nation.

Really? We can barely restrain ourselves from having a celebration and leading a march down Mid-America Mall. Trump’s “agenda,” to dignify the whimsically erratic and ever-changing stream-of-consciousness that seems to guide him, is, so far as we can tell, a toxic and dangerous stew of things that augur no good for the nation. If only the protestation of the pundits, that the president can’t get anything done, were true! The fact is — and this definitely cools our joy — that Trump has been able to make some momentous changes by abundant use of the kind of independent presidential directive that he used to condemn when President Obama employed the strategy.

Obama issued his directives — on behalf of DACA (the Dream Act for Childhood Arrivals), for example — in order to advance overdue action when Republican-imposed gridlock had stymied it. Trump uses the device to achieve ends that have never even been taken through an established congressional process. To name just a few: Trump has struck down DACA, eliminated vital environmental safeguards, endangered an important international agreement restricting nuclear activity in Iran, and, most recently, withheld prime-the-pump funding from insurance companies participating in the Affordable Care Act.

And Trump is at war not only with congressional Democrats but with responsible members of his own Republican Party. Just ask the two GOP Senators from Tennessee — Bob Corker, whom circumstances have induced to itemize out loud the ways in which this president menaces the country, and Lamar Alexander, who has seen his bipartisan efforts to maintain the premium supports for the ACA undermined by Trump.

So we do not grieve over the president’s inability to achieve legislative results in tandem with Congress. The rude truth is that, like all tyrant types, he does enough harm on his own.

Bernal Smith As members of the Memphis community — and the journalistic calling — we mourn the unexpected and untimely passing this weekend of Bernal Smith, the innovative and public-spirited publisher of The Tri-State Defender.

Bernal Smith

During the four years of his stewardship, Rhodes graduate Smith advanced the long tradition of the Defender as an outlet for the aspirations of Memphis’ African-American population, made it a beacon as well for the entire local community, and all the while he was making the paper a fully independent local publication for the first time.

Beyond all that, Smith was a capital fellow, a genuinely companionable and compassionate friend, a consistent pleasure to be around for all who encountered him. His trajectory was toward ever more productive relationships and achievements. That he died in his prime is to be regretted and mourned. That he lived among us and left an important legacy behind is a memory for which we remain thankful.

Tags Bernal Smith, Bob Corker, President Trump's lies, Tri-State Defender, Trump's 'achievements'

Politics Politics Feature

Dogs and Ponies

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date October 26, 2017

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

It is still 2017, which means that candidates for election in 2018 see their task as introducing themselves to the electorate and, when gathered together on the same stage with their declared primary opponents, are still making nice with each other, more or less.

Such was the case this past Friday night at a gubernatorial forum arranged for GOP hopefuls during the annual convention of the Tennessee Federation of Republican Women, a weekend affair held at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn.

There are six declared Republican candidates to date, and they all sat together in a row on stage, ready to be evaluated by several hundred women from Republican clubs across the state. Although a few of them may have appeared together on ad hoc occasions before, this was evidently one of the first times they were all assembled en masse, and the semiotics of the affair were such as to put them all — four women and two men — on an artificially equal footing.

In fact, three of the female candidates — 6th District Congressman (she prefers the term) Diane Black, state Senator Mae Beavers, and state House Speaker Beth Harwell — all wore nearly identical shades of red. The fourth, Kay White, a Johnson City activist, wore a dun-colored outfit, and that shade of difference, no doubt a happenstance, happened to coincide with her status as an outlier of sorts, with nothing like the name recognition or advance ballyhoo of the others.

The two men — former state Commissioner of Economic Development Randy Boyd and Franklin businessman/farmer Bill Lee — both wore standard blue jackets, though Boyd’s belonged to a suit and Lee’s to an informal outfit that included khaki pants and an open-collared shirt.

Jackson Baker

Karl Dean waits turn to speak at a Democratic meeting

Here, too, in a way, medium was message: Boyd, the earliest declared candidate, looked like what he was, a key member of Governor Bill Haslam‘s state government, the deviser of Tennessee Promise, Drive to 55, and numerous other Haslam initiatives. Lee, by contrast, sported a folksier look consistent with his professed persona as a non-politician type, a Cincinnatus ready to put down his plow and come to the aid of the commonwealth.

Interestingly, both men are doing idiosyncratic turns on a venerable Tennessee tradition — the solitary cross-Tennessee trek, whereby a candidate goes from place to place, starting at one end of the state, usually East Tennessee, meeting and greeting all the way, and ends up with a ceremonial final splash in Memphis. That was the literal finale for then-gubernatorial candidate Lamar Alexander in 1978, who walked his way across Tennessee in a plaid shirt and took a tentative dip in the Mississippi River at the very end.

Lee, in fact, had formally arrived in town only the previous day, via tractor (though he is basically a cattle farmer), concluding a “95-Counties-in-95-Days” pilgrimage begun in Mountain City on the North Carolina border. He got here in time for a Thursday night riverboat ride sponsored for the GOP rank-and-file by the Shelby County Republican Party, then met up with some local folks in Millington on Friday at a pizza cafe.

Boyd, who has been in Memphis a multitude of times already, is theoretically still on his way here. A veteran marathoner, he is about mid-way on a run across the state, doing eight miles a day and then holing up in this or that township, making a point of greeting as many local folks as he can before moving on. He went back to his route after Saturday’s forum, though he is liable to be in town a few more times for fund-raisers and such before he technically concludes his trip.

At this stage, the differences between candidates on issues can largely be divined by reading between the lines. On Friday night, all were professed conservatives (as, indeed, all Republicans describe themselves, even the few bona fide moderates in today’s right-tilting GOP), all are four-square for traditional values, all are budget hawks, all want government to create a climate propitious for business.

The most zealous partisans seemed to be Black, who began her political career as a state legislator opposed to TennCare; Beavers, a self-styled “Christian constitutional conservative” with low tolerance for taxes or diversity on social issues, and White, a veteran Tea Partier and former Trump campaign official (who, paradoxically, had kind words for Democratic icons JFK and Harry Truman).

The closest thing to a one-on-one clash was Black’s questioning of optimistic Tennessee employment figures immediately after Boyd had enumerated them, though she did not call him out by name.

The forum was what cynics might call a dog-and-pony show, in that there was more show than substance, though there were ample opportunities for seasoned members of the audience to let their imaginations do some divining.

The GOP gubernatorial primary will be a hard-fought affair, with several of the candidates able to boast both personal wealth and significant financial support, and the eventual nominee will no doubt win by a plurality, probably a narrow one. In such circumstances, major disagreements are inevitable, and the polite relations of Friday night almost certainly will be just a memory.

• Meanwhile, former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, one of two declared Democratic candidates for governor (the other is state House minority leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley) turned up at a well-attended district meeting of the Shelby County Democratic Party in Collierville, touting three issues in a brief speech: education, jobs, and health care.

Unlike the Republicans, who tended to talk up their opposition to Common Core, Dean emphasized a need to raise teachers’ salaries. And he won tumultuous applause with a promise to pursue Medicaid expansion, something no GOP candidate is likely to entertain.

Tags Beth Harwell, Bill Lee, Craig Fitzhugh, Democratic gubernatorial candidates, Diane Black, GOP gubernatorial candidates in TN, Karl Dean, Kay White, Mae Beavers, Randy Boyd

We Recommend We Recommend

An American in Paris at the Orpheum

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date October 26, 2017

CREDIT: Matthew Murphy

“The French have a word for it,” or so the original theatrical trailer for An American in Paris claimed. According to the French (by way of MGM’s marketing department), the cinema had found “a bright new mood” in this story of a former U.S. soldier, a mysterious Parisian girl, and the City of Light.

“There’s a new sort of thrill to be felt,” the trailer trumpeted, introducing the romantic comedy’s superstar song-and-dance man Gene Kelly, French singer Georges Guetary, and actress/dancer Leslie Caron who’s described as “an exciting girl, like a sunbeam.” Audiences were promised “new and exciting beauty,” in addition to “new enchantment” and “the greatest dance entertainment ever projected on the screen.” That’s a lot to live up to, and Vincente Minnelli’s delivered, picking up a 1951 Academy Award for Best Picture. Sixty-four years later, in 2015, the George Gershwin-inspired classic was reimagined for the stage and Joffrey Ballet alum Allison Walsh (who’ll be playing Lise Bouvier when An American in Paris docks at The Orpheum) was part of the challenging adaptation process, from first readings and workshops to opening night in Paris.

Matthew Murphy

“I know every aspect of this show — maybe too much,” says Walsh, a former dance captain, ensemble member, and the original understudy for Lise.

Walsh explains that MGM wanted to distance their technicolor musical from the still-recent trauma of war. The stage adaptation opens in the immediate aftermath of WWII, setting a completely different tone.

“We see the Nazi flag being torn down and turned into the French flag,” Walsh says. “This changes the story. Now it’s about young people finding themselves in a whole new world after everything they’ve been through.”

Art Art Feature

Artistry on Campus unites artists.

Post author By Michael Donahue
Post date October 26, 2017

If Jarvis Howard hadn’t run away from home, Artistry on Campus might not be a reality.

Howard, 23, is one of the founders of the organization, which was designed to unite artists, writers, dancers, and other creative types at University of Memphis by promoting their talent and giving them exposure through events on and off campus.

Howard, who began drawing as a child, ran away when he was in the fifth grade. “I was trying to fit in with my friends,” he says. “I was hard on my mom because she couldn’t afford the stuff my friends had. Shoes and clothes. Like Jordans. Nike’s were popping at the time.

“I took my sketchbook outside, and I ripped my sketches into pieces. I walked down the street. Then I came back home. My sketchbook was back in the house. My grandfather went outside and he taped every piece together.”

That’s the point when Howard began to take pride in his work. And, he says, “As I got older, I apologized to my mom.”

Artistry on Campus was born after Howard, Johnathan Russell, and Sumojaih Archer got together at the student center. Howard painted a ’90s-type cartoon character on a jacket, Archer customized a hat, and Russell worked on a picture of a lion. “We were just sitting up there drawing and painting and sketching,” Howard says. “Next thing you know in my head I was thinking, ‘We need to start an art club.'”

and Jarvis Howard

“We all just showed each other our art work, [the] different styles, different things that we’re interested in, and decided to have an organization,” Russell says.

They wanted to “find others who are also interested in the arts and just continue to grow and connect,” he says.

“We were just trying to come in contact with and make a family of a lot of visual artists,” Russell says. “People who did photography, people who did journalism, people who were interested in music. We wanted to include as many different crafts and forms of art as we could because we know we all draw inspiration from all those areas of life. So, we didn’t want to exclude anybody from the opportunity.”

“I love the idea,” says their advisor, Devon Thompson, administrative assistant in U of M’s student leadership and involvement department. “I’m always willing to support students who have ideas to broaden their talent.”

Artistry on Campus in particular? “Their love for wanting to give back. They don’t do it for the accolades or recognition for themselves. They want to take their talent and give back to their institution — the university — and the community as well.”

“Sip and Paint,” where Kool-Aid combined with creativity, was Artistry on Campus’ first event.

They then held an art event at a nearby community center. “We were able to work with a good number of kids,” Russell says. “We would walk around and help them draw little Halloween symbols.”

The next planned event was to join forces with Tiger Records, a student-led record label, and host a showcase of art and music in front of the student center.

A group arts project — a mural at a McDonald’s — hopefully will become a reality. “They need a mural, so our job is to provide a sketch,” Howard says. “Basically, just get everyone’s idea. Then we just come up with one sketch.”

Long range plans? “Have a pretty big presence in the community and continue our work with community centers and just working with kids,” Russell says. “We want to work at elderly homes. And just get a chance to do artwork for elderly citizens.

“A lot of us came up being told, ‘Yeah, art is cool. Yeah, whatever your craft is, it’s cool, but you can’t live off of that. You can’t make a career out of that.’ I want us to disprove that and just be passionate and work on our art. And take it as far as we can. And prove that this is who we are. This is part of what we do.

“Since it’s something that we were blessed with, it’s ours to say how far we want to go with it.”

Tags Artistry on Campus

Theater Theater Feature

Reviewing Buried Child, Honky Tonk Angels.

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date October 26, 2017

Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer-winning family drama Buried Child is nearly 40 years old but contains MAGA threads that could have been written last week. Employing a unique brand of kitchen sink surrealism, Shepard mapped the American dreamscape like nobody else. The territory he explored was lonesome as a Hank Williams ballad, jazzy as a Miles Davis joint, funny as a Buster Keaton pratfall, vast as the Texas sky, and confining as a snow globe. His celebrated family plays are populated by desperate people lost inside history’s funhouse, using old photos, movie clips, sports trophies, Lefty Frizzell records, flags, and family stories to construct artificial realities as sturdy and enduring as bronze statues of frail men in military garb.

Buried Child, now onstage at TheatreWorks, is an Oedipus redux, telling the story of Vince (Stephen Garrett), a young man who brings his girlfriend home to meet the family. Only when he arrives, nobody seems to recognize him. Vince’s sickly grandfather Dodge (James Dale Green) is all paranoia and cranky defiance as he drinks, watches TV, and falls apart piece by piece. His grandmother Haley (Emily Peckham) slips around with the preacher, and his mentally incapacitated father (Jeff Kirwan) wanders in and out of a torrential rain with vegetables he’s found growing on infertile land that hasn’t seen a crop in 40 years. Except for the one time when he wanders through with the family’s secret shame cradled in his arms like a doll.

New Moon’s Buried Child is too brightly lit, and never the moody, TV-haloed nightmare it needs to be. The acting’s good, but the ensemble’s neither as focused or as tightly wound as the cast for last season’s terrific production of Killer Joe. Attention to details, a hallmark of the New Moon’s best work, is in shorter-than-usual supply here, but the acting is generous and brave all around. James Dale Green and Jeff Kirwan are especially satisfying as the cantankerous Dodge and Tildon, a raggedy man who moves through the world like someone who’s grown accustomed to random horror but doesn’t want to step in it.

Buried Child is at TheatreWorks through November 5th.

Far be it from me to suggest that there’s no place in country music for jazz hands, but if you’re going for verisimilitude, it’s probably a look you want to avoid in a show called Honky Tonk Angels. Then again, between show-tuney arrangements of classic country songs and a paper-thin script full of cringe-worthy lines, verisimilitude may not be a big concern in this cruise-ship-ready musical revue.

There’s something intrinsically nostalgic about Honky Tonk, which was always city music for country people. It’s the electrified steel-guitar-laden sound of rural people chasing economic opportunity in the aftermath of WWII. Folks who landed in town with a guitar slung over their shoulder wrote plaintive songs about displacement, temptation, loss, and longing for a simpler life more mythic than real. Honky Tonk Angels, currently on stage at Germantown Community Theatre (GCT), chases a version of that story that’s both contemporary and contrived. If follows the trials and tribulations of three women who meet and form a band on the bus ride between Memphis and Nashville.

What GCT’s production has going for it is a strong cast that approaches the material from such an honest, loving place they almost make a pandering script sound as honest as a Tammy Wynette song. Tamara Wright plays Sue Ellen, whose backstory is loosely rooted in the song “9 to 5.” She brings the sass and sizzle on tunes like Parton’s pink-collar anthem and Pam Tillis’ uptempo novelty, “Cleopatra (Queen of Denial).” On the other end of the country spectrum, songs like Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin'” and “The Pill” sound perfect coming from Ashley Whitten-Kopera’s Angela, a homespun narrator whose backstory revolves around life in a double-wide with an inattentive husband named Bubba.

From her simple-but-effective acoustic guitar accompaniment to her strong voice and wholesome girl-next-door approach, Courtney Church-Tucker is something of a miracle worker in the role of Darlene. Her history is inspired by an ridiculous interpretation of Bobbie Gentry’s hit “Ode to Billy Joe,” and, to her credit, Tucker somehow makes you believe.

Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Go to Helvis

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date October 25, 2017

If you’re planning to check out Mike McCarthy’s Destroy Memphis documentary, about the failed effort to save Libertyland, or at least Elvis’ favorite rollercoaster, the Zippin Pippin, you might also want to grab a copy of McCarthy’s recently complied comic book HELVIS No. 1 (Millenia Comeback Special).

This erratically-published story of a pop-eyed zombie Elvis walks a weird line between personal and regional mythology, and a kind of underground journalism, chronicling the death and decay of a Memphis at the heart of American pop culture.

McCarthy created HELVIS in 1988 when he was still living with his parents, seventeen miles outside of Tupelo. The first (unfinished) version of the comic wasn’t published for 24-years though the ghoulish, trash-rock horror story served as an inspiration for McCarthy’s first film, Damselvis, Daughter of HELVIS, and its influence can be felt on in other films like Teenage Tupelo, The Sore Losers, and Superstarlet A.D.

Go to Helvis

The new, “complete” Helvis, currently available at 901 Comics, reflects McCarthy’s interests from Sexploitation films, Mad magazine, and rock-and-roll to historic preservation. One sequence finds Helvis disoriented, mad, and riding the Zippin Pippin in Green Bay, WS. Although it reflects a less than happy ending for Memphis, the comic’s a sweet Halloween treat for your favorite trickster, and the perfect companion piece for Destroy Memphis.

Worth it for the centerfold .

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News News Blog

Beale Street Task Force to Hire Crowd-Control Consultant

Post author By Maya Smith
Post date October 25, 2017

Beale Street

The Beale Street Task Force met Wednesday and discussed how to implement crowd control on Beale without charging people to enter the street.

The task force listened to Memphis City Council members’ observations from their trip to Bourbon Street in New Orleans. The council members’ main takeaway is that while there is no cover charge to enter Bourbon Street, like Memphis’ Beale Street Bucks, the crowds there were well-controlled.

Owner of Eel Etc. Fashions on Beale, James Clark said that he believes the Beale Street Bucks program is “ruining Beale Street and hurting revenue.”

“We need to make Beale Street a place where everyone can come, not just the tourists,” he added. “African-American people resent the hell out of being charged.”

But, member of the Beale Street Merchants’ Association and owner of Silk O’Sullivan’s on Beale, Joellyn Sullivan said no effort in the past has prevented the stampedes and violence on the street as well as the Bucks program.

However, council member Martavius Jones said the lack of stampedes and other issues cannot be solely attributed to the Bucks program.

“I just don’t think there’s enough data to support that,” he said. “We have to be careful before we make that particular generalization.”

James Holt, president and CEO of the Memphis in May International Festival and member of the task force, said that a cover charge won’t solve the two main issues on Beale Street: Crowd control and perception of exclusion.

“The problems won’t be fixed with a cover charge,” he said. “It might have worked for a short time, but it alienated a significant percent of the population.”

He suggests the task force bring in a specialist to study crowd dynamics and establish ways to control it.

Chairman Berlin Boyd agrees, saying that the city needs an expert to access ways to control the crowd effectively on Beale without having a cover charge in place.

The task force held off its vote on recommendations to present to the city council, as its

tentative next step is to find a crowd control consultant, whose fee would be paid by existing Beale Street Bucks revenue.

News News Blog

Clayborn Temple Named a ‘National Treasure’

Post author By Maya Smith
Post date October 25, 2017

Clayborn Temple

The city’s more than a century-old building on Hernando that played a pivotal role during the Civil Rights Movement is now entering into a new era.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Clayborn Temple as a National Treasure Wednesday and announced that the Trust will work with local partners like Clayborn Reborn to identify future uses for the building, “commemorate its unique history, and help ensure that it has a sustainable future.”

Together the National Trust and Clayborn Reborn will create ownership and financial structure for the building, develop and implement reuses that reflect its history, and build awareness of Clayborn’s role in the fight for economic and social justice.

Inside of Clayborn

Constructed in 1891 by Second Presbyterian Church, the little over half-an-acre Romanesque-style building was then the largest church in the country south of the Ohio River.

Then, 40 years later, it became the home of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and officially known as Clayborn Temple.

During the 1960s, it remained the home of the AME church, but was also a political social hub for civil rights activists. It was a safe haven for gatherings to plan efforts for fighting racial inequality in Memphis.

In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. led 15,000 sanitation workers in a march from Clayborn Temple to Memphis City Hall and when riots erupted, the marchers retreated to Clayborn.

“The labor and race issues that marchers at Clayborn Temple fought for persist today, from football fields to company boardrooms,” David Brown, executive vice president and chief preservation officer for the National Trust said. “Now more than ever, we are called to honor the stories of the many diverse people who sacrificed and achieved to make the world a better place for us all — and to tell the full American story in an inclusive way.”

Executive director of Clayborn Reborn, Rob Thompson said one of the major goals in restoring Clayborn has been to bring attention to the 1968 sanitation workers. He said this chapter in history has “too often been overlooked and largely forgotten.”

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Clayborn was also accepted into the National Fund for Sacred Places, which will provide planning grants and capital grants ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 over four years.

“Clayborn Temple represents not only Memphis and America’s complex past, but also the promise of turning historic sites back into vital community resources,” Brown said.

Tags Clayborn Temple