Month: March 2018

Categories
News News Blog

BBB: No, You Probably Didn’t Call Yourself

CREDIT: Flynt | Dreamstime.com

Flynt | Dreamstime.com

Don’t answer phones calls from yourself.

The BBB of the MidSouth said Thursday it is getting reports of a new phone scam in which people are getting calls from their own phone numbers.

It’s an updated version of a phone scam called “spoofing” and the BBB said to ignore the calls.

“It’s a pretty clever ruse devised to get people to answer their phones,” said Randy Hutchinson, president and CEO of BBB serving the Mid-South. “When folks see their own number on caller ID, it makes them wonder what it’s all about. Don’t let curiosity or confusion make you answer the phone.”

Scammers use spoofing to hide the real number of an incoming phone call. Most of these call are illegal, the BBB said, as they’re usually an attempt to steal personal information.

The new spoofing method, called “neighbor spoofing,” uses a number that begins with the same first six digits of your own number. The tactic may ”help fraudsters beat new call-blocking services and apps that rely on blacklists of known robocallers and illegal telemarketers to help block unwanted calls.”

The BBB said callers usually want to pitch a product, like extended auto warranties, medical alert systems, travel packages, and credit card interest rate reductions. Or, they want to steal personal information. Callers pretend to be your bank, phone service provider, or credit card company. 

“They tell you that there’s something wrong with your account and you need to provide them with your personal information,” the BBB said. “Don’t do it. They’re phishing and hoping you’ll bite.”

Don’t even answer the phone, the BBB advised. Doing so, tells a computerized dialer that yours is a “good, working number. Then, the crooks sell your number to other crooks and you end up getting more calls instead of less.”

Here are some tips from the BBB to help combat unwanted robocalls:

Don’t assume the number on caller ID is legitimate.

Don’t answer calls from numbers you don’t recognize or from your own number.

Don’t press any numbers. Doing so confirms your number is good and you’ll get more calls.

Don’t call the number back.

Don’t provide financial or other personal information in response to an unsolicited call.

Be wary of doing business with any company peddling their goods or services this way.

Trust your instincts – If something doesn’t seem right to you, end the call and report it at bbb.org/scamtracker and ftc.gov/complaint.

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies 108, Trail Blazers 103: They Won Again

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

Last night needed more of this.

The Grizzlies can’t stop beating Western Conference playoff teams who seem to be sleepwalking through the last couple weeks of the regular season. First it was Minnesota on Monday night, their first road win of the calendar year 2018. They continued the trend—creating an honest-to-God winning streak, something they haven’t seen in weeks—on Wednesday at home against a Portland team missing Damian Lillard.

It’s just like the Denver game from earlier in the month: team somewhere in the bottom half of the West playoffs bracket (this is before the Nuggets found themselves in 10th place) comes up against a Grizzlies team that, while bad, plays hard, and manages to play with so little intensity of execution that the Grizzlies, with whichever good player happens to show up on that given night, sneak up on them and steal a win out of the jaws of their sojourn in the wilderness.

Look, last night was a fun, exciting basketball game, but we’re way too late in the season for this to start being fun. Up until Monday, the Griz were neck-and-neck with the Suns for the league’s worst record, but now, two wins later, they’re tied for third-worst with Atlanta, and barely hanging on to an edge over Orlando and Sacramento. The Grizzlies were absolute garbage for so long they were practically guaranteed a top-3 pick, but if they keep on winning, it’s entirely possible that they’ll have spent an entire season in the depths of misery only to fail to reap the (Ayton/Bagley/Doncic-sized) reward.

But, fear not. There’s a solution to this mess, he’s already under contract (no, not MarShon Brooks, who came in on a 10-day straight from China and scored 21 off the bench, including 14 in the 4th quarter alone), and he’s guaranteed to be making $10M of the Grizzlies’ money through the end of next year: play Ben McLemore 40 minutes in every remaining game.

This is not the McLemore the Grizzlies need in order to lose their remaining games. It is, however, a Memphis classic, in the same way a top 3 Grizzlies pick would be.

I can’t believe I’m actually putting forth a solution like this; one doesn’t normally choose to subject oneself to the basketball equivalent of waterboarding (apologies to the 2012 Bobcats, whom I may have also called “basketball waterboarding”), but McLemore has been uniquely well-suited to torpedoing any chance the Grizzlies have at winning this year.

I bring this solution up—really, the solution the Griz have deployed all season long when trying to lose on purpose—because McLemore didn’t play at all against Portland and only played 8 minutes against the Wolves. He’s so bad, so bad, that he’s got to be on the court for the rest of the season.

A top-3 pick, which, let’s be honest, is the only acceptable outcome of a season this craptacular if you’re a Grizzlies fan, is well within the Grizzlies’ reach, even now, after these wins. But they can’t win again. The stakes are too high. To avert their eyes from the utter darkness of the Tank at the last second would be to undo the one thing bringing hope to so many the whole time they’re been going on multiple double-digit losing streaks: the chance that the Grizzlies might actually get the #1 pick in the NBA Draft. The later the pick, the bigger the chance that the Grizzlies will pick badly. This is what they’ve been losing for all season long. The young kids are good, or at least better than they have any right to be—this much we know.

Now keep losing. Time is tight.

Tweet of the Night

Grizzlies 108, Trail Blazers 103: They Won Again

Up Next

Road games in Utah, Portland, and New Orleans, and then the last two home games of the season on Friday and Sunday against Sacramento (a must-lose if I ever saw one) and the Pistons.

They need to lose out. Whether that’s actually what happens, we will see. I’ve got an interesting guest post lined up that will tackle what the Grizzlies should do with whichever pick they actually end up with (feels destined to be, like, fifth, doesn’t it?) so stay tuned.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Louise Page: From Salty to Sweet at Shangri-La’s Fool Fest 2

CREDIT: Kaitlyn Flint

Kaitlyn Flint

Louise Page

Memphis-based songwriter and pianist Louise Page has been busy of late. She released her first EP, Salt Mosaic, last September, and, after a winter of steady gigging in support of the EP, she and her band will open the festivities this Saturday at Fool Fest 2, Shangri-La Records’ spring sale and mini-festival, which doubles this year as a 30th anniversary celebration for the store.

“I have deep family roots in Memphis. My mom is from here,” Page says. The singer/songwriter moved to the Bluff City from central Pennsylvania to study creative writing at Rhodes College, where her grandmother matriculated when the college was still called Southwestern. “I got a degree in creative writing, which I now use to write songs,” Page muses. “It’s not what I thought I’d use it for.” Page’s songwriting prowess is on full display on her first EP, which mixes folk-inflected numbers with indie-rock laments of heartbreak.

Salt Mosaic opens with “Little Coast,” a plaintive wish for a new beginning. Piano runs and Page’s haunting vocals come in first. “I want to cut and run away,” she sings, “I want to rewire my disobedient brain.” Then the rest of the band joins in, bringing the energy up to match the fervency of Page’s lyrics with horn squeals and guitar arpeggios. But Page’s lyrics — and her voice — are the star of the show, and they remain so for much of the EP. The band, which includes a horn section, a violin, guitar, upright bass, and drums, adds details at just the right moments, giving Page’s voice textures to work with.

As a song, “Little Coast” stands on its own, but it also works as a thematic starting point for Salt Mosaic, whose songs share themes of endings and beginnings, of stripping away layers to reveal the essential self. “The name Salt Mosaic comes from the fact that the songs I ended up picking to record are all pretty much about broken relationships, be they romantic or friendships,” Page says. “I used to have really bitter, salty feelings about those experiences and those people.” Page elaborates on the cathartic aspect of songwriting, saying part of the process is “taking those bitter, salty feelings and turning them into something beautiful.”

“Simple Sugar is sort of the aftermath of Salt Mosaic,” Page says of her planned sophomore release. “One of the lyrics for one of the newer songs is ‘When you’re used to salt, everything tastes sweet.’” As with Salt Mosaic, Page will track her new, sweeter batch of songs at Young Avenue Sound. Calvin Lauber will reprise his role as engineer for the Simple Sugar sessions. “The first EP was kind of experimental. I was figuring a lot out,” Page says, expounding on the two EPs’ complementary relationship. “In my head they go together; they’re kind of a pair.” But Page says that, while Salt Mosaic collected songs she wrote over a span of six years, from age 18 to just weeks before the recording sessions, the songs on the new EP are “all songs I’ve written since September.” She thinks that will lead to Simple Sugar sounding more streamlined than Salt Mosaic, which, true to it’s name, has a collage-like eccentricity, an eclectic mix of quirky but complementary colors.

“I’m just a classic band kid. That was my group in high school,” Page says. “I was in marching band, and concert band, and choir.” Music has always been a part of her life, Page says. She started playing piano as a child in central Pennsylvania. Her parents bought the piano for her older siblings, but Page, the youngest, was the one to embrace it. Page began taking formal piano lessons, and in the fourth grade, she joined the school band and took up oboe as well. Citing her classical training, she counts Claude Debussy among her influences, which also include contemporary artists St. Vincent and Fiona Apple, who share an experimental streak that appeals to Page. “They both take risks,” Page says, then adds, “I want my music to have a personality.”

The Fool Fest show kicks off a busy spring for Page and her crew. She’s playing Lucero’s annual Block Party at Minglewood Hall on April 14th before she and her band return to the studio to begin tracking Simple Sugar. This summer, they head out on a 10-day east coast tour, to New York and back.

Fool Fest 2 featuring Louise Page, Negro Terror, Model Zero, and Alicja-Pop at Shangri-La Records, Saturday, March 31st at 2 p.m.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Calling B.S. on Fear of Gun Regulation

Surely even the most recalcitrant and reactionary of persons on the issue of gun violence had to be impressed by the energy and commitment of the young Americans involved in last weekend’s March for Our Lives. Hard as it might have been to imagine it in advance, the entire extravaganza — in Washington as well as in most of the several score other American cities with mini-marches — was planned, staffed, and executed by persons aged 18 or under. (The only exceptions were some of the entertainers who took part, who tended to be oldsters in their 20s.)

Yet it may also have been true, as the 68-year-old 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen said in a luncheon address to the Rotary Club of Memphis at Clayborn Temple on Tuesday, that the majority of the throngs gathered to watch were “kids my age or older.”

We can only hope that the middle-aged and elderly among us are indeed not too jaded to have understood the message of those representatives of the younger generation who had personally endured the terror and risk of over-lenient gun trafficking, as those kids from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, surely had.

And that clear and obvious message was quite simply: Do something! Unfortunately, the power and reach of the NRA and other parts of the gun lobby are such that, as a pained Cohen had to inform Rotarians, the governing Republican majority in Congress has no appetite to do anything at all.

It would be comforting to believe otherwise, yet this reluctance to act on an obvious problem was also reflected as recently as Monday night, two days after the march, at a forum of county mayor candidates right here in Memphis. Three Republican candidates — County Commissioner Terry Roland, Trustee David Lenoir, and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos — participated in the forum at Rhodes College and, for the most part, they acquitted themselves remarkably well.

It was only on one subject — that of gun violence — that they drew a blank. Lenoir’s solution to the specter of gun violence was to recap his major campaign themes — “good jobs, great schools, and safer neighborhoods” — along with an exhortation to “prosecute criminals to the full extent of the law.” Touliatos, who cited her penchant for taking crackers out to the hungry among her Juvenile Court charges, advocated showing children “that somebody cares for them.”

Only Roland, emphasizing his membership on the board of a mental-health agency (who knew?) came within a country mile of any solution that is part of the current national dialogue, and he undermined his call for more attention to the mentally ill with the over-flip remark, “When you show me a gun that goes off and kills somebody by itself, then I’ll support gun laws.”

All in all, that part of the Republicans’ mayoral debate was exactly the sort of thing that Emma Gonzáles meant when, in the aftermath of the gun-murder of 14 of her classmates and 3 faculty members, she made a speech dismissing any and all evasive pseudo-solutions to the tragedy with the words, “We call B.S.!”

So do we, and we can only hope that something more substantive emerges from exchanges between mayoral candidates in the forthcoming county general election, after the primaries.

Categories
Cover Feature News

A City Remembers

Surely everybody in Memphis (and in the world at large, for that matter) is acquainted with the fact that a tragedy was visited on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — and mankind — upon the civil rights icon’s appearances in town in March and April 1968 for a dual purpose: to lend his unrivaled moral authority to the cause of striking sanitation workers and to gird for what was then an imminent Poor People’s March to be held in Washington, D.C.

The purposes were interrelated; Dr. King was on the brink of a subtle but huge change of course — from his familiar role of campaigner for racial equity to that of crusader for economic and political justice at large. The new mission encompassed the old one and had always been implicit in what King, already a Nobel laureate, thought and did. Some commentators have subsequently seen the Memphis sojourn as an ill-fated interruption of his life’s work. But the evidence is that he himself saw it as a previously unforeseen serendipity, as an opportunity to kindle the embers of the all-inclusive social revolution he had in mind.

In any case, King was no stranger to Memphis. In several previous visits over the years, he had foreshadowed his larger purpose. Though he may have passed through town on other occasions — Memphis is, after all, a crossroads city of sorts — his presence was particularly public and notable on four earlier dates.

July 31, 1959: King was already a celebrated personage of sorts when, at the age of 30, he came to Memphis to speak at the venerable Mason Temple at a Freedom Rally, called to support what was an unprecedented effort by Memphis blacks to mount a significant political presence in a local election.

Four African Americans were making a bid for public office in that year’s city election. The candidates and the offices they sought were: Russell Sugarmon, Public Works commissioner; the Rev. Benjamin Hooks, Juvenile Court judge; Elihue Stanback, tax assessor; the Revs. Roy Love and Henry Buntin, running for the Memphis School Board. They constituted what was being called the Volunteer Ticket, which also had one white member, Ray Churchill, who was running to depose Judge Beverly Boushe, referred to at the rally by the celebrated Rev. W.H. Brewster as “our longtime enemy.”

Gelatin silver print, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art purchase; funds provided by Sara and Kevin Adams, Deupree Family Foundation, Henry and Lynne Turley, Kaywin Feldman and Jim Lutz, and Marina Pacini and David McCarthy 2006.31.135 © Withers Family Trust

Other black eminences besides King were on hand to support the ticket — Daisy Bates of Little Rock’s desegregation battle; opera singer Mahalia Jackson, and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. But King was the cynosure. The Commercial Appeal headlined its morning-after report “‘Want to be Free’ is Chant At Big Negro Political Rally,” and began the lede, “Rev. Martin Luther King of Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott frame, inspired it and the audience echoed it.”

In a speech repeatedly interrupted by the aforementioned chant, King, who had taken up Rosa Parks’ cause and led a successful months-long boycott of the Montgomery bus system to end its system of segregated seating areas, told the crowd about the Montgomery participants: “They saw that ultimately it is more honorable to work in dignity than to ride in humiliation. They chose tired feet over tired souls.”

The rally also featured remarks by Lieutenant George W. Lee, a symbol of the black community’s Old Guard, who responded to King by saying, “We’re going to fight till hell freezes over, and, if necessary, skate across on ice in order to keep freedom moving in the right direction,” and by Sugarmon, who commented, “Many people still think of Memphis as Mr. Crump’s town and us as Mr. Crump’s Negroes. That ain’t so now.”

April 30, 1963: King was back in Memphis four years later for a local organizational meeting of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference and took part in another rally, this one hosted by Metropolitan Baptist Church and devoted to the subject of voting rights. Hooks, once more a candidate for Juvenile Court judge, and the Rev. Shuttlesworth were again on the bill, as were the Revs. Ralph Abernathy and Wyeth Walker of Atlanta, associates of King in SCLC.

But the turnout of just under 1,000 attendees — “spellbound,” they were called by the CA — was primarily, as before, motivated by a desire to see and hear King, who was only days away from playing the decisive role in Birmingham protests that would break the back of hard-core segregation in that industrial Alabama city.

Gelatin silver print, printed from original negative in 1999, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art purchase with funds provided by Ernest and Dorothy Withers, Panopticon Gallery, Inc., Waltham, MA, Landon and Carol Butler, The Deupree Family Foundation, and The Turley Foundation 2005.3.116 © Withers Family Trust

The venue was once again Metropolitan Baptist, and local traffic was jammed for hours in advance of King’s appearance. The audience, forced to wait because of the snafu in the streets, sang choruses of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” during the delay.

Once Dr. King mounted the pulpit and got started, he was at his eloquent best, quoting from Shakespeare, Thoreau, Emerson, and even Sigmund Freud. “We are on the way to freedom land,” he said, emphasizing anew the importance of the ballot in the struggle for justice (“Even today, we can say to the Southerner, you may keep us from voting, but we’ll keep you from being president.”) and making a special appeal to children to join the burgeoning civil rights movement.

He bespoke his own impatience amid the gathering momentum of that year, which would include the March on Washington later in 1963, in saying, “I’m tired of seeing the first Negro to do this, the first Negro to do that. I want to see some seconds and thirds.”

June 7, 1966: Dr. King’s next major visit to Memphis came as a stand-in of sorts for James Meredith, who had been the first black admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1963, amid rioting and even armed resistance on the part of white resisters. In early June, Meredith had launched a solitary March Against Fear, which began in Memphis and was intended to take him all the way to Jackson, Mississippi, the Magnolia state’s capital.

But Meredith was shot by a sniper just outside Hernando and hospitalized. King, along with 21 other marchers, hastened to the site where the march was interrupted and vowed to continue Meredith’s route to Jackson. Three Mississippi Highway Patrolmen interrupted the surrogate march and engaged in a shoving match with King, ordering him and the marchers to remove themselves from the main pavement of Highway 51 and do their walking on the shoulder of the road.

Gelatin silver print, printed from original negative in 1999, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art purchase with funds provided by Ernest and Dorothy Withers, Panopticon Gallery, Inc., Waltham, MA, Landon and Carol Butler, The Deupree Family Foundation, and The Turley Foundation 2005.3.35 © Withers Family Trust

“Why, in Selma we marched on the pavement,” Dr. King said, citing the previous year’s march he’d led that culminated in the passage of a voting rights bill in Washington. The head trooper replied, “But you had a permit then. We don’t care if you march to New Orleans, but get off the pavement.”

After taking an ice cream break at a local roadside stand, King and the marchers resolved to continue the march on the shoulder of Highway 51 and resumed their passage south. The numbers of marchers grew geometrically, day by day, including such other avatars as Stokely Carmichael, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young, and, finally, by a convalescing James Meredith himself. Eventually a throng of several thousand, filling up the highway’s pavement, entered Jackson in triumph.

Commented King: “There is nothing more powerful to dramatize injustice like the tramp, tramp, tramp of marching feet.”

September 9, 1966: On that March Against Fear in June, Carmichael, one of the leaders of a new, more militant form of protest, had aroused much attention by a public call for Black Power. At the time, the advent of firebrands like Carmichael was widely seen as threatening the leadership of the civil rights movement by King and other apostles of non-violence.

On a return visit to Memphis and to Metropolitan Baptist Church for a meeting of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, King met the dilemma head-on. He gave a speech affirming his intent to hold his ground — and the movement’s. “If every Negro in America turned to violence tonight, I’ll still stand with non-violence,” he declared. “We will persist in the struggle against injustice, but we must use the proper methods in doing it. … Our power does not lie in Molotov cocktails and rocks and bottles. It lies in voting and the willingness to suffer for righteousness.”

© Withers Family Trust

But, while his non-violent methods did not change, then or ever, King would become ever more militant thenceforth in his own way. In condemning the Black Power impulse as such, he had pointed out in that Memphis speech, “The weakness of riots is that they can be overcome by superior force, the National Guard. We need us something the National Guard can’t stop.”

But he, too, had shifted his emphasis. Speaking of an “invisible wall” barring the way to progress, he said, “The wall is perpetrated by white moderates who say to us, ‘Wait,’ by a federal government more interested in winning the war in Vietnam than in winning the war right here, by some white politicians, by some Negro politicians, by some white ministers, [and] some Negro ministers more interested in being Uncle Toms than in being just.”

Increasingly, for Dr. King, the task of “being just” had expanded beyond civil rights per se, beyond voting rights, and into the struggle to end the Vietnam War as well as into a new campaign to bridge the immemorial gap between rich and poor.

It was in pursuit of that latter dream that Martin Luther King conceived of the Poor People’s March and, as a warm-up of sorts for that mission, committed himself to assist the striking sanitation workers of Memphis in 1968.

Beginning with a visit to Memphis on March 18th, when he addressed the strikers and proclaimed solidarity with them, he would come back two more times, on March 28th for a march that would misfire, eluding King’s control and ending in violence, and one more fateful time, on April 3rd, with the intention of leading another march in support of the strikers and keeping it non-violent.

That night, though feeling ill, he would respond to entreaties from his associates and leave his room at the Lorraine Motel in the middle of a rainstorm, coming to Mason Temple, where he delivered his last rousing message in the powerful, climactic and unconsciously prophetic “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.

On April 4th, on what would be his final occasion in Memphis, Dr. King was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine, preparing for an evening out with friends and supporters, when a sniper’s shot rang out, ending a gallant, courageous life and curtailing his final ambition — to accomplish the age-old vision of true economic justice — a vision that continues to this day.

MLK50 Events

Pinwheels for Peace

Events, ideally, should be fun or at least entertaining. But how to peg it around something that involves racism and a murder? Will it be too sad or scary? Is there an age limit for this sort of thing?

“Nobody’s too young for social justice or activism,” says Dory Lerner of the National Civil Rights Museum.

The idea, she says, is to turn it around into something productive. MLK50 Pinwheels for Peace is an example of that and is part of the larger MLK50 Curriculum called Creating Change through Action, which is geared toward parents, teachers, and activists and includes units on peace, justice, housing, education, poverty, and better jobs.

Kids all across the country at schools, nature centers, and botanic gardens are invited to make pinwheels and then plant them in a peace garden. Folks at the National Civil Rights Museum will be setting up a pinwheel-making station at the museum on April 4th, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Participants are asked to reflect on what they can do to make the community better while making the pinwheels. Pinwheels for Peace runs through April 9th, the day of King’s burial.

“Our goal is to fight,” says Lerner, “but instead of using our fists, we use our minds, our voices, our feet.”

— Susan Ellis

Other Events

Seeing Civil Rights Symposium

Brooks Museum, March 28th-29th

Exploring Ernest Withers’ photography as art and a political tool. Features a keynote speech by Teju Cole.

The Mountaintop

Halloran Centre, March 28th-April 1st

Katori Hall’s drama about King’s last night.

At the River I Stand

Halloran Centre, March 31st, 3 p.m.

Screening of this documentary followed by a panel talk hosted by former NAACP president Cornell Brooks.

Final Footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr.

Tennessee Welcome Center, April 3rd, 9:30 a.m.

Tour retracing King’s last steps, including stops at Clayborn Temple, Mason Temple, the Lorraine Motel, St. Joseph’s Hospital, and R.S. Lewis Funeral Home. Features a keynote speech from Eric Williams, curator of religion at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

Memphis 50 Years Later, Marching Forward

Mike Rose Theatre, University of Memphis, April 3rd

Part of the Where Do We Go From Here? Symposium with panels on education and poverty and a talk by historian Taylor Branch.

IRIS Orchestra “It’s Up to Us”

Clayborn Temple, April 3rd

Program based on a speech by King with commentary from Dr. Harold Middlebrook.

I Am 2018

Mason Temple (930 Mason), April 3rd

Commemorating King’s Mountaintop speech. Featuring Danny Glover, Common, Andrew Young, Bernice King, and others.

Reenactment of “I AM A MAN” photo

Fourth and Beale, April 4th, 6 a.m.

A reenactment of iconic photo by Ernest Withers.

50th Anniversary Commemoration

National Civil Rights Museum, April 4th

A day full of events reflecting on this horrible anniversary, with tributes starting at 10 a.m, a 6:01 p.m. (the time of the assassination) bell toll, and an evening of storytelling starting at 6:15 p.m. at Crosstown Concourse.

For more events, go to mlk50.civilrightsmuseum.org.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Perfect Fit

CREDIT: Button Brigade

Shirts don’t have to be for either men or women.

Button Brigade, a gender-neutral clothing line launching in Memphis, makes shirts that are “somewhere in the middle.” Founded by Katie Cooper, the line offers short-sleeved button-up shirts designed to accommodate anyone.

“Seeing a need and meeting a need,” is what Cooper said led her to form the business.

“I wear button-ups all the time, and having to shop for one is an absolute nightmare,” she said. “It was really discouraging, and I was like, ‘surely, I’m not the only one with this problem.'”

After chats with friends, who were also having a hard time finding button-ups, Cooper realized there was a shared struggle in the LGBTQ community to find androgenous, button-up shirts that fit just right. That’s when she had the idea to create shirts that she said are “somewhere in the middle” and designed to work for everyone.

Based on body measurements, and a men’s sizing chart with a few alterations, the shirts range from XS to 4XL and are meant to be “size inclusive.”

Different from most button-ups, Button Brigade shirts are made with 10 buttons instead of the standard seven. Cooper said this is so that people don’t to have to worry about “awkward” chest and waist gapping. Made for narrower shoulders, the shirts are also less “boxy” with a slight taper on the side to help with curves.

Button Brigade

Shirts by Button Brigade.

“It’s not like the most innovative thing,” Cooper said. “It’s just minor changes that make them fit better. It’s not rocket science.”

As for style, Button Brigade offers solid shirts as well as ones patterned with stripes, birds, and pineapples.

Beyond providing proper-fitting shirts, Cooper said another goal of the business is to help change the perception of the LGBTQ community in the South.

Cooper plans to give back a portion of the Button Brigade’s profits to LGBTQ projects and initiatives in Memphis. The first beneficiary, OUTMemphis, is slated to receive 10 percent of the profits from the first line of shirts.

Details for the project haven’t been confirmed yet, but Cooper said in some way she, along with OUTMemphis, will work to tell the organization’s story, as well as the stories of those it has impacted.

But, in order to get the Button Brigade up and running and produce the first line of shirts, Cooper needs $27,000. To raise the money, Cooper is using the online platform Kickstarter, where people can donate money and get a shirt or other rewards in return. So far, almost $6,000 has been raised.

Once production wraps in August, six different shirts will be available on the Button Brigade website for about $110.

“I just wanted to make something to make a person feel okay about themselves, better about themselves, and more confident,” Cooper said. “Because more times than not, they’re already getting push back.

“So, if you can wear a shirt one day that makes you feel better and not care about what other people think, then, good, I’ve achieved my goal,” Cooper said.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Forward March

CREDIT: Laura Jean Hocking

Before what Life Magazine called, “the largest expression of public dissent ever seen in this country,” President Richard Nixon said, “As far as this activity is concerned, we expect it, but under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it.”

The delusional traitor Nixon had previously referred to anti-war protesters as “bums,” but half-a-million people were about to descend on Nixon’s front yard in a massive march called the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam.

On November 15, 1969, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters began marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Monument. The morning was damn cold. I know because I was there. We listened to speeches by Senator George McGovern and Dr. Benjamin Spock and joined in with Pete Seeger singing John Lennon’s tune — “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

Laura Jean Hocking

March for Our Lives

Nixon spent the day secluded in the White House watching college football, but his venal Vice President, Spiro “Ted” Agnew, called the protesters “an effete corps of impudent snobs.” The work of several anti-war organizations, plus 250 student government officers and student newspaper editors were necessary to draw the massive number of people to Washington. What these young adults from Parkland High School managed to put together last week was nothing short of miraculous.

We are in the midst of an historic moment … “and a little child shall lead them.” These committed students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are an inspiration, and if you’re too old or too cynical or too oblivious to grasp the significance of the March For Our Lives against gun violence, you fall in the same category as the cadre of dead-enders that sat on their couches and cheered on the Vietnam War — on the wrong side of history.

These survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, were poised and eloquent beyond their years. There were a few celebrities in attendance, but the march and the program were organized by the students who witnessed this horror. Their impassioned and heartbreaking testimonies brought on more than a few tears in our house. When Jennifer Hudson, who lost her mother, brother, and nephew to gun violence, sang “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” that did it for me. That brought me full circle. Back when I heard Bob Dylan sing it, I didn’t have to go through half a box of Kleenex. 

These high school kids have started a wave of indignation about this country’s gun violence that appears unstoppable. I don’t know what the popular term is for this generation, whether it’s Millennials or Gen Z or whatever the hell it is, but they are about to effect some real change. Politicians purchased by the NRA have been put on notice by this generation (larger than the Baby-Boomers) and they will vote.

The National Rifle Association’s venomous response was predictable: “Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children,” while referring to the event as the “March for Their Lies.” Videos of their well-paid lackeys, Dana Loesch and Wayne LaPierre, contempt and vitriol dripping from their lips, were regrettably televised. Hate-mongers called the kids “crisis actors.” The students were not intimidated. Gun laws will change the moment politicians realize they must face their voting-age children’s scorn. Enormous marches were held in hundreds of cities in solidarity with the students from Parkland, including Memphis.

If I were a football game, I’d be in the fourth quarter. I haven’t hit the two-minute warning yet, but I can see it out there on the horizon. I figured I had one more march left in me, so Melody and I headed downtown. We gathered at the Clayborn Temple and marched the short distance to the National Civil Rights Museum. I’m not good at estimates, so I’ll just say the crowd was enormous. Young students gave testimonies about their first-hand experiences with gun violence that were both emotional and wrenchingly personal, since Memphis is no stranger to firearm violence.

The encouraging takeaway was the determination of these young people to effect change. I did notice a whole lot of gray hair in the crowd and was pleased and proud that everyone’s knees still worked. Old hippies never die, they just march on.

The Memphis march was great. What was hard was the walk back, and trying to find where we parked the car. We marched about four blocks longer than we had to. My calves are sore and my back hurts, but I’m happy we attended. As for policy, I agree that the Assault Weapons Ban should be reinstated. The opposing argument is there would still be millions in circulation. Maybe so, but there wouldn’t be any new ones for sale so some vengeful teenager with a chip on his shoulder could legally buy and shoot up his school.

If you believe that the Second Amendment entitles you to own a battlefield weapon, where does the right to your firepower end? Grenade launchers? Mortar cannons? Nobody’s coming for your guns. Keep your handguns and your long-guns. Go have fun at the range and protect your home. Just spare the life of my child.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Doc 52 Bourbon: Searching for a Niche

The recent debate over wine sales in grocery stores sparked heated discussion across the city and state. We talked about it — a lot. Now that the issue of Sunday alcohol sales has reared its head in Tennessee, the whole thing seems like a foregone conclusion, hardly worth mentioning. Regardless of which side of the debates you fall, both are game-changers for Memphis’ wine and liquor shops — and not necessarily to their advantage.

Like bookstores and other small retailers facing Amazon and Big Box outlets — local toddy shops have had to hustle to keep and grow loyal customers. It hasn’t been easy. I caught up with Ryan Gill, the General Manager over at Doc’s Wines, Spirits & More in the Carrefour, to talk about the new normal for the liquor business — and found the clever angle of the entrepreneur still alive and well. Part of this strategy isn’t trying to beat the grocery stores at their game, but to beat them at his.

Gill is a man on a mission to make Doc’s the face of bourbon in Memphis. “Thinking outside the box and creating products exclusive to our store are ways that we can continue to fight losing customers to grocery stores,” he says.

That thinking includes being the first liquor store in the area with a Certified Bourbon Steward on staff. The training and certification is done by the Stave & Thief Society of Louisville and endorsed by the Kentucky Distillers Association. It is, more or less, a certification similar to Sommelier training with wines. With plans to add nearly a hundred new bottles of bourbon to the store’s selection in the coming weeks, it may not be a bad investment.

Gill says he isn’t content with all the good bourbon that is “out there.” He also has his eye on an inside bottle or two. Long used to picking single-barrel bourbons, and earlier at Southwind Wine & Spirits, Gill, and Doc’s bourbon aficionado, Mike Jones — have put their 10 years of experience in curated whiskey sipping to a novel use: Doc’s is partnering with Big River Distilling to bring Memphis’ first private label bourbon to its shelves under the name Doc 52 Straight Bourbon Whiskey. It’s nine years old, uncut, unfiltered, and cask strength at 110 proof. Those nine years were spent the old-fashioned way, without heat cycling. The first batch is limited to 162 bottles, which will retail for around $50. After this run, there are plans for expanded availability for a Doc’s single barrel. “We just wanted to do something special for the first one,” says Gill.

The private label isn’t new for Doc’s, which has long had store-exclusive wine — also under the label Doc 52. The “Doc” in question, by the way, is the original store’s owner, a surgical oncologist named Roy Page. The original store had the slogan, “The Home of the 52 Week sale.”

The real question, though, is how does Doc 52 taste? It’s been pegged by some early samplers as in the same profile as Woodford Reserve Double Oak, which is pretty good company. Without any Woodford handy, I couldn’t do a side by side, but I did have a sample of Doc 52. There is some vanilla and caramel in the deep amber. What jumped out at me, however, wasn’t what Doc 52 was like, but what it wasn’t: It’s not a wheated bourbon, like Weller. Doc 52 has a subtle sweetness that comes through from a mash built on the high side with corn. There is a little heat to it, but there generally is with a cask-strength selection. With a little bit of water added, everything opens up and what you have is a bourbon with a big mouth to it that isn’t harsh or overwhelming.

“Our private label bourbon is just the beginning of Doc’s becoming the face of bourbon in Memphis,” says Gill.

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Music Music Features

Chicago’s Twin Peaks Hit Memphis This Week.

Twin Peaks are treading some less familiar territory this spring. Riding high off three landmark album releases within the past two years, the rising Chicago indie-rockers stop in Memphis on Thursday, March 29th, for a show at Growlers.

It’ll be the first chance for a Memphis audience to catch the five-piece, who followed their breakout 2016 third album, Down in Heaven with the 2017 double live album Urbs in Horto and a series of limited-edition 7-inch sides (recently compiled and reissued by Fat Possum Records as Sweet ’17 Singles, released last month).

That run of well-received creativity is paying off on the road.

“On this tour, it’s been a lot of little towns and stuff that we don’t really go to,” says bassist and co-vocalist and songwriter Jack Dolan, speaking on the phone at a gas station outside Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “It’s a lot of places we haven’t been to or only been to once. Typically, on a tour like this, you kind of expect all the shows to be empty. It’s not like we’re selling out an arena in Nebraska, but it’s encouraging. They’re small venues, but we’re packing them out.”

The band has earned a reputation for a raucous live show, and the proof appears on Urbs in Horto, recorded at historic Chicago venues Metro and Thalia Hall. Titled after their hometown’s motto, Latin for “City in a Garden,” Urbs was a proud achievement for the band that got its start in Chicago’s scrappy DIY house-show scene.

“The live album thing — I don’t think we expected to do something like that, but you’re trying to switch it up all the time and do stuff differently because the way music is these days, it’s all over the place,” Dolan says. “There are so many different lanes you can be in. So I guess it’s all about keeping it fresh and keeping the fans happy.”

The recent studio releases reveal the band pushing its boundaries in the studio and expanding its sonic horizons while proudly indulging influences ranging from the Stones to the Replacements, the Velvet Underground to Ty Segall.

“That’s come from experience and doing this for a while,” Dolan says. “We’ve been developing a sound that has changed a lot over the past five years or whatever, but we’re in the zone where we’re still just kind of learning about our own styles and honing that sort of thing because it’s a lot of different personalities going on. So you just try to home in on the best parts of all our music.”

After the current run of shows, the band will return to Chicago to demo songs for a new album that they hope to record in summer with longtime collaborator and producer R. Andrew Humphrey.

“We’re all writing on our own, that’s always been how we do it,” Dolan says. “We’ll bring an already done song or already thought-out song, and then we kind of build on it from there. That’s where most of the collaboration comes from. That’s when we’re adding and building on a foundation, and we take it forward from that point.

“We still play a lot of stuff from the first record because a lot of those songs are still the best ones we play live. The shelf life is pretty long for any given song, and the scope of the set is our whole discography, which is nice.”

While this will be Twin Peaks’ first show in Memphis, the band’s members, all in their early 20s, count the city’s underground rock scene as an influence on their sound as well as on their approach to their career. In press interviews, they have mentioned late Memphis rocker Jay Reatard’s singles on Matador Records as an inspiration for the Sweet ’17 Singles series.

“Especially when we were starting off in high school and stuff, we were really into stuff like the Black Lips and Jay Reatard and that kind of garage-rock stuff,” Dolan says. “The thing about those bands is they just kept putting out music kind of frequently, not worrying about cycles and stuff like that. Up to this point, we hadn’t had the opportunity to do that kind of thing, so [Sweet ’17 Singles] was a way to keep bringing it back to that. Because those bands are how we realized it was possible to put something out in a format like that.”

Chicago’s Twin Peaks Hit Memphis This Week.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

At the Plate: a reimagined Oshi and Indian Pass

Coming up soon, Oshi will host a sake tasting and a beer dinner. At one point, patrons will be introduced to the sake bomb. This involves a shot of sake balanced on chopsticks on top of a glass of beer. The chopsticks are parted, the shot goes in, and the rest is up to the consumer.

“People come here to have fun,” says Minh Nguyen, one of Oshi’s new owners, along with Tammy and Marvin Shackelford.

Oshi opened in 2014 on South Main, offering an imaginative menu of Asian-inflected burgers and dogs. With the new owners, the focus is now sushi. Nguyen says he expresses his personality through such favorite rolls as the Mist Roll (shrimp tempura, avocado topped with crabstick, spicy mayo, eel sauce, and sweet chili) and the B.P. Roll (spicy tuna, cream cheese, avocado, crunchies, white tuna, jalapeño, cilantro, mayo, and sriracha).

Nguyen gets creative through Omakase, where it’s anything goes. The customer tells the chef what flavors he likes, and then Nguyen uses that intel to create a special dish.

One holdout from the old menu is the Asian burger, though Nguyen says their version is a completely new take. It’s a wagyu patty with cheddar, bacon, tomato jam (!), sweet pepper sauce, fried egg, mixed greens, and a garlic aioli on a brioche bun. It comes with fries.

Inside Oshi on South Main

Also on the menu are pho, a vegetarian dumpling soup, crab cakes, fried calamari, vietnamese crepes, teriyaki, fried rice, fish and chips, and lobster roll.

The best way to peg the menu is Asian fusion.

Nguyen says he wants to challenge local palates, to teach Memphians to try new things.

“We want to make simple Asian food that tastes good and not the same,” says Nguyen.

Kinon Kiplinger, manager of the newly open Indian Pass in Overton Square, says the Florida original was in an old gas station. It was nothing fancy, a place for family and friends, where “grab yourself a beer” was a common refrain.

That was the sort of attitude that led to the beer honor system, which began in the Florida location and is repeated in the Memphis restaurant.

It is what it sounds like. Guests fill their own glass, marking each beer they get on the sheet. It’s up to the guest whether or not they are honest.

Before you get any big ideas about the beer, Indian Pass does have ways to keep on top of it. There are cameras, a tap attendant, and servers are taught to keep count.

“If you’re not honorable,” says Kiplinger, “we do have the right to prosecute.”

Indian Pass’ space was once Chiwawa, and before that Chicago Pizza Factory. The place has been expanded, the kitchen moved from downstairs to the main floor. The cool wrought-iron sign has been stripped of its “Midtown is Memphis,” replaced with “Indian Pass.”

According to owner/operations manager George Gouras, the idea was “to wipe away the remnants of the tenant before them.”

The menu is on the small-ish side, with raw, baked, and char-grilled oysters, head-on shrimp and crab featuring steamed, broiled, and stuffed shrimp and steamed crab legs. For those not into seafood, there’s the “Land Food” part of the menu with burger, cheeseburger, and a grilled chicken sandwich. One thing you won’t see is a deep-fryer. Gouras says if someone wants something fried, they’ll see to it. Otherwise, the idea is to “keep things good; keep things fresh.”

To that end, Gouras drives halfway to Jackson, Mississippi, to meet his seafood guy. He fetches several hundred pounds once or twice a week.

The menu isn’t the same as the Florida restaurant. That’s due to Gouras own take on dishes like the crab dip and the gumbo.

Kiplinger describes Indian Pass as a “little getaway,” perfect for the 30A crowd. But it still has that essential Memphis vibe. “It’s a little slice of Florida with a Memphis feel,” says Kiplinger.