Bianca Phillips, whose byline is familiar to many Flyer readers, braved the sun and crowds to report on all the fun you couldn’t have! Among the highlights were Mavis Staples and Eminem, but there were many more magic moments for those who fell under Bonnaroo’s spell. Journey with Bianca in our exclusive tour…
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Facebook – Memphis River Parks Partnership
A temporary recreational pop-up space with basketball courts and lawn games is set to open Friday, June 15th in Tom Lee Park.
The Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) and the Memphis Grizzlies are partnering to activate RiverPlay for a second season.
Last year, the pop-up space was installed on a portion of Riverside Drive near the Mississippi River Park. This year, RiverPlay will be in the Beale Street Landing parking lot in Tom Lee Park.
“We’re pleased to be working alongside the Memphis Grizzlies to bring RiverPlay back to Memphis River Parks,” Carol Coletta, president and CEO of MRPP, said. “The partnership works to deliver a catalytic, connected, and fun riverfront for all Memphians, and RiverPlay will help us do that. We’re excited to host it and look forward to seeing new faces and new activity in the park this summer.”
The space will have basketball courts, playing fields, lawn games, and a shack to rent sports equipment for free.
RiverPlay will be open every Wednesday through Sunday from 3 to 7:30 p.m. through Aug. 5th. On three Fridays during the summer, June 29th, July 20th, and Aug. 3rd, hours will extend to 9 p.m. for “Sunset Skate” nights. The pop-up’s grand opening celebration is scheduled for Friday at 2 p.m.
In addition to the space on the river, the Grizzlies will activate Chandler Park in South Memphis, by opening a GrizzFit Gear Shack, that will offer free athletic gear rentals. There will also be a free summer camp at the park every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday through the end of July. At the camp, youth will learn the fundamentals of traditional and non-traditional sports and fitness activities.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, MRPP board members discussed a tentative plan to bring more trees and amenities to Tom Lee Park. The board also talked about making some of the infrastructure for the Memphis In May International Festival, like utility hardware permanent.
Representatives with Studio Gang, the Chicago design firm working with the city on redoing the riverfront, said it could take a little over two years to complete the makeover of the park from start to finish.
White House/Wikipedia
Trump, Kim
If you’re still unclear about what really got done in Singapore between President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, you’re in company with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Trump and Kim did sign a document that said they’d work towards a new relationship, building a better peace, the complete de-nuclearlization of the Korean Peninsula, and more.
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Corker
Right? So, yeah, that’s something. But, wait. What? Don’t worry if it’s not perfectly clear.
Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (read: a guy who should really, actually have a clue about this kind of stuff and access to the answers), said in an official statement Tuesday morning, that he’s not really sure, either.
“While I am glad the president and Kim Jong Un were able to meet, it is difficult to determine what of concrete nature has occurred,” Corker said. “I look forward to having Secretary [Mike] Pompeo before our committee soon to share his insights and look forward to carrying out our oversight responsibilities.”
But it kinda, maybe even doesn’t matter what they did or said or signed. Trump said that he may be wrong (just joking, of course. C’mon!) about all of it but that he’d never admit it.
Here’s part of a White House transcript of a press briefing after his meeting with Kim.
“I think he’s — I think — honestly, I think he’s going to do these things,” Trump said. “I may be wrong. I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong.’ I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse. (Laughter.)”
Zach Thomason knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up.
Sort of.
“When I was seven years old, I told my dad, ‘I want to be a Northern Italian chef, a rock star, or a doctor,'” says Thomason, 31.
Cooking was appealing. “It looked like magic. There was that science. It just popped out of a pan. I put in these ingredients, and it just developed into something really cool.”
Thomason, now a chef at Next Door Eatery, wanted to go to cooking school, but his dad nixed the idea. So, Thomason studied creative writing at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. He and his brother, Ben. who lived with him, worked in the kitchen at a local restaurant.
One night, Thomason covered a shift for his brother. “I was sending him these texts like, ‘Where are you? I’ve got stuff at school to do. This is ridiculous.’ I’m starting to freak out and there’s just something going on in my stomach that said, ‘Something’s off.'”
He began calling hospitals. “I finally got in touch with the Police Department and I said, ‘Sir, is Ben Thomason in your custody?’ He says, ‘Yes, sir, he is.’ And I say, ‘Well, may I speak to him?’ He said, ‘No, sir, you can’t.’ I said, ‘Well, has he been arrested?’ He said, ‘No, sir.’ I said, ‘Well, if he hasn’t been arrested and he’s in your custody I have the right to speak to him.’ He said, ‘Son, your brother is dead.'”
Thomason was stunned. “My brother borrowed my car in order to go get some dope. And on his way back, he flipped the car over the interstate and killed himself.”
He grabbed a bottle of Jameson from the bar. “My knee-jerk reaction at the time was to drink. I took it to the back dock, and it was on. It was not pretty, and it continued for a good while to come.”
Thomason continued to work at the restaurant. “I learned how to do the dance in the kitchen at that place. There is a dance when everything is working right. It’s this orchestrated movement. There’s no bumping into each other. You know what everyone is doing. It’s really beautiful.”
But, he said, “Problem was I learned this dance and I learned how to work drunk.”
He hopped around restaurants in different cities. “I think it started out as this desire to fill my brother’s shoes because he seemed to be going in this direction at a young age.”
But he “grew really passionate about it.”
Thomason went through homeless periods. “Living out of the back of a car, losing the car, living in a tent in Nashville.”
He felt “destined for death. But there was something — God, whatever, the great cosmic muffin in the sky — deemed there’s something better for me out there than what I was doing.”
Thomason went into recovery and, with his fiance, moved to Memphis. David Krog, who was executive chef at Interim, said he’d give him a job if he remained sober for six months.
“That kitchen was run as ‘We are good people first, and that’s how we are going to behave. As good people and caring people.’ I’d grown used to seeing these very cut-throat environments and sabotaging and backstabbing. I was only six months sober after years and years of drug abuse. My hands still shook. I had these people who were willing to be nurturing. They were probably getting very frustrated with me, but they nurtured me to a point where I can do things now. I can take care of myself.”
After Krog left the restaurant, Thomason went to work at the Gray Canary. He moved to Next Door, so he could work a daytime shift to spend more time with his fiance and her daughter.
“Eventually, I could want to open a pizza place. But, at the same token, I really am an artist. David has been teaching us how to do this tweezer food and make things very pretty. One day, whether it be with him or on my own, I would like to be a part of opening a restaurant that is geared toward very, very small, tight, pretty palate-encompassing plates.”
Wherever he lands, Thomason wants the kitchen to be like Interim’s when he worked there. “Be a part of a kitchen again where there is this genuine sense of care that we have for one another. It was really astonishing the way that everyone treated one another and was connected with one another. I don’t even see it outside in the real world on a normal basis let alone in a high-intensity kitchen. If I can manage to be a part of something like that again, I would do that in a heartbeat.”
It’s a dreamy Music Video Monday!
Beale Street Caravan’s I Listen To Memphis series rolls on with the first-ever video from Memphis supergroup Motel Mirrors. John Paul Keith and Amy LaVere first teamed up in 2013 to create a perfect stew of elegant songwriting, countryfied harmonies, and twangy picking. For their long gestating second album, they were joined by LaVere’s husband Will Sexton on guitar and Shawn Zorn on drums. This version of “I Wouldn’t Dream Of It” was recorded live at the Galloway House, the former church in Cooper-Young where Johnny Cash played his very first show. The video series was directed by Christian Walker and produced by Waheed AlQawasmi. Take a look and listen!
Music Video Monday: Motel Mirrors
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Zigadoo Moneyclips
Once you hear the name Zigadoo Moneyclips, you’ll likely never forget it. Which is helpful, since these Memphians have not been plying the local club circuit much of late. No doubt that’s been partly due to the final sprint to the release of their sophomore album, Imaginary Girl, and maybe because it’s because they’re focused more on thinking big. Their music may be ideal for large outdoor gatherings like their last gig, the Memphis Hotwing Fest in April. As Flyer writer Joe Boone noted after their first album dropped, “Should we go ahead and call this festival music? Is festival a genre? It is now. Zigadoo Moneyclips have a sound that is perfectly matched to a large-scale P.A. outside.”
Their songs are well-primed to be crowd pleasers. Unlike so many scruffy rock bands in the club scene, these pop enthusiasts are not shy about embracing their inner Timberlake. The new record thumps, snaps and pops with the familiar drive of a summer car stereo. Recorded at Super Secret Lab and Ardent Studios, the album features core band members Zak Baker (guitar, keys, and vocals), Leigh McDonald (trumpet and vocals), Jamie Davis (bass), Dan Brown & Khari Wynn (guitar), Michael Shelton (drums) and Josh Aguilar (alto sax and vocals), as well as a supporting cast of Memphis musicians like Tom Link (bari and tenor sax), Sam Shoup (upright bass), Jason Miller (piano), Julia Struthers (vocals), Kyndle McMahan (vocals), Rachel Levine (violin), Carlos Sargent (drums) and Jay Richey (drum programming).
That last credit is appropriate, as their sound has moved in a more electronic direction, adding keys & synthesizers to the mix. And central to this evolution was Ari Morris, who engineered, co-produced and mixed the album. Morris, a seasoned engineer who works heavily in Memphis hip-hop (Young Dolph, 8Ball), gives the band the full polished-bling sound of a radio hit.
The band are clearly embracing this sound with a sense of fun, only slightly tongue in cheek, as they sing lines like “Take a minute to look into the mirror and say, ‘Damn, I’m sexy!'” over a lifted Stooges riff and horn blasts. Other tracks, like the frankly horny “Raza,” are even more radio friendly, offering a call and response like “He’s from the city/She’s from the country” with only a slight wink.
On Saturday, June 9, the group celebrates the album’s release with a part at under-recognized venue the House of Mtenzi Museum. It will be interesting to see how these Top 40 enthusiasts translate the record into a live experience, laden as it is with the chirping samples and skronks that are the sine qua non of contemporary pop. But, given the band’s burgeoning reputation as festival pleasers, something tells me they’ll do just fine.
Zigadoo Moneyclips celebrate the release of Imaginary Girl on June 9, with Crown Vox and Ohn and On at House of Mtenzi, 8:00 pm. $10 cover includes CD/download card.
$5 for unlimited access to local kegs.
Jon W. Sparks
John McIntire custom made a cap for We Saw You
Michael Donahue
John McIntire and his caps of many colors.
Many of John McIntire’s heavy marble sculptures can be found in museums.
Some of his recent creations could be found on your head.
McIntire has been drawing colorful pictures on caps. They’re just cheap caps he buys at dollar stores, but the whimsical artwork is fabulous. He makes them when he gets inspired and, usually, gives them away.
This all began when McIntire began drawing on a cap while waiting for some friends. “I found a Scripto pen, one of those permanent ink (pens), and I started sketching on a hat that already had something on it,” McIntire says. “I went in the house and I found some colors. And then I went to the Dollar Tree and they had more colors.”
He draws cartoon-looking people and creatures on the caps for the most part.
Taking one of the caps, he says, “This guy is fishing. This is for a fisherman. And the fish are playing a joke on him. They hooked the hook on the back of his collar. And the fish are laughing at him.”
Describing another fishing cap, McIntire says, “This is a guy looking for the fish and he doesn’t realize he’s standing on the fish.”
One cap is an homage to the late bluesman, Furry Lewis. “This is ‘Blues in Heaven.’ This is like Furry Lewis in heaven.”
“Plants Revolt” is a “lady running out of the garden and the plants are angry. They’ve got pissed off faces. And there’s a snail.”
One he describes as “elaborately done. My take-off on Rubens. Lightning bolts and people descending into hell.”
He quickly executes his drawings, McIntire says. And, he says, “I never know when I’m going to get inspired to do another one.”
People want him to draw his pictures on other pieces of apparel, McIntire says. “They want me to do T-shirts now. I don’t want to do T-shirts. In the ’60s and ’70s I did T-shirts for Burkle’s Bakery, the Blues Foundation. They sold instantly.”
He doesn’t have many of the shirts left. “I found a kid wearing one of my T-shirts. He was riding a tricycle. And it was from this blues festival in the Shell. I offered to buy it from him. And he said, ‘Well, it’s my big brother’s.’ And he said, ‘He’d kill me if I sell it.’ I said, ‘I’ll give you $25.’ And he said, ‘Nope.’ And me and my buddy went up to $50.That was a lot of money back then.”
The kid refused to give it to McIntire. “He pedaled off with my shirt.”
……….
Michael Donahue
Sleep Out Louies grand opening
I’ve always had a special fondness for Sleep Out Louies. One reason is because I can tell this story:
The bar/restaurant had just opened. I was working at the old Memphis Press-Scimitar — the afternoon newspaper — at the time. I just got back from lunch and I said, “I’ve just been to Sleep Out Louies.
My colleague Jill Piper said, “You fell asleep at Huey’s?”
It’s great to have Sleep Out Louies back again. I went to the opening party, which was held May 22nd at its new location in Peabody Place.
One thing I noticed was the absence of framed neckties.
I asked marketing director Molly Prather what’s up with the ties, which were a staple at Sleep Out Louies when it was on Union.
“The ties are coming back,” she says. “We had quite a few people at the grand opening give us ties they were wearing or brought back ties that were originally framed.”
They plan to hang the ties. “Tie hanging parties. A happy hour party. Give them some appetizers and stuff like that. They get to hang it up and celebrate.”
Maybe someone “won a big case or got a promotion,” Prather says. “To mark the occasion, they hang their tie on the wall.”
People visited the old Sleep Out Louies after work. “Every single day they came in for happy hour. It’s just a way for us to show our appreciation for the hard work they were doing during the day and coming in and hanging out.”
So, where are those ties? “Some of the folks who came in knew we were closing down and asked for their tie back.”
Some ties were moved to the Mesquite Chop House in Southaven, where “a lot of those ties are hanging on the wall.”
Molly said Sleep Out Louies president Preston Lamm told her they had about 200 ties at the old Sleep Out Louies. They belonged to “a lot of stakeholders downtown who had a passion and love for the city. They were all on a mission to bring downtown back to respectability. And it wasn’t always just ties. Ladies had scarves. Some folks brought in a pen that maybe they used to close a big deal.”
And they celebrated.
A quote on the wall where new and old ties will be hung reads, “One day, I shucked off my tie, kicked off my wing-tips and quit. I’d rather sleep out in the cold than work another day like this.”
Sleep Out Louies is a place where people can “come in, loosen their ties, enjoy a cocktail and some oysters and just shrug off the stresses of the day,” Prather said.
So far, the “new ties” at Sleep Out Louies are from Bernard Lansky, Jim Norwell, Jim Beck, Rico Jackson, and Aubrey Howard.
“Tie one on” has a new meaning at Sleep Out Louies.
………….
Michael Donahue
Jerry Lawler and Larry Raspberry at Memphis Italian Fest. Raspberry and his High Steppers performed at the event.
I again got to be a judge again at the Memphis Italian Festival. I look forward to this each year. I remember judging spaghetti sauce back when the festival first began. It might have been the very first one. The judges sat in the cafeteria, as I recall, and they brought us cups of spaghetti.
The judges now gather in a tent on the grounds on the final morning of the festival. We’re read the rules of judging. This year, the roster of judges included noted Memphians, including Ron Childers, Kevin Kane, Dave Woloshin, and Brother Chris Englert from Christian Brothers High School.
Each judge was given the names of three booths to visit. Everyone I encountered at the booths were very gracious. They served a bowl of spaghetti gravy to me. A couple of the booths also served meatballs. I asked for seconds at each booth, which meant I ate six bowls of spaghetti gravy by 1 p.m. that day.
I returned to the judge’s tent, turned in my sheet with the scores and then I drove home and drank club soda.
Caps, Ties, Spaghetti Gravy, and Margaritas
Caps, Ties, Spaghetti Gravy, and Margaritas (2)
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Last week, a Harvard report estimated that 4,645 people died from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Since the hurricane hit the island in September 2017, various studies have also reported high numbers, in the thousands, that drastically surpass the official count. Eight months after Maria, the official government death toll is still at 64.
But these numbers didn’t matter much to most of the America that woke up to yet another racist and Islamophobic tweet from Roseanne Barr. Her racist comments are not much of a surprise, given her past comments and years of dehumanizing black folks, Arabs, and Palestinians, and yet Barr’s small jump to less tolerable racism garnered more attention than the death toll of Hurricane Maria. Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC covered the Roseanne story for more than 10 hours, total, according to Media Matters. They spent about 30 minutes on the report of 4,600 Hurricane Maria deaths.
Scroll through the tweets under the hashtag #4645Boricuas, and you’ll see all the stories that cable news is ignoring. Puerto Rican journalist Andrea González-Ramírez has been amplifying these stories by retweeting and sharing the names and stories of those who died from Hurricane Maria and the U.S. neglect of Puerto Rico.
REUTERS | Alvin Baez
People look at hundreds of pairs of shoes displayed at the Capitol to pay tribute to Hurricane Maria’s victims after a research team led by Harvard University estimated that 4,645 people lost their lives, a number not confirmed by the government, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 1, 2018.
To this day, many Puerto Ricans continue to live in the dark, without electricity, without clean water, without adequate food, and without appropriate medical access. As I read through people’s account of life in Puerto Rico — again, many folks living in the dark and multiple island-wide blackouts well into eight months after the hurricane —I began to feel all these emotions. How can the U.S. wash its hands as Puerto Ricans are dying? How can it accept so much neglect toward human life?
Those questions lingered for a few minutes, and then I checked myself: As with Roseanne’s tweets, I am not really surprised by the U.S. response — or lack of — toward Puerto Rico. Just check the receipts. Flint still does not have clean water; thousands of immigrant children continue to be separated from their families, many of whom are escaping from U.S.-backed state violence; and black, brown, indigenous, and LGBT+ bodies are attacked each day by people and policies for simply existing.
In that case, is the U.S. neglect of Puerto Rico just part of what makes it the U.S.?
Before letting that question spiral too much, let’s go back to the U.S. relationship with Puerto Rico. When I tried to fight the question of “Why should the U.S. care about what is happening to Puerto Ricans?” I used to think that “Because Puerto Ricans are Americans” would be a sufficient answer. Then I started to wonder, what is “American,” since certain folks are treated differently than others.
That’s when I found the words of Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán, professor at Creighton University Graduate School — and a Puerto Rican. She says the problem with the narrative of “Puerto Ricans are American citizens” is that it assumes that, in her words, “the solution to Puerto Ricans’ colonial predicament is U.S. citizenship.”
Here’s what our history books don’t cover. Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony. After more than 400 years under Spanish rule, Puerto Rico was invaded by the U.S., which then took the island under the Treaty of Paris in 1898. In 1917, Puerto Ricans were given official citizenship. However, they have limited rights and voice. They can’t vote for president, and they have no voting representation in Congress.
For years before Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico has been a U.S. “colonial subject,” used for its resources. As Nelson Denis, author of War Against All Puerto Ricans, wrote in an essay in 2017, “Puerto Rico has been little more than a profit center for the United States: first as a naval coaling station, then as a sugar empire, a cheap labor supply, a tax haven, a captive market, and now as a municipal bond debtor and target for privatization. It is an island of beggars and billionaires: fought over by lawyers, bossed by absentee landlords, and clerked by politicians.”
Since the hurricane, pushes to privatize the island’s economy have intensified. Disaster capitalists claim that privatization is the solution to improving the economy of Puerto Rico, even though there is no evidence to prove privatization would do any good. Efforts to privatize education, water, roads, the government-owned electric utility system, and other services have grown, which threaten the self-determination of Puerto Ricans.
After enduring the blatant neglect for decades, Puerto Ricans are demanding to be seen and heard. Last week, more than 1,000 pairs of shoes were set in front of Puerto Rico’s Capitol building in remembrance of those who died from Hurricane Maria, and to call for administrative transparency over the hurricane’s death count. While 4,645 deaths is not an exact number, it has brought forward the need for the U.S. to acknowledge and deal with the injustice and oppression that the island and its people experience. No matter how many miles away we may think we are from the conditions experienced by the people of Puerto Rico, we must amplify their voices and follow their lead towards decolonization and liberation.
Aylen Mercado is a brown, queer, Latinx chingona pursuing an Urban Studies and Latin American and Latinx Studies degree at Rhodes College. A native of Argentina, she is researching Latinx identity in the South.
One thing the great filmmakers of the 1970s valued above all others was intensity. That’s evident in a pair of the decade’s masterpieces—Taxi Driver and Raging Bull—that were collaborations between director Martin Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader.
Ethan Hawk stars as a priest in existential crisis in First Reformed.
Schrader is something of a legendary figure in Hollywood, which is understandable when you see his filmography. He appears in the infamous New Hollywood gossip epic Easy Riders, Raging Bulls holed up in the Hollywood Hills with a pistol and a pound of weed, furiously pounding out the script to American Gigolo. Schrader called those films “man alone in a room stories.” They, along with his films like Auto Focus, rotate around a single individual, tortured, mysteriously driven, and often trying to make sense of a chaotic world. Usually, the protagonists, like Travis Bickle, come apart in the end in some spectacularly weird fashion.
Ethan Hawk and Amanda Seyfriend
First Reformed is a major comeback for Schrader, now 71. In this case, the man alone in the room is Ethan Hawke as Toller, an Episcopal priest in rural New York. His titular church was a stop on the Underground Railroad, but now it’s a dwindling congregation in a fading town. Toller spends more of his time giving tours to leaf peepers and school groups than ministering to his flock. That’s why, when Mary (Amanda Seyfried) asks him for counseling, it’s something of a relief. Her boyfriend Michael (Philip Ettinger) is a environmental activist who just got out of prison in Canada on charges related to an oil sands pipeline protest. Mary is pregnant, but Michael doesn’t want her to have the baby. He no longer thinks the fight against climate change is winnable and believes its wrong to bring a child into a world that is doomed to foreseeable catastrophe.
Amanda Seyfried
The scenes between Hawk and Ettinger are brutal in their intensity, even though they’re just two people sitting alone in a room, talking. In his diary, which Schrader uses as a voice over device, Toller says the philosophical, scientific, and theological debate felt “exhilarating” like “Jacob wrestling the angel”.
The repercussions of that single conversation echo through the lives of the three characters. Toller was an Army chaplain whose son was killed in Iraq, driving him from the service and breaking up his marriage. He’s struggling to keep his psyche together and his job intact as the 250th anniversary of the founding of his church approaches. Mary and Michael’s dilemma puts pressure on him at exactly the wrong time as he prepares for a ceremony where his megachurch-leading boss Pastor Jeffers and the governor will attend, bringing unwanted attention to a man who just wants to disappear.
Hawke puts himself into the frontrunner position for the 2018 Best Actor Oscar with his performance as a strong but brittle man nearing his breaking point. Schrader’s screenplay is unsparing in its honesty and directness. Toller’s inner turmoil is existential, but grounded in real world pain. The situations are entirely believable and throughly of today, but Toller’s philosophical ponderings are right out of Shakespeare. Is it all, in the end, worth it?
The film’s unsparing intensity is at once its greatest strength and biggest weakness. To watch First Reformed is to stare unsparingly into the most basic, unanswerable philosophical questions we have. It is, as Toller says, both exhilarating and exhausting. Schrader earns his depth—there’s no such thing as gratuitous Christ imagery in a film with a priest for a leading man—but it’s about as subtle as a gold brick to the face.
First Reformed
Here are seven notable pro wrestling events happening in Memphis this summer:
1) Lucha Libre with former WWE superstar Jake Swagger (Sunday, June 10): The same Memphis-based organization that brought Rey Mysterio and “Broken” Matt Hardy to town in the past 18 months is now bringing in former world champion Jake Swagger. The MLLW event will also feature a championship battle royal and oodles of fans placing their hand over their heart.
2) SmackDown Live at FedExForum (Tuesday, June 12): WWE’s blue brand will be live from Memphis for their final show before the annual Money in the Bank pay-per-view. According to WWE TV commercials, fans can expect to see Daniel Bryan’s “return to action in Memphis for the first time in three years.” Plus, Paige will host a Women’s Money in the Bank Summit (whatever that is) and Andrade “Cien” Almas is scheduled to wrestle Sin Cara. Also on the card: WWE champion AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, The Miz, and Jeff Hardy.
(Preparty for SmackDownLive with me and my radio tag team partner Dustin Starr at Kooky Canuck. Details here.)
3) Dana White’s Lookin’ for a Fight on Beale Street (Friday, June 15): The Vince McMahon of the UFC is coming to Memphis to be in the corner of Derrick King and MMA fighter Matt Serra as they battle Dustin Starr and MMA fighter Din Thomas with Maria Starr in their corner. Cameras from White’s show will be on hand filming all of the action in front of Jerry “The King” Lawler’s bar on world-famous Beale Street.
4) Cerrito Trivia’s House Money in the Bank at Memphis Made Brewing (Thursday, June 28): It’s a wrestling event where you get to be a part of the action. I host this free competition which is the trivia night version of WWE’s Money in the Bank.
5) Redbirds Wrestling Night at AutoZone Park (Friday, July 6): Since the Redbirds hired Memphis Wrestling’s Power Couple as their co-emcees this season, you could argue that every night is Wrestling Night at AutoZone Park, but this particular Fourth of July weekend game will actually feature live wrestling matches and storylines.
6) Roundhouse Revival 3 at the Mid-South Coliseum (Saturday, July 21): Memphis Wrestling has already returned to Saturday mornings. Now, it’s back at the Mid-South Coliseum too. Free live wrestling will once again take place in front of the historic arena as part of the third Roundhouse Revival in as many years. In addition to live music, basketball, and food trucks, this year’s installment will include water slides and robots. Will we get to see Robots vs. Wrestlers?!
7) Real Memphis Wrestling at Rec Room (1st and 3rd Friday of Every Month): Twice a month, the Rec Room transforms into the WreckRoom when UCPWS takes over the popular Broad Avenue arcade bar. Fans under 21 are welcome with a parent or guardian. Cover is $5, thus making it the perfect setting for a revival of Craig Brewer’s MTV show.
Listen to Kevin Cerrito talk about pro wrestling on the radio every Saturday from 11-noon CT on Sports 56/87.7 FM in Memphis. Subscribe to Cerrito Live on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, tunein, PlayerFM or Sticher. Find out about his upcoming wrestling trivia events at cerritotrivia.com. Follow him on Twitter @cerrito.