Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Anime Blues Con at Cook Convention Center

A long, long time ago — 2010, to be precise — Memphis was a very different place. “We didn’t have an anime con,” says Matthew Santirojprapao, the director of media and communications for Anime Blues Con. Sure, we had comic cons and the Mid-South Con, which caters to a variety of fandoms. But the massively influential Japanese style of animation had no local con to call its own. “So we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if it did?’ And we started one,” Santirojprapao says. And that is the astonishing origin story of Anime Blues Con, now celebrating its 8th year.

Don’t get the blues, anime fans.

“In our first year of the event, we had between 800 and 1,000 attendees,” Santirojprapao says. This year, Anime Blues anticipates 4,000 visitors and cosplayers. They’re coming out to meet voice actors like Lucie Pohl who voices Mercy from Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch, and veteran stage actor Paul Nakauchi, a Broadway and West End musical theater veteran who voiced Wong in Marvel’s animated Dr. Strange feature, and Savatte in Marvel’s Clone Wars. They’re coming out to experience Japanese arcade cabinets courtesy of Tokyo Attack, to overdose on manga, and catch some obsessive fan-forward performances. “I think our special guests have been really good,” Santirojprapao says, looking for the best way to describe Anime Blues’ growth.

In addition to voice talent and arcade opportunities, this year’s con includes a performance by Bit Brigade, a band that plays the themes to classic video games like Mega Man and Legend of Zelda. Drama is added to the performance by way of a real-time gaming element. “I am really looking forward to seeing that,” Santirojprapao says.

Categories
We Recommend We Saw You

Big Wig Ball, Bumpus South Main, Feast on the Farm, Hole-In-One

Don Perry

Too much competition at Big Wig Ball.

Don Perry

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

I love the Big Wig Ball because most of the guests look like me. They have big hair. Which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether I want to be the only hirsute one standing out in the crowd. This bunch had shocking pink, vibrant blue and golden yellow locks, which, unlike me, they can simply slip off when the event is over.

About 200 attended this year’s event, which was held June 22 at Annesdale Mansion, says event chair Keri Chapman. The Big Wig Ball benefits Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital.

Asked what makes the Big Wig Ball stand out as a party, Chapman says it’s fun to dress up at “your typical cocktail or formal party,” but at the Big Wig Ball, guests “can pick the craziest wig they want to.”

The Big Wig Ball has the “formal aspect to it, but then you mix in the wig and it makes it a little bit crazier.”

This year’s event raised about $40,000 for Le Bonheur.

Music was provided by Jerred Price as Almost Elton John, Charvey Mac and DJ Justin Jaggers.

………….

Bumpus South Main Harley-Davidson held its first Bike Night Pre-Party June 27 at The Grotto, the space between the store at 525 South Main Street and Earnestine & Hazel’s.

Complimentary hot dogs and hamburgers hot off the grill and ice-cold beverages were served to guests who stopped by the store.

The store opened in May, says general manager Mike Marchky. They’re going to do the cookout pre-parties each Wednesday “throughout the riding season,” which is Sept. 26.

The store, which opened in May, sells men’s and women’s clothing, collectibles and gifts, but no Harley-Davidson motorcycles. But, Mike says, “If we’ve got somebody who wants to buy them, we’ll send them out to our store on Whitten Road in Collierville.”

The store will be serving complimentary beer and wine during Trolley Night on June 29. And, he said, “15 percent off select Harley-Davidson merch.”

.

Michael Donahue

St. Louis Church Hole-in-One capped off a week of golf, food and camraderie on June 23

No one won the million dollar first prize at this year’s St, Louis Church Hole-in-One Summer Festival, which was held Father’s Day June 17 through June 23.

And no one won the car.

“But we had several people that won hole in ones,” says Joe Evangelisti, publicity chair with the St. Louis Church Men’s Club, which presents the annual event.

Each night, golfers were eligible to win cash prizes totaling $1,000. “If they were the first one of the night, they got $500. If they were second, they got $300. And if they were third, they got $200. So, there were several of those.”

They got a trip to the prize room when they made shots closest to the hole, Evangelisti says. “Lots of people made trips to the prize room every night. If you were in the one foot, three foot or five foot circle, you were eligible for prizes.”

Qualifying golfers participated in a shoot out for a car and the million dollar shootout.

The St. Louis Men’s Club Culinary Institute was again on hand with its famous barbecued pork and barbecued bologna sandwiches.

Proceeds benefit St. Louis youth programs.

………….

Cowboy boots, cowboy hats and jeans were more-than-acceptable attire at Feast on the Farm, which was held June 23 at Agricenter International.

The event, which was promoted as “country chic,” featured tastings from area food establishments.

All proceeds from the event supported Agricenter International, which is a non-profit dedicated to agricultural research, education and conservation.

[slideshow-1]

Categories
Music Music Blog

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup

The Levitt Shell, winner of the Memphis Flyer’s Best Place To See Live Music last year, has announced the acts booked for the fall season.

Robert Cray plays the Levitt Shell on July 13.

Beginning September 6th and running through October 21st, the Orion Free Music Concert Series will present 24 shows on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Memphis acts, sponsored by Regional One, include Snowglobe, Star and Micey, North Mississippi Allstars, and Opera Memphis.

Two, ticketed “Stars at the Shell” shows serve as fundraisers to supplement the free music. The first, coming on July 13th, features internationally renowned bluesman Robert Cray, with special guest Cedric Burnside.

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup

On September 29th, Brooklyn soulsters Lake Street Dive will anchor 2018’s final “Stars at the Shell” series.

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (2)

Here’s the full line up for the Levitt Shell fall season:

Thursday, September 6th: 
Devon Gilfillian

Friday, September 7th:
Orquesta Akokan

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (3)

Saturday, September 8th: 
Meta and the Cornerstones

Sunday, September 9th: 
The Mulligan Brothers

Thursday, September 13th: 
Black Umfolosi

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (4)

Friday, September 14th:             
Snowglobe with Star & Micey

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (5)

Saturday, September 15th: 
Rhodes Jazz Night with Joyce Cobb

Sunday, September 16th:
Those Pretty Wrongs

Thursday, September 20th: 
Low Cut Connie

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (6)

Friday, September 21st:             
Memphis Renaissance

Saturday, September 22nd:
North Mississippi Allstars

Sunday, September 23rd:             
Opera Memphis

Thursday, October 4th: 
Dean Owens and the Whiskey Hearts

Friday, October 5th: 
Squirrel Nut Zippers

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (7)

Saturday, October 6th: 
Film and Music Night

Sunday, October 7th: 
Memphis Hepcats

Thursday, October 11th:             
Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (8)

Friday, October 12th: 
Bette Smith

Saturday, October 13rd:             
Walden

Sunday, October 14th: 
Las Cafeteras

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (9)

Thursday, October 18th:             
Crystal Shrine

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (11)

Friday, October 19th: 
John Fullbright

Saturday, October 20th:             
Film and Music Night

Sunday, October 21st:
Nefesh Mountain

Levitt Shell Announces Fall Music Lineup (10)

Categories
Rassle Me Sports

Under Armour’s New Shirts Honor The Rock’s Memphis Wrestling Heritage

Ever since January, when he first posted an Instagram video dressed in a Flex Kavana shirt, wrestling fans in Memphis and across the world have been wondering “Can you buy what The Rock is wearing?”

Now you can. Two t-shirts paying tribute to The Rock’s Memphis wrestling heritage are the newest arrivals to his online Under Armour store.

The shirts feature Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s original ring name (Flex Kavana) and the year (1996) that he made his pro wrestling debut working for the USWA in Memphis. (Once Johnson was called up from Memphis to the then-WWF in November ‘96, Flex Kavana became Rocky Maivia.)

Under Armour’s New Shirts Honor The Rock’s Memphis Wrestling Heritage

The People’s Champion, who regularly bragged about how expensive his shirts cost during promos, is charging the people $35 plus shipping for the new tees.

Earlier this year on my radio show, I asked Jerry “The King” Lawler if he knew about the Flex shirts and if was going to make any royalties off them. The audio of that conversation can be found here.

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.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Welcome to It City

A few short years ago, once you got south of Earnestine & Hazel’s on South Main, you entered a barren urbanscape of abandoned warehouses, dusty railyards, and weedy, empty lots. Now the streets are lined with row after row of apartment buildings. Hip restaurants like Loflin Yard and Carolina Watershed are repurposing old industrial spaces in creative ways. South of South Main is booming, inhabited by thousands of mostly young Memphians who live, work, and play Downtown.

Will it last? Can a neighborhood built on young folks wanting to live Downtown sustain itself? Well, it can, but only if there is a steady stream of fresh young folks wanting to live there in the coming years. Here’s hoping there is. Otherwise, well, that’s a lot of apartments to fill.

That’s because as those young Memphians grow older, they’ll form relationships and maybe — as tends to happen — decide to have children. At that point, they’ll usually want the customary accoutrements of family living: a house, a yard, a mutt.

The closest neighborhoods to Downtown are already feeling the pressure of the influx — from Downtown and from older suburbanites moving in. If you want to buy a home in Midtown, East Memphis, Cooper-Young, etc., you’d better be pre-approved for your loan and be ready to pounce when a house you like comes on the market. Memphis’ core is a hot housing market right now.

In recognition of that, developers are moving in, buying distressed properties, doing teardowns, and putting up two or more new houses on what were once single-family lots. These new homes are often what are called “tall skinnies,” because, well, that’s what they are. Another name for them is “infill homes,” and they are going up all over Cooper-Young and elsewhere in Midtown. (The Flyer‘s Toby Sells has done numerous stories on infill housing, with more to come soon.)

On the plus side, more housing is being created in core city neighborhoods, meaning a bunch of fresh residents, bringing more businesses, new restaurants and retail, and, hopefully, new students for neighborhood schools. On the down side, there is a danger our old neighborhoods will lose their historic charm as older homes get torn down, trees get removed, and residential parking gets more difficult. Try finding a parking spot around the new Nashville export, Hattie B’s, on Cooper.

In fact, if you want to see where all this could be going, drive up to East Nashville and behold the glut of tall skinnies on street after street. Behold the young hipsters with strollers. Behold the bicyclists and coffee shops. Behold the new urbania. It’s coming, for better and for worse.

In Memphis, all the attendant paraphernalia of an “It City” — the bike lanes, the bike-share program, the Bird scooters, the moving of musicians here from Austin and Nashville, the booming South Main, Overton Square, Crosstown, Broad Avenue, and Cooper-Young entertainment/restaurant districts, the Railgartens and Urban Outfitters and Hattie B’s — it’s all developing under our very noses. Something’s happening here, Mr. Jones, and we’d better pay attention.

Case in point: We’re increasingly seeing plans for new apartment buildings springing up in Midtown, with the city offering the usual PILOT plans to “encourage” developers by allowing them to avoid taxes for an agreed-upon period of time. Whether or not those deals make sense is an open question. What shouldn’t be in question is a requirement that in order to get a PILOT, developers should have to build structures that reflect the character of the surrounding neighborhood.

Traditional Midtown apartment buildings — the Gilmore, the Kimbrough, the Knickerbocker, the apartment buildings along Poplar near Overton Park — seamlessly integrate with the cityscape and their neighborhoods. In contrast, many of the new apartment designs being given PILOTs are stark, cheap-looking boxes, seemingly built only to take advantage of the housing boom with no consideration of the visual impact on the character of our historic streetscapes.

Again, go visit Nashville — specifically, the Gulch, just south of Downtown — if you want to see how quickly these cheap-looking boxes can redefine the character of a neighborhood. Memphis needs to put serious design restrictions and guidelines in place before giving out tax breaks to developers.

If we don’t do it, “It” is going to do us.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Raisin at Hattiloo

From a technical standpoint, I could pick Hattiloo’s Raisin to pieces. The set looks slapped together, the music’s canned, and that’s just for starters. But so much of any show’s success depends on material strength and a cast’s ability to leverage it. In this regard, everything about Raisin delivers. Music and dancing never water down the message in this faithfully adapted retelling of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. This story of the Younger family and their struggle to buy an affordable home and possibly start a family business is a subtle, almost generous look at how America and its wealth became segregated. It is a deeply felt family drama that ends with a devastating loss barely tempered with dignity and determination.

As more and more Americans moved out of apartments and into single-family homes, the limited properties made available to African Americans were typically lower quality and far more expensive than property being offered to whites. Absent credit, it was sold via a contract system eliminating equity. One missed payment could result in eviction, with nothing to show for your effort. This is the legal, social, and economic environment in which Raisin unfolds.

Raisin isn’t about integration or white flight. It’s about a family’s struggle to create legacy inside a system designed to prevent it. The family patriarch has died leaving $10,000 in life insurance. Lena, the surviving matriarch wants to sink most of the money into an affordable home in a white neighborhood, not because of the demographics, but because “It was the best [she] could do for the money.” Her son Walter Lee’s a chauffeur who wants to invest the money in a family business — a liquor store. Her daughter has exchanged faith for science and wants to go to medical school. In the absence of credit or anything more than sustenance income, all these dreams hinge on one pot of cash. Add to this dynamic a white representative of the Clybourne Park neighborhood who wants to negotiate a kinder, gentler way to keep blacks out, and you have all the ingredients necessary for an emotionally honest and devastating primer in how everything went wrong.

Raisin‘s story is famously inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes. More crucially, it’s informed by the Hansberry family’s personal experience in court, fighting the restrictive legal covenants and members-only neighborhood associations. Hers is a deeply sad but open-hearted critique of the American Dream, a Depression-era fiction embraced by President Herbert Hoover to sell the advantages of single family home zoning where ethnic groups were excluded, over crowded apartment-based urban living where anybody might move across the street.

Raisin‘s Lena became an almost instantaneous theatrical archetype. George C. Wolfe brilliantly lampooned that archetype in The Colored Museum‘s “Last Black Mama on the Couch” sketch. Hattiloo stalwart Patricia Smith never sits on a couch or plays to type. Her Lena shifts from thoughtful, nurturing, and wise, to superstitious, impulsive, and tyrannical. She struggles to create security for her family without realizing how restrictive security can be — or how tenuous. Smith exudes maternal virtue, but hers is a nuanced, warts-and-all take on a part the veteran performer could have easily phoned in.

Director Mark Allan Davis gets top-shelf performances from an ensemble cast that includes Rashideh Gardner, Samantha Lynn, Aaron Isaiah, and Gordon Ginsberg. But Kortland Whalum’s leave-it-all-on-stage take on Walter Lee Younger is really something to see. Whalum feels nothing lightly and his words and songs land like punches — some weak, flailing and ineffectual, some like haymakers. It’s as rich a performance as I’ve seen in ages, just at the edge of too much but never tipping over.

Walter Lee gets swindled, of course. I don’t think that’s a spoiler given the shopworn material. He’s one more casualty of unstable alternative economies created when people are isolated and shut out of the regular economy. The Youngers may be moving into a Chicago neighborhood, but in this moment Walter Lee becomes the embodiment of Hughes’ “Harlem,” and the “dream deferred.” Maybe this gifted, young, imperfect black man, who’s trying to do all the things he’s supposed to do but still can’t get ahead, will finally dry up like a raisin in the sun. Maybe he’ll fester like a sore or stink like rotten meat or sag like a heavy load. Maybe he’ll explode. In a beautifully manicured interpretation, Whalum gives you the sense it’s all on the table all the time.

Short take: This Raisin has some real problems. Telling one helluva strong story isn’t one.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Food Fight: The Battle to Eliminate Memphis’ Food Deserts

If you drive through Midtown, there are no shortages of places to find fresh food. In fact, there are three full-scale grocery stores within a one-mile radius of each other. But, as you venture further south, along Bellevue into South Memphis, you won’t find many grocery stores. Instead, you’ll see streets lined with fast food joints, dollar stores, and corner stores selling junk food, beer, cigarettes, and a few overpriced groceries such as white bread and milk.

Marlon Foster, longtime resident of South Memphis and pastor of Christ Quest Community Church near McLemore and Mississippi Boulevard, says accessing healthy, non-processed food is a huge struggle among his neighbors. People “literally right next door to me don’t have real food to eat. There are a lot of people who walk up and down the street to get food from me and other neighbors,” Foster says. “We see it all the time”

Since the church opened 14 years ago, Foster says he’s been offering Sunday-morning breakfast to his congregation. Half come just for the guaranteed meal, he says.

“It’s about gathering, but it’s also a direct confrontation of hunger,” Foster says. “People are not coming to socialize; they’re coming because they’re hungry and need something to eat.”

Source: USDA; modified for the story

The green fields in the above map indicate food deserts.

South Memphis isn’t the only Memphis neighborhood where residents don’t have reliable access to fresh, healthy food. In fact, on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s atlas that highlights areas in the U.S. with low access to food, much of the city of Memphis is colored green. In this case, green isn’t good. Green means that the people living in that census tract are low-income and live between one and 10 miles from a grocery store.

Click a button on the interactive site, and magenta begins to overlap with green, showing the areas in Memphis where a large portion of households don’t own cars. Green plus magenta equals food desert, which the USDA defines as a community where at least 500 people and/or 33 percent of the population reside more than one mile from a grocery store and do not own an automobile. These areas exist heavily here in Whitehaven, Orange Mound, South Memphis, and North Memphis.

The latest report by Feeding America, a national hunger-relief organization, shows that 198,610 Shelby County residents were food insecure in 2015, meaning about 21 percent of the population faced “lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods.”

These are communities where residents do not live in close proximity to affordable and healthy food retailers, especially those that sell fresh fruits and vegetables. Healthy food options in these communities are either hard to find or unaffordable. Residents can, however, easily access processed food with little or no nutritional benefit and that is high in fat, sugar, and sodium.

The USDA cites that in most cities, food deserts are found in low-income areas and neighborhoods of color. Memphis, a city that is about 62 percent African American, is no different. On the USDA’s food desert atlas, green largely covers the city’s poorest zip codes — 38126, 38105, 38108, and 38106, which have an average median household income of $19,107 a year. In these neighborhoods, families struggle to find and afford healthy food, children rely on school-provided meals, and parents have to make trade-offs between basic needs and adequate food.

Closed Doors

When Kroger closed two of its stores in South Memphis and Orange Mound in February, the residents who depended on those stores were suddenly struck with the reality of not having a place to buy food.

Rhonnie Brewer, chief visionary officer of local consulting firm Socially Twisted, says she doesn’t live in either of those neighborhoods, but when she heard about the predicament of the residents there, she was compelled to help “meet the need.”

After attending neighborhood meetings, while researching and contacting potential grocers to fill the space, Brewer says she realized she needed hard numbers to actually prove a grocery store could be viable in those locations. So, Brewer went to the Memphis City Council, asking for funds to conduct a grocery store feasibility study. Though some of the council members were “strongly for it,” she says, others “weren’t concerned” and couldn’t understand why a study was necessary.

“It wasn’t easy,” but after what Brewer says was “lots of presentations and lots of begging,” the council voted to fund the study.

Still, some council members said they didn’t see a need for the study. “I was dismayed,” she says. “Because anything that impacts the community’s citizens is the responsibility of the city ultimately.”

The study, based on census data, traffic counts, and other numbers, showed the need for a grocery store in the two spots, but in locations like South Memphis and Orange Mound, Brewer says the study also suggested a traditional grocery wouldn’t work. Because profit margins for the two locations were projected to be low or negative, Brewer says the grocer would need to be “creative about making money … . It’s completely doable, it requires thinking outside of the norm for grocery stores.”

Brewer then returned to the city council to propose the creation of a grocery store prototype that would be most viable in low-income areas. Creating the prototype would have cost the city about $174,000, but the council told Brewer it wasn’t in the budget. “They just didn’t go for it,” she says, and some of the council members “basically avoided me. I sent emails, called, texted, left voicemails, called their assistants, and still got no responses from some,” Brewer says. “It left me at a loss.”

Theo Davies at Green Leaf Learning Farm.

Steps Forward

Brewer’s talks with the city council were not in vain, though. Last week, the council took a step toward bringing grocery stores into the city’s food deserts, but in a different direction. The council voted to allocate $360,000 from surplus funds to an initiative meant to make it easier for grocers to open shop in underserved, low-income neighborhoods.

The Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), modeled after the USDA’s national program, is designed to expand access to nutritious food in communities by developing and equipping grocers, small retailers, corner stores, and farmers markets that sell healthy food.

Through the initiative, healthy food projects in Memphis’ USDA-certified food deserts will be incentivized with loans and other assistance to offset the costs of land/facility purchase, construction/renovation, and business start-up/operations. The initiative is spearheaded by The Works, Inc. CDC, a housing and community development group that aims to rebuild and restore South Memphis.

Roshun Austin, president and CEO of The Works says the initiative will be “vital” in eliminating food deserts in neighborhoods where she works in South Memphis, and in others, such as North Memphis, where there are “whole blocks of neighborhoods that barely have convenience stores.”

“We’re not in it just to provide a loan,” Austin says. “It’s about what we can provide and what it means for families’ health. This is a way to focus on how we reduce our health disparities.”

Ma Ani Community Service Summer Program campers.

Austin is wasting no time getting started, either. She’s been working with Rick James, owner of the local Cash Saver chain, to bring a grocery store back to Kroger’s old location in South Memphis’ Southgate Center.

James, who has already signed a lease with the property owners for the 31,000-foot space, says “it’s a done deal” and expects the store to open sometime in August. James has been operating stores in Memphis for about 30 years, and says he’s “confident” that the store will be successful.

“The neighborhood is very, very similar to the ones where we already have stores,” James says. “We know how to provide for these customers, and we’re comfortable in the community. I wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t think it could be successful.”

Whether the store is a success or not, James says Cash Saver is “not in it for the short-run,” citing a $1 million front-end investment for store renovations.

Unlike other grocery stores, Cash Saver has a “price plus 10” format. This means at the register, customers pay the price listed on the shelf, plus tax, plus an additional 10 percent of each product’s cost. James says this allows the store to offer the lowest price for all products, instead of just for a few on-sale items. Despite the extra 10 percent, James says he’s “pretty certain” that Cash Saver’s products are cheaper than those found in other grocery stores.

With Cash Saver set to open at the end of the summer, hope is on the horizon for the approximate 55,000 individuals living within a 3-mile radius of the shopping center. Still, in a zip code where the annual average household income is a little over $29,000, transportation options are limited and obstacles still stand in the way of getting to the store. And those without access to a car, living further than a mile from the store, by USDA definitions still reside in a food desert.

Maricela Lou-Gator welcomes Ma Ani counselor Deen Bowden and campers.

An Oasis

Opening grocery stores is one way to address the food desert epidemic in Memphis, but tucked away in South Memphis another type of solution — and an oasis — already exists. Sitting to the south of Walker, near Mississippi Boulevard, a two-third-acre learning farm spans over 30 formerly vacant, blighted lots and three abandoned buildings.

The Green Leaf Learning Farm is a USDA-organic-certified farm, where everything from jalapeños and thai chilies, to zucchini and tomatoes, to sage and thyme is grown. The food is sold at the farm, as well as the South Memphis and Cooper-Young Farmers Markets. Residents of the neighborhood receive a slightly reduced rate on food, and every week, food is given away to neighbors.

Marlon Foster is not only the pastor of Christ Quest Church, but he’s also the founder of Green Leaf and the organization that operates it: Knowledge Quest. Foster grew up just a few blocks from where the farm sits now and says he’s seen the population and economics of the neighborhood shift over the years. People moved out, businesses closed, buildings became dilapidated, and lots turned to blight, he says.

“It’s challenging for me to ride down the same streets I rode down as a kid with my parents now and remember what used to be,” Foster says, citing the number of grocery stores that used to be in the community. “We had what we needed in the neighborhood, but now a lot of it is gone. We are having to literally build from the ground up with community gardening to try to fill the gap for that loss.”

Green Leaf is an effort to be a “direct redress” to the food desert in which it operates, Foster says. “At least with the presence of Green Leaf, those food desert realities begin to diminish for those in a close proximity to the farm,” Foster says. “Through us, families do have access to healthy produce — and soon to be — eggs and honey.”

Because the goal of the farm’s parent organization, Knowledge Quest, is to provide high quality service to “one of the most under-resourced and underserved neighborhoods that traditionally would not get that,” Foster says, Green Leaf strives to grow the highest quality food.

“We don’t just provide vegetables; we’re committed to growing the healthiest of the healthiest,” Foster says. “We’re passionate about vegetables with high amounts of nutrients, like leafy greens — hence our name, Green Leaf.”

Green Leaf has three focuses: community and economic development, food access, and education. Student education, through “mass exposure” and “intentional engagement” to growing food, is the most important, Foster says.

Students at Knowledge Quest have the opportunity to learn about the different aspects of urban agriculture, and those who show interest are given the opportunity to join a club and learn more in hands-on ways. The club members learn everything from water and soil conservation to how to project harvest yields, Foster says.

“So if they want to be outside and get their hands dirty or own a farm or go into an agribusiness career one day, they’ll have that experience to do that,” Foster says. “Our goal is for a child to have the chance to experience all the elements of the food cycle.”

Urban farming is one way to curb the food desert problem, but Foster says it’s not the single solution. “I am still an advocate that it should not be that for under-resourced communities to have healthy food, they have to grow it themselves,” Foster says. “I wouldn’t want to go down that road too far — to say that it’s the whole answer.”

Foster says community farming is a good way for people to become empowered and immediately respond to challenges in their neighborhood. “But still, we want access to produce in traditional outlets,” Foster said. “I want a high-quality grocery store in proximity to me in South Memphis, where I live.”

It all works hand-in-hand, Foster says, as urban farming can be one piece of a broader solution.

More Than Food

Despite some forward strides, there are still a number of neighborhoods in Memphis where residents are without healthy food options. Rhonnie Brewer says it’s important to keep the conversation about food deserts going.

“The minute it gets quiet and it’s no longer relevant, it gets swept under the rug,” Brewer says. “Then it becomes the status quo, and it’s normal old news. At the end of the day, if you were to look at the USDA food desert atlas, you see Memphis covered in all these spots that are food deserts, and that’s an issue that has to be addressed. I just don’t want these individuals who are now living in these situations to get forgotten about.”

People often don’t understand the obstacles that stand in the way of certain demographic groups in some neighborhoods accessing fresh food, Brewer says.

“If you are a senior who lives in Orange Mound off of Park with no means of transportation, imagine the hurdles you would have to go over to get to the closest full-scale grocery.”

Grocery stores do more than just provide food, Brewer says. They often serve as anchors in communities. Where there is a grocery store, there is a centralized hub where other retail stores will likely open. It’s also a determination of where people decide to live, she says.

“When the grocery stores close, neighborhoods start to die,” Brewer says “Small businesses can’t be supported, people start to move out, and schools close. It’s like a huge domino effect. At the point where there’s no grocery store or school in the neighborhood, it’s dead.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Cory Branan: Folk All Y’all and Lightning in a Bottle

The first time I saw Cory Branan — solo at the Hi-Tone in its former location on Poplar — he performed an act of serious musical hypnotism. The crowd was quiet (for a Hi-Tone crowd), quiet enough that I could pick out every finger-plucked note. His lyrics ambled, getting there but not always taking the most obvious route. He had a country twang and a folky, John Prine-inflected delivery, but he played an electric guitar, a Gibson SG, if I remember correctly.

There has always been a little rock-and-roll in Branan’s country, a little folk in his poetry. He’s a musical amalgamation, and he’s set to play an intimate Memphis set this Saturday at Studio688 as part of the Folk All Y’all series.

Folk All Y’all concerts aim to match idiosyncratic musical acts with intimate, interesting venues to create a unique concert experience. And Branan is tailor-made for the musical experiment. His songs breathe with an authenticity that suggests something in possession of a life of its own. He speaks slowly and quietly, but when he sings, his lyrics don’t always conform to meter. That’s not to suggest he’s sloppy or out of time, rather that he’s counting his own time. Or that he knows the value of losing track of time every once in a while. “Keep up,” his songs seem to say.

Branan, a native of Southaven, spent a handful of years in Nashville, but the singer/songwriter has had an on-again, off-again relationship with Memphis, where he cut his teeth in metal and country bands and where he now lives with his wife Rebecca and son Clemens. (He also has a daughter, Jane, “from a different mama.”) The Branan family moved back to Memphis in February, and since then, the singer says he’s been enjoying home life.

“I’m kind of a hermit. My wife jokes that I went out five times in the five years we lived in Nashville,” says Branan. “When I’m off the road, I just wanna be home.”

The singer has been adapting to family life, learning how to write whenever he can steal the time. After the Folk All Y’all gig, Branan heads out in July in support of California punks Face to Face, who are releasing a record of acoustic versions of old material. In October, he’s set to play the second annual MEMPHO Fest with his full band. And then there are the plans for the new record.

“I’ve never been able to write on the road,” Branan says. He says he would collapse into a bed after a tour, still feeling the ground moving underneath him. But things are a little different now for Branan. “Now, when I come off the road, I just wanna look at the wife and kid.” So the blond songsmith has been teaching himself to write on the road.

Branan has a dozen new songs in the works for the follow-up to Adios, which was released in April 2017 on Bloodshot Records — and named one of the Memphis albums of the year by the Flyer. In contrast to Adios, one of the more polished of Branan’s five studio albums, the new material suggests a raw approach.

“I’m thinking about more of a 1970s-type songwriter record, where you can hear the room, and everybody’s doing it live,” Branan says, referencing Jackson Browne and “even Gordon Lightfoot” before hitting on his ideal example. “For me, it’s some of those Kinks records in the 1970s. You can hear ’em hitting their teeth on the microphone. It’s just so ragged and glorious.” If anyone can produce the Southern Muswell Hilbillies, it’s Branan, who says he plans to play some of the new material during his set this Saturday.

The singer says he plans to hunker down in late autumn or winter to record the new album. Branan’s already envisioning how the process will go. “That’s always been my choice: overqualified, underprepared musicians,” Branan says of his recording style. “Don’t give ’em too much of a heads-up about what’s gonna happen. Just surround yourself with the best people and do it fast and try to catch a little lightning in a bottle.”

Cory Branan at Folk All Y’all, Saturday, June 30th at 7:30 p.m., at Studio688
(688 S. Cox). $20.

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Politics Politics Feature

Memphis Reacts to Border Crisis

Jackson Baker

Bredesen at Bioworks Foundation

This week was destined to see large and distinct choices, forks in the road for the politically minded.

Be this a blue-wave year or not, the Shelby County Republican Party still has to be considered the county’s dominant political unit, on the strength of its success in the last several election results. And what is arguably the lynchpin organization of the SCRP, the East Shelby Republican Club, scheduled its annual Reagan Day Master Meal for Thursday night at the Great Hall of Germantown, with state treasurer David Lillard as the featured speaker.

The occasion is one of two during the year (the other being the GOP’s February Lincoln Day Dinner) that generally brings out the Republican brass, who will sing such praises as they can for the Trump administration.

• Former Governor Phil Bredesen, a conservative at heart, might be considered an unlikely avatar of the aforementioned Democratic blue wave, but that he is, as the party’s standard-bearer for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the GOP’s Bob Corker. Bredesen was in town for a Monday night fund-raiser, which followed up on an earlier meeting Monday with representatives of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation about the effect of Trump’s tariffs on entrepreneurial initiatives being midwifed into being by the foundation.

“Too early to tell,” was Bredesen’s finding about the fledgling medical enterprises under discussion, though he told reporters afterward that the president’s tariff policy would give a hard hit to the state’s agriculture and possibly its automobile industry — as well as to Tennessee whiskey, which Bredesen described as one of the state’s major exports and one wide open to other countries’ retaliations.

As Bredesen said, “You can’t hurt Elvis, and you can’t hurt Dolly, but you can definitely hurt Jack Daniels.” Bredesen had harsh words for the president’s hard-line policy on immigration. “Child abuse,” he called it.

That may end up being the mildest epithet bestowed this week on President Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy toward immigrants seeking asylum. A massive demonstration protesting that policy and its results, notably the separation of parents from their children and the scattering of both to various detention camps in the country, took place Sunday at Lindenwood Christian Church, under the auspices of MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope).

Jackson Baker

candidate John Boatner and family at border action rally

Yet another demonstration took place Monday evening at Shady Grove Presbyterian Church under the auspices of the activist group Indivisible Memphis and the non-profit Showing Up for Racial Justice. Both assemblies numbered in the several hundreds and, at both, plans were launched for aiding the afflicted asylum-seekers and countering the border policy.

Yet a third such gathering, a “Families Belong Together Memphis Action Rally,” hosted by Latino Memphis and Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition [TIRRC], will convene on Saturday, June 30th, at 10 a.m. at Gaisman Park.

Political candidates, mainly Democrats, were observed at the first two rallies, and doubtless will be at the third, but ordinary citizens, expressing extremes of both outrage and compassion, are the main players in this drama, a continuing one that could well transform the ongoing course of the year and trump politics as usual.

And yes, that pun was very much intentional.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Withers Creative Fest

The Withers Collection Museum and Gallery is launching a different kind of summer festival. Instead of choosing between music or film, the Withers Creative Fest chose to embrace both, and to prioritize process over product. Named for civil rights photographer and museum namesake Ernest Withers, the new festival was built for intergenerational networking and to “showcase the works of local creative talents in Memphis.”

Jazmin Withers, the Collection’s marketing and communications director and great-granddaughter of Ernest Withers, says the festival was inspired by a recent partnership with the Memphis Music Initiative, an innovative non-profit organization built to enhance in-school music education. “That partnership brought us into close contact with all of these wonderful, young, creative people,” she says.

Music meets film meets photography.

June is African-American music appreciation month, so the original plan was to launch a new music festival. But Memphis has several musical festivals and Withers and her collaborators didn’t think that was enough. “Why just focus on music when you can also have film? And why not photography,” Withers asks. “This is the Withers collection.

“You can be a musician, but at some point you’ll need a producer or an engineer,” Withers says. “You can be in film, but you’re going to need actors, writers, photographers. So bring them together.”

The three-day festival pairs seasoned professionals in the fields of music, film, and photography with younger artists and entrepreneurs for afternoon discussions with musical performances in the evenings.

Artists and speakers include photographers John Hamilton and Rico Doss, music producers Princeton Echols and Christopher Gray, and Bar-Kay Larry Dodson Sr.