Month: September 2018

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Mama Gaia Closed in Crosstown

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

Mama Gaia announced today it closed its Crosstown location.

The restaurant, which serves all-organic vegetarian fare, was one of the first businesses to open in the Crosstown Concourse.

It will now focus on its Ballet Memphis location.

From the press release:

Mama Gaia (pronounced ma-ma \ˈgī-ə\), a fast-casual dining experience offering organic vegetarian menu options announced that it will shift focus to its location inside Ballet Memphis and close its Crosstown Concourse location Tuesday, Sept. 4.

Mama Gaia’s successful catering business will continue serving its fresh, organic menu to customers around the Mid-South. The restaurant will still offer delivery through UberEats, among others as well. Crosstown Concourse leadership has already secured a new restaurant concept to occupy the space, which will open this month.

Co-founders Philipp and Cru von Holtzendorff-Fehling set out to offer Memphians a new dining experience that served delicious dishes that were both good for patrons’ health and the planet, and opened the doors in Crosstown in March 2017.

“We believe wholeheartedly in this concept, but we need to make this strategic shift,” said Philipp, CEO and co-founder of Mama Gaia. “Crosstown is home to 265 apartments, a high school and more than 40 other tenants,” Philipp said. “An estimated 3,000 people visit the building every day. We absolutely love the vertical village and what it has accomplished as a whole. Unfortunately, there has simply not been enough interest in organic vegetarian food to sustain business. As we move forward, we’re concentrating on the Ballet Memphis location, catering, delivery and are certainly looking at other ways to expand the concept.”

“We really love Mama Gaia, and appreciate all of Philipp’s and Cru’s hard work the past year,” said Dr. Todd Richardson, co-leader of the Crosstown Concourse development. “The Crosstown neighborhood can look forward to a new restaurant moving into the space in September.”

We’ll keep you posted on what’s going in the new location. 

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Tigers 66, Mercer 14

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

The Memphis Tigers won their 2018 season opener Saturday night at the Liberty Bowl, and there was a distinct “ho-hum” quality to the outcome. Scoring 56 points before halftime — and allowing the visitors a total of 37 yards over the game’s first 30 minutes — will do that. For the first time since 1963, the Memphis program has started five consecutive seasons with a victory. Rookie quarterback? Grad-transfer Brady White passed for 358 yards and completed touchdown passes to five different teammates, emphatically shaking off any rust that may have developed in almost two years on the sidelines. Ho-hum.
Larry Kuzniewski

Brady White delivers.

“We’ve been working extremely hard, since January,” emphasized Tiger coach Mike Norvell in his postgame remarks. “We’re trying to be the best version of ourselves. We had a pretty solid week of preparation. To play as well as they did, especially in the first half, is a thank-you to Memphis. You walk into that [new] locker room, and it’s special. Things are progressing here. This was one game. We have a lot of things to improve.”

Don’t tell the Mercer Bears about any improvements needed for the Memphis offense. The Tigers accumulated 752 yards of total offense, one shy of the program record (set in last year’s American Athletic Conference championship game). Tailback Darrell Henderson averaged 8.4 yards on nine carries and would have led Memphis in rushing had freshman Calvin Austin not taken his one carry for an 83-yard trip to the end zone late in the fourth quarter. Junior Patrick Taylor scored a pair of touchdowns, the latter on a 75-yard catch-and-run that gave the Tigers a 35-0 lead barely two minutes into the second quarter.

The Memphis defense got in on the point-scoring fun, sophomore cornerback T.J. Carter returning a first quarter interception 35 yards for his first college touchdown. The Tigers allowed the Bears an average of just 3.4 yards on 51 plays, while Memphis gained 8.7 yards per snap on 86 plays. The drubbing was thorough, relatively clean (seven penalties for each team), and a statement that Norvell’s offense will not sleep as Anthony Miller’s NFL career begins in Chicago.

“The level of work [Brady White] has put in to learn this offense, the time he’s spent building relationships with his teammates, he’s a great young man,” said Norvell of the quarterback he once recruited to play at Arizona State and later lured to Memphis. “I had a great deal of confidence that he’d play well.”

When asked after the game how he would grade his play, White responded, “I’m not gonna do that.” He didn’t raise his eyebrows, didn’t smile. Just turned toward a contingent of reporters, awaiting the next question. He looked as cool in his first press conference as he did behind a veteran Tiger offensive line for the half of football he was required to play. (Freshmen backups Brady McBride and Connor Adair took the snaps in the second half.)
Larry Kuzniewski

Brady White

“I had some butterflies out of excitement,” acknowledged White. “But I wasn’t nervous. When you have weapons like we do, you just want to get them the rock. My job is to get them the ball and let them do the work. We’ve got studs all over the field, both sides of the ball. We have a high standard here at Memphis.”

The Tigers must quickly turn toward one of the season’s biggest challenges, a road game at Navy next Saturday. Norvell described the upcoming tilt as “a championship-like game.” Both Carter and receiver Damonte Coxie described chips on the shoulders of their teammates, memories of coming up short last season [in the AAC title game] a primary motivator as summer leans toward fall.

“We’re going to get to the film, get our minds right, and get down to business,” said White when asked about how he’ll celebrate his debut as Memphis quarterback. He sounded like someone less than interested in the impact he made in his debut, and more curious about the impact his team can make on a season very early in the making.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Classic Pimpin: 8Ball & MJG Bring It All Back Home

The distance between Orange Mound and Midtown is mere blocks, but the Railgarten appearance by Memphis rap duo 8Ball & MJG, slated to take place Sunday, September 2, is more of a metaphysical journey. Just two weeks ago, Premro “8Ball” Smith and Marlon Jermaine Goodwin celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of their nine-song studio debut Comin’ Out Hard, a funky, bluesy hip hop masterpiece.

Recorded in Houston, Texas by producer Tony Draper, Comin’ Out Hard is a lyrical marvel: On it, the MCs drop one juxtaposition after another: In one verse, they rap about running drugs on the corner and in the next, they’re ruling high school talent shows. There was truth to their lyrics, but there was also a lot of fantasy. The song “Armed Robbery,” MJG explained to me during an interview in 2007, is “a broke motherfucker’s fantasy, to be able to rob a bank and get away with it.” Laid over the hook from Lalo Schrifin’s “Mission: Impossible Theme,” the riveting story-song helped solidify 8Ball & MJG’s legacy on the top tier of Memphis rappers, right alongside the city’s other heavy-hitters, Three 6 Mafia.

While the members of Triple 6 covered more ground, 8Ball & MJG rapped specifically about Orange Mound, the first Black neighborhood in the U.S. to be built by Blacks, established on the site of the former Deaderick Plantation in the 1890s. 8Ball was raised by his mother on Lamar Circle and was bussed to Ridgeway Middle School, where he met MJG. The two attended Middle College High School, and, in their downtime, hung out at a pool hall across the street from the Lamar-Airways Shopping Center. MJG grew up a few blocks away, on Sample Street, where he absorbed the country music his grandmother loved alongside the jazz and R&B his father preferred. Each had formidable talent, but together, they gelled into a single unit that left lesser MCs in the dust.

Their music transcended the boundaries of Park Avenue and East Parkway, reaching audiences of all races around the world. Today, 8Ball & MJG don’t just serve as the prototypes for classic southern rap music: they are often rapped about, with their names popping up in the lyrics on songs like E-40’s “Record Haters.” Even National Public Radio has sung their praises, devoting a 2014 segment of “Morning Edition” to the group. Now, 8Ball & MJG are putting the finishing touches on a film biopic, also titled Comin’ Out Hard, written, produced and directed by the Superwoman Squad, a multicultural collective of creative women and female entrepreneurs. The duo is releasing a new live album, Classic Pimpin, this fall. They’re also slated to make an appearance at Atlanta’s A3C Musical Festival in October.

8Ball & MJG’s Railgarten concert, which also includes performances by Chinese Connection Dub Embassy, Unapologetic’s Weird Maestro, and DJ Witnesse, caps off a loose series of local appearances, including 901Fest in May and a listening party held at Memphis Slim House last February. Next, the duo hits the road for a fall tour, which includes stops in Birmingham, AL, Grand Prairie, TX, and DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The Railgarten show is slated to take place on the outdoor stage, with the first act appearing at 7 p.m. Admission is $10.