Month: February 2020

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

New Dining Options — and Maybe Alcohol — at Memphis Zoo this Year

CREDIT: Justin Matrose/Wikimedia Commons

Justin Matrose/Wikimedia Commons

Memphis Zoo Food & Beverage Director Eric Delmez is planning to roll out a variety of new dining options at the zoo later this year.

Delmez joined the zoo staff in 2019 after previously working for the St. Louis zoo for 11 years as its food and beverage director.

As well as shifting from prepackaged food items to fresh-made foods, Delmez wants to embrace Memphis culture by bringing barbecue options to the zoo. He also plans to include a variety of foods that are common at theme parks, like funnel cakes, as well as lower food prices to entice more people to eat while they’re at the zoo.

It’s also possible that we may see alcoholic beverages served at the zoo later this year, pending a bill filed by State Sen. Brian Kelsey. Beer and wine are a likelihood, and the zoo is even floating the idea of creating some type of beer garden on the premises.

The new food options will happen alongside a number of other major changes at the zoo this year, including renovations on the aquarium and many of the animal habitats, and the Memphis Zoological Society plans to add roughly 100 new full-time, part-time, and seasonal positions.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Four Primary Colors

By the time you’re reading this, the all-important New Hampshire primary vote will have been completed. We’ll all know whether the old white finger-pointing guy beat the young white gay guy who acts kinda like a Republican. Or maybe one of the two white women senators managed to move up in the standings and win enough votes to get “momentum.” Or maybe the other old white guy — the former vice president — came out of nowhere and “beat expectations.”

It’s all so meaningless. As it’s currently constructed, the presidential primary system is skewed beyond any possible usefulness, except to provide bloviation opportunities for the cable news outlets for a month.

The Iowa caucuses are absurdly undemocratic. Anyone with a night job or who has small children to care for or who is out of town or who lacks transportation to get to the caucus site is out of luck. Or maybe you’re physically challenged and can’t spend several hours arguing a candidate’s merits in a local gymnasium. Or maybe you just don’t think this is the way democracy should work. Tough. You don’t get to vote in the Iowa presidential primary. Go suck on a corncob, loser.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, it would be difficult to find two states less representative of the current Democratic Party. It’s almost like the Republicans picked them out to sabotage their opponents. New Hampshire is 94 percent white; Iowa, by contrast, is a bastion of diversity with 91 percent white residents.

People of color make up around 40 percent of Democrats, nationwide. I don’t think it’s an accident that when the first two primaries rolled around this year, all candidates of color had dropped out. The Democratic Party is killing itself with this system.

Imagine if, say, South Carolina, had gone first, followed by California a week later. Would the party have the same two front-runners? I seriously doubt it. Californian Kamala Harris would still be in the conversation, and so would Cory Booker, since South Carolina has a large African-American vote. Joe Biden might have started with a win. Who knows? If you started with those two states, the system would skew in an entirely different direction, and again, not necessarily one that’s reflective of the party as a whole. The point is, singling out certain states to begin the nomination process is a bad idea, no matter what states you choose.

Billionaire candidate Mike Bloomberg, another old white guy, isn’t even pretending to play along with the current system. That’s because he’s so rich he can ignore the primaries and just buy ads all over the country — and all over your Facebook feed. Bloomberg realizes that Iowa and New Hampshire are basically meaningless if you’ve got the money to ignore them. This ain’t the way to get the best presidential nominee, folks. Not even close.
So, I hear you saying: What’s the answer, smarty-pants editor guy?

I thought you’d never ask. It’s staring us in the face: Super Tuesday. The first one, on March 3rd, will feature 13 states, American Samoa, and Democrats abroad. Expand that process: Have four Super Tuesdays on sequential months, say February through May in the presidential election year. Tie the four Super Tuesdays to the four principal time zones in the U.S. and rotate who goes first every four years.

You’d have to tweak it to account for states with acreage in two zones. So give Tennessee to the Central and put Indiana and Kentucky in the East. Since the Mountain Time Zone is a little sparse, population-wise, put the Dakotas and Nebraska in with the other big-sky states. Add Alaska and Hawaii to the Pacific, and you’re set. The Super Tuesday Quadfecta!

Candidates could focus on regional campaigning instead of blowing all their money in one state, which would dampen the Bloomberg effect. And there would be plenty of racial diversity and lots of urban and rural areas. Most important, a candidate couldn’t become a “front-runner” by winning a single obscure state. After a couple of these regional Super Tuesdays, you’d have a pretty clear idea who the public favored.

Genius, right? I’ve only been pitching this idea for three election cycles, but nobody wants to listen to some schmoe in Memphis. I’m begging you, if you know DNC Chairman Tom Perez, give him a call. Tell him it’s your idea. Let’s get this fixed before the 2024 election cycle rolls around.

Assuming we have a 2024 election cycle.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Dixie Beer: The Story Behind NOLA’s Iconic Brew

On television, investigative journalists are never shown wasting most of their time on leads that go absolutely nowhere — but it happens. A lot. Back in 2015, I was in New Orleans chasing down what appeared to be an insurance fraud case of near-biblical proportions when I found myself in the back of a car driven by the owners of the iconic Dixie Brewery. I’d been a fan since college, and this was an angle to the story that was just too weird not to follow.

Dixie Beer was started in 1907 and bopped along swimmingly until the big nationals drove most of the locals out of business in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, in the 1970s, there was that infamous “bad batch”: 45,000 cases of epically skunky Dixie Beer. Smelling a bargain, Joe and Kendra Bruno bought the brand in 1985. They filed for bankruptcy in 1989, apparently deciding that being technically a microbrewery offering a single beer that tasted exactly like Miller Lite was not a great business plan. Dixie then introduced a more substantial Blackened Voodoo lager and by the 1990s had brewed itself back into solvency.

Then came Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The brewery on Tulane Avenue took on 10 feet of water and was looted shortly thereafter. Ten years later, the Brunos were in an eminent domain argument with the city and LSU over the abandoned building possibly being expropriated for a VA hospital. It made them paranoid. Which brings it back to where I came in.

Kendra leaned around the front seat and asked how she could be sure I wasn’t a shill of the LSU system. The charming Mrs. M leaned forward and said, “Oh, Murff went to Alabama. He hates LSU.”

That did the trick.

Without a building, Dixie was then contract brewed in Wisconsin, and later, after Saints owner Tom Benson and his wife Gail bought the brand in 2017, here in Memphis at the Blues City Brewery. The recipe has remained the same, but it’s hard to see how the Memphis water didn’t improve on that paragon of unremarkably drinkable beer. We’ve got artesian wells; the water in NOLA tastes like underwear.

About two months ago, Dixie returned home to East New Orleans, with plans to take the brand national. Which would be nice, because you can’t actually get it in Memphis proper — not even when it was made here. You can get it in Southaven.

With Mardi Gras upon us, it may be worth the trip over the state line for a six-pack or two in order to get in the spirit. Especially since the insurance companies have ruled out the baby in the king cake as a choking hazard. Absurd. Of course, it is. In fact, all of New Orleans is a choking hazard. That’s where the magic happens.

I understand that Dixie is not using city water and possibly getting it from the artesian wells of Abita Springs — home of Abita Brewing — which, if you need a Mardi Gras beer here, is a great option.

Abita’s Mardi Gras Bock is, to me, an obvious marketing gimmick aimed at the sort of people who eschew king cake simply to avoid choking to death. Its amber, on the other hand, is a great Munich-style beer. Hop 99 is a great ale for all you hopheads, and Wrought Iron IPA is just a great beer.

It’s Dixie Beer, though, that is my psychic anchor to New Orleans; perhaps it’s the memories as much as anything. Their Blackened Voodoo lager is worth trying, especially on Fat Tuesday, not only for the flavor but because it was banned for a time in Texas as being too occultish and witchy. For my money, someone here in town needs to start carrying this stuff on those credentials alone.

As for the insurance fraud story I was chasing, it was deemed too weird to publish. You don’t see that on the television either. That’s just bad storytelling.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Ballot Bombshell: Election Machine Issue Becomes Moot

Some drama was expected, but nothing like the more-than-audible gasp that exuded from the audience at Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission, when Tami Sawyer articulated what was suddenly and shockingly becoming obvious:

“There will be no new machines in 2020,” said Sawyer, summarizing it all in an epiphany after an hour or so of intense debate and argument on both sides of the speakers’ dock regarding what sort of new voting machines the county should get in its long-planned buy in time for the August election cycle locally.

County Election Coordinator Linda Phillips had been making and repeating that promise of new machines for most of the last year, kindling up an ever-growing local controversy as to which type of machine. On Sunday she had published a viewpoint in The Commercial Appeal in which the following two sentences were the key ones: “Now that we are about to replace our outdated voting equipment, the controversy has reached the boiling point. I have spent my career conducting elections, and I’d like to share my viewpoint.”

Jackson Baker

House District 97 candidate Gabby Salinas (l), one of two Democrats running, enjoys an exotic Mideastern dance in her honor at a weekend fundraiser.

Phillips’ viewpoint, as spread out over two pages in the paper, was that ballot-marking devices (BMDs) are superior to voter-marked paper ballots (VMPBs) because, she argued, they are more secure from error, though she acknowledged they were somewhat more expensive as machinery. A contrary point of view is being argued by a determined group of local voter-reform activists, who stress that the hand-marked method is cheaper and more easily checked for accuracy and that the ballot-marking devices favored by Phillips are eminently hackable.

To underscore the latter point, one of the VMPB advocates, Bennie Smith, who doubles as a Democratic member of the Shelby County Commission and styles himself an expert on voting technology, had demonstrated to a previous meeting of the commission that he could insert a predetermined vote total into a result line of the BMD machine’s paper readout.

Both kinds of machine, Phillips has pointed out, possess a “paper trail” capability allowing voters to see and approve a printout of their ballot. (Critics of BMDs, the machines employing ballot-marked devices, complain that voters are asked to base their comparison ultimately on an unintelligible bar code.)

Anyway, the verbal battle was raging as usual on Monday, though Phillips herself was absent, when everything became moot.

Prompted by commission chairman Mark Billingsley, Marcy Ingram, deputy county attorney and de facto legal adviser to commission members, announced to the assembly at large that state law — to wit, TCA 29-111 — forbade any purchase of new voting technology without a prior voter referendum.

“Yes, Mr. Chairman earlier today, we determined that in the budget, the commission has a lot of leeway to use CIP funds, general obligation bonds, to pay for the voting machines. And there’s a statute on the books that’s about 15 years old that says that if you use general obligation bonds you do have to put it out to the voters to let them decide whether or not this is appropriate. So, with that being said, you would have to have a special election or have to put the item on the August ballot, if you intend to use CIP.”

Billingsley reinforced the point: “So in layman’s language for people in the audience and people listening at home … there would have to be a referendum.”

“That would be correct,” Ingram replied. And moments later, Commissioner Sawyer expressed the bottom line: “No new machines in 2020.”

Sawyer went on to argue — in the long run, successfully — that it would still be useful to vote on the resolution that had been in question before the bombshell.

That was Agenda Item #33: “Resolution of the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County, Tennessee, urging the Shelby County Election Commission to pursue a voter-marked paper ballot approach when spending county funds for new voting equipment.” The primary sponsors of the resolution were Commissioners Van Turner, Willie Brooks, Sawyer, and Reginald Milton.

The background was the fact that the Shelby County Election Commission had, at Phillips’ request, issued an RFP (request for proposal) to potential bidders who would supply new voting machines for use by her promised date of August, and the controversy over which kind of machine had flared up there.

On the basis of the divided responsibilities built into Shelby County government — in this case, that, while the SCEC could decide on the machinery, the county commission could vote Yes or No on whether to fund the purchase — the advocates of hand-marked ballots, prevented from speaking at SCEC on grounds that the RFP was underway, had resolved to take their case to the commision.

Before attorney Ingram’s bombshell announcement, the VMPB activists — law professor and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, teacher and recent city council candidate Erika Sugarmon, former legislator and school board member Mike Kernell, and veteran rights activist Dr. Suhkara A. Yahweh — had pleaded their case, with eloquence and examples.

It was all for naught, though there would indeed be a vote on the agenda item, expressing a preference for ultimate use of hand-marked ballots by a de facto party-line vote of 7-6, with yea votes coming from Democrats Brooks, Mickell Lowery, Eddie Jones, Milton, Sawyer, Michael Whaley, and Turner and no votes coming from Republicans Mick Wright, David Brandon, Amber Mills, Brandon Morrison, chairman Billingsley, and Democrat Edmund Ford.

Jackson Baker

Commissioner Wright cited the fundamental irony

In the fallout from the bombshell, there was general discontent from commissioners, whatever their ideology or point of view on the merits of particular machines, that word of the potential predicament had not been sounded long before, that, as Chairman Billingsley put it, “the people charged with the election would have made us aware of this by now.”

Commissioner Wright cited the ultimate irony of the situation: “It’s disappointing that the state has this rule in place, that the voters would have to vote using the system we want to replace in order to have the system that we want to replace be replaced.”

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Birds of Prey

Ah yes, the first superhero movie of the year. It’s like the sighting of the first robin of spring, only with more tedious fighting.

For 2020, it’s Birds of Prey. For a mercenary enterprise that shows every sign of being constructed out of spare parts and leftovers by a corporation determined to wring every last penny out of the increasingly threadbare Batman brand, it’s not bad.

Everything about this film’s concept is schizophrenic. The primary title suggests it’s a superteam story, but make no mistake, this is Harley Quinn’s movie. More to the point, it’s Margot Robbie’s movie. She not only stars as the Joker’s former special lady friend, she’s also the top-billed producer.

Crazy for loving you — Margot Robbie (above) as Harley Quinn breaks up with the Joker and takes charge of her life in Birds of Prey.

Birds of Prey began life as a spinoff of 2016’s Suicide Squad, an abominably bad movie that teamed up a bunch of Batman-adjacent bad guys for a once-in-a-lifetime mission. Suicide Squad is one of those movies that you think might turn the corner and be so bad it’s good, but then you try to watch it, and it’s just painfully Highlander II bad. So Robbie, director Cathy Yan, and writer Christina Hodson had a pretty low bar to clear.

One theory goes that Batman is so beloved because he fights the best villains. Harley Quinn is the last great addition to his rogue’s gallery, introduced in 1992 as part of the first season of the beloved Batman: The Animated Series. The original Harley (Dr. Harleen Quinzel) was unambiguously a victim in an abusive relationship — a psychologist at Arkham Asylum assigned to help the Joker. But she fought the crazy, and the cray-cray won.

The Joker had always had nameless henchmen to carry out his evil clown games, but never a sidekick or a love interest. Even though Harley Quinn was conceived as a throwaway character, she caught on and actually proved to have some depth. She would periodically try to break away from the Joker’s domination, only to go crawling back. Consequently, she became one of the most sympathetic characters in the Batman mythos. When Robbie gave the character a live action debut in Suicide Squad, she was reimagined as a polychromatic roller derby girl, reduced to a damsel for Joker to rescue.

When Birds of Prey opens, Harley and the Joker’s volatile relationship has finally exploded for real. As she explains in her voiceover, she’s bound and determined not to go back to him this time. Her post-breakup ritual is relatable. She moves into her own apartment. She changes her hair. She spends nights on the couch watching Looney Tunes while eating a carton of ice cream. She gets a pet hyena and names him Bruce, after that Wayne guy. She rekindles her love of ultraviolence at the roller derby. She gets blotto drunk and blows up the chemical plant where her ex transformed her into a metahuman.

In the early going, when it’s focused on Harley’s character beats, Birds of Prey is actually fun to watch. I’ve been a Robbie skeptic, but I have to admit she has grown into a good actress. As Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Mark Hamill have proved by playing the Joker, it’s fun to watch someone with chops chew the scenery.

Harley gets a McGuffin to chase — a diamond inscribed with the information needed to claim a great fortune — in a nested set of voiceover-enabled flashbacks. When the birds of prey start assembling, things get more conventionally punchy. There’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead — who should be in everything — as Huntress. Jurnee Smolett-Bell as Black Canary, introduced singing a torch song version of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” The great Rosie Perez is Renee Montoya, a Gotham City detective who talks like she’s from a 1980s cop movie. She’s balanced out by Ewan McGregor who serves up the ham as Roman Sionis, a villain who looks like a refugee from a Miami Vice episode.

The closest Marvel analogs for the R-rated Birds of Prey are the Deadpool movies. Director Yan wears her influences on her sleeve: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Kill Bill are most prominent. As with all these endless superhero movies, the little character moments are the best parts, while the action sequences all kind of blur together. But the stakes are pleasingly low (the world is never in any danger), and Robbie’s charisma saves the picture from getting overwhelmed by corporate IP service diktat.

The journey of Harley from henchwoman to antagonist, and her determination to get out from under the shadow of her more famous boyfriend, is where the energies of the all-woman creative team have been directed. Their candy-colored enthusiasm is infectious.

Categories
News News Feature

CannaBeat: New Bill Would Make it Harder for Cops to Search You

CREDIT: Dimitri Bong | Unsplash

So, you’re cruising through Midtown, puffing on a perfectly legal doober of CBD flower. Some cop smells it, says it’s THC, wants to search your car, and maybe arrest you.

What can you do? Right now? Nothing. But that could change, thanks to the work of two Republican lawmakers in Tennessee. (You read that right.)

A Baptist and former special education teacher, Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma), and a cattle-farming, Church of Christ congregant, Rep. Jay D. Reedy (R-Erin), want to make it harder for law enforcement officials to search your car (or anywhere else) “based solely on the odor of cannabis.”

CBD and industrial hemp were legalized thanks to the 2018 Farm Bill, but much of the details of that legalization were left up to the individual states. Regulations have come here in spurts and fits, but there’s been no “here’s-what-we’re-doing-with-CBD” task force or regulatory agency formed. So CBD and hemp is still in the Wild West a bit.

Dimitri Bong | Unsplash

The “odor-of-cannabis” bill shows just how wild. Historically speaking, Republicans have been tough on crime and not too keen on jazz cabbage or its fans. Yet, this bill seems a reversal on both stances.

However, it does fit Republican ideals in two ways. Industrial hemp and CBD are rising industries in Tennessee (read: business and bucks). They’re also agricultural products (read: Tennessee farmers are so on Republican brand, and they vote).

But a look under the hood of this possible new law shows it could be a boon to local governments. The folks in Nashville who put price tags on all kinds of legislative ideas say the bill would cut simple possession or casual exchange violations in half.

Researchers with the state government assumed there were about 18,690 convicted on such charges last year. Most of these offenders wind up in local jails. Keeping 10 percent of them out would save local governments more than $897,000 in incarceration fees.

Possessing a half-ounce to 10 pounds of marijuana — a Class E felony — will get you an average of 1.28 years. Cut that by 10 percent, the researchers say, and the state government saves more than $752,000 every year.

However, state and local drug dogs will need to be trained to distinguish between hemp and marijuana, the researchers said. That training could cost up to a total of $300,000 annually.

Two other Republicans, Rep. Bryan Terry (R-Murfreesboro) and Sen. Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville), want to push the THC front a bit.

Their bill would prohibit the “revocation of parole, probation, or bail based on a drug test result that is positive for THC below a certain level.” It would also prohibit “public employers from taking adverse employment action and denying certain benefits based on such a test result.”

Few details of the legislation were immediately available. It was filed in late January and hasn’t yet been debated.

Hemp Fest 2020

Um, is it too early to get excited about Mid-South Hemp Fest? I didn’t think so.

Last year’s was the largest cannabis event in the state. It returns on Saturday and Sunday, April 18th-19th, at Shelby Farms. Search for the event page on Facebook. We’ll see you there!

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: ‘I Hit People with Coffee Pots,’ Fox13’s Darrell Greene’s in Time-Out

“I hit people with coffee pots”

Nextdoor user Larry Sides unleashed this amazing, blazing chaos in a post last week titled, “Joe woods response to my post.”

“I never threatened you but if you did call the police he will you all be out here Tuesday I threatened you want time I said I was scared for my life for you from you because you have stab people in sent people out of here and ambulances out that every last text did you ever wrote and at 1 time of anything about threatening you I said I’m scared to you because you have stab people I hit people with coffee pots and put him in the hospital.”

Posted to Nextdoor by Larry Sides

Lady and the …

“The unbiased ‘quality’ of our local CBS News affiliate,” wrote Reddit user u/lkjhiujyrres5 last week during the State of the Union address.

Posted to Reddit by u/lkjhiujyrres5

Calling It

Fox13 anchor Darrell Greene ended up in hot water after a cold-weather tweet last week. As snow fell Friday morning, Greene posted:

Later, he wrote, “They made me take [the tweet] down and stripped me of my ‘calling’ powers for 6 months.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

This Weekend’s Laurelwood 15K Raises Funds for Local Organizations

CREDIT: BBBSMS

Run the 901 Race Series hosts Laurelwood 15K, its third of four races this year, this Sunday to benefit local organizations Church Health, Wolf River Conservancy, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Mid-South (BBBSMS).

BBBSMS has served more than 16,000 young boys and girls, or “littles,” in the Memphis community since 1968, matching them up with “bigs,” or mentors, to serve as positive role models by spending quality time with them at least twice a month.

BBBSMS has nearly reached its $1,000 goal for race day, but Susan George, the program’s executive director, says she hopes they surpass the goal so they can better serve children who have not yet been matched with mentors.

BBBSMS

Youngest volunteer, Ian

“This funding allows us to recruit additional mentors for the kids who we have waiting,” she says. “We currently have 130 kids on our waitlist, and 92 percent of those kids are boys.”

George says it’s important for these children to have mentors to look up to, as most of them are struggling with parents’ incarceration, divorce, or death.

“A lot of the kids have challenges that they don’t know how to work through, and mentors, with the support of our program, are able to help them work through those things,” she says. “That way they can realize their potential and move on to bigger and better things for themselves.”

Anyone who is interested in becoming involved in the race or as a mentor, intern, or volunteer for the program may reach out by visiting msmentor.org or calling 323-5440.

Laurelwood 15K, Laurelwood Shopping Center, 422 S. Grove Park, Sunday, February 16th, 7 a.m., $20-$55.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Beers for Beasts to Benefit Australian Bushfire Recovery

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Earlier this winter, bushfires devastated much of Australia’s mainland, killing one-third of New South Wales’ koalas and burning 14.6 million acres of land.

“We have a bushfire season pretty much every year,” says Damien Klingberg, an expat of South Australia who now lives in Memphis. “But this is the worst there’s ever been — on record, anyway. And there are fires affecting all areas in all six of the mainland states.”

Klingberg moved to the States in 1994 and has since made a life here in Memphis working as a beertender at Memphis Made Brewing Co. When he heard of the fires in Australia and the devastation that came along with them, including damage to his family’s entire cherry orchard, he and his fellow Australian mate Nick Van De Velde decided they needed to contribute to the relief efforts by organizing a benefit concert at Memphis Made.

Brandon Dill

Memphis Made Brewing Co.

“Nick pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to do this,’ and I said, ‘You’re right, we do,'” says Klingberg. “And it kind of started from there. We approached the fantastic management and ownership of Memphis Made and said, ‘Hey, this is what we want to do. Can we do it?’ And they have been super supportive.”

For a suggested $5 donation toward relief funds, guests will enjoy the music of two of Klingberg’s bands, Piper Down and Solar Powered Love, as well as other local acts Jeff Hulett, The Switchblade Kid, and DJ Zach Ives. Memphis Made will also donate $1 from each beer sale to organizations picked out by Klingberg and Van De Velde: WIRES Australian Wildlife Rescue, Wildlife Victoria, Wildlife Rescue Queensland, SA Bushfire Appeal, and Wildlife Recovery Fund.

Beers for Beasts, Memphis Made Brewing Co., 768 S. Cooper, Saturday, February 15th, suggested $5 donation.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Crosstown’s No Meat Meet-Ups: for Vegans and Veg-Curious

Bianca Phillips has been organizing vegan events in Memphis since 2004. Phillips says that, for her, it started as a moral issue rather than one of diet.

“I consider myself an ethical vegan, so vegan for the animals,” she says. “[We] don’t want to contribute to factory farming.

“When I went vegan in 2004, I wanted to meet other vegans. I put flyers around town, old-school flyers. Like, ‘We’re going to have an animal rights meeting!’ and people came.” At the time, the focus of the group was to spread animal rights information and not to focus on the health benefits of veganism.

Bianca Phillips

No meat, no problem — Crosstown Arts hosts vegan potluck meet-ups.

“We’d organize mostly PETA protests, and PETA would send us materials and we’d go out to KFC or somewhere. … We did circus protests, vegan leafleting, dressed in full plant costumes that we made ourselves,” she says with a laugh.

“[At the time] it was called Memphis Area Animal Rights Activists, and shortly after we started, I met a guy named Vaughan Dewar, and he was interested in starting a vegan meet-up group to be more focused on the food aspects of veganism and not quite as much the protest side of things,” Phillips says.

“He joined our animal rights group, but on the side, he founded another group called Food Awareness, and he would put together these super-researched presentations and go to churches and other places to deliver these talks about the benefits of a plant-based diet.

“At some point, we merged our groups together and started doing less of the protest stuff and became more focused on vegan meet-ups. So we would get together once a month at different restaurants around town and eat vegan food together,” she says, citing popular spots for vegans and non-vegans alike, like Pho Binh, which is famous for its lemongrass tofu.

Roughly 16 years later, the vegan movement in Memphis is stronger than ever. “Just in the past two years, with the whole plant-based movement, it’s much more socially acceptable to be vegan or ‘plant-based,'” she says. “I used to feel like I knew, or knew of, all the vegans in Memphis, but not anymore.”

It does feel like there are significantly more options for vegans in Memphis now than there were in the past. With the rise of local establishments like Imagine Vegan Cafe and the Raw Girls food truck, the city is embracing veganism more than ever.

Last year, when the cafe at Crosstown Arts transitioned from a full-service lunch and dinner menu to a smaller menu of pastries and coffee, Chris Miner, co-founder of Crosstown Arts, wanted to make sure the space was kept active.

That’s when he approached Phillips about organizing a monthly vegan potluck in the cafe space. Miner was familiar with Phillips’ history of organizing vegan food and drink events and thought that would be a perfect fit for Crosstown Arts.

The No Meat Meet-Up Vegan Potlucks launched last September, with about 30 attendees at the inaugural event. Since then, the attendance has gone up each month, with attendees bringing a rich variety of vegan dishes to each gathering. While it’s not required that those who attend bring a dish, it is, of course, encouraged so there’s enough food to go around.

Some of the dishes people have brought to past potlucks include tater tot casserole, Bhel Puri, vegan pizza, and desserts. It’s a great way for even non-vegans, who may be intimidated by the perceived confines of a vegan diet, to sample a number of different vegan food options at once.

For vegans who want to gather with like-minded people, or non-vegans who are curious about plant-based diets, the No Meat Meet-Up Vegan Potlucks are an opportunity to meet, mingle, and sample different kinds of foods.

Crosstown Arts will host the next No Meat Meet-Up Vegan Potluck on Sunday, February 16th.