The Switchblade Kid was rattling Cooper-Young neighborhood windows last December when my 9-year-old niece frantically tried to get me to stop the car. “Wait! Stop! Stop the car!” she exclaimed while grabbing my phone to video the punk scene at the Cooper-Young Gazebo. Little did she know, that scene was our destination. We walked away with some auction items from 901 Comics, benefiting the P&H Cafe, along with some groovy memories.
901 Comics is at it again in its partnership with The Switchblade Kid Harry Koniditsiotis and his 5 and Dime recording studio. This time it’s 901 Comics’ quinquennial celebration benefiting A Room in the Inn. 901 Comics owner and former Memphis police officer Shannon Merritt says he picked the nonprofit because he’s personally seen the need. “There is a severe need for facilities like this,” says Merritt, who encountered such situations as a police officer. “Displaced families and individuals are desperate for any help. MIFA can only do so much.”
Live music performances will be featured every hour on the hour from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Cooper-Young Gazebo. The lineup includes alternative rock from Sunweight and J. D. Reager, Americana from The Whiskey Wells, and more alternative rock from SooperFlat.
Celebrity guest, legendary Marvel and DC artist Pat Broderick, will sign autographs and do sketches at the shop. (Photo: public domain, compilation by 901 Comics)
SooperFlat will also release Dr. Confusion on flexi disc with story, the brainchild of band member Patrick Seller. Along with in-store specials all week preceding the event, Marvel and DC artist Pat Broderick will sign autographs and do sketches at the shop. There will be raffles and auctions.
Be sure to pencil this novel graphic event on your calendar.
901 Comics 5th Anniversary Celebration, 901 Comics, 2162 Young, Thursday, June 3-Saturday, June 5, 10 a.m.-7 p.m., free.
Though the 17th letter of the alphabet has become problematic in recent times, redolent as it is of anonymous sowers of discord in the political realm, Memphis bassist David Parks, aka Parks David, is having none of it. Listening to his EP, The Q Tape, which dropped in May, one could even say he’s reclaimed all the superior connotations of the now-infamous letter.
“I started creating this kind of sound during quarantine,” he tells me. “And so really it was the quarantine tape. Really locking in and just creating. But then I got sick of quarantine. Like, ‘I want to go outside.’ So it morphed into this whole different thing. And there are a lot of great ‘Q’ words.”
When I point out that the letter evokes both the nickname of the great Quincy Jones, whose jazzy, funky ’70s soundtracks can be heard as influences here, and the brilliant Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, Parks readily agrees. “Absolutely. I’m a super-huge Tribe fan, a huge Q-Tip fan. And also, I’m bringing that soundtrack back, reimagining the relationship between film and music.”
Parks means that literally, as the all-too-brief EP, subtitled “a cinematic experience,” has a visual counterpart of the same name, featuring the auteur driving an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme around Memphis with a mysterious briefcase, so bathed in the golden light of the “Me Decade” that one can almost smell herbal refreshments. And the music is mainly an instrumental odyssey that complements such images, full of atmospheric strings and sparse keyboard chords, undergirded with the kind of fluid basslines that are a staple of classic, old-school R&B.
“I made a conscious effort to put some real slick, Memphis, James Alexander bass on this,” Parks says. “I wanted to take my time and create some iconic lines. ’Cause that’s kinda missing from popular music right now. Great bass lines. Give me that live element! I wanted to incorporate the digital, the modern, with instruments that come from the earth, that come from the wood and the trees.”
Still, listeners shouldn’t sleep on that echo of Q-Tip in the mix, signified visually by Parks in his yellow hoodie and sonically by the exclusively programmed beats. “As much as it is Isaac Hayes,” Parks adds, “I feel like it is Juicy J as well. I wanted to put some Memphis influence and everything that I experienced and created here, from sweaty clubs to arenas and stadiums.” Referencing the rapper and producer designated by the alphabet’s 10th letter is no idle name-drop, for the group he co-founded, Three 6 Mafia, arguably did more than any other to combine the hard beats of hip-hop with the dark atmospheres of cinema. That’s echoed in The Q Tape as well.
And there’s another connection, only apparent if you reflect on the quality of the artists Parks is drawing from: If Juicy J and Isaac Hayes earned Oscars for their soundtracks, and Q-Tip had his “Award Tour,” Parks himself has joined their ranks, thanks to playing on Ledisi’s “Anything for You,” named Best Traditional R&B Performance at this year’s Grammy Awards.
“That was a big deal,” Parks reflects. “You always aim for playing on a Grammy-winning record. That’s a pretty big milestone in my career. So I’m ready to keep expanding, and just take it as far as I can take it, artistically. Honestly, it’s a bittersweet moment. Because it’s like, ‘Man, I contributed to something great.’ But truth be told, I want a Grammy with my name on it. You know? I’ve made a lot of people’s stuff sound good, so now it’s time to focus and deliver what my vision looks like.”
Parks pauses, then offers another alphabetical reference. “Quintessential. That’s a great word, right? I like helping my friends and playing on great records, but it’s time to take those talents and add them to what I’m doing for myself. You always hope that your art is quintessential.”
Mike Hollihan or Michael Roy Hollihan, as he normally signed himself, has passed. And that means that two other sobriquets adopted by the former freelance journalist and blog-meister have gone with him. One was “Mr. Mike,” as in “Mr. Mike’s Rumpus Room of Science,” the most enduring of his two blogs; the other, which for obvious reasons, first got my attention, was “Half-Bakered,” as in “halfbakered.blogspot.com.”
This last-named and first-launched venture — Hollihan’s most famous or notorious effort — had been his calling card to the newsreaders and political junkies of the Mid-South when he began it in 2002, intending it to be corrective to what he saw as the adversaries of his own homegrown libertarian-conservative-populist political consciousness. He began that blog at a time when Tennessee was in a permanently convulsive condition over the prospect of a potential state income tax, and he meant to do what he could to head one off.
Several journalists offended him with their coverage of the issue, since they — “we,” I should say because he settled on me as chief offender, hence the “honor” of my name in the title of his blog — insisted on referring to the matter as “tax reform” and took seriously the efforts of then Republican Governor Don Sundquist and various, mainly Democratic legislators to devise a fair-minded, less regressive alternative to the ever-rising state sales tax. This was at a time when Tennessee was having grievous difficulties paying its due bills, not to mention funding major programs like education and healthcare.
Hollihan saw us all as conspirators, liberal pointy-heads out to steal the public’s money, and his polemical style was as unkind to us as he could make it. I will forgo repeating any of the epithets he used on me. “The crone” was how he referred to the estimable lady who was then writing a competitive column for The Commercial Appeal. He depicted a colleague of mine as having developed a permanent brown ring around his nose from nuzzling into the good graces of the establishment. And for reasons I never understood, he reserved some of his viler invectives for rabidly right-wing talk show host Mike Fleming, whom you would have thought he should see as a lodge brother.
Hollihan was, in a sense, beyond ideology, though it is fair to say he tilted Republican.
His saving grace was that he tried to function also as an all-purpose media critic, and he had a good eye for that circus, able to divine the derelictions and failings and foolishness of everybody in the public weal, save himself.
Perversely enough, we got to be friends of a sort with a real degree of mutual respect. And I almost took offense when — with an apologetic grace note to me — he announced, in 2011, that he would no longer call his then intermittently appearing blog “Half-Bakered” but instead would designate it as “Mr. Mike’s Rumpus Room of Science.”
For several seasons, Hollihan did some newswriting for the Main Street Journal, a local periodical run by youthful entrepreneur Jonathan Lindberg.
And he nursed a whole host of physical problems, which eventually, it would seem, wore him down. Hollihan was a loner, basically, but he belonged to an unofficial fraternity of board game enthusiasts, and his recent passing, which went virtually unnoticed among members of the local media and political tribes, was duly observed with a special wake put on by the frequenters of the Board to Beers bar on Poplar Avenue.
Hollihan’s last moment as a blog crusader, this time on behalf of the MAGA movement, occurred last November when, after a several-years’ absence, he lit up the Mr. Mike’s Rumpus Room space with six posts in the wake of the presidential election, all examining possibilities that recounts might still enable a reversal of the election’s outcome. The last one, on November 12th, was entitled “Don’t Give Up Hope … Yet.” He was still flailing away.
Creating money for the future (Micheile Henderson | Unsplash)
Politicians and philosophers might disagree on how capital should be allocated, but they agree it’s the lifeblood of our economy and society. Regular people don’t usually consider themselves capital allocators, but that sort of mindset can be useful when running your personal budget.
Most simply, capital is money that makes more money. When money flows out of your bank account, it’s either for an expense (like an operating expense in business) or a capital expenditure. A capital expenditure is money that isn’t gone forever — it hangs around in another form that you hope will create money for the future.
Here are a few ways to apply capital thinking to your budget:
• Markets. The purest way to turn income into capital is to invest it in the markets. Today’s investment portfolios are a modern miracle — they have incredibly low costs to enter and strong prospects to provide a real return that outpaces inflation over time (despite inevitable fluctuations).
• Real Estate. Real estate can work, but it’s not a capital-accumulation panacea. Buying a house with a typical down payment is highly leveraged and therefore risky. An owner-occupied dwelling produces no income and instead produces significant expenses like interest, insurance, and general upkeep that can soak up capital as quickly as it becomes equity. There are lots of reasons to own vs. rent, but hoping for a quick financial windfall is not a good reason to buy.
• Vehicles. Cars quickly destroy capital via depreciation. Businesses buy vehicles to make money and embrace the tax benefits of their depreciation as a small benefit to the necessary cost of doing business. Families don’t get to deduct depreciation, and a vehicle for a family usually represents nothing more than a way of getting around. Buying fewer vehicles and using them less — by living closer to work and school, for example — will make a huge positive impact on household capital accumulation over time.
• Human Capital. College feels like an expense, but the right degree can make huge changes in lifetime capital accumulation. Not just any degree from any university will help, though — discernment is necessary these days to understand the exact purpose, utility, and value of a program. For-profit colleges have exploited many students, and even the most prestigious universities can produce graduates with significant debt and minimal opportunity, knowing they might have been better served on a different path.
• Hobbies. What’s better, running or scuba diving? Scuba diving requires training, equipment, travel, and storage space, while running requires shoes and clothes you probably already have. Even the most avid gearhead would spend far less on running than diving, and an avid runner probably enjoys the hobby just as much as a diver. Strategically finding less expensive hobbies you truly enjoy can make a huge difference when it comes to accumulating capital.
• Collectibles. Speculative collectibles might seem to pay for themselves, but by the time baseball cards, NFTs, or limited-edition anything looks like a profitable hobby, it’s probably far too late. If a major part of your hobby involves looking at price guides and auction listings to see if you’re making money, you probably won’t find the windfall at the end of the rainbow you’re expecting.
Looking at spending and saving this way might seem overly clinical but can be eye-opening once you get used to this mindset. Working people trade their time for income. Any opportunity to steer income away from expenses into capital activities that actually store and create value will bring about a day when capital can be used to free up your time — everyone’s only truly nonrenewable resource.
Have a question or topic you’d like to see covered in this column? Contact the author at ggard@telarrayadvisors.com. Gene Gard is Chief Investment Officer at Telarray, a Memphis-based wealth management firm that helps families navigate investment, tax, estate, and retirement decisions.
Reddit user u/stupidnapolean wrote, “Remember when those apartments on Highland were painted green and people lost their minds over it and got the owners to repaint? Can we show those same people this billboard on Union?”
Posted to Reddit by u/stupidnapolean
A Thang, Really?
Memphis Sandwich Clique moderator Joey Danforth perplexed and, perhaps, repulsed many with this confounding image that claimed “fish filet and cookies & cream ice cream. It’s a Mississippi thang.” Mississippians in the group loudly proclaimed that, no, that is not a real “thang.”
Posted to Facebook by Joey Danforth
Looney Grizz?
Do you absolutely need to own an NFT of a Memphis Grizzlies Looney Mascot trading card? It’s one of a few Memphis NFTs available on Rarible, and yours for only nine cents from your Ethereum wallet. Confused? Us, too.
PHOTO BY JON W. SPARKS.
Nelson Gutierrez’s art explores human identity, experience, and history.
Artist Nelson Gutierrez was born in Colombia and worked in various places around the world and in the United States before coming to Memphis six years ago. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone as devoted to local artists and art.
Gutierrez has an exhibition opening this weekend at 2021 Projects, a gallery at 55 South Main Street. That space is not the usual art venue, however, and that’s due to the artist working with the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC) and numerous other artists in town to make it an attraction on several levels.
That otherwise vacant space is part of the Open on Main retail initiative, a project that goes to the heart of the DMC’s mission to boost the economic presence of Downtown. There are, as any who stroll along Main Street will attest, plenty of empty storefronts. Open on Main makes it possible for entrepreneurs, artists, and small business owners to take a low-risk chance on testing their concepts Downtown in some of these storefronts.
The Walk, ink and pencil on paper, 54 x 8 inches, 2021
Open on Main
Brett Roler, vice president of planning for the DMC, says, “Blight and vacancy drag down property values, curtail a vibrant street life, and make it harder for our existing businesses to thrive.” It is clearly better to have open doors and engaged pedestrians. The program has helped more than 30 store operators test the retail market Downtown, with more than 80 percent participation by minority/women-owned business enterprises.
Open on Main typically provides rent-free opportunities for tenants to have their pop-up businesses on Main Street. The arrangement is usually for a month, but Gutierrez was able to secure a six-month plan since he was having rotating exhibitions of about a month each. His stewardship began in January and has gone well enough that the DMC has agreed to let him continue using the space through December.
“What they’re doing is letting entrepreneurs use the empty spaces temporarily in order to test businesses,” Gutierrez says. “It’s not specifically for art, but as that’s my field, I said that that would be a good thing to do.”
He was talking with the DMC last October when so much was still closed to public activity, but they realized it was the time to start looking at ways to reactivate the art scene. “I knew there were going to be a lot of obstacles and limitations due to the pandemic, but we had the tools to do a lot of things virtually. It wasn’t just the exhibitions or the physical space, but also the social media that we would promote, and the interviews we’d do, and promoting the website.”
Gutierrez got together with artist Carl Moore and discussed who could be part of 2021 Projects. “We wanted to help the artists that are not represented by a commercial gallery, so that was our main criterion,” Gutierrez said. “Carl has been here for a very long time, so he knows more people than I do after only six years that I’ve been in the city. We made a list of people that would be able to participate. Another criterion was the quality of the work, so those people had more need to find spaces to execute their work or to reach the public.”
Artists who have exhibited so far are Andrea Morales and Khara Woods (February-March), Maritza Dávila and Carl Moore (March-April), and Johana Moscoso and Scott Carter (May). Gutierrez’s retrospective show runs from Friday, June 4th, through Friday, June 25th.
Norma Constanza Esguerra, plexiglass and MDF, 25 inches diameter, 2019
Portrait of the Artist
Gutierrez’s work is very much grounded in his experiences in Colombia, which have been, he says, in a type of civil asymmetrical war among the Colombian government, left-wing communist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups, and the drug cartels.
“It’s a really complex conflict,” Gutierrez says. “And I grew up in the middle of that. The government was fighting to provide order and stability. The guerrillas claimed to be fighting to provide social justice. The paramilitary groups were reacting to threats by guerrilla movements and to protect private interests. The drug cartels were fighting to protect their own businesses. And basically the people that most suffered were the civilians at large.”
He says most fighting was happening in remote rural areas in mountains and jungles. “There were several cases of terrorist attacks in big cities, which increased in the mid-’80s to the early ’90s. I was affected directly by that violence. Everybody in Colombia knows someone that at some point was kidnapped. Everybody in Colombia knows someone that at some point was badly hurt or killed by these types of situations. So that was our reality.”
In the late 1990s, Gutierrez left his homeland and went to England to study for his master’s degree. It was transformative. “When I started seeing the whole thing from outside, everything changed because when I was living in Colombia, I was used to it,” he says. “That was what we were seeing every single day in the news. We didn’t even have a sense of shock anymore. That’s not normal.”
He started to do some work on the subject of kidnapping. “There were about 1,500 people kidnapped,” he says, “so the work is about that and the spaces where people are kidnapped and how families suffer — all the psychological impacts of these particular crimes in a society.”
And there were the land mines. Gutierrez says more than 11,000 people were killed or wounded by land mines in Colombia. While in England, he did an installation for UNICEF and the Colombian Embassy regarding that. Despite a 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, the United States, along with China, India, Pakistan, and Russia, have not signed the treaty. Colombia, however, did sign it.
Youth, acrylic on paper, 25 x 25 inches, 2021
The Road to Memphis
After his master’s degree, Gutierrez went back to Colombia to teach for a couple of years, and he met his wife. They moved to Miami where he worked for an educational foundation. After four years there, he went to Washington, D.C., for eight years, continuing to do his art and to teach. His wife worked with nonprofits, including United Way International, until she received an offer from the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC), the fundraising organization for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
And that’s how they came to Memphis.
He got an offer to work with ArtsMemphis as an artist advisory council member in 2016. “I was helping to understand better the situation of diversity in the city and in the county and how we could impact, in a more balanced way, the artists in the city based on that,” he says. In those years, he met artists and did work with the UrbanArt Commission. One of those artists he met was Carl Moore, who told Gutierrez about the program.
Being able to secure 2021 Projects for an additional six months was a definite win for Gutierrez. “When we first made the list of artists, the list was really extensive,” he says. “It’s not just the people that we’re showing now — there are a lot more people that we would like to support and show their work.”
Sorting Through His Passions
As for his own work, he continues to address the issues in his home country. “Having lived that conflict from inside and then seeing it from outside and seeing it now after 20 years, how do I feel about that?” he wonders. “I don’t feel like I’m a hundred percent Colombian anymore — it’s not that I’m not Colombian, but I don’t feel as I used to feel before. Things have changed, and I have changed. I’m trying to understand that and understand the history of the country and understand that as an outsider-insider. I don’t know — is that like a weird situation of non-place?”
These are the musings of an artist sorting through his passions. But it is what artists do, and Gutierrez is not idling. “Some of the work that I’m doing now, some of the drawings that I’ve been working on are based on photographs from the 1940s and 1950s,” he says.
Some of those photographs were taken on April 9, 1948. A political assassination that day sparked violent riots that came to be known as “El Bogotazo.” It changed history.
“That started the violence that we’re living in now,” Gutierrez says. “So that’s what I am working on now. And how am I seeing that from the outside 75 years later? Even after 75 years, you see repercussions of those acts.”
Whatever questions he still has, Gutierrez knows this about his art: “The intention of the work is to point to this reality and to engage people in a critical debate around it changing in the public their habitual way of looking and thinking, in an effort to create empathy again.”
Maria Cristina
Another view comes from Marina Pacini, who was chief curator at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art from 2001 to 2019. Speaking of a recent series, she says, “Like his earlier works, the images are a graphic exploration of human interconnections, and they emphatically demand close attention from viewers, who are rewarded for their effort. With a simplicity of means, Gutierrez packs both a literal and a metaphorical punch.”
May 29, 2021: OKC Energy FC plays Memphis 901 FC in a USL Championship match at Taft Stadium in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (Photo by Steve Christy)
Fresh off a thrilling draw in its second match, Memphis 901 FC made the trek to Oklahoma City on Saturday to face conference rivals OKC Energy for the first time. The Oklahomans looked ripe for the taking, having only mustered two draws and three losses in their first five matches. And but for an incredible goal line clearance, Memphis very well could have walked away from the stadium with three points. While the team rued some missed chances, the 0 – 0 draw saw the defensive line celebrate a first clean sheet of the season.
Kadeem Dacres the Key to Success
Dacres put on a show against Atlanta, tallying a goal and an assist in a comprehensive attacking performance. He attempted to go one better this time around, constantly harrying the OKC Energy defenders and generally causing trouble wherever he went. If 901 FC is going to succeed this season, it seems more than likely that success will be built around Dacres’ dynamic play (and his budding partnership with fullback Mark Segbers). He was a constant menace, whether making penetrating runs, cutting inside and shaking his markers, trying to tee up teammates, or getting on the end of crosses.
And while 901 FC struggled to get quality strikes off, Dacres came closest to breaking the deadlock with his redirection of midfielder Laurent Kissiedou’s shot, denied only by OKC defender Conor Donovan’s miraculous goal line clearance. Unfortunately, Dacres’ desire to create something out of nothing cost him a second yellow card when he was booked for a pretty clear dive in the 89th minute. That means a one-game suspension, and 901 FC will be without its best attacker for next weekend’s match against Indy Eleven. That’s an unfortunate headache for head coach Ben Pirmann, but if we’re looking for the silver lining, it’ll be a prime opportunity for someone else to step up and show what they can do.
Shooting Boots Left at Home
Memphis already looks like a much more fluid attacking team than last season, so far having been consistently able to create chances in the opponent’s box. But sticking the ball in the back of the net might just be the hardest part of the game, and 901 FC still has some work to do when it comes to finishing. Memphis took 14 shots in Oklahoma, but only one was on target. That’s not great, but it’s still early days yet.
Don’t forget, the squad saw massive turnover in the off-season, and a good chunk of the squad joined up right before the start of the season. It’s understandable that some of the players are still finding their feet, and growing familiarity should eventually breed more confidence in front of goal. Plus, we haven’t even seen what the likes of injured new signing Roland Lamah can do yet. At the very least, the chances are coming. Expect a few more to hit the back of the net before too long.
Defense Holds Firm Yet Again, But Needs to Stay Alert
Defender Zach Carroll has stepped up and marshaled the defensive troops for the first three matches. Against OKC, he led the team in blocked shots, doing his part to keep the home team off the board. In goal, John Berner picked up another man of the match award after making four saves. We’re only three games in, but the keeper already looks like a fantastic acquisition for the team.
And while the Energy were kept at bay for most of the game, there were a few slips in concentration that almost cost Memphis. In the 39th minute, Skylar Thomas got a little lax on the ball and was stripped by OKC’s Frank Lopez, leaving the forward with just Berner to beat. Then in the 49th minute, the defense went to sleep on a quick Oklahoma free kick, with Berner coming up big to save from Villyan Bijev. These kinds of slips can be costly in tight games. But nitpicking on two isolated incidents aside, the defensive unit looks much stronger this year. It’s still early yet, but the pieces for a successful season are there. For now, a tough test awaits Memphis on June 5th at Indy Eleven, one of the league’s strongest teams.
Last weekend, my girlfriend Sydnie and I did something we hadn’t done since the first months of 2020 — maybe since the tail end of 2019. We bought tickets. Baby-stepping our way back to events with other people, we caught a Saturday-night showing of A Quiet Place Part II. We bought a couple of local beers and some candy at the concession stand. We oohed and aahed at the remodeled theater — new seats, fresh coat of paint, transparent plexiglass dividers at the ticket booth. In a quarter-full theater, we watched a movie with other people, a communal experience that has been sorely missed. I even liked listening to people crunching popcorn.
Then, giddy with a new sense of freedom of movement, we bought plane tickets. After more than a yearlong delay, we’ll be going to visit Syd’s family in Boise, Idaho. Of course, purchasing plane tickets requires a more significant investment of time, money, and optimism than ponying up for a pair of movie tickets, but it feels undeniably refreshing to look a few months into the future and decide that it’s not a bad bet to make plans.
The secret to our newfound confidence is no secret at all. We’re vaccinated. We still wore masks in the theater (when we weren’t swilling Adjective Animal, that is) and we will on the plane. It just seems polite, especially when we’re interacting with theater or airline staff who have no way of knowing our vaccination status, or if we’re thorough hand-washers. Even after taking two doses in the arm, travel at this point is still a bit of a gamble. And, as the vaccine hesitant would point out, we’re choosing to gamble on the efficacy of a bit of medicine we don’t understand fully.
But I do that every time I get on a plane, every time I drive somewhere. I understand that Bernoulli’s Principle is instrumental in achieving lift, just as I understand that my car is powered by combustion, but that’s about the limit of my comprehension. I choose to trust that the people who design these things know what they’re doing, and that they have an interest in not being wrong. Just as I believe that Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson want to make profits, a goal that is more easily achievable if your product works.
That doesn’t mean I don’t believe some people have a good reason for choosing not to be vaccinated. I’m simply painting a picture of relatively guilt- and worry-free socialization. There has been no end of noise around this issue, and I hope it might do some measure of good to provide a clear-headed account of my experience. To that end, it’s been a month and a half since I got my second shot, and I’ve had no side effects to speak of. No surprise medical bill arrived at my door. My smartphone, I’m fairly certain, is the only device tracking my whereabouts and page-viewing trends. Best of all, I’m infinitely less worried about accidentally, unknowingly getting someone else sick. As far as I can tell, the risk was worthwhile and has paid off.
As I write this, Shelby County is not even close to half-vaccinated. I hope we’ll continue to work to improve that statistic, but that’s going to require us to do something besides shame and mock our fellow citizens. I’ll also mention that requiring proof of vaccination status is nothing new — though I’ve not once been asked to prove my own.
When we were children, my sister and I moved in with our dad, from Phoenix, Arizona, to Chester County, Tennessee, a trip of some 1,400 or so miles that meant we had to change school districts. I vividly remember my dad’s increasingly frantic attempts to secure our vaccination records before the beginning of the school year. Neither he nor my mother were really the record-keeping type, and things were not at their best between them at the time, which complicated the process somewhat. But, complicated or not, we were required to prove we wouldn’t bring disease with us to charming Chester County. And that was 20 years ago in an overwhelmingly conservative rural county.
When it comes down to it, though, I doubt I can convince anyone to take their shot. I’m no doctor, have no degrees in epidemiology or virology. In this instance, I’m a gambler, but one who likes the odds, who’s willing to bet that good ol’ Bernoulli will keep the plane aloft … even if I’m not sure exactly how. Jesse Davis
Jimmy "Sushi Jimmi" Sinh was moving to Orlando, but he's decided to stay in Memphis.
Jimmy “Sushi Jimmi” Sinh was going to move to Orlando, but he’s staying in Memphis, where he’ll continue to do his private chef jobs.
For now, he’s taking a two-month vacation at his home in the country near Memphis. “I don’t know what I want to do yet, but, so far, I just want to continue doing my private chef-ing,” Sinh says. “So, that’s what I’ve been trying to do, trying to get people to reserve more dates and book up the rest of the year. If I don’t, somebody else will. The main thing is I’m going to take two months to relax and spend some time with my wife, my kids.”
Sinh and his family talked it over, he says. “We don’t want to move the family when the kids are so young. And we just felt like the kids need to bond a little more as a family.”
Part of his family was moving to Texas. “I was moving in one direction, the other part of my family in another direction. We feel like the family would be split a little too far. We decided to stay back a little bit and raise the family here.”
Long range plans include starting another food truck. “The last one I did I just pretty much overwhelmed myself. Like I was just trying to do too much. This one, I’m going to still keep the sushi. And I want my customers to eat a lot cleaner. I don’t know if I’m going to have a lot of the stuff I’d normally have, like a lot of fried stuff. Everything would just be cooked a lot cleaner. And have a lot more healthier options and do more sashimi and nigiri on this truck.”
The food truck won’t be called “Sushi Jimmi,” he says. “It’s going to be called something else. I want to come out with a different brand. Still have it made by Sushi Jimmi.”
Sinh wants to chill for a couple of months. “We live in the countryside and I’m loving it.”
And, he says, “I’m more of a country boy. I love large land. I don’t like to be in the city. And when I’m home I like to be in my own personal space. I don’t want to be in a noisy environment or anything like that.”
As for his plan to move to Orlando, Sinh says, “I was going to grab just a regular job and just kind of get a feel of how things work out there. But working all these years I never really took a nice vacation for myself or took the family out on a nice vacation. It makes you hate where you are in one spot and makes you not appreciate where you are.”
Sinh, who moved to Memphis from an Orlando suburb in 1995, closed his first restaurant, “Sushi Jimmi,” and food truck in May 2019. Sinh, who gained legions of fans, went on to work at Saltwater Crab, La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant, and, finally, at Saito 2.
“When I shut Sushi Jimmi down, I hopped back into my work. Worked really hard like I did at Sushi Jimmi. I never gave myself a break, so I kind of burned myself out and just hated what I was doing. That’s why I decided I’m taking a break. Take two months off. Give myself some ‘me’ time and think about what I can do for this city. And that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m actually driving out of town to pick up some stuff to improve my private chef-ing. I want to bring Sushi Jimmi to you. Make sure it’s something you’ll never forget. It’s one of those experiences you’ve got to have.”
And, as for opening another restaurant of his own some day, Sinh says, “I don’t know about a restaurant just because of how bad of an experience I had when I had my restaurant. I’d hire people and people don’t want to go to work. Look at right now. Nobody wants to work. I don’t want to have to deal with those situations any more.
“I’m a one-stop shop. I come fix the food, serve you, and clean up. I like to keep it simple. I don’t like to put too much on myself anymore.”
And, he says, “That’s how I feel right now.”
Does Sinh plan on maybe moving again? “Not any time soon. Right now, we’re settled for a while. At this moment, we’ll worry about what’s going on now. Let’s give this city what the city deserves, which is good food.”
People can book Sinh by going to “Sushi Jimmi” on Facebook and Instagram.
University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) Chancellor Steve Schwab will retire and the UT System will begin a search for his replacement. Schwab will continue to serve as chancellor until June 30, 2022, or until a successor is on board.
Schwab has been with the UT Health Science Center for 15 years, serving chancellor since 2010. Prior to that, he served as executive dean for the UT Health Science Center’s College of Medicine.
Schwab is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Medicine and completed his internship/residency in internal medicine at the University of Kansas Hospitals and Clinics, followed by a fellowship in nephrology with Washington University at the Barnes Hospital. He spent 18 years on the faculty at Duke University, where he rose to become professor and vice chair of the Department of Medicine. In 2003, he was named Regents Professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia, and was later named chief clinical officer.
Under Schwab’s leadership, UTHSC:
Expanded clinical partnerships across the state, creating an integrated statewide UTHSC organization of four campuses (Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville) with shared educational, clinical and research activities.
Transformed the Memphis campus. Driven by the Campus Master Plan, led by Ken Brown, the executive vice chancellor, UTHSC has accomplished more than $300 million in construction. Among major additions to the campus are the Translational Science Research Building, the Center for Health Care Improvement and Patient Simulation, the renovated Historic Quadrangle at the heart of the campus, the ongoing construction on the Delta Dental Building, the Pharmacy Building and the Cancer Research Building.
Moved the university toward top-quartile performance in academics, growing the education enterprise to more than 3,300 students and 1,400 residents and fellows, at the same time achieving graduation rates at approximately 95 percent and overall first-attempt board pass rates at 95 percent or higher.
Raised the research enterprise. UTHSC has doubled its grant awards, with a projected total for awards of more than $120 million this academic year. At the same time, UTHSC has more than doubled sponsored program revenue (non-clinical, all-source grants and contracts) to more the $300 million annually.
More than tripled its clinical enterprise with the development of faculty practice plans throughout the state, generating more than $300 million in clinical revenue.
Stood as a health care leader in the state during the global pandemic.
Schwab was named a 2021 CEO of the Year by Memphis magazine and Inside Memphis Business magazine, one of seven distinguished leaders of health based institutions in Memphis. In an interview earlier this year, he said, “Education was hit hard by the pandemic. More than half of our training is usually clinical and done in clinics and hospitals. We maintained our clinical enterprise using PPE and had to adapt our educational programs to go full-speed in our partner hospitals.”
The Center also educates residents and fellows before they go into practice. “Those physicians and dentists stayed working full-time and they were on the front lines,” Schwab says. “We adapted to decrease our density, maintain everything we could do online, and do our laboratories, simulation, and clinical care face-to-face. We had a near-hospital-like experience, but with an educational flavor, and I think we’ve successfully adapted.”
Last year’s changes meant UTHSC needed a new set of guidelines on how to do research in a pandemic. Schwab said, “We had one of the 11 regional biocontainment labs in the United States and that lab literally went into 24-hour operation. We almost doubled our staff doing COVID-related research, usually collaborative projects with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and major pharmaceutical manufacturers on either aspects of vaccine development or therapeutic interventions.”
The last year provided more than the usual learning experience for students. First- and second-year students, Schwab said, had “an opportunity to participate both in terms of diagnostic testing and in terms of administering vaccines. They’ve risen to the occasion in a major way — nursing students, doctoral nursing students, pharmacy students, and the dental and medical students.”
He says he was impressed by the way faculty, staff, and students stepped up and did what had to be done. Students had to learn additional things in a more difficult environment, the staff was tasked with sterilizing rooms every day, and the faculty worked longer hours teaching the same number of students, but in smaller groups to keep distance.
Schwab is particularly proud of one achievement in particular: “We graduated everyone on time last year, and we’re on track to graduate everyone on time this year.”
The UT System has hired Witt Keiffer to conduct a search for the next chancellor of UTHSC. The firm’s team will work in coordination with UT’s in-house executive recruiter and search committee representing faculty, staff, students and alumni.
