Month: August 2021

Categories
Hungry Memphis

Update on The Peanut Shoppe Closing

The Peanut Shoppe (Credit: Mariah McCabe)

People haven’t been banging down the door to buy peanuts and popcorn since the recent announcement about The Peanut Shoppe, closing its doors December 31st.

But that’s okay, says Rida AbuZaineh, manager/co-owner of the iconic business at 24 South Main Street.

“I’ll tell you why,” AbuZaineh says. “I’ve been in the business 29 years. August is a slow month because it’s back to school. Lots of kids this year are going back to school. Not virtual. They need uniforms, supplies, and so on. So, parents, they spend quite a bit on that. So, that’s why.”

And, he says, “This business thrives in the spring,  early summer, and the fall and Christmas. When the weather is nice for walking. That’s what it is. ‘Cause this business depends on walk-in traffic.”

That doesn’t mean people aren’t supporting him. His Peanut Shoppe social media pages blew up, he says. “Same day you did the article, Nurah (AbuZaineh’s daughter) posted something about the closing and finale of The Peanut Shoppe. And that post generated over 12,000 hits on Facebook. On Instagram, I don’t know. On Twitter, under 50,000.”

Lily Montague, he says, “started a GoFundMe behind my back. The reason [I haven’t done one] is I have pride and integrity. I’m not going to open my hand begging people for anything. But people say to me ‘Rida, it’s okay. You’re in need and you’re desperate and you’re penniless.’ Which is the truth.

“Now, this girl, she had the goal of $2,500. The first half a day she reached about $1,200. She renewed it again. Now, I think it’s up — until a couple of days ago ‘cause I only checked it twice since day one — to $4,500 ‘cause she raised the value to $5,000.”

The total is now up to $4,600.

The Peanut Shoppe opened in 1949. AbuZaineh heard it originally opened on Madison before moving to Main Street in 1951, but he’s not sure. The AbuZaineh and Lauck families became owners and partners of the establishment on January 8th, 1993.

Rida AbuZaineh and his pal, Mr. Peanut, at The Peanut Shoppe (Credit: Terry Jones)

AbuZaineh says they weren’t told until a few months before the sale that the building was going to be sold. It will be turned into apartments and condos, he says.

As for a new location for The Peanut Shoppe, AbuZaineh says,  “We don’t have a location. We have one more potential future location. We are trying to get there with the help of the owners of the building.”

People have told him, “Go to (the other end of) South Main,” AbuZaineh says. “I’m not going to wait for people to come home after 7 so I can open the doors for them.”

Others say, “Go to Beale Street.” AbuZaineh doesn’t want to “have some drunken people walk in my store. Come in with their drinks in their hand and show no respect. No.”

AbuZaineh stops and checks his GoFundMe Facebook page. “I swear to God. I just opened this. It’s only the third time I opened the page. The top spenders are 300, 250, 200, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100. I don’t know what to say.  I’m about to cry.”

The Peanut Shoppe (Cedit: Mariah McCabe)
Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Staffing Shortage Worsened by Pandemic Impacts MATA’s Reliability

(Credit: Justin Fox Burks)

Bus riders are waiting longer for buses or sometimes waiting for a bus that never arrives due to a Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) staffing shortage. 

MATA’s goal for on-time performance, which measures how often buses arrive within a seven-minute window of their scheduled time, is 76 percent. Since May it’s been at 63 percent. 

Gary Rosenfeld, MATA’s CEO, said that number is “totally unacceptable.” He said a shortage of bus operators has affected MATA’s ability to improve its on-time performance and meet the expectations of customers. 

MATA has about 200 fixed-route bus operators and needs about 30 more just to have enough manpower to provide reliable daily services. Rosenfeld said this is especially true as the number of Covid-19 cases continues to rise in the county. 

“We’ve been hit with Covid-related absences at a much higher rate this month than last month or the month before,” Rosenfeld said. “We find ourselves with not enough operators to put all the service in the streets according to what’s posted in the schedule.”

Rosenfeld said he knows this puts additional stress on passengers, as well as the employers whose employees depend on MATA to get to work on time. 

“I emphasize and sympathize with our passengers,” Rosenfeld said. “It just creates a really bad situation for them and for our employees who catch the brunt of people’s stress and anger over poor service conditions.”

There is also a shortage of mechanics who are needed to regularly inspect the buses. On average, buses need to be inspected every eight to ten days, Rosenfeld said. Without a full complement of mechanics, the inspections back up and those buses can’t run. 

“So you can see the gravity of the situation,” Rosenfeld said. “If we fall behind a day or two because of a shortage of qualified mechanics, we quickly fall behind in the number of buses that are available to provide service. And we will not sacrifice safety and put buses in the street that are not inspected.”

‘It’s Not Pretty’

With late buses, or buses not showing up at all, Sammie Hunter, co-chair of the Memphis Bus Riders Union, said he and other bus riders struggle to get to jobs, school, and other essential destinations like the grocery store. Hunter said August has been particularly rough as temperatures rose above 90 degrees most days. 

“You have people that have to stand in the heat and the sun when the bus they’re waiting on might not even show up,” Hunter said. “I’ve seen it all and it’s not pretty.”

“Taxpayers deserve reliable, sufficient transportation.”

Hunter said he relies on the 69 route to get home after work and often waits two hours for it to arrive. 

“When I get off work, it’s the end of the day, I’m tired, and I’m ready to go home,” Hunter said. “Taxpayers deserve reliable, sufficient transportation. We should be able to go to a stop, get on a bus, and get where we need to in a reasonable amount of time.”

Hunter said he understands “things happen,” but there needs to be contingency plans for situations like bus operator shortages. 

‘Doing All We Can’

Rosenfeld said the issue is not limited to MATA or Memphis. There has been a shortage of commercial drivers in the country for the past several years, he said. The pandemic has exacerbated that.

“Just like the medical profession is seeing an exodus because of what nurses and hospital workers are going through, our frontline folks are dealing with many of the same issues,” Rosenfeld said. “They have to deal with the public and trying to enforce reasonable rules for public safety while operating a bus is not necessarily an easy job.” 

As a result, employees are finding jobs with less responsibility or retiring. 

“Employees are in charge right now in terms of the market,” Rosenfeld said. “Employers are really at a disadvantage.” 

“Just like the medical profession is seeing an exodus because of what nurses and hospital workers are going through, our frontline folks are dealing with many of the same issues.”

Rosenfeld said MATA has been working to recruit employees for “quite some time” with signing bonuses, a modified training program, and revamped benefits packages. 

“We’re doing all we can to generate interest in our program for new employees,” Rosenfeld said. “At the same time, so is every other employer in the service industry in the greater Memphis area.”

One way MATA attempted to recruit more employees is by raising its starting wages to $19.35 an hour for bus operators after they complete training and $26 an hour for mechanics, but Rosenfeld said that still isn’t enough to compete with other major transportation companies in the region.

The average starting wage for commercial operators has increased from $12 an hour to over $25 an hour in the past 18 months, he said. In retail, there’s an avenue to generate more revenue to pay employees more, but MATA has a fixed revenue. 

“From a wage and benefit perspective, we’ve probably done all we can do for right now,” Rosenfeld said. “But if we end up at the top of the hill, it won’t take long for other companies to either match it or exceed it.”

Categories
Book Features Books

Piece of My Heart: Stephen Graham Jones’ New Novel

(Courtesy Stephen Graham Jones)

Years ago, some friends of mine made a full-length horror movie. A slasher. They bought a van, drove it up to Connecticut, where they filmed for a few weeks. They did pretty much everything themselves, so they could pay for the things they couldn’t do themselves. They hired a pro cinematographer and a handful of real actors — Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, Peter Tork from The Monkees. All this to say, this was no backyard B-movie red corn syrup amateur-hour horror flick. My friends were members of the congregation of the Church of Horror, and they made a pilgrimage to Connecticut to make an offering in all seriousness.

I know people who live and breathe — whose blood pumps — for slashers. In a world that seems, at times, arbitrary and chaotic, they can rely on the unspoken rules of slashers. Those folks exist in the real world, not just in the celluloid frames of Scream (Wes Craven, 1996), or the pages of books like Stephen Graham Jones’ My Heart is a Chainsaw (Saga Press).

The heroine of My Heart is a Chainsaw, 17-year-old Jennifer Daniels, aka Jade, of Proofrock, Idaho, is one such slasher savant.

“I write because I can’t draw. I write because I can’t cut to the basket slick enough to go pro. I write because I eat too many Sixlets and drink too much tea and my fingers get all jittery, and I have to put them somewhere,” writes Jones on his website, demontheory.net. “I write because, for a few pages at a time, I can make the world make sense.”

For Jade, slashers are a way of making the world make sense. There are rules to slasher films, after all, a precedent that must be followed. They’re a coping mechanism helping her get through life as a high school outcast with a hard home life, but, as with any coping mechanism, they also help her keep the world at arm’s length.

Jade is poor, and her parents are divorced. She does some janitorial work, which helps her pay for food and bargain bin VHS tapes of ’80s horror flicks, but which hardly endears her to her classmates. Jade’s father is Native American, and her mother is white, leaving her with a feeling of not fully belonging to either community. It doesn’t help that her mother has treated Jade like a stranger since the divorce. So Jade is left to fend for herself, as she lives with her neglectful, alcoholic father. That might not seem to be enough to doom a teenager, no matter how much they quote Halloween, to status as a pariah, not in the 21st century anyway. But as anyone who has lived in a truly small town can attest, Jade is doomed at least thrice-over.

A scholar of slasher movies, Jade sees herself as a Cassandra when strange disappearances begin to plague Proofrock and no one believes her hypothesis. She has cracked the code, and stands ready to usher Letha, who Jade sees as the story’s Final Girl, to triumph over the masked killer, whoever it is.
As the pages turn, My Heart is a Chainsaw reveals other horrors — neglect and abuse, gentrification, racism, and loneliness. The book culminates in Proofrock’s annual Fourth of July celebration, when the townies row or motor their boats out on the lake to drink and watch a screening of Jaws. The big celebration waiting at the end of the book works like a ticking clock — the reader just knows that something horrible is going to happen to spoil the party. After all, it’s a slasher. There are rules.

Jones’ other most recent publications, The Only Good Indians and Night of the Mannequins, won a pair of Shirley Jackson Awards, and TOGI racked up several other awards besides, so it’s no surprise that My Heart is a Chainsaw is already receiving early buzz. The author’s prose is lyrical, and his tone sometimes shades into reverence and remorse — reverence for the genre whose influence can be found in so much of his work, and remorse for the high school outcast those genre rules say he must put through the wringer. 

Certified slasher scholar Stephen Graham Jones (Courtesy Stephen Graham Jones)
Categories
News News Blog

Judge Lipman Refuses to Lift Jail Covid Decree

Shelby County Jail (Credit: Shelby County Sheriff's Department).

U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman entered an order on Tuesday denying a motion from the Shelby County Sheriff’s office to terminate a consent decree of last June mandating improved access to Covid-19 prevention for prisoners in the Shelby County Jail.

 The consent order was the result of litigation on inmates’ behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee.

Judge Sheryl Halle Lipman

In seeking termination of the decree, the motion from Sheriff Floyd  Bonner had claimed, essentially,  that, pursuant to the consent decree, the Department had offered all inmates access to a vaccine and provided adequate educational materials and incentives to take the vaccine.

Lipman rejected this argument, finding that, contrary to the assertions of head jailer Kirk Fields, it was not clear that all detainees had indeed been offered a vaccine. 

She found further that it was even less clear that all inmates had received the educational materials that the Sheriff’s Department contended had gone out to each detainee, or that the educational materials had indeed been adequate.

In denying the Department’s motion to terminate the decree, Lipman cited testimony from two experts, one provided by the plaintiffs and another by the court itself, asserting that the vaccination rate for jail inmates remained at a “shockingly low rate” of between 11 and 24 percent.

The judge said that such a rate, “in the midst of the virulent Delta variant, signals a population in deep peril,” and concluded, “The consent decree did not enshrine mere box-checking. It enshrined meaningful protection for plaintiffs, a medically vulnerable group.”

Hence, she said, “Defendants have failed to satisfy their burden that the Consent Decree has been terminated. Thus, their Motion to Terminate the Consent Decree is denied.”

Categories
News News Blog

Department of Education Investigating Tennessee Over School Mask Opt-Outs

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is investigating Tennessee along with four other states to determine whether statewide prohibitions on universal indoor masking discriminates against students with disabilities.

In a letter to Tennessee’s Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn, Suzanne Goldberg, the department of education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, informed that the investigation would explore if Tennessee’s policy that allows parents to opt out of school mask mandates prevents students with disabilities who have higher risk of severe illness from Covid-19.

Gov. Bill Lee issued Executive Order No. 84 earlier this month allowing Tennessee parents to opt their child out of school mask mandates regardless of school districts policy. 

Goldberg said OCR is concerned that this policy may be preventing schools from meeting their legal obligations not to discriminate based on disability and to provide equal educational opportunities. 

“The Department has heard from parents from across the country — particularly parents of students with disabilities and with underlying medical conditions — about how state bans on universal indoor masking are putting their children at risk and preventing them from accessing in-person learning equally,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a press release. “It’s simply unacceptable that state leaders are putting politics over the health and education of the students they took an oath to serve.

“The Department will fight to protect every student’s right to access in-person learning safely and the rights of local educators to put in place policies that allow all students to return to the classroom full-time in-person safely this fall.” 

Following the announcement of the investigation, Tennessee Senator Raumesh Akbari who represents the Memphis area, urged Lee to rescind his executive order.

“Gov. Bill Lee’s administration should immediately suspend its order negating local mask rules in schools until this federal investigation concludes,” Akbari said. “All our students, including those who have underlying health conditions, deserve access to safe learning conditions.”

Other states being investigated include Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. 

This comes days after a class action lawsuit was filed against Gov. Bill Lee and Shelby County alleging that allowing students to opt out of the mask mandate violates the Americans with Disability Act. 

The plaintiffs, two Shelby County families, claim that Executive Order No 84 forces parents of children with disabilities “to make the impossible decision of deciding whether to pull their children out of in-person learning or risk severe reactions or death as a result of COVID-19.” This is a “brutal choice,” the lawsuit reads. 

“Excluding children from the public school classrooms because of a disability is precisely the type of discrimination and segregation that the ADA and its amendments aim to prevent and specifically prohibit,” the lawsuit reads. 

The plaintiffs are asking the court to block the governor from enforcing Executive Order No. 84, while requiring Shelby County to enforce the countywide mask mandate in schools. 

Read the full complaint here

.

Categories
News

TriStar Space To Open in The Emerge Building in September

TriStar Space rooftop in The Emerge Building

More room to party! The TriStar Space, located in The Emerge Building at 516 Tennessee Street, is slated to open in the circa 1910 building in September.

The 7,000-square-foot venue, which includes a rooftop patio that overlooks the Mississippi River, can be used for weddings, private dinners, corporate events, birthday parties, and other functions. The space can accommodate 125 seated guests and 200 standing.

The interior features exposed wood ceilings, original brick walls, and stained columns.

The event venue boasts 7,000 square feet and a rooftop patio.
The TriStar Space can accomodate up to 200 guests. (Credit: The Emerge Building)
The event venue boasts 7,000 square feet and a rooftop patio.
Owner Micah Lacher repurposed the third floor of the building into a 7,000-square-foot event space. (Credit: The Emerge Building)

The Emerge Building is the former home of Emerge Memphis, a nonprofit economic development initiative that provides strategic support to startup companies and entrepreneurs in the Mid-South.

Micah Lacher, owner of Anchor Investments, the company that bought the property in 2019, says, “We are very excited to see our plan come together over the past 2.5 years since buying the property. We have been able to lease many of the available spaces in the building and bring in even more entrepreneurs and companies that believe in our vision for the property. The energy of the tenants and community is what most excites me about where we are and where we are headed.  We look forward to making another major announcement about a great retail tenant for the 1st floor in the weeks to come.

The Emerge Building at 516 Tennessee Street. (Credit: The Emerge Building)

“We have done some events on the rooftop since buying the building, but it has never been a strategic focus for us until this point. Our rooftop has one of the best views in South Main. After seeing the interest in the rooftop, we decided to turn the third floor of the building into the TriStar Space. The historic walls and floors have amazing natural beauty and character, and we knew we needed to bring them back to life. Our space will offer one of the best atmospheres in Downtown Memphis for people to celebrate monumental days in their lives. We are very excited to host these days.”

And, Lacher says, “As a Memphis native, it has been a lot of fun to redevelop The Emerge Building and breathe more life into it. The Memphis community has welcomed us with open arms and it makes me very proud to be a Memphis native. We look forward to doing more projects in my hometown.”

Categories
Film Features Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: “Indian Summer” by Short In The Sleeve

Music Video Monday is warming up.

The Memphis band Short In The Sleeve decided to make a change. For their fourth record, an EP titled Indian Summer, songwriter Jason Middlekauff says they decided to trade in their guitars for breezy bloops and poppy hooks. “I’ve always loved synth pop, but I wasn’t sure how the guys would take to it. They really embraced what I was after, and I think we ended up creating some of the most catchy but beautiful songs we ever have.”

You can check out Short In The Sleeve’s Bandcamp here, after you watch the new video for title track “Indian Summer.”

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
News News Blog

Heavy Rain, Winds Expected to Hit Memphis

Source: National Weather Service

Memphis could get up to six inches of rain and heavy winds as the remnants of Hurricane Ida move through the Mid-South Monday.

The rainfall and winds are expected to begin at 3 p.m. Monday and last through the evening, according to the Memphis National Weather Service. 

Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) said its crews are prepared to respond to any damage and outages. However, the utility said that restoration times may be longer due to Covid-19 safety measures. 

MLGW also advises the public to avoid contact with downed power lines as the lines could still be active. To report an emergency such as downed wires or gas leaks, call 901-528-4465. For outage reporting, call 901-544-6500. 

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Salinas’ Selection as Dem Chair an Anti-Climax but a Powerful One

As had been hinted strongly along the party grapevine, the Shelby County Democratic Party named Gabby Salinas its new chair in a Zoom convention on Saturday. Considering that Salinas’ declared rival, former chairman Corey Strong, had conceded before a vote could be held, there was a strong sense of anti-climax to the outcome. 

The number of voting participants — comprised of members of the party’s two previously elected bodies, a Grass Roots Council and an executive committee — was announced as 123, and,  even as the roll was being called, it was obvious that there was an unusual number of new names among them — many of them reportedly involved by Salinas.

That could be taken as a good omen, and it underscored the organizational skills of the young Bolivian-born cancer survivor, who was treated as a child at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and where now she is a researcher in her own right. As Salinas alluded at one point along the convention format, she had raised formidable amounts of cash — and support — in two strong but losing legislative races.

A factor that didn’t get overt mention during the convention itself nor during the run-up to it, but which may be highly relevant to the SCDP future, is the fact that Salinas’ roots in the Latinx  community correlate with census figures showing that group to have the greatest population advances over the past decade, locally as well as nationally. It was clear, too, that her appeal to her fellow Democrats was high among all ethnic groups.

Salinas’ victory, it should be noted, was not over a slouch. Strong had been deemed  a strong candidate himself, but he had clearly read the tea leaves, and, though early in the proceedings he had participated in a Q&A forum component moderated by party veteran TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, he would seem in retrospect  to have decided, perhaps before the convention even began, to concede to the prevailing mood.

Outgoing party chair Michael Harris touted several of what he considered triumphs during his own two-year tenure — not least of which was a treasury surplus of some $30,000.

On a technical note, those who tuned in to the meeting electronically can boast of having heard what it sounds like when hundreds of voices recite an oath of allegiance all at once. Even in such a melange, specific strong voices can be heard coming through. And there was, one could imagine, an unusual resonance to what the throng sounded like on Saturday.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Whitehaven Pastors Speak Against Gun Violence

A group of South Memphis and Whitehaven pastors, the Concerned Pastors of Whitehaven, gathered at Southland Mall on Monday for a press conference to announce action against a rash of gun homicides in the city. The text of the announcement, delivered by Rev. James Kirkwood, was as follows:

“As of today we have had 2,167 homicides in our city. Nineteen of those homicides were in Raines Station. Raines Station is called home by many good law abiding mothers, father, sisters, and brothers. Those great people do not wake up seeking to cause harm to the men and women. God created nor do they desire to be harmed by anyone.

“CPOW is coming forward to peacefully protest the violence that is happening in our community and city. We want our sons and daughters to live and not die by senseless gun violence that causes pain and trauma to our community leaving us without the victim and the perpetrator.

“You and I are the change Memphis has been waiting for. Together, we can solve the problems we can’t solve alone.”

The group announced further action via a Community Prayer Vigil to be held on the afternoon of Friday, September 2, with the venue to be announced.