Yoga with goats at Marquette Park this Saturday. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
Barbecue Weekend May means barbecue in Memphis, and this year we have two whole barbecue festivals on the same weekend: Memphis in May’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest and the new SmokeSlam. Read about what to expect from the two festivals in our barbecue cover story here.
SmokeSlam, Tom Lee Park, Thursday-Saturday, May 16-May 18, $15.13-$544.74
DreamFest Weekend 13 Minglewood Hall | Friday, May 17, 6 p.m. Overton Park Shell | Saturday-Sunday, May 18-19, 6 p.m. A dream is a wish your heart makes, and if your heart wished for a weekend dedicated to music, music, and more music, well, you’re in luck: This weekend is DreamFest Weekend, which means three days of free music for the whole family. Find out more here.
The ’Vous Museum of Science & History Friday, May 17, 7 p.m. Catch a screening of The ’Vous documentary about the world-famous Memphis barbecue institution and celebrity attraction The Rendezvous as it faces unprecedented change as the legendary waiters retire and family business moves into a third generation. A Q&A and tasting will follow the screening. Tickets are $12/adults, $10/seniors (60+), and $10/youth (3-12). Purchase tickets here. (Read more about the film in Chris McCoy’s article here.)
Experience Memphis Gardens: Cooper-Young Garden Walk Cooper-Young Historic District Saturday-Sunday, May 18-19, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Embark on the first garden tours of the Experience Memphis Gardens citywide garden walk with the Cooper-Young Garden Walk. The two-day event will feature over 100 gardens, speakers, musicians, and garden vendors throughout the vibrant, historic neighborhood. Tickets for the CY Garden Walk will also get you into the other 250-plus amazing gardens throughout the Greater Memphis area that are a part of the monthlong Experience Memphis Gardens tour. And they cost only $26 for 26 days of fun. Learn more about the event here.
AAPI Heritage Month Celebration Bert Ferguson Community Center Saturday, May 18, 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. May is Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, so explore the rich and diverse cultures of Memphis’ local Asian ethnic communities. Enjoy live performances, cultural activities, and food. This event highlights the diversity of Memphis with representation from Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Pakistani communities.
Comic Con Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library Saturday, May 18, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Fans of comics, movies, anime, manga, video games and pop culture in general will want to check out Memphis Public Libraries’ second annual Comic Con, where you can meet Matt Wagner and Gene Ha as well as more than 50 local vendors selling art, comics, toys, prints, graphic novels, art supplies, knickknacks, and more. There will also be free graphic novels for the first 200 in attendance — we’re talking Grendel, Mae, Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, One Punch Man, Demon Slayer, Heartstopper, Hilo, Nimona and My Hero Academia, to name just a few. There will also be arts and crafts, face painting for the little ones, and food trucks. Trivia will take place at 11 a.m. as will a children’s story time, followed by a Super Smash Bros. Tournament at noon. Matt Wagner and Gene Ha will participate in a panel discussion at 1 p.m., and you can register for a cosplay contest at 2 p.m.
Uptown Arts Festival Grind City Brewing Company Saturday, May 18, noon-7 p.m. Grind City’s yard will transform into Uptown’s very own art festival. Local artists and businesses from and near the neighborhood will be selling food, goods, and high-quality art. Experience the Uptown neighborhood, local artists, live music, local food and dry goods, games, freebies, and beer of course. It’s free to enter, $10 to park.
Goat Yoga in the Park Marquette Park Saturday, May 18, 1-3 p.m. Enjoy a relaxing afternoon of yoga and cute goats from 901Goats from Walkapony Goat Ranch at this fun, free event hosted by Play Your Park. There are two time slots for Goat Yoga in the Park: 1 to 2 p.m. and 2 to 3 p.m. No pre-registration is required. Slots are first come, first served to the first 80 people at the event. This event is for ages 10 and up.
City of Memphis’ 205th Birthday Celebration Overton Square Wednesday, May 22, 6 p.m. Happy birthday to you, Memphis! That’s right: Overton Square is celebrating Memphis’ 205th birthday with a performance by jazz and blues artist Jeremy Shrader, an Elvis impersonator, plus a birthday balloon photo opp and Memphis themed treats for sale at 17 Berkshire.
Concerts in The Grove: Chinese Connection Dub Embassy The Grove at Germantown Performing Arts Center Thursday, May 23, 6:30 p.m. GPAC will have music, food trucks, and corn hole, all in the beautiful, park-like setting of the TruGreen Lawn. Cocktails and drink specials are available on the First Horizon Foundation Plaza. Bring your lawn chairs and blankets. Outside food and drinks are permitted at Concerts in The Grove. Gates open at 5:30 p.m. Admission is free.
There’s always something happening in Memphis. See a full calendar of events here.Submit events here or by emailing calendar@memphisflyer.com.
Jerry's Sno Cones owner David Acklin in a 2021 photo (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Owner David Acklin says Jerry’s Sno Cones is not coming back to its 1657 Wells Station location.
“I’m not going to re-open Jerry’s there,” Acklin says. “We’re going to move forward.”
Acklin, who still owns the Jerry’s Sno Cones at 1601 Bonnie Lane in Cordova, won’t say why he closed the old location. “I really can’t say anything about anything. I’m just taking the high road. We needed a change and we’re moving forward with Cordova.”
Asked if it was a safety issue, Acklin says, “I never had any problems. But I may be a different kind of guy. I’ve been in Memphis for 54 years and I love Memphis.”
Acklin believes the store opened in 1967. In a 2021 interview in the Memphis Flyer, Acklin says, “I used to go there when I was a teenager.”
He got to know the owners L. B. and Cordia Clifton, whose son Jerry was the namesake of the business. Acklin, who was working at a printing company at the time, worked for the Cliftons for free after he got off his other job.
Acklin eventually bought Jerry’s Sno Cones, but he continued to work at the printing company. As he says in the interview, “I used to change clothes at red lights. Take off my tie and put on my shorts … I used to wear penny loafers. I’d pull my socks off and slide into my flip-flops.”
There would already be a line when he got there at 3:30 p.m., he told the Flyer.
And in the interview Acklin recalls going outside one July. “The line went straight out around the sign and two houses down.”
He asked a youngster in line to count the people: there were 220 lined up.
Acklin is going to ask customers in the next couple of weeks to begin voting on another location for Jerry’s Sno Cones. “We’ll pick it out by people coming to Jerry’s and voting.
“We’ll have a list. Like Arlington, East Memphis, Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett — whatever areas we feel like a lot of our customers come from. Maybe let them nominate an area.”
So, will the old Jerry’s Sno Cone location become something else? Maybe a cafe? “Man, I guess anything is possible.”
Jerry’s Sno Cones will close its original location in the Berclair/Nutbush area.
The iconic Memphis establishment announced the move on Facebook Wednesday afternoon. They gave no reason for the closing. But they said the Jerry’s location at 1601 Bonnie Lane in Cordova is open.
Jerry’s Sno Cone’s via Facebook
“We are grateful for the past memories and are looking forward to new family memories at our Cordova location,” the owners said in the post. “We will be voting soon on a new location. God loves you and so does Jerry’s Sno Cones!”
Taj Mahal appears in holographic form. (Photo: Courtesy Blues Foundation)
The Blues Foundation’s Blues Hall of Fame Museum has unveiled a brand-new interactive hologram of blues musician Taj Mahal, making it the first museum in Tennessee and second in the United States to have a full-body hologram, says Blues Foundation CEO and president Kimberly Horton.
Horton says when she found out about Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame’s hologram of philanthropist Ernie Boch Jr., whose personal collection of guitars were on display at the museum at the time, she knew she “had to have one for Memphis.”
The Blues Foundation’s first hologram features Blues Hall of Famer Taj Mahal. “It’s him. Like he’s actually sitting in there, actually sitting in the [holographic] box,” Horton says. “You could actually have a full conversation.”
That means that guests can ask whatever question comes to mind, and the hologram, which has been trained with AI, will generate a response as Mahal himself would answer. “We had Taj Mahal sit still for 12 hours one day and just asked him all these questions, about 250 questions, and filmed him while he was doing that,” Horton explains. “So this is his voice. And these are his mannerisms. These are his hand movements.”
From the beginning, Horton says she knew Mahal would be a part of the debut of the permanent exhibition, which will spotlight other artists in the future. “He’s just great,” she says. “When it comes to music, he’s multi-Grammy-winning. He has touched every genre of the industry. He’s got his hand in everything. Taj will be 82 this month, so it was imperative that he was the first person that was in the hologram.”
After all, Horton says, “If you want to preserve something or preserve history, then what better way to do it?”
The Blues Hall of Fame Museum is located at 421 South Main Street. Admission is $10/adults, $8/students, and free for kids 12 and under. There is an additional charge of $10 to interact with the hologram. Museum hours are Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“Covid met January 6th. They slept together and gave birth to the anti-Christ of anger, fear, distrust, disinformation, and trauma that plagues America to this day.”
That was an X/Tweet on my timeline last week. I hope it was written by a human and not a bot because it reflects a very human feeling I’ve been trying to get my head around. I think we’re in the midst of one of the most disordered eras in the history of this country, comparable to our great wars, our Great Depression, our presidential assassinations.
We are riding a chaotic chariot of change with no idea of where or when it stops. We have come to a place where we can’t even agree that the sky is above us, that day follows night. Facts are fungible. Everyone is entitled to their own facts because you can “prove” anything. Politics and religion have become intertwined and irresolutely tribal. Disinformation is the currency of the realm, a bloated ratatouille of content — true, false, and irrelevant — that overloads our brains. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X, Truth Social, even such presumably benign sites as Nextdoor have become infiltrated with the madness of our political discourse. Every commenter is a pundit or a cynic or an expert … on everything. Crime is everywhere. Democrats are pedophiles. Trump shits his pants. Biden can’t walk. Trump has dementia. Be very afraid. Be very confused.
Former President Trump’s rally in New Jersey last Saturday provides a perfect template for what I’m talking about. Prior to the event, Trump touted that there would be 80,000 people there, so that number became the focal point. When Trump began speaking, pictures from Trump supporters, mostly taken from the stage area or from the crowd, were cited as evidence that Trump had drawn at least 100,000 people. “Let’s see Biden draw a crowd like this!” they said.
Then photos from anti-Trumpers appeared that purported to show a much smaller crowd. Next came photos of a full Michigan football stadium and of a Taylor Swift concert. “This is what 100,000 people looks like,” said these posters. “Compare this to photos of Trump’s pathetic rally. Hah!”
Not to be outdone, an aerial photo of 400,000 people appeared under the headline: “Trump Draws Massive Crowd to New Jersey Rally.” Roger Stone and lots of other Trump supporters retweeted it. But the picture turned out to be an aerial shot of a 1994 Rod Stewart concert in Brazil. Boo! Fake news! Then video appeared of Trump speaking to a small crowd, possibly near the end of his speech. No way, said his supporters. It was “AI-generated and put out by Antifa.” Or something.
So how many people came to hear Trump speak? Pick a number. There’s “proof” of everything, so everything is meaningless. And maybe that’s the point: Flood the zone with so much conflicting information that none of it can be trusted, that it all can be discounted.
How did we go from a country that elected a centrist African American 12 years ago to one that actually appears capable of reelecting an amoral, foul-mouthed, self-absorbed misogynist who took away women’s bodily autonomy, stole federal classified documents (and probably sold them), slept with porn stars, botched the handling of a pandemic that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, and, oh yeah, tried to overturn a presidential election?
What. The. Hell?
Normally when a time of upheaval is over, a country will celebrate. There are parades, a coming-together, a time of kumbaya. Americans have had no downtime in the past eight years, no room to reflect — just unrelenting chaos. The Covid pandemic continued implacably, even as the 2020 political campaign unfolded. People were still dying by the thousands, while two major party candidates debated and campaigned in the midst of it. Remember the masked appearances and debates? Even masks and vaccines became political. So exhausting.
Then the election happened and Trump lost (really), and as most predicted, he claimed it was all rigged. Phony Venezuelan voting machines! Mule teams! Crooked election workers! A minute later and it was January 6th, and we all watched an attempted insurrection in real time. It’s all been too much. Too many bad actors, too many alternate facts that created an information overload, one that allowed a man with no moral core to attain the highest office in the land. And to possibly do it again.
Emcee Otis Sanford, Buddy Chapman, and David Wayne Brown at Brooks book-reading event (Photo: Jackson Baker)
As the Greater Memphis community continues to try to sort out whether it is in the grip of a crime wave or whether, as a recent Crime Commission report indicates, crime statistics are actually on the wane, the subject continues to dominate local attention.
One matter that has remained more or less on the back burner is that of Mayor Paul Young’s proposed director of public safety, a pending position (sometimes referred to in administrative ranks, somewhat less reassuringly, as “public safety advisor”).
Young suggested the new office back in January after the city council declined to endorse his proffered reappointment of C.J. Davis as police chief, and the new mayor, in response, fell back on the expedient of keeping Davis on as interim chief.
From the beginning, it was uncertain whether the proposed directorship was to be a fundamentally new concept or a retooling of a dormant position. Compounding the confusion was the fact that, at some hard-to-pinpoint period in the administration of former Mayor Jim Strickland, the existing title of police director had somehow morphed back into that of police chief, a development making Davis’ currently impermanent position seem all the more tenuous.
But now the suggestion comes from administration sources that the task of filling the new position — however it is to be titled and whatever its scope — is in the “latter” stages and may be just around the corner, with a narrowing down of prospects by mid-June and a likely appointment by July 1st, in time for the new fiscal year.
Meanwhile, coincidentally and maybe usefully, the individual most identified in Memphis history with the erstwhile rank of police director, E. Winslow “Buddy” Chapman, has published his memoir, under the title of Call Me Director: Memoir of a Police Reformer.
Chapman’s service at the helm of city law enforcement came during the administration of former Mayor Wyeth Chandler (1972-1982), and it coincided with conditions that were not unlike those of our present moment.
Mayor Young’s apparent intention with his new directorship is to establish a wide-ranging civilian control over police authority, and that was the mission also of Chapman, who had to fight a protracted battle with the good-old-boy regime of then-Police Chief Bill Crumby to achieve, finally, a workable dominance over local law-enforcement policy.
As Chapman writes in his book, and as he related to an appreciative audience in a book-signing and reading at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art on Monday night, the issues he had to deal with were very like our own these days.
They included instances of police brutality, racism in the MPD ranks, severe financial shortages and under-staffing, and the imperatives of federal supervision. He also had to face down and survive simultaneous police and fire strikes in the crisis year of 1978.
What he strove to impose as an alternative to established practices was a form of what we would call today community policing. And, as he ended his tenure and resumed civilian status, he founded the local CrimeStoppers organization, which he ran as director until recently when he turned the reins over to David Wayne Brown, the co-author and collaborator of his memoir.
The book grapples with the conundrum of finding the right balance between carrot and stick in law enforcement — same as Mayor Young and his soon-to-be public safety director will shortly face — and is well worth their reading and ours.
May means barbecue in Memphis. It’s like something comes over this city. This year we have two whole barbecue festivals on the same weekend: Memphis in May’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest and the new SmokeSlam. (How will Memphis eat so much barbecue?) Our food writer Michael Donahue profiled two barbecue joints in his food column this week: Pollard’s Bar-B-Que and Jimbo’s Brickhouse BBQ (see page 25). He rarely ever does a double-feature, but the barbecue got to him, it pulled at him. (How did he eat so much barbecue?) And then the writers at the Flyer simultaneously started craving barbecue — like some sort of supernatural phenomenon — and all they could think about was barbecue, barbecue, barbecue. Or is it barbeque? BBQ? Bar-b-que? Our editors argued; tears were shed. Barbecue was expensed, for the sake of journalism. We had to capitalize on this madness and make a whole barbecue issue. We had no choice; we had to share what we learned. So please read about the barbecue places and dishes that have made us go mad with gluttony. Join us, won’t you?
Arnold’s Smokehouse (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
Arnold’s Smokehouse
Located in the Castalia Heights neighborhood, a few blocks behind the Kellogg’s plant, Arnold’s Smokehouse is off the beaten path, but well worth the effort to find. It’s in a non-pretentious building, hard by some railroad tracks, making it clear Arnold’s isn’t about atmosphere; it’s all about the food. And the food is very good.
The owners are sister and brother Ivy and Shanon Arnold, and they have each created their own extensive menu. Ivy’s is vegan, and features creative smoked ingredients including jackfruit, cauliflower, mushrooms, grilled veggies, tomatoes, greens, pasta, gumbo, and, of course, tofu. Shanon’s menu is more traditional and meat-friendly. Both are stellar and varied, with some ambitious and unexpected offerings. But this story is about barbecue, so we went the more traditional route.
We started with the cauliflower puffs and green beans as sides, and went with the pulled pork sandwich and pulled pork fajitas as our main dishes. Everything was superb. In fact, I’d rank both the sandwich and the fajitas as among the best I’ve eaten in my 30 years here in Barbecue-Ville. Seriously delicious food, y’all.
A little logistical advice: Because of the varied menu, I suspect, our wait time was around 30 minutes after ordering. It wasn’t unpleasant. We chatted with Willie Arnold, the father of the owners, and some of the patrons and watched an episode of Martin, but next time, I’ll probably call in our order ahead of time or use DoorDash. However you do it, you’d be wise to give Arnold’s Smokehouse a try.
— Bruce VanWyngarden
2019 East Person Avenue, 901-922-5950
Payne’s BBQ Tacos at Molly’s La Casita (Photo: Chris McCoy)
Payne’s BBQ Tacos at Molly’s La Casita
Most of the other restaurants in this story are devoted to barbecue. Molly’s La Casita is not. It’s a Midtown staple, long known for its hearty Tex-Mex fare, including some of the best refried beans you will ever experience. One of the newest additions to the menus fits into the Memphis barbecue story. It’s a collaboration between two Memphis culinary institutions.
“We bought the restaurant about three years ago,” says Jessica Cornell, owner of Molly’s La Casita. “We were just ordering our pork through one of the vendors. I was like, we’re in Memphis. We have so many barbecue options that are made locally. We should try to do something with a local restaurant. Ron Payne is a regular customer. He comes in here once a week and I approached him and asked him what he thought about us using his barbecue pork for our tacos. He thought it was a great idea. So now that’s what we do. It goes in the pork tacos and our pork tamales.”
The Payne’s Pork Tacos differ from the classic pork tacos only in the protein. The dinner portion is two tacos, served with soft tortilla or crunchy shell, with a sprinkling of onion and cilantro. The shredded, slow cooked pork barbecue elevates the dish way beyond the average taco. It’s a match made on Madison Avenue, which is kind of ironic, given that Molly’s original location was on Lamar Avenue, just around the corner from Payne’s.
“Everyone loves them,” says Cornell. “We sell out of the pork all the time. Every time he [Ron Payne] comes, he has to bring us more pork.”
— Chris McCoy
2006 Madison Avenue, 901-726-1873
Eddie “Bossman” Patterson (Photo: Michael Donahue)
Bossman Pit Stop
Eddie “Bossman” Patterson’s logo is “Come Get Lost in the Sauce.” It’s on the back of the T-shirts for his Bossman Pit Stop.
And that’s easy to do. I recently tried one of Patterson’s pork barbecue sandwiches for the first time. There’s so much going on with those delectable flavors. I asked him if it had buffalo sauce in it. He says no. He uses Cattlemen’s barbecue sauce as a base and then adds his own ingredients.
A native of Tunica, Mississippi, who grew up in Memphis, Patterson tells me he learned how to barbecue from his mother and grandmother. He also learned barbecuing when he worked at the old Papa Chuck’s BBQ on Getwell Street. Papa Chuck’s later moved to the Airways location, which Patterson bought a year after the owner died.
The NBA player Antonio Burks gave him his nickname 19 years ago, Patterson says. “He said I was ‘the boss’ in barbecue. He called me ‘The Bossman.’” They both attended Booker T. Washington High School, he says.
Patterson says he barbecues every day. He goes to bed at 4 a.m, takes his grandson to school the next morning, and then at some point starts barbecuing. “I barbecue for eight hours, put it to the side, and let it do its own thing.”
The secret to good barbecue? “Cook it slow in its own juices.”
Patterson, who also does catering for businesses and events and also operates a food truck, says he eats barbecue every day. “I have to test it to make it right.”
His wife, Patricia, isn’t too happy with him not getting enough sleep, Patterson says. “She’s the ‘Bosslady.’”
— Michael Donahue
2251 Airways Boulevard, 901-743-5426
BBQ Tofu Nachos at RP Tracks (Photo: Abigail Morici)
BBQ Tofu Nachos at RP Tracks
I’ll be honest with y’all because that’s what journalism is all about: honesty. I wasn’t looking forward to this issue because I don’t eat meat; therefore, I don’t eat barbecue. So I was planning on playing hooky and just not writing anything for this cover story — not because I’m a slacker but because I’m picky (I swear I’m not just saying that to keep my job). But then I remembered that I once heard that RP Tracks had BBQ Tofu Nachos, and I eat tofu and I eat tortilla chips. Have I eaten them together? No, but, hey, I have a job to do.
So I moseyed on down to RP Tracks — which, no, isn’t a barbecue joint, I’ve been informed, but it’s a place where this non-barbecue-eater can eat some barbecue, so deal with it. To my surprise, the menu has quite a few barbecue tofu options — the nachos plus a quesadilla and a sandwich — so I had choices for barbecue which, normally, I don’t. And that was kinda nice (and they have other barbecue meat, but I don’t care about that).
I stuck with the nachos for my visit, and they did not disappoint. They came topped with cheese (good), lettuce (good), jalapenos (I didn’t eat), and sour cream (good). I got the black bean chili on the side because, like I said, I’m picky and just don’t like black bean chili, but my boyfriend does and he gave it a thumbs-up. Now, for the pièce de résistance, the barbecue tofu — the rating? Pretty dang good. Cooked just right — not chewy, not mushy, perfect, dare I say. Since I’ve never had “real” barbecue, I can’t make any comparisons, but the flavor was like barbecue chips, especially when you put it on a tortilla chip, which, duh, makes sense. (That was an embarrassingly late-in-life epiphany for me.)
All in all, with this being my first foray eating barbecue in Memphis, I’d say RP Tracks serves up a great vegetarian/vegan/pescatarian option. Try it. I did. And this picky eater liked it.
— Abigail Morici
3547 Walker Avenue, 901-327-1471
Cozy Corner (Photo: Alex Greene)
Cozy Corner
When I dine at Cozy Corner, my longtime go-to barbecue sandwich joint, I think one thing: savory. While many of the slow-cooked meats around town have flavor profiles leaning more towards a vinegary edge or a sweet edge, I feel that Cozy Corner approaches the great quality recognized by Japanese culture: umami. Yes, there is a very subtle sweetness to their sauce, balanced with an equally subtle touch of vinegar, but those are mere elements in a whole that’s far greater than the sum of its parts.
That earthy, slow-roasted whole comes through in every delectable bite of a Cozy Corner barbecue sandwich, complemented with a bit of slaw, of course. Unlike many joints offering pulled pork, the meat here is thinly sliced, but the difference in texture matters little to this diner. It’s the flavor profile that’s key. And that’s also true of Cozy Corner’s ribs.
Served (of course) with slices of the whitest of white breads, the meat on these ribs practically falls off the bone. Perhaps one key to that is the Chicago-style smoking technique they use, with the coals placed a bit further from the grill. Starting the meat on the lowest rack and then progressively moving upward increases its time in that luscious smoky environment.
Aside from their classic ribs and sandwiches, Cozy Corner is also famous for their whole Cornish hens, whole chickens, and barbecued bologna sandwiches. But it’s at Thanksgiving that they really shine: My family always pre-orders a whole smoked turkey from them that never disappoints.
— Alex Greene
735 North Parkway, 901-527-9158
………………………………………………………………………………………………
On the Queue for the Weekend
Barbecue smoke plumed blue and beautiful (and mouth-watering) over Liberty Park Wednesday and another will rise Thursday right on the river.
Two barbecue festivals do it low and slow this year in Memphis. The Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest (WCBCC) opened to the public Wednesday. SmokeSlam, the brand-new festival, was slated to open doors at Tom Lee Park Thursday afternoon.
The Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest returns to Liberty Park. (Photo: Memphis In May via Facebook)
Everyone used to just call the WCBCC “Barbecue” or “Barbecue Fest.” Time will tell what shorthand or nickname will arise with two contests in town at the same time.
One thing is the same, though. Memphis in May has attracted some of the biggest, most-winning teams in barbecue. The roster shows Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q competing in shoulder. Barbecue celebrity Myron Mixon’s Jack’s Old South team will compete in whole hog. Sweet Swine O’ Mine is back cooking shoulder.
In all, Memphis in May boasts about 130 teams from 22 states and five foreign countries. All of them compete in the traditional categories of ribs, shoulder, and hog, as well as hot wings, sauce, and “Anything But Pork.” Winners will take home a share of $150,000 in prize money.
Down on the river, SmokeSlam’s three-day event promises a “fan-first” experience. This means barbecue, of course, but also fans can shop the National Barbecue & Grilling Association (NBBQA) BBQ Bazaar, a central marketplace with a wide array of products from celebrity chefs and other curated goods. The marketplace will also feature live demos from big-name pitmasters like Carey Bringle, Thyron Mathews, Ray Sheehan, Melissa Cookston, and more.
Other high-profile pitmasters will show their stuff at the B&B Charcoal: Live Fire Extravaganza. This will feature demos and live-fire samples from pros like Al Frugoni (Open Fire Cooking), Derek Wolf (Over the Fire Cooking), and others.
The biggest buzz around SmokeSlam in Memphis has been the music lineup. It includes Tone Loc, Young MC, War, The Bar-Kays, and St. Paul and the Broken Bones. Every night ends with a fireworks show.
SmokeSlam attracted some heavy-hitting teams, too: 10 Bones BBQ from Nesbit, Memphis-loved caterers Hog Wild BBQ, and Nashville’s barbecue-famous Peg Leg Porkers. In all, nearly 60 teams will compete. They’re mostly from the Memphis region but the contest pulled in teams from South Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona, and elsewhere.
SmokeSlam boasts the biggest purse in barbecue competition history. Teams will share $250,000 in prize money.
— Toby Sells
World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, Liberty Park, Wednesday-Saturday, May 15-May 18, $15.00-$549, memphisinmay.org
SmokeSlam, Tom Lee Park, Thursday-Saturday, May 16-May 18, $15.13-$544.74, smokeslam.com
Kingdom of the Planet of Apes is a fun summer blockbuster.
When French writer Pierre Boulle wrote La Panéte des singes in 1963, it was meant as a wry commentary on human hubris. His most successful book to date was a war story which was adapted by director David Lean as The Bridge on the River Kwai. Boulle, who didn’t speak English, won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 1957. His novel, which was translated in the UK as Monkey Planet, became an unexpected hit in England, and was promptly optioned by 20th Century Fox. Boulle thought the book was unfilmable, so he was shocked when Planet of the Apes became a huge hit in 1968. At the Academy Awards that year, Planet of the Apes beat 2001: A Space Odyssey for Best Costume Design. (Legend has it that many Academy voters chose PotA because they thought Kubrick had used real apes in 2001’s “Dawn of Man” sequence.)
The enduring vision of Boulle’s premise has echoed across the decades, with five films and two television series in the 20th century and, beginning with a Tim Burton-directed remake in 2001, for films in this century. In this future world, the humans, who have lost the power of speech and reason, live in captivity and servitude to a society of primates. Gorillas are the warrior class, orangutans are the priestly class, and chimpanzees are scientists.
The last three PotA films, beginning with Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011, tell the story of how our world got that way. A medical test chimp named Caesar (Andy Serkis) is infected with an experimental virus, designed to treat Alzheimer’s disease, that increases his intelligence. But when the virus escapes from the lab, it has the opposite effect on humans, and a global pandemic ensues which threatens the existence of humanity. Cloverfield director Matt Reeves helmed Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes, drawing a long and complex portrait of Caesar as a wise leader of his people — uh, apes — while a crippled humanity fights for survival. Reeves evolved a patient, detailed style, which proved to be perfect for this version of PotA, but turned positively turgid when he took on the superhero genre in The Batman.
Wes Ball of Maze Runner fame took over for the latest film, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which picks up the story many generations after the death of Caesar. Noa (Owen Teague) is the son of the chief of Eagle Clan, a group of chimps who live in harmony with nature. When he leads an expedition to gather new falcon eggs to raise in the village aviary, he strays into the forbidden Valley Beyond. When he returns, he is followed by a group of masked gorillas armed with electric lances. Eagle Clan, having never seen electricity before, is quickly overwhelmed by the raiders and kidnapped for parts unknown. Noa escapes and sets out to find his stolen tribe. Along the way, he meets Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan who belongs to The Order of Caesar, a monastic order dedicated to their namesake’s two moral laws: Apes Together Strong, and Ape No Kill Ape. Together, they discover Mae (Freya Allan), a human who, they soon learn, can talk. They track the mysterious raiders until they are ambushed on a bridge and dragged back to an armed camp on the shoreline. There, Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) is trying to break through a huge vault door set in the side of a sea cliff. He believes there is game-changing human technology behind the door, and that Mae knows how to open it.
Kingdom is a much more conventional sci-fi adventure story than Reeves’ meditations on the responsibilities of leadership. Its sweeping vistas of Los Angeles in ruins make for some compelling cinema, and Ball knows how to concoct a good slam-bang action sequence. Unlike the old days of Roddy McDowall emoting behind a thick mask, these apes are all motion-capture CGI creations, which sometimes causes confusion, as Noa’s chimp brethren all kinda look alike. Teague’s Noa makes a serviceable and pleasingly vulnerable hero, but he can’t live up to the masterful mo-cap performance of Andy Serkis. Sure, it’s blander than its predecessors, but taken on its own terms, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes remains a fun summer blockbuster.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Now playing Multiple locations
America’s largest garden walk with over 300 gardens takes place every summer in Buffalo, New York, bringing in more than 60,000 visitors from all over the U.S., Canada, and beyond. Kim Halyak, co-chair of the Cooper-Young Garden Club, wants Memphis to be the Buffalo of the South. “I want people to say I’m tired to go to Buffalo,” she says. “I’m going to Memphis.”
And Halyak’s goal isn’t too ambitious, it seems. Already, this year’s Experience Memphis Gardens citywide garden walk, which Halyak helped organized, will be the largest garden walk in the South at some 270 green spaces in neighborhoods across the Mid-South. The walk, which kicks off on Saturday, May 18th, with the annual Cooper-Young Garden Walk, will span over six weeks through June 30th, on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
“Nine years ago, we started [the Cooper-Young Garden Walk] with only 23 gardens,” explains Halyak. “At the time that we were only a one-day event, but we have really grown. And then last year we decided to go citywide, so we reached out to the city and said, ‘Hey, show us your gardens.’ And there were people from neighborhoods all over Memphis [who volunteered] — Colonial Acres, Berclair, Central Gardens, Frayser, Raleigh, High Point Terrace, I mean all over.”
The tour will showcase a wide range of spaces — beginner gardens, highly manicured lawns, farms, community gardens, nurseries, vegetable gardens, and so on. “We have a tour of Ounce of Hope’s aquaponic farm,” Halyak says. “We have a Master Gardener garden tour. We have gardens in Raleigh that we’ve never had [on our tour]. We have Cancer Survivors Park, and, I have to tell you, I’ve lived here 40-some years and I had never been there before. So what we really want to do is say to people: ‘You live in Memphis, go explore Memphis, go see what Memphis has to offer.’ … I really do want people to fall back in love with Memphis.”
The walk, in a way, is an incentive to beautify the city, Halyak adds. “Everybody gets aware of, hey, we have company coming. They just go crazy with excitement, and you cannot believe the community [that comes with that]. People have gotten to know their neighbors. … I don’t want to reinvent the wheel and I want us to make Memphis better. So this year, we’re giving away $10,000 to the neighborhoods that were on the walk last year. And when this walk is over, then I hope to give $20,000 away to the neighborhoods that were on the walk for beautification projects.”
Tickets for the Experience Memphis Gardens walk can be purchased at the Cooper-Young Gazebo on the day of the Cooper-Young Garden Walk sponsored by Urban Earth (May 18th-May 19th), at Urban Earth, at Ounce of Hope, at the Women’s Exchange, and online at experiencememphisgardens.org, where you can find a full schedule and more information.
Experience Memphis Gardens, Various Locations, May 18-June 30, $26.
The play opens in the kitchen and stays there for almost the entirety of the show. (Photos: Sean Moore)
It’s difficult to imagine a more Memphis-centric theater outing than the opening night of The Circuit Playhouse’s production of The Hot Wing King — written by Memphis native Katori Hall, performed by a cast of six Memphis residents, set in Memphis, and attended by none other than the mayor of Memphis.
If the audience’s response is anything to go by, this show’s success could be described not by a traditional two thumbs-up, but rather by a rapid-fire volley of finger snaps. The Hot Wing King serves up not only an often-hilarious look at the bonds and squabbles of a found family, but also a refreshing, unapologetic depiction of gay Black men comfortably presenting a full range of everything non-toxic masculinity can be.
This play has a bit of a sitcom-like feel to it, right down to Andrew Mannion’s scene design of a slightly upscale lived-in Memphis house. The play opens in the kitchen and we stay there for almost the entirety of the show, but you’ll find no complaints here as the set dressing was beautifully homey.
The Hot Wing King follows Cordell, a St. Louis native who recently relocated to Memphis to move in with his boyfriend, Dwayne. Their cohabitation seems like it’s off to a rocky start despite their obvious affection and deep feeling for one another. Cordell, who is currently looking for a job, seems to be rubbed the wrong way by the idea of being supported by another person. Thus, he pours himself obsessively into his hobby, trying to win the annual Memphis “Hot Wang Festival.” Much of the play’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime is taken up with the intricacies of the cooking, prepping, marinating, etc. of the wings by the couple and their two close friends, but the real meat in this production lies in the struggle of the characters’ internal battles of guilt and accountability, and of the external conflicts that subsequently stem from within.
One such major conflict arises when Dwayne’s nephew EJ and EJ’s father TJ make unexpected appearances in the middle of the festival prep. Sixteen-year-old EJ is in need of a place to stay, and as his mother, Dwayne’s sister, died after being restrained by police (police that Dwayne had called for a welfare check) almost exactly two years ago, it’s understandable why Dwayne wants to take EJ in. At least, it’s understandable to the audience. Cordell, on the other hand, is still struggling with his discordant relationship with his own adult children, who don’t know that he divorced their mother in order to pursue a relationship with Dwayne.
The situation is messy, yet it has an air of familiarity to it that most audience members will probably be able to relate to. Anyone who has been through great loss will understand that though everyday events and emotions are a necessity for navigating daily life, the pain is never too far away. While the dialogue occasionally drifts into somewhat unrealistically poetic expressions of this sort of grief and pain, the cast carries it off well. The jump between comedic hijinks and somber self-reflection doesn’t feel quite as stark as it could, when the actors are performing with such open honesty.
What makes this play truly special and important is the matter-of-fact presentation of queer Black men who are completely at ease with their sexuality. As a straight white woman, I can only imagine what it would mean to see that kind of representation onstage to a person struggling with their own sexual identity. What I especially appreciated was Katori Hall’s method of revealing the characters’ struggles after we had been introduced to their confidence. Again, I have only imagination and empathy to go off of here, but I think seeing these characters being their full authentic selves would be inspiring to young queer people; to see that they, too, overcame struggles to get to that point could only be incredibly validating.
When it comes to serving up quality theater, The Hot Wing King has everything to offer: heart, saucy exchanges, slapstick comedy, and even redemption.
