Author: Alexandra Pusateri

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q&A with Gina Sweat

In December, newly elected Mayor Jim Strickland appointed longtime Memphis Fire Department employee Gina Sweat as the new director, replacing former Director Alvin Benson.

Sweat, the department’s first female director, has been a firefighter for 23 years, rising through the ranks since 1992. Strickland noted that Sweat was chosen for the job “on her merits and her dedication to service” in a press conference announcing her position. The Flyer was able to catch up with Sweat for her thoughts on the new job.

— Alexandra Pusateri

Gina Sweat and Mayor Jim Strickland

Flyer: How does it feel being the first female fire director?

Gina Sweat: To be honest, it’s quite humbling. It wasn’t my goal to set off to be the first female fire director. I was just one of those people who came to work. My parents taught me from a very young age the value of hard work, that you earn what you get by working hard and applying yourself. That’s really been my whole approach to my career, because it was hard being a female and not being as physically strong as the men. So you have to find ways to work smarter. They could muscle through things, and I couldn’t.

I never set out to be a role model for women. I just set out to be the person who came to work and did what I was supposed to do. By doing that, and always applying myself, I find myself in this position today. It just shows you can work your way to the top. I think anyone can do what I’ve done. I’ve just been fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time and making sure I was making the right decisions.

Are you hoping to tackle any specific issues as fire director?

We have a great fire department here in the city of Memphis. We’ve had some morale issues, and some of those things I can’t do anything about. But I am going to listen to what’s going on in the field to try and find things I can do. Even if they’re small [things], just to let the firefighters know that I am paying attention and hearing them, just trying to find some little wins to let them know that I have their back.

I do want to find ways for us to become more engaged with the community, which is going to fall in line with the recruitment efforts we do. We’re looking at ways to engage our youth and introduce them earlier to these career opportunities that are open for them, putting them on a path so they’ll know how to become a firefighter.

Once we recruit the right people, we have to make sure they stay on the department. We are losing more firefighters than we have in the past, but I think if we can head that off before it gets out of hand, we’ll be in a much better place.

Where will you be focusing your recruitment efforts?

We’re going to focus our initial efforts in the city of Memphis and the metro area. I think it’s important to recruit people who have some ownership in the community: people who have family and ties to the community, their churches, schools. I think that’s going to help us with the retention part.

In the past, when they did go outside of the city, we got firefighters, but a lot of them didn’t stay. They got the experience here and went back home. Some of them did stay and became Memphians, but I feel strongly that we have people here in the city [who could work for the fire department]. We need to invest in our youth a little better, and we can find quality people here in our hometown.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Bartlett Pole Fitness Studio Offers Classes for Men

Nicki Dark spins around a pole. She’s using deep, sculpted, and meticulously worked muscles to control her movements. There’s much more to it than stripper-style pole dancing; what she’s doing, based on her muscle movement, is a feat of strength. It’s pole fitness.

Dark, whose real name is Nicole Bennett, is one of the few instructors in pole fitness who teach co-ed classes, much less have an all-male class. Since her studio in Bartlett, Nicki Dark Fitness, opened just over a year ago in 2014, her classes have grown to more than 50 students, many of them men.

Dark got into pole fitness, which builds upper- and lower-body strength through exercises performed on a vertical pole, about five years ago and quickly became enthralled.

“The difference between what I teach in pole fitness and pole dancing is technique,” Dark said. “I show my students how to build their foundation in order to create a beautiful home. Pole dancing is more how you decorate. It’s how creative you are with your technique.”

The Dark Spartan class at Nicki Dark Fitness is just for men.

That technical foundation she teaches — which Dark says is based on techniques developed by men in Russia — can lead students to national pole fitness competitions with the American Pole Fitness Association, which hosts national championships every year, or the Pole Sport Organization, which features competitions that can branch off into aerials and complex maneuvers.

“When I got into pole fitness, there weren’t really guys [doing it] in the city of Memphis,” she said. “We live in the Bible Belt, so pole fitness is already unorthodox. When I sought to get my certification, the majority of my trainers were male. So when I saw that, I said, ‘Wow, there are men who do want to do this and not look at it in a negative light.'”

The Dark Spartan classes cater to Dark’s male students, who develop muscles differently based on their physiology. It’s not unheard of for pole fitness classes at other studios to turn men away, particularly when female instructors may not be able to teach them correctly.

“Guys want to do it as much as girls do,” Dark said. “I do not discriminate against guys. They’re so welcome. My guys love it, because a lot of places are very uneasy about guys. On top of that, they don’t know how to actually teach them, because they’re not strong enough to accommodate what they need to learn based on their strength.”

The all-male classes focus far more on upper body strength than the all-female classes. During the co-ed classes, things are broken down for both.

“Believe it or not, pole fitness does not [require a lot of upper body strength],” she said. “The way I teach it, no, because I actually teach you how to build it during the classes.”

Since Dark has started her Dark Spartan classes, the number of men who have signed up has been slowly growing.

“It took a little while, because a lot of them were not allowed in certain places to do pole,” she said. “It’s amazing watching men do pole, because in Russia and Asia, they actually have more male polers than female polers. The pole I teach is more the strength and athleticism of it, not the seductive side of pole dancing.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Memphis Woman Launches “Period Panty” Business

Memphian Crissy Clements is offering women an eco-friendly, affordable alternative to disposable feminine hygiene products.

With companies like THINX — maker of absorbent “period panties” — popping up, some women are choosing to forego using disposable feminine products in favor of heavily lined underwear with moisture-wicking capabilities. Others are turning to them as a complement to disposable products.

Crissy Clements

But THINX are rather pricey, and Clements wanted to offer women a cheaper option. So she launched 4period.co, a Memphis-based online retailer of feminine hygiene undergarments. For comparison, a five-pack of 4period underwear costs $60, and a single pair runs $15, while the single pairs of THINX can cost up to $38.

Clements is the company’s sole employee. She took a few minutes to talk with the Flyer about her company. — Alexandra Pusateri

Flyer: Why did you start 4period?

Clements: Originally, I wanted to only make [and sell regular] black panties. I ended up getting hooked up with a manufacturer, and I was looking through their catalog for different styles. I found these period panties that were leak-proof. I arranged to get the samples sent, and I fell in love with them.

I was dumping water on them, thinking it was too good to be true. THINX has been doing this, and they have a little more variety with the styles that they offer. Of course, they have more funding. The problem is they are ridiculously expensive. Even for non-period underwear, I’m not going to pay $24 for one pair of panties. I wanted to offer women a cheaper alternative without giving up on quality.

What makes you different from other companies offering “period panties”?

I wanted to make sure I could provide the maximum amount of protection. My panties can hold half a cup of liquid. There’s front and back protection, which my competitors don’t have. Not selling them in packs is also ridiculous.

How do they work?

They’re 100 percent organic cotton on the outside, and the leak-guard layer is 100 percent sanitary. It’s totally safe for skin contact. You can wear them with or without a pad if you want to. It’s not chemically treated or anything. The leak-proof lining is so thin; it’s actually thinner than the regular gusset in your panties. The panties are absorbent, so you won’t bleed through your clothes.

What are the benefits of wearing these?

It saves women time by not needing to launder their sheets as often, and money, by not having to buy new panties as much. The panties, for me, have been a godsend, as someone who has developed an allergy to pads and tampons. There’s always a need to reduce waste, too. For instance, if you’re wearing the panties and you’re expecting your monthly visitor, you don’t have to put on a panty liner — [the panties are] reducing waste.

What’s next for 4period?

I’m actually hoping to do a bit of charity for incarcerated women. I know they can only get those cheap, cardboard-quality pads and tampons that don’t offer the protection.

Categories
News News Blog

IKEA Breaks Ground on First Store in Tennessee

Construction on the first IKEA store in Tennessee has begun, starting this morning with a celebratory ground-breaking at the site. When completed, the store will be 271,000 square feet and employ 225 workers.

The store, which will be the 43rd in the United States, is slated to open in fall 2016. It will have over 10,000 items for sale, three model home interiors, 50 room settings, a supervised children’s play area, and a 300-seat restaurant serving Swedish fare. The store also will feature a “Children’s IKEA” area, baby care rooms, and play areas to really bolster its family-friendly atmosphere.

The company’s road to construction was initially delayed through issues with the Shelby County Assessor Cheyenne Johnson, who re-evaluated the property IKEA now occupies as being $1.2 million more than originally thought. However, since a tax break deal with the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE), the company has moved forward with the construction and planning of the new store.

The store will be built in Wolfchase, on the southwestern side of Interstate 40, near the Germantown Parkway exit.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Treadwell Middle School Garden Gets Visit from USDA

CREDIT: Alexandra Pusateri

A group of students at Treadwell Middle School are getting a hands-on education in agriculture, nutrition, and the importance of community and teamwork through their school’s community garden. And that’s caught the attention of the federal government.

The school’s use of urban gardening as a learning tool and outreach program opened the door for a visit last week from Ann Bartuska, the deputy under secretary for the Department of Agriculture’s research, education, and economics programs.

She’s part of a task force to promote and advance urban gardening, and that brought her to Memphis to tour gardens at Treadwell, Jones Orchard, and Knowledge Quest, among others.

Alexandra Pusateri

USDA’s Ann Bartuska (in the red jacket) meets with Treadwell students.

“We’ve been trying to put [the Department of Agriculture’s programs] all together in urban areas because of the growth of interest and to respond to food deserts,” Bartuska said. “One way is through self-empowerment. Another way is through teaching kids science, technology, engineering, and math through gardening. All of this seems to come together in an urban community garden-type setting, so seeing these kinds of successes are really helpful.”

Daniel DeShon, a special education teacher, started the Green Thumbs 4H Garden Club at Treadwell more than two years ago. DeShon is a proponent of teaching kids about nutrition, which prompted the launch of the garden club.

That also prompted him to apply for a grant to install a salad bar in the cafeteria — one that would be filled with the bounties of the school’s community garden.

The 4-H and garden clubs at Treadwell joined forces for the garden. DeShon, who is also the adviser to the 4-H Club, was a horticulturalist for 30 years.

Brandasia Gooch, the president of the 4-H Club, loves working in the garden. (Her favorites are the strawberries and grapes.)

“I love to garden,” she said. “My auntie loves to garden, too. I love to practice in her yard. I just love it.”

The 4-H gardening club promotes parental involvement. Felisha Williams, Gooch’s mother, was a member of a 4-H Club when she was younger.

“I want her to go farther than I did, and I want her children to go farther than she did,” Williams said.

Nonprofits like The Kitchen Community have stepped in to help Treadwell with the community garden. The

nonprofit donated raised garden beds and benches to create a complete outdoor educational environment. The garden has received grants from Lowe’s and Memphis City Beautiful, and it continues to grow.

“It was very obvious that kids needed something else besides just sitting in the classroom,” DeShon said. “At the first project we had, six kids showed up. When we have a project now, we have as many as 80 kids show up. It became quickly obvious when we started working outside on Saturdays, kids would start pouring out of houses from the neighborhood into where we were working. They really wanted something to do. They were looking for something to do besides sit inside and play video games.”

These days, instead of watching basketball and football games together on Friday nights, many residents of the neighborhood around Treadwell are building up the community garden for everyone to enjoy.

“This is the power of community gardens,” Bartuska said. “It becomes a gathering place.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Bikesmith Opens Shop in Broad Avenue District

When Jim Steffen started fixing bicycles in the back of his Bikesmith truck, he noticed that many cyclists liked to stick around and watch the repair process. Now, they can watch the repairs and drink beer at the same time, and all in the comfort of a brick-and-mortar shop.

Steffen has expanded his mobile repair business into a shop on Hollywood, right in the heart of the Broad Avenue Arts District. In the new shop, customers can sip craft beers while they wait.

For years, Steffen’s Bikesmith truck, a converted freight truck, has been serving people in neighborhoods without bike shops. But the business’ growth over the past year warranted a new shop for Steffen, who got his start fixing bikes with the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy’s bike rental program.

With his Bikesmith truck, Steffen has been able to serve cyclists as far east as Collierville and in some locations in Mississippi.

A look inside the Bikesmith shop

“For some people, going to a bike shop can be a little intimidating,” Steffen said. “I think people get nervous when they go to a bike shop if they don’t know bikes. They just want it to work. I think having the truck took some of that anxiety out of people. A lot of people wanted to come on the truck and see what I was doing.”

Steffen says he’ll continue to operate his mobile business, but customers can also visit his brick-and-mortar shop. The new shop is in a renovated automotive garage, complete with repair racks and a bar. There’s also a patio and some green space in the back, which Steffen is considering adapting into a bike polo court or a “pump track,” a looping trail system for mountain bikes.

Visitors are invited to ask questions about their bikes and chat while their machinery is being worked on, and they can enjoy beers and sodas while they wait.

“With our repair stands, we have this bar with stools there,” he said. “When David [Evans] and I are working on your bike, you can sit there and watch us work on your bike. We wanted to have everything out in front so you can see it. We wanted to make it more than just a bike shop.”

Steffen and his wife have a history with Broad Avenue: They volunteered on the street when it was going through the city’s MEMFix revitalization program, and they participated in art walks.

With the implementation of the Hampline bike path along Broad, Steffen said the arts district seemed like an obvious choice.

“It’s really easy for people to get their bikes down here,” Steffen said. “It’s really close to [Overton Park]. You have the Hampline. We wanted to have a place where people can bike to the shop. I don’t think there’s another place in town that would be as perfect as this building is.”

At the Bikesmith shop, visitors can also purchase their own bicycles and bike accessories.

The shop is celebrating its grand opening on December 6th with food, beer, and a raffle giveaway for a kid’s bike.

Categories
News News Blog

University of Memphis Receives Grant to Improve Teacher Training

The University of Memphis College of Education will be receiving a grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve its teacher preparatory program.

The charity organization, which is based in Seattle, will give $34.7 million over three years to five Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers, meant to connect higher education institutions, preparation providers, and K-12 school systems in order to improve the education sector.

The University-School Partnerships for the Renewal of Educator Preparation (U.S. PREP) consortium is the official recipient of the grant, in which the University of Memphis is a partner university. The consortium is led by Texas Tech University and includes Southern Methodist University, the University of Houston, Southeastern Louisiana University, and Jackson State University.

“The partnership enables the U of M to collaborate with universities implementing similar changes,” said Dr. Ernest Rakow, interim dean of the College of Education. “The U.S. PREP coalition offers both a system of support and a space to learn from each other as we all strive to enhance our pre-service teacher education programs and prepare teachers who are culturally relevant, classroom-ready, and prepared to work in the communities the University serves and beyond.”

The University of Memphis will receive about $600,000 over three years.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Memphis Zoo Wraps Up 20-Year Master Plan

The Memphis Zoo will be entering a new era after the completion of its new hippopotamus exhibit, which is set to open in March 2016.

The exhibit is the last major project in the Zoo’s 20-year master plan. The Zoo has been redeveloping old exhibits and creating new ones since the late 1980s.

The Zambezi River Hippo Camp will not only provide a new home for the hippos, it will also showcase flamingos, crocodiles, and free-flying birds. The camp’s name comes from the Zambezi River, the fourth-longest river in Africa. The exhibit is modeled after a South African fishing village with a coffee plantation.

The Zoo’s overall master plan mostly focuses on large-scale immersion exhibits, which is the trend in zoos across the country. Newer exhibits, such as the China exhibit, Teton Trek, Northwest Passage, and the upcoming Zambezi River Hippo Camp are examples of immersion exhibits, which focus on the animals of specific regions.

Immersion exhibits transport the visitor to the animals’ natural habitat and provide interaction with the visitor, and the Memphis Zoo’s expansions have reflected this, according to Chuck Brady, CEO and president of the Memphis Zoo.

is still under construction.

“It’s much more engaging and immersive for the visitor to not only see the animals in nice, pleasant environments but also to get the feel like you’re walking down the Zambezi River or walking through Teton Park,” Brady said. “It’s a good theme, and we’re going to continue it.”

The Zoo also plans to install “beacons” in the future for their smartphone app, where visitors will receive educational notifications on their phones based on where they are in the park.

The Zoo’s history with Overton Park has been met with opposition when expanding. When Tetron Trek was being built in 2008, Citizens to Preserve Overton Park opposed the exhibit due to the removal of four acres of the Old Forest within the borders of the Zoo. A raised boardwalk is supposed to protect the natural flora of the ground.

The master plan also includes the smaller project, Chickasaw Bluffs trails, which aims to be low-impact on the Old Forest Arboretum of Overton Park inside the Zoo. The idea is to allow visitors to learn more about the natural culture of the Old Forest, but activists have opposed the idea of charging admission through the Zoo to walk the trails of the natural area.

Parking, a more recent point of contention with activists for Overton Park, was not included in the master plan. Over the past couple of years, activists from a group called Get Off Our Lawn have staged protests over the Zoo allowing its patrons to park on the Greensward at Overton Park. A plan to reconfigure the Zoo’s parking lot to handle more cars was dropped last month due to higher-than-expected costs. Solutions for Zoo parking have gone back to the drawing board.

A new 10-year master plan is currently in development and should be finished in about a year and a half.

For more information on the new Zambezi River Hippo Camp, check out The Memphis Flyer News Blog for an in-depth look and a slideshow.

Categories
News News Blog

EDGE Approves Extension for IKEA

IKEA is moving forward on its Memphis location.

Tuesday afternoon, the Economic Development Growth Engine, or EDGE, unanimously approved an extension of the global chain’s 11-year PILOT agreement by up to 18 months.

[jump]

Reed Lyons, real estate manager for IKEA, said the extension is a “safety net, taking uncertainty out of this process.”

The tax break extension is meant to offset a potential $1.2 million loss in savings from a re-evaluation of the property value by the Shelby County Assessor Cheyenne Johnson. IKEA has already purchased the land on Germantown Parkway for $5.6 million in July of this year. Last month, Johnson appealed a Shelby County Board of Equalization ruling that allowed the property to be reverted to its value back in 2014, which was $1.25 million. The matter is now up to the state, which has yet to determine a ruling.

The base deal that was approved in January remains the same. The company will still be providing 175 new jobs, plus at least 50 seasonal and part-time positions.

Now that the extension is approved, IKEA could start construction as early as this winter. Lyons said the construction could take anywhere from 10 to 15 months.

Al Bright, chairman of the EDGE board, thanked the IKEA team for coming to the meeting.

“You are a great local partner,” Bright said. “Welcome, again, to Memphis.”

Categories
News News Blog

Updates on the Upgrades to New Hippo Home at the Zoo

CREDIT: The Memphis Zoo

The Memphis Zoo

The Memphis Zoo is six months away from having its African exhibits vastly expanded to include a brand new home for the hippopotamuses.

The four-acre Zambezi River Hippo Camp is meant to feel like a safari along a river. The exhibit, which opens in March 2016, will give visitors a glimpse into the wildlife of the region in Africa that doesn’t just stop at hippos; it also includes flamingos, crocodiles, and birds — complete with an aviary. The entire camp is modeled after a fishing village in the region, along with a plantation that will show the region’s relationship to coffee.

The exhibit will also feature open multipurpose buildings housed in rondavels — South African-style huts. The second story will allow visitors to have a higher view of the animals below with the ability to see all parts of the Zambezi River Hippo Camp.

[jump]

The hippo exhibit falls in line with a trend of zoos in recent years to focus on regions or groups of animals rather than just one classification of animal. According to Chuck Brady, CEO and president of the Memphis Zoo, that’s the way the Memphis Zoo has been going for the last ten years.

“When we developed ‘China,’ for our giant pandas, we made a turn in our thinking in a sense where we went to a themed exhibit that was far more than just an exhibit of wildlife,” Brady said. “We wanted to have aspects of culture, conservation interests, [and] information about the people, what they were like. We did a great job with ‘China,’ and we wanted to stick with that.”

Brady said by 2000, the original hippo exhibit was “antiquated” and inefficient through its use of “dump-and-fill” pools, where the water is dumped out every day.

“It wasn’t pleasant to look at,” Brady said. “We have a long history with hippos. It was time. That structure and facility was passed its useful life. That’s what we tried to avoid throughout our campus.”

One reason the new hippo home stands out is due to its aquarium-like observation points, under covered walkways for visitors to see how the hippos and crocodiles interact and live underwater. There will be three hippos total in the exhibit. The newest one to be added, a male, comes from Disney World’s Animal Kingdom. Four Nile crocodiles will be shipped to the zoo from a farm in South Africa.

The exhibit will be heavily interactive on top of its park-wide Keeper Chats — where zookeepers talk to the public about the specific animals — including drums ripe for beating and canoes for kids to play in.

The Zambezi River Hippo Camp is the last major exhibit out of the 20-year master plan. A new 20-year plan should be ready in about a year in a half, according to Brady.