Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

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At Large Opinion

The Year After the Year

The Saugatuck River (Photo: Andrew VanWyngarden)

It was the year after the year of the big change, the year after the year we all stayed home, the year after the year the offices shut, the restaurants closed, the live music died, the planes stopped flying. It was the year after the last year of Trump. It was 2021.

It began with the most egregious assault on American democracy in our history: The January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol — planned and instigated by the former president of the United States with the assistance and support of numerous Republican flunkies and traitors. It was a pseudo-insurrection that drew thousands of deluded Americans to Washington, D.C., to act out Trump’s final fantasy — that he could overthrow the democratic process and remain president, despite losing the election by 7 million votes. The cultish “patriots” who bought into this lunacy included a planeload of wealthy Memphis Country Club types who, as of this writing, have remained officially unidentified — and out of jail. Maybe they just watched from the hotel lobby. Or went shopping. We may never know. Screw ’em.

As February came on, the first Covid vaccines were administered hereabouts. The state urged us to try the “Sign-Up Genius,” which sort of worked and sort of didn’t. There were long lines, short lines, last-minute cancellations, and sudden open cattle calls for shots. My daughter called me on February 2nd and said, “They’re giving the vax to whoever shows up at the Pipkin today. A bunch of people canceled. You should get on over there.”

An hour later, my wife and I pulled into that strange building on the Fairgrounds, lowered our windows, and got the jab. It felt like a whiff of freedom after a year of suppression and worry. It felt even better 28 days later, when we got the second dose. Vaxxed, baby!

March came and the Tigers missed the Big Dance. The Grizzlies made the play-in playoffs but it was soon over. No one seemed to care much. Maybe it was the shortened seasons, the missed games, the empty arenas, the sideline masks. The magic wasn’t there.

In April, Memphis International Airport (MEM) climbed back atop the rankings as the world’s busiest cargo airport for the first time since 2009. And Amazon announced it was increasing its presence in the Mid-South with two new facilities: a delivery station in North Memphis and a fulfillment center in Byhalia, Mississippi. Some good news at last.

In more good news, I retired as editor of the Flyer in May and set off on a road trip to the East to see distant family and some old friends. The talented Mr. Jesse Davis stepped in as Flyer editor and hasn’t missed a beat since. Thanks, pal.

As soon as I got back to town in June, inspectors discovered a crack in the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and shut it down. I don’t think there was a connection.

Freed from having to be the official voice of the Flyer, I began to write about whatever sparked my fancy: Brooks Museum statuary cleaners, the Waverly flood, the 1919 Elaine (Arkansas) Massacre, Midtown geckos, Donald Trump’s email grift, the latest zoo/Greensward spat, kayaking Nonconnah Creek. It’s been very liberating, and I’m grateful to be able to do it in semi-retirement. Or whatever this is.

I spent most of the summer putting together a collection of my past columns, travel articles, and features for a book, which the Flyer’s parent company, Contemporary Media, published in November. It’s called Everything That’s True, and it makes a great gift, I’m told. So go buy it. It’s at Novel, Burkes, and on the Memphis magazine Shopify site. All sales revenue goes to support the Flyer. End of commercial break.

Thankfully, the year ahead looms with some promise that life can return to normal. Yes, there’s a new Covid variant, but 75 percent of us are vaccinated now and there are medicines that will keep most folks out of the hospital, even if they catch it. Those lines at the Pipkin building hopefully will not reoccur — and the “year after the year” will remain behind us. Onward.

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At Large Opinion

No Country for Us

Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Christmas card (Photo: Boebert’s Twitter)

In 2005, Cormac McCarthy released a novel called No Country for Old Men, a relentlessly brutal tale of a man who stumbles onto a drug deal gone wrong on the Mexican border and makes off with the loot he finds on a dead man. It doesn’t end well. Almost everybody in the book eventually gets murdered. No one gets a happy ending. The characters in the novel (and the subsequent movie) are driven by greed, revenge, grief, and blood-lust. There is no love story, no kindness, no forgiveness, no hero. Only senseless violence and death.

We learned a couple weeks ago that Memphis was no city for Young Dolph, a rising rapper who was assassinated at, of all places, Makeda’s Homemade Cookies. It was reportedly the third attempt on the artist’s life in the last five years. The first two were suspected of being the work of a rival rapper whose name I won’t mention here.

But Young Dolph was nothing if not resilient. Following a 2016 attempt on his life in Charlotte, North Carolina, which involved more than 100 shots being fired at his bullet-proof vehicle, he released an album called Bulletproof, which contained such songs as “100 Shots,” “In Charlotte,” “But I’m Bulletproof,” “I’m Everything You Wanna Be,” and “So Fuk’em.” Young Dolph’s response to a murderous attack on his life was to boast about his superiority to his attackers in his music and to gloat about their bad shooting.

Let me issue a “trigger warning” of sorts here: I — an old white guy — dug into the lyrics of Bulletproof, seeking to learn more about the art of Young Dolph, a performer who is revered by many hereabouts for his good works in the community. His was a name I’d heard, but I didn’t know his music.

Unsurprisingly, I guess, I found Young Dolph’s lyrics revolting. I get that the brutish misogyny, the profanity, the porn-ish sexual swaggering, the celebration of money, drugs, and violence found in Bulletproof’s lyrics is performative. I understand that it’s a genre, a trope; it’s “gangsta” — a celebration of outlaw life similar to Mexican corridos — songs that celebrate cartels, coyotes, and drug-runners. And I get that outlaws have been celebrated in country music and rock-and-roll forever. In “Folsom Prison Blues,” Johnny Cash brags that he “shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.”

But this stuff seems next-level and not a healthy next-level. The language is disgustingly demeaning to women; it glorifies casual violence, avarice, and death. And it’s depressing to me that so many of America’s young people love this stuff and take it to heart — like whoever shot and killed two high school girls at a gas station drive-by shooting in Memphis recently. Gangsta.

But, here’s the thing: This toxic version of humanity is everywhere, and it crosses the country’s ethnic and cultural divides. You want to see another soulless, empty celebration of the cult of death? Look at Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert’s Christmas card tweet, wherein she poses with her young male children, all of whom are gleefully brandishing firearms. Listen to her intentional racism in video clips, read her blindingly stupid tweets. What the actual “fuk” is wrong with her? And with us, a country that contains districts in which a majority of the citizens vote for humans like this asshole?

And how do you explain Ethan Crumbley, the Michigan 14-year-old who took a gun his parents had just bought him and murdered four high-school classmates. I’d venture to say that his folks were not influenced by gangsta rap. They are more likely members of the far-right, white-supremacy death-cult that infests the Trump wing of the Republican Party. White American boys committing mass murder is no longer considered unusual. It’s just another trope. Like gangsta rap.

We are a wounded nation. We need to quit glorifying those who appeal to our basest instincts — guns, greed, racism. We need to rediscover the power of kindness and generosity, and do better. Or soon we’ll have no country for anyone.

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At Large Opinion

Tuesdays With Sid

Illustration: John Ryan

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from Bruce VanWyngarden’s new book, Everything That’s True, which is now out
and available online and at Novel and Burke’s Books.

I moved to Memphis 20 years ago this spring. It was a new city to me, and I liked to wander around Downtown on my lunch hour. One day, I walked into Rod & Hank’s Vintage Guitars, a magical shop then located just across from the Peabody hotel on Second Street. I loved the smell and the feel of the place, and I loved all the classic old guitars hanging on the walls.

Rod Norwood and Hank Sable were friendly guys and would encourage you to take instruments down and play them until you found one that you had to have — as they knew you would, eventually. After a few visits, I fell in love with an old Gibson J-45 that sounded like thunder when you strummed it and whose high notes rang clear as water. I had to have it, and I dropped some serious jack to take it home.

“A J-45 is the guitar Sid Selvidge plays,” Hank said. “A lot of the old country blues singers wouldn’t play anything else.” I’d heard of Selvidge — mostly from reading Robert Gordon’s essential Memphis music and wrasslin’ book, It Came From Memphis — but hadn’t met him. When Hank told me Sid gave guitar lessons in the shop, I decided to give him a call. I wanted to learn country blues, and I wanted an excuse to keep hanging around Rod & Hank’s.

The next week, Sid and I — and our J-45s — met in the guitar shop’s upstairs room for my lesson.

“What do you want to learn?” he asked.

“Whatever you want to teach me,” I said.

Every Tuesday, for the next couple years, Sid taught me lots of nice licks and cool songs, but mostly he taught me about Memphis music. He had a million stories — about Furry Lewis, Mudboy and the Neutrons, Sam Phillips, the Memphis coffeehouse scene, you name it — and I loved to hear them. Sometimes, we’d talk more than we’d play.

After the “lesson,” we got in the habit of going downstairs and playing in the shop for a while. Soon, Hank started joining in on banjo and fiddle. Then, former Commercial Appeal music writer Larry Nager began dropping by with his mandolin. Then Sid’s marvelously talented son Steve began showing up and playing Dobro.

The impromptu “Second Street String Band” even played a few gigs, and it was a thrill for all of us to play behind Sid’s amazing voice. But all things come to an end. Rod and Hank closed the shop and took their business online. Sid got a full-time gig running the international radio show Beale Street Caravan. Nager moved to Cincinnati. I became the Flyer editor, and Tuesdays were never the same.

But Sid remained a friend, and he remains in my memory as one of the kindest, most generous people I ever met. His passing last week leaves an irreplaceable void in Memphis music. I still miss those Tuesdays, and, like a lot of folks around here, I’ll miss Sid Selvidge.

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At Large Opinion

Hit the Brakes

Mr. Siwabud Veerapaisarn | Dreamstime.com

My pappy said, “Son, you’re gonna’ drive me to drinkin’

If you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot Rod Lincoln.”

— Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

I was northbound on Cooper, first in line at the stoplight at Central, patiently waiting for it to turn green. A guy a few cars behind me wasn’t in a patient mood. He peeled out of the line, roared forward using the oncoming traffic lane, then made a hard right onto Central, squealing his tires as he accelerated across my bow, headed east. I turned to my left to see the driver in the turn lane next to me looking wide-eyed, shaking his head in disbelief.

Two days later, I was having dinner with a friend at an outdoor table in crowded Overton Square. As we were about to dig into our meal, a matte-gray Mustang about 40 feet away on Madison Avenue began spinning its tires, sending up a sulfurous cloud of burning rubber, before passing two cars and accelerating through a red light at Cooper.

The following day, while discussing the incident with friends, I was shown a TikTok video of a white muscle car pulling up alongside a Memphis police cruiser and doing a complete donut around it before speeding off into the night.

What in the world is going on here? The most comprehensive answers to that question were covered in an excellent two-part story by Micaela Watts in The Commercial Appeal in early October. I urge you to read it.

The condensed version is that a subculture of souped-up muscle cars has emerged in the city, fueled by over-powered vehicles (Dodge Chargers, Mustangs, Infinitis) from the mid-2000s that have become cheap to buy, and by the ability of their drivers to obtain or create fake drive-out tags in lieu of license plates. Since Memphis police are prohibited (thankfully) from high-speed chases, the hot-rodders have gotten bolder — on the streets of Memphis and in displaying their dangerous antics on social media.

There’s nothing new about the love affair between reckless youth and reckless driving. It’s been glorified in pop culture since at least 1951, when Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” (cited by most as the first rock-and-roll record) was released right here in Memphis. Tell me which of the following tunes rings your bell, and I’ll tell you how old you are: “Little GTO,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Mustang Sally,” “Radar Love,” “Little Red Corvette,” “Pink Cadillac,” “I Can’t Drive 55,” “Bitchin’ Camaro,” “Shut Up and Drive.” I could go on. And on. The Google “songs about cars” rabbit hole has more inventory than Covington Pike.

If it makes you feel any better, the raging muscle car craze is a nationwide phenomenon, not just a Memphis thing. But that doesn’t help the people who’ve been killed by drivers illicitly racing through the city streets of America, including two people here who were killed by an off-duty Memphis cop going 100 miles an hour in his Dodge Charger. Local television stations have aired video of cars racing around the I-240 loop, using other traffic like participants in a video game. It’s crazy out there.

The Memphis City Council passed an ordinance designed to punish those who take part in organized races and stunt demonstrations. The police department launched Operation Slow Down Memphis in August and says it is directing extra resources for patrolling and monitoring local thoroughfares. Speed bumps have been added on Front Street and other areas popular with motorheads.

All good, but I think a more proactive approach might be necessary, at least as long as this phenomenon lasts. Call it profiling, if you want, but these vehicles aren’t hard to spot. If MPD officers see a drive-out tag on a muscle car while on patrol, I would have no problem with them pulling that car over and doing a license and registration check. These vehicles can be as dangerous as a loaded gun. Drag racing and performative stunt-driving in crowded entertainment districts and residential neighborhoods are putting lives at risk for nothing other than misguided testosterone. It’s time to hit the brakes.

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At Large Opinion

Mind Over Meta

Tatine hangs with Al Yankovic. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

Facebook is a daily presence in my life and has been since 2010 when I joined the social medium to post pictures of a trip my wife and I took to the Grammys in Los Angeles. I remember I created an “album” of photos, each carefully captioned: the beach at Malibu; the HOLLYWOOD sign; Tatine meeting Weird Al Yankovic. So exciting!

It was around this time, I suppose, that most of us basically stopped shooting pictures with a camera. You remember that tedious process: You’d take your film to Walgreens, then wait a few days to go pick up your developed pictures (along with the negatives, in case you wanted to go crazy and print another copy). Then you’d sit out in the parking lot, looking through your vacation shots or whatever. No filters, no enhancements. What Walgreens gave you is what you got. How crude.

Now, our phones take care of all of that. Instant sharing! Filters! Video! No more dusty sleeves of old photos stuck in drawers. And Facebook has all our shots organized by date and subject matter and helpfully suggests reposting them as “memories” for us, so we can amuse/bore our friends all over again.

Around the world, three billion people are using Facebook to advertise their lives, faces, interests, writing, families, gardens, pets, food, businesses, music, vacations, politics. And Facebook uses all that free information we provide to make mega-billions of dollars from companies that want to advertise to us. It is a marketing behemoth with algorithms so advanced, you’d swear they’re reading our thoughts. That’s because they are, literally — the ones we write down for them. We are Facebook’s product and they’re getting top dollar for us, but we don’t seem to much care. Check out my new shoes, y’all!

Facebook has made some huge blunders. When the company pushed for a “pivot” to video in 2015, thousands of journalists were laid off, replaced by video “content providers.” Three years later, Facebook had to tell advertisers (and newspapers and media organizations) that video was not working as they’d promised. People actually preferred reading to being spoon-fed videos. Oops, said Mr. Zuckerberg, give us some journalism again, please.

And the company seems a little touchy these days, given all the bad press it’s gotten regarding its failure to remove political disinformation and racist, white-supremacist content from its platform. I have a friend who was reprimanded by the Facebook popo last week for using the word “Chubby” in referencing the Sixties singer, Chubby Checker. Yes, it’s his name, but it breached some sort of algorithmic dog whistle. I’m guessing that typing “Porky Pig” would definitely get you 30 days in the hole.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about the daily emails I get from Donald Trump. The Flyer art director illustrated the column with an image of a Trump fundraising ad that had been emailed to me. Normally, when I post my column on Facebook on Wednesday morning, I start getting comments, likes, etc., within minutes, mainly because I’m followed by a few hundred people, so it shows up in their news feed. That week, however, nothing. By mid-morning, I’d had two comments, maybe three or four likes. Facebook was obviously suppressing the distribution of the column.

When I figured it out and changed the art, things got back to normal quickly, but it gave me a real sense of how much Facebook can shape what all of us read in our news feeds — for good or evil.

Here’s hoping they’re as vigilant at stopping nazi memes and hate speech as they are at keeping Donald Trump from getting a free ad — and at protecting Chubby Checker’s feelings.

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At Large Opinion

Let’s Go, Brian!

Target of Operation Let’s Go, Brian

It was October 15th and President Joe Biden was pissed, fuming, from the soles of his shiny brogans to the tips of his little white mullet. He looked around the White House Situation Room at his gathered political team and growled: “We have an issue, people.”

“Yes sir, several,” said press secretary Jen Psaki, brightly, “and we’re tackling all of them today, as you’ll see. First, of course, we need to figure out what the heck to do about Joe Manchin …”

“Eff Joe Manchin,” said the president.

“Well, yes sir. Sure. We can come back to that. And we have to determine what concessions we can get on climate change from …”

“Eff climate change.”

“What? Sir, please … What about your trip to Europe in two weeks? You’re meeting the pope.”

“JEN, you’re not understanding me. There is only one issue we need to deal with right now … and that’s Brian Kelsey.”

“Who?”

“Brian Kelsey, the Tennessee state senator who lives in Nashville and represents Germantown. He’s the key to everything. If we can bring down Brian Kelsey, it all falls into place! We’ll be able to get full socialism, at last — gun bans, knife bans, in-utero vaccinations, $50-an-hour minimum wage for Black people, forced healthcare for the sick, the teaching of facts and science in public schools, required face masks for pets, all of it.”

“I had no idea,” said Psaki.

“Oh yeah,” said the president. “Kelsey’s the head of the snake. That’s why I’m announcing today the launch of a top-secret federal plan to take him out. It’s called ‘Operation Let’s Go, Brian.’ That little rat bastard’s going down like the Titanic.”

I may have made up some of the above material. Or all of it. But after seeing Brian Kelsey’s overwrought, self-righteous reaction to the announcement that he’d been indicted on five federal felony counts of campaign fraud last week, it’s clear he’d love us to believe it.

“Look, this is nothing but a political witch hunt,” Kelsey said when the indictments were announced. “The Biden administration is trying to take me out because I’m conservative and I’m the number-one target of the Tennessee Democratic Party.”

Really? This presumes that a) Joe Biden has actually ever heard of Tennessee state senator Brian Kelsey, which is doubtful; and b) that even if he had heard of him, he would have been able to launch an investigation in 2017, when the FBI began looking into Kelsey’s case and when a certain orange-haired former president was in charge of the Justice Department. In short, Kelsey is spewing horse puckey.

His case stems from 2016, when Kelsey was making a run for Congress and attempted to switch funds he’d raised for his state races to an account for his federal race, which is a federal crime. The grand jury that indicted Kelsey alleges that he laundered the money by using state campaign funds to “buy” a membership into a Nashville supper club, which then conveniently made a like donation to Kelsey’s Congressional campaign fund. Slick, if true. And I’m guessing it is, since a number of Republicans are facing similar allegations regarding this “supper club.”

And, as is usual for Republicans these days, Kelsey immediately played the victim card, claiming persecution by the current GOP whipping boy, President Biden. Let’s go, Brandon!

It’s really bad timing for Kelsey. He’ll be distracted from the “Right to Get Sick” special session currently going on in Nashville, in which Republicans are attempting to pass every possible measure they can think of to stop local health departments, private businesses, and government officials from mandating any precautions against any pandemics, current and future.

I can’t imagine anything stupider, but then again, I could have never imagined a major U.S. political party intentionally linking itself to the Dark Ages, eschewing science and reason and spreading ignorance and divisiveness — from the top of the party to obscure state senators from Tennessee.

Brian Kelsey says he’s innocent, and that President Joe Biden is out to get him. We know the latter statement is a lie. The jury is still out on the former.

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At Large Opinion

$ave America

Somebody loves me.

Call me a masochist, but I’ve stayed in touch with former president Donald J. Trump. Or, better said, I’ve allowed him to stay in touch with me.

Trump was booted off Twitter on January 8th for violating that social medium’s “glorification of violence” policy. And there’s little doubt that his tweets surrounding the January 6th insurrection and its aftermath glorified the actions of those who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol.

“American patriots,” Trump tweeted on January 8th, “will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly.” Trump added, “I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” which Twitter interpreted as: “So if some of you patriots want to come and mess that up, feel free.”

That was Trump’s last tweet. He briefly experimented with other social media platforms but got no traction, and finally he settled on email as the best way to deliver his message. I signed up for it on the theory that we better keep an eye on the sumbitch.

At first, Trump’s emails were tweet-length rants in the form of a “Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America.” All the catchphrases were there: “Radical left Democrats,” “Disgraceful RINO Republicans,” “Fake News,” and, of course, “Russia, Russia, Russia.”

Now things have changed. Sure, Trump still emails the occasional “statement,” but it’s almost like he’s just going through the motions, like the Beach Boys playing the Beau Rivage casino — singing the hits for the money. And make no mistake: Money is what this is all about.

Consider: On October 14th, a typical day, I got 15 emails from Trump. Fifteen! I’m old, so I’m targeted by a lot of email marketers, but none of them think I’m stupid enough to open 15 emails a day in order to win a football signed by The Donald or an invitation to Mar-a-Lago or to become a member of the Day One club (where, according to Donald Trump Jr., “your name will be first on the list my father sees”). Or I could win a signed hat, a signed poster, a signed photograph, a personalized welcome mat, or (gasp!) lunch with Kimberly Guilfoyle. The approaches vary but the closing pitch is always the same: Give me, your beloved president, some money.

If you click on “Donate,” you’ll see a countdown clock at 59 minutes with the following clever text:

President Trump is working around the clock to SAVE AMERICA from Joe Biden and the Radical Left, but he cannot do it alone. He’s calling on YOU to step up.

For 1 HOUR ONLY: you can INCREASE your impact by 300%! Please make a contribution of ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to help President Trump SAVE AMERICA!

So, as you can see, it’s an emergency. Helpfully, when an American Patriot™ donates, say, $50 to Save America, he is automatically signed up to give that amount monthly forever — or until he notices the money disappearing from his bank account and decides to opt out.

If you read the fine print (so boring!), you discover that the money goes to Save America JFC, a joint fundraising committee on behalf of Save America and Make America Great Again PAC (“MAGAPac”). And if you read all the way to the bottom, you’ll reach the money shot: “Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”

That means this money is not going to help Donald Trump or any candidate get elected. It is not going to help Donald Trump “save America.” It is going to help Donald Trump pay his bills, fuel his jet, fund his lawyers, and settle his lawsuits. It is a grift, pure and simple. It is what Trump has done all his life.

When a snake emails you who he is, believe him.

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At Large Opinion

Invasion of the MGs

No salmonella with this gecko — only smiles and car-insurance deals. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

If you’ve felt a strange urge to buy car insurance lately, it could be because of the subliminal influence of the gecko invasion that has swept into Memphis and environs in recent years. To be precise, these new (-ish) residents are Mediterranean geckos. Speckled and almost translucent when they are young, they can reach about four inches in length in adulthood. They are sort of adorable-looking. At least, I think so. Your mileage may vary.

I first spotted one of the MGs hanging out around my porch light on a summer night about five years ago. I took a picture of him, looked him up on the Google, and thought, “Cool, we have a gecko.”

Little did I know.

Now we have a lot of geckos. I still see them around the back-porch light at night, where I’m told they are very good at snagging the occasional careless june bug or moth. They also live in the rocky crevasses around our flower beds and under the patio furniture. When I open the garage door, I can always count on seeing one or two scampering for cover. (I mean, if geckos can scamper. They kind of writhe for cover, if I’m being honest.) Our cat has nailed a couple and left them as trophies on the doormat.

We have a thriving population, to say the least, one that has blossomed in the past couple of years. And we’re not alone, apparently. The MGs have been the subject of several posts on nextdoor.com, which means they’ve arrived — right up there with dog poop, fireworks, doorbell videos, and suspicious characters.

One post — “Anybody know what kind of lizard this is?” — drew numerous comments. Turns out not everybody thinks they’re adorable. One commenter said: “I hate those see-through things. They give me the hebbie jebbies big time.” Another person warned that someone told her that geckos carry salmonella as a “defense mechanism.” Which is misinformation. (I know, hard to believe that an internet comment could be wrong, but crazy stuff happens.) Salmonella is a phenomenon occasionally associated with pet geckos, but not our local wild MGs. And it’s not a defense mechanism. Jeez.

On another gecko-related nextdoor.com post from September 24th, someone commented: “I’ve had two in my house the past week! I accidentally got the tail on one and it squirmed for a half hour after I put the gecko outside lol.” Whoa. That’s enough to give anyone the “hebbie jebbies.”

So where did they come from? Why are they in Memphis? And what do they want from us? I turned to Matthew Parris, an associate professor of biology at the University of Memphis, for answers.

“The Mediterranean gecko is an invasive reptile species native to southern Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East,” he said. “It has expanded its range through unintentional introduction to the United States, with first reports of it in Florida from around 1910. It’s established populations throughout the southeastern U.S., and there have now been reported sightings in more than 20 states.”

So when did these little dudes get to Memphis? Parris said the first reports of the species in the Memphis area were in 2007. “The species is very adept at surviving in urban landscapes,” he added, “and is relatively common in city environments within its range.”

The geckos have also obviously become adept at finding ways to survive Memphis’ occasional sub-freezing temperatures. MGs appear to be hardy and resourceful little suckers, to say the least.

“They’re nocturnal and feed on insects,” Parrish said. “Their impact on native reptile communities is unknown, but the animal causes no obvious harm to people, pets, or the natural environment.”

Which means, no matter what you might read on the internet, they’re not suspicious characters. They won’t hurt you, even if you can see through them. They’re just friendly immigrants from the Mediterranean region who mean us no harm. They’re sending their best.

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At Large Opinion

Greensward Redux

Cars parked on the Greensward (Photo: savethegreensward.org)

Let us hearken now to those halcyon days of 2016, back to the difficult final months of the Great Battle of the Greensward. For those of you new to the history of the Kingdom of Memphis, let me share the tale: The Memphis Zoo — led at that time by a rather intransigent fellow named Chuck “You and the Horse You Rode In On” Brady — had begun to allow increasing numbers of cars to park on the Overton Park Greensward, a large, flat, grassy field used by park patrons for Frisbee football, soccer, picnics, and the occasional drum circle.

Over several years, the zoo kept expanding its parking footprint, finally going so far as to set up temporary fencing across the middle of the Greensward — usually on nice weekend days. On one side of the fence were people doing the aforementioned park things. On the other side were cars, SUVs, trucks, and the occasional bus, which left dead grass, mud, and deep, rutted tire tracks in the Greensward, rendering it useless for recreation even when it wasn’t being parked on.

Things started getting really heated in 2014. Park lovers formed groups: Get Off Our Lawn (GOOL) and Citizens to Preserve Overton Park (CPOP). Activists stood on nearby street corners urging zoo patrons to park on nearby streets, rather than despoiling the Greensward. Aerial photographs were taken that showed just how much of the people’s parkland was being taken over by a private entity. The pictures got national attention. Protestors were arrested. Houses all over Midtown bore signs urging Memphis to save the Greensward. Then the zoo cut down some trees. Some activists threatened to begin spray-painting cars. A zoo sign at the park entrance was defaced. Things were tense.

And then, in the winter of 2016, newly elected Mayor Jim Strickland managed to get both sides into mediation. After months of costly negotiation, a compromise was struck. The zoo would be allowed to enlarge its lot to 415 spaces, taking some of the Greensward, but with the great majority of the land being preserved. The zoo subsequently announced that it would build a parking garage on nearby Prentiss Place and wouldn’t need to expand its lot. Huzzah! Parking on the Greensward was a thing of the past. Peace reigned in the Kingdom.

At least it did until last Friday night at 5:06 p.m., when the zoo and city issued a joint press release stating that the Prentiss garage project was being scrapped because it was too expensive and that the zoo would go back to the lot-expansion plan, and, oh, while it was being expanded, the zoo would once again be letting its customers park on the Greensward. Enjoy your weekend. Nothing to see here.

This is some seriously tone-deaf policy and very stupid politics. The zoo has amply demonstrated over the past five years that it can operate without parking on the Greensward. The zoo has also amply demonstrated that it has the resources to raise millions of dollars from its patrons and funders. Now it can’t afford a parking garage? There’s an aroma of fish here. You don’t do a Friday night news dump unless you know you’re doing something that doesn’t bear scrutiny in the light of day.

Activists are already meeting and planning. This move is not going to play well with those who went through all this drama five years ago. And I need not remind those who’ve lived here a while that Overton Park has been under assault before, and that its supporters (then derided as “little old ladies in tennis shoes”) once managed to defeat the mighty U.S. government when it announced plans to split the park with Interstate 40 more than 50 years ago. Overton Park is the only place in the country where I-40 was stopped and forced to take a detour.

The force is strong in this place, this Old Forest, this people’s park. There is a history here, and the Memphis Zoo and the city of Memphis would be wise to take a cue from it.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Midtown’s Apartment Boom Explained. Sort Of.

It’s a simple question, really, one I’ve heard numerous times in recent months: “Who’s going to live in all these new apartment buildings in Midtown?”

New complexes have sprouted all along Madison — across from Minglewood, next to Cash Saver, at the corner of McLean. There are new apartments at McLean and Union and more going up at Sam Cooper and East Parkway. There is no doubt that there is an apartment-building boom.

So, who’s going to live in all these new apartments? The question got even more interesting on the heels of just-released U.S. Census data that show Midtown and Downtown (where another apartment-building boom has occurred) both actually lost a little population between 2010 and 2020. There seems to be a disconnect.

I asked two developers (both of whom asked to comment anonymously) and a former president of the Memphis Area Association of Realtors. Interestingly, all pointed to the recession of 2008 as a major turning point in the housing market.

“After 2008, it was the same all over the country,” said one of the developers. “The single-family home building business got decimated, so the supply of new housing was constrained for a number of years. There was a demand shift to less owner-occupied housing, more rental housing. Some of that is still playing out.”

“Midtown is really hot,” said the other developer I talked to. “Houses go on the market and sell within hours. There’s not much new housing stock, really — nowhere to build. Developers develop what the market demands, and right now, that’s apartments. And these apartments are getting leased.”

Kathryn Garland, immediate past president of the Memphis Area Association of Realtors agreed that the Midtown market is tight. “It’s gotten to where some people might want to sell, but they’re afraid they won’t be able to get another house in the area, and they can’t afford to close on a new house before selling their old one, so they stay put, which keeps the market tight. And many landlords lost a lot of money during the pandemic because of the eviction freeze. I know some who are turning rental units into BnBs, just to try to recoup. And that also tightens the available housing.”

So how do we reconcile population loss with an apartment-building boom? There are several possibilities, not all mutually exclusive. It’s possible, for example, that Midtown’s population fell lower at some point, say 2015, and started to pick back up in the past couple of years, which looks like a boom. It’s also possible that the demand for Midtown housing and the attendant rental increases have driven the less-affluent to other neighborhoods, countering the population growth of new people moving in.

“I’m still not convinced the data has caught up with any of what’s happened in the past couple of years,” said one of the developers. “The pandemic has impacted housing in ways we’re still not completely understanding. People whose company headquarters are in New York or Chicago are now letting their employees work from anywhere. Some of those people are moving to markets like Memphis because they can afford nicer apartments and homes. We haven’t been able to quantify that yet, but it’s happening.”

“The pandemic is affecting the commercial market, as well,” said Garland. “Commercial realtors will tell you that the office space market has changed entirely. Companies are downsizing their space, moving to Zoom meetings, letting employees work wherever they like. Things are in flux.”

But what happens when all the young people moving in get older, have children, want a yard and a dog? Does the apartment bubble burst?

“Of course, the apartment bubble could burst,” said one developer. “You’re always trying to figure out your next move. Sometimes, you just pull in your wings and see where the demand goes.”

“Often, apartment buildings become condo buildings as demand changes,” said Garland. “There are lots of older folks, retirees, who are moving into apartments and condos in Downtown and Midtown when they downsize. Their homes out east get bought by young families. It’s all a cycle.”