Entrepreneur and community organizer Keedran Franklin was straight up playing on Facebook last week. Over several Facebook posts, he pumped up what would be a huge announcement. Announcement time came, and his sound cut out. It left many laughing and many more like this from Arlen Dewayne Berry.
Posted to Facebook by Arlen Dewayne Berry
Franklin had still not revealed his big announcement as of press time.
A Cannabis Request
“Can y’all not smoke a crap load of weed and then hang out at the zoo around kids?” asked u/criticalmonsterparty over in the Memphis subreddit. “I’m not hating on anyone’s personal preferences, but there was two distinct smells at the zoo today — animal poop and weed.”
Seeing Double
Posted to Reddit by Fun_Inspector_156
The subreddit was also enamored with a glorious double rainbow that appeared over the city last week.
Horrifying footage captured a man attacking a car with an axe after a fender bender weekend before last. The man, apparently fueled by road rage after an older couple rear-ended his car, busted windows and the windshield before police arrived. The Memphis subreddit’s top comment from u/ManRahaim summed it up: “yo, wtf.”
Sad and Lost
Memphis Reddit user u/Super_Situation_9346 poured their heart out about the state of the city last week, especially Cordova (as far as we can tell). The user was “horrified” by litter, plummeting property values, “raggity streets,” and population loss. The sub’s moderator jumped in to say, “this is a sub for the rural Alaskan village, Cordova.”
Locked
Posted to X by Memphis Basketball
University of Memphis Tigers men’s basketball players drenched coach Penny Hardaway with bottled water Sunday after their win against the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The win ensured the team a place in the NCAA Tournament.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young opened an Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread on the Memphis subreddit over the weekend. His answers were to be posted after press time. Questions centered around the Memphis Area Transit Authority, the potholes and trash on Airways to and from the airport, drive-out tags, and more. A major focus of questions, though, was on Elon Musk and his Memphis super computer’s environmental impact.
Horse Thief
Posted to Facebook by Shelby Farms Stables
A stolen horse was returned to Shelby Farms Stables last week after a brazen daylight theft left stable workers tracking the animal and its thief down the Shelby Farms Greenline. Pancho was returned after the stable’s Facebook post about the theft blew up, as did a TV news spot on the ordeal.
Dammit Gannett
The Commercial Appeal was on a hot streak of typos and errors last week, all captured on the All News Is Local Facebook group. One headline told of the “schoold voucher bill.” Another wondered if “Memphis VA wokers” had been laid off. Susan Adler Thorp roasted the Memphis paper’s post about where to get the best king cake in Knoxville.
Memphis’ Cxffeeblack has announced a partnership with COMOCO Cotton, a sustainable textile company, to release a limited-edition T-shirt with the phrase “God Don’t Make No Junk. Cxffee Don’t Need No Cream” printed across the front. This partnership, in turn, has created what they say is COMOCO’s and the world’s first Black-owned cotton supply chain.
“This collaboration is about more than a product. It’s about shifting the narrative — reclaiming what was once stolen and turning it into a tool for our collective liberation,” Bartholomew Jones, hip-hop artist, educator, and co-founder of Cxffeeblack, said in a press release.
“Coffee’s a $465 billion industry, and it’s the most traded good for third-world countries after oil and is the most drunk liquid on the planet after water,” Jones said in a previous interview with the Flyer. “Amidst all of those things, the people who discovered coffee, which are people in Africa, receive less than 1 percent of that revenue.”
Bartholomew Jones and Stephen Satterfield, owner of COMOCO Cotton (Photo: Courtesy Bartholomew Jones)
Cotton, likewise, is another historically charged material for its role in slavery and sharecropping. “COMOCO is helping to reframe that narrative and reclaim cotton as a source of pride, empowerment, and prosperity,” its website reads, as the business works exclusively with Black farmers to address “the historical and ongoing marginalization of Black farmers and farms.”
In this way, as the press release states, “Through this partnership, coffee and cotton, once tools of oppression, are transformed into symbols of resilience and creativity, owned and driven by Black hands.”
The cotton T-shirts are dyed with the coffee company’s Guji Mane, sourced directly from Ethiopian farms. These shirts are limited only to those who invest or return to invest in Cxffeeblack’s WeFunder, the goal of which is to build a permanent headquarters as a community space and to establish the world’s first all-Black coffee supply chain connecting Africa to Memphis. Recently, the company has celebrated passing its halfway point to $1.2 million on capital raised.
“Investing in this collaboration means investing in a future where Black ownership is not the exception — it’s the standard,” Stephen Satterfield, owner of COMOCO Cotton and host of Netflix’s High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America. (Satterfield met Jones when he visited Cxffeeblack’s shop, the Anti Gentrification Cxffee Club, during a stay in Memphis. Ever since, Satterfield has supported the Memphis-based company.)
“Black creativity is the foundation of so many industries, yet we rarely own the means of production,” Jones said. “This collaboration proves that we don’t have to ask for a seat at the table — we can build our own, from the soil up.”
Memphis photographer (and physician) Frank Chin made it Facebook official last week. He posted a screenshot showing that Google Maps officially changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Just, wow.
Posted to Facebook by Frank Chin
His Facebook is worth a scroll, y’all. He gets around, shooting some of the great events around town. Like one this past weekend showing the University of Memphis volleyball team taking the annual Polar Bear Plunge, benefitting Special Olympics of Greater Memphis.
Or this one, showing warriors facing off at the Memphis Lunar New Year Fair.
Pork, plz
Posted to Facebook by Allan Creasy
MEMernet celebrity Allan Creasy delivered the comment of the week. On a Fox13 post proclaiming “Memphis in May Announces Barbecue Competition for Kids,” Creasy said, “I think we’d all prefer pork.”
Love is in the air, so they say every time Valentine’s Day rolls around, but isn’t love always in the air? At least, we find that to be the case after delving into these three Memphis couples’ love stories. With class president battles, spilled spaghetti, and flutes and pianos, these stories are, dare we say, better than any rom-com.
Patrick + Deni (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Deni + Patrick
Patrick and Deni Reilly are at work together every day. Patrick is the chef and they’re both owners of three restaurants: The Majestic Grille, Cocozza American Italian, and the upcoming Cocozza American Italian location in East Memphis.
They remember when they met. Patrick, who is from Dublin, was general manager at the Gibson Lounge at the old Gibson Guitar Factory. Deni, who is from New Jersey, worked with DoubleTree hotels. Sean Costello introduced them at his concert in 2001 at the Gibson Lounge.
“I was pretty smitten,” Deni says. “I thought he was pretty cute.”
“I said we should go out to lunch sometime,” Patrick says. “And she leaned over and kissed me. And I said, ‘Or maybe dinner.’”
“I gave him my number,” Deni says.
They began dating. Deni remembers when her parents visited Memphis and met Patrick for the first time. Her mother told Deni’s sister, “She’s in love.”
“I was headed in that direction,” Deni says.
“It’s one of those things,” Patrick says. “We were friends for a while. Then we dated for awhile. We broke up for awhile. I was divorced and I was really gun-shy about another relationship, so it took a minute. I don’t know when I knew, but I knew when I made that commitment. And that was a couple of years later.”
Popping the question backfired at first, Patrick recalls. “I had a plan. I was going to propose at McEwen’s.”
He was all set to propose. “I had the ring, which my friend Suzanne Hamm helped me pick out, and I had it all arranged in my head.”
They went to dinner. “But for some reason they kind of rushed us out. They dropped the check on us really fast.”
So, Patrick didn’t have time to propose.
And, Deni says, “I also spilled spaghetti sauce all over my shirt.”
Patrick then came up with Plan B. The Christmas tree was still up at the Peabody Hotel, so he suggested they have a drink in the lobby. He thought that would be “a fun romantic spot” to ask for Deni’s hand.
But, he says, “There was a fire alarm or something and 200 people in their pajamas with blankets in the lobby. It was so strange. We ended up going home.”
“He lit the fire and some candles, took the ring out of his pocket and said, ‘Here,’” Deni says.
Patrick told her, “I’ve been trying to give you this all night.”
“I think I laughed and kissed him and said, ‘Yes,’” Deni says. — Michael Donahue
David + Holly (Photo: Courtesy David Shotsberger)
Holly + David
Music brought them together, and their music remains decades on.
“We met in piano class,” says David Shotsberger.
It was a mandatory class for serious music students on the campus of Penn State University, piano proficiency. In it, students sat at their own keyboards, listening to themselves on headphones. The professor could select which student to hear and speak to with a special headphone setup. A few keyboards away from his own, Shotsberger saw another student named Holly.
“I noticed her, and the professor noticed me noticing her and told me — through the headphones — to pay attention to the lesson,” Shotsberger says, laughing.
That was 1993. Holly studied flute performance. David studied music composition and theory. He was a hometown guy, from right there in State College. She was from Pittsburgh. They became friends.
About a year later, they ran into each other on campus and agreed on a date. Dinner was at the then-Penn-State-famous Gingerbread Man (or G-Man). The restaurant closed in 2014 to make way for Primanti Brothers, an iconic Pittsburgh sandwich shop and bar.
Whatever David and Holly talked about on that first date stuck, and that conversation almost certainly included music. For years, the couple would talk about music, play music together, and go to shows together. Holly would travel with, occasionally sing with, and sell merch for David’s family’s traveling gospel and country group, New Life.
The two stayed together and married in 1998 at the Eisenhower Chapel right on the campus of Penn State. That was May. By July, David had selected the University of Memphis for his doctoral work and the couple relocated to the Bluff City. By then, Holly earned a master’s degree in speech language pathology and a job hunt in a new city loomed.
“ I think when you’re that young, you’re just a little bit more adventurous, maybe, willing to go do new things and go to new places when you know no one there,” she says. “So, moving to Memphis felt like an exciting adventure at the time.”
They stuck together, relied on each other, established Memphis as home base, and made friends. Memphis was temporary, anyway. Who knew where they’d end up after David finished his doctorate program?
Turned out, Memphis had plans for David and Holly. He earned a one-year appointment at the U of M and later became the director of operations for the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for a couple of years. Holly worked as a speech language pathologist in early intervention clinics in Marion, Arkansas. David is now the creative director for Advent Presbyterian Church and directs the jazz band and teaches music technology at Rhodes College. The couple raised two children together, and Holly now works as a speech language pathologist in the Memphis-Shelby County Schools.
Memphis and music have remained constants in David and Holly’s lives and relationship over two decades here.
“For sure it’s about the people that we’ve met here,” Holly says. “Memphis has brought many dear friends that we’ve done life with for 25 years or so. They’re family now. So, that makes Memphis home.”
They still play music together and know each other in a special way that only musicians can. David says Holly is the person he’s played music with the longest, around 32 years or thereabouts.
“She’s one of the best musicians I’ve ever met in my life,” David says. — Toby Sells
Anthony + Patricia (Photo: Courtesy Patricia Lockhart)
Patricia + Anthony
In high school, Anthony and Patricia Lockhart ran against each other for class president. Patricia won, but Anthony, to this day, claims it was rigged.
“Now that is slightly true,” admits Patricia. “I think the principal had something to do with it. I didn’t get the popular vote, but I got the teacher vote.”
Still, that didn’t stop Anthony from asking her out once they were at the University of Memphis. “The light hit my skin just right one day,” she says. Anthony says they were distant friends and he wanted to see where things would go, so he looked up her email address in the campus directory.
“She sent her number back real quick,” he says.
For their first date, they went to McAllister’s Deli and the movies at the Malco Paradiso. Neither of them can remember what movie they saw, but they know it was a good first date and they know it was March 2005, an anniversary they still celebrate today. “I’m forced to do that,” Anthony says, to which Patricia replies, “Oh my gosh, you are not forced; you are highly recommended to comply.”
By November, Patricia had moved into Anthony’s, and by April, Anthony proposed. A year later, they were married. “This is not a story we recommend of our kids ’cause this is just the way the cookie crumbled for us,” Patricia says. “My aunties even were like, ‘Patricia, wait five years.’ And I didn’t see the point in waiting because I knew that I was going to be with him.”
“We had fun. We wanted to do everything together,” Anthony says. “We had a great time growing and experiencing each other. It was like we were progressing together. We had a lot of firsts together.”
“If I were to give advice to people, I would say the person that you married is going to change,” Patricia says. “The Anthony that’s sitting beside me is different from the Anthony — in some ways, not a whole lot of ways — that I married, that I started dating 20 years ago. His views have changed; taste buds have changed. And it’s all about loving a person through their changes, and Anthony has seriously loved me through all of my quirky changes and mood swings, especially with hormones and having kids — all of the things.”
“Communication is definitely necessary, either good or bad,” Anthony adds. “[You need to] have an open mind and communication.”
Today, Patricia, an assistant principal and writer (sometimes for the Flyer), and Anthony, a site inspector for the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development, are parents to four children: Eve (11), Elijah (13), Elliott (13), and Aiden (16). The kids say their favorite parts of their parents’ marriage are their humor, how well they get along, and “the way dad looks down at mom and [she] looks up at [him] when [they’re] in the kitchen standing close to each other.” And Eve, especially, likes that she can poke fun at them.
“We’re a big family, and we enjoy each other, like genuinely enjoy being around each other,” Patricia says. “And what I love about being a parent with Anthony is that I could walk in and be like, ‘I’m a 20 percent parent today. That’s it.’ And he’s just like, ‘Okay, I got 60, and 80 is enough for today.’”
“I think parenting definitely helps you kind of grow a little bit,” Anthony adds.
But in between parenting and working, the two also know to make time for each other, to date each other. “I’ll be at work, and sometimes being an assistant principal is extra, extra stressful,” Patricia says. “I’ll get this calendar alert and it’s him putting a date on my calendar.” — Abigail Morici
Bastard, orphan, son of a whore, and a Scotsman, he grew up to be a hero and a scholar. Who else could I be talking about but everyone’s favorite $10-bill Founding Father, the one and only Alexander Hamilton, star of the revolutionary Broadway musical Hamilton. With 16 performances on the schedule from Tuesday, February 18th, to Sunday, March 2nd, Hamilton is making its way to the Orpheum Theatre. To coincide with the show’s run here, producer Jeffrey Seller and the Orpheum Theatre Group have announced the Ham4Ham digital lottery, offering 40 tickets for $10 for every performance.
The lottery opened on Friday, February 7th, and will close at noon on Thursday, February 13th, for tickets to performances February 18th to 23rd. Subsequent lotteries will open each Friday and close the following Thursday for the upcoming week’s performances. Winners will be notified Thursday between 1 and 4 p.m. via email and mobile push notification, and winners may purchase up to two tickets.
Photo: Joan Marcus
To enter, download the official Hamilton app (here) via the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Patrons must be 18 or older and have a valid photo ID. Only one entry per person will be allowed, and repeat entries and disposable email addresses will be discarded. Tickets are nontransferable and void if resold.
For the full schedule of Hamilton performances at the Orpheum, visit here. The Orpheum will also host a Kids Night on Broadway on Thursday, February 27th, with pre-show interactive activities, photo booth opportunities, and more for the youngest audience members, starting at 6:30 p.m. For that night, if you buy an adult ticket, you can get a free ticket for a child under 18 by calling 901-525-3000, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Availability is limited.)
Hamilton is recommended for ages 10-plus due its strong language.
Questions remain after several social media users reported an incident at Global Cafe in Crosstown Concourse Tuesday.
Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers were called to the site. The large police presence and flashing police lights attracted attention.
This left many wondering what — in general — was going on. Videos taken at the scene leave more questions for some who say MPD unnecessarily escalated the situation. Others say the people on the scene yelling at police escalated the situation.
The situation started when an employee at Global Cafe asked Rachael Spriggs to leave. When she refused, the employee called police and alerted Crosstown security. The scene spilled out into the street in front of Crosstown where a crowd shouted at police and filmed them. The situation got physical, pepper spray was released, and people went to jail.
Neither Crosstown Concourse nor Global Cafe immediately responded for comment.
The Equity Alliance, a Tennessee-based nonprofit organization, posted they were aware of the situation involving Spriggs, the agency’s Director of Powerbuilding.
“We are actively gathering details and will provide updates as we learn more. Stay tuned for more information,” the post said.
Equity Alliance via Facebook
Spriggs went live on Facebook Tuesday in a video captioned “Global Cafe in Crosstown is a good idea in theory but they are racist as sh*t!”
In the video, Spriggs and an employee were having a verbal altercation. As Spriggs speaks to the camera the employee tells her she needs to leave or he would call the cops.
“Call the cops, call the cops – I’m fine with you calling the cops,” Spriggs said. “I’m fine with that.”
The employee then said Spriggs was not welcome there, to which Spriggs said he had no power. Another person can be heard saying that Spriggs was escalating the situation, to which she said she wanted him to call the police so she could “bring attention to his racist behavior.”
Spriggs then told viewers that the police had been called. Minutes later Spriggs showed the police showing up, who asked her to come outside. She then said that the officers informed her that “they wanted to bar her from Crosstown.”
A Crosstown officer told her she was being barred for “being disruptive” after “refusing to leave the establishment.” The officer said the employee had the right since Global Cafe is a private business.
As Spriggs continued to speak on her live, she said ‘aye don’t touch me, mane,’ as an MPD officer pulled on her jacket. The phone was dropped, and picked up by police officers. Before the live was ended, Spriggs asked why she couldn’t have her phone to which an officer told her she was being detained.
According to a post made by Spriggs Wednesday, as she was being detained “more officers arrived on the scene and completely escalated the situation.” She said officers “slammed [her] legs in the door and yanked [her] from the car.”
The post also said that officers threw her “disabled friend onto her back.” The woman has been identified as community organizer Shahidah Jones.
Facebook user Brittney King posted a live video where you can see a crowd form around Spriggs, who was in MPD custody.
An officer then touches Jones’ arm to which onlookers tell the officer to get their hands off her. A woman tries to intervene to which an officer shoves her, pushing both her and Jones to the ground.
The woman recording the video repeatedly yells that Jones is disabled.
“Why would you jump on this disabled woman? Why would you do that?” she yells. “What the hell?”
UPDATE:
Spriggs went on to post early Wednesday morning saying that she had not patronized the business in months, yet “did not want to make a statement because of my support for their mission.” She also said this treatment was “not consistent among the other employees.”
The Official Black Lives Matter Memphis Chapter is raising funds for those arrested. A post from user Allyn Smith said that bail had been set at $4,000 for community members who were “wrongfully and arrested and publicly vilified.”
Amber Sherman, a local political strategist, posted a video on Instagram saying that police are trying to charge those involved with assaulting an officer. The caption said four local organizers were arrested including General Sessions Court Clerk Tami Sawyer.
“You can clearly see the situation was escalated by police grabbing on people, pushing people – things they do not have to do,” Sherman said. “Our demand is for all the charges to be dismissed against everyone who was arrested. Two, boycott Global Cafe and boycott Crosstown Concourse.”
Sherman asked that people call the restaurant to let them know they’re boycotting because they’re “anti-Black” and “call police on people and help escalate situations that end in violence for Black people.”
The University of Tennessee Health Science Center has settled in a First Amendment case involving a pharmacy student’s “sex-positive” social media post.
Kimberly Diei, a Memphis pharmacist, agreed to a $250,000 settlement after filing a lawsuit against the university in a case of free speech.
The suit was filed in 2021 by Diei and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) after the student was investigated for tweets made in 2020 on Twitter( now X) regarding the song “WAP” by rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B. FIRE also said the school received complaints about another tweet Diei made referencing a Beyoncé song.
According to FIRE, an initial investigation was launched in 2019 by the university on the grounds of “professionalism” but was eventually dropped. However, the tweets involving “WAP” lead to another investigation, where UT administrators voted to expel her.
Diei made the tweets under pseudonym “KimmyKasi,” which court documents said never identified her as a UTHSC student. Nevertheless, Diei was notified by school officials that they had received a complaint and the tweets were deemed “ a serious breach of the norms and expectations of the profession,”
UTHSC’s Professional Conduct Committee never told Diei exactly which school policies she violated nor which posts were in question, according to FIRE.
“The First Amendment robustly protects students’ rights to have a voice outside of school, even if college administrators don’t like what they have to say,” FIRE said in a statement.
Diei appealed the decision, which was then reversed after FIRE sued the school in February 2021. Three years later, a federal appeals court ruled that the tweet, which was referred to as “sexual” and “vulgar” by the administration was protected by the First Amendment.
“Kim’s posts complied with the social media sites’ policies and involved expression that the First Amendment squarely prevents public universities from investigating and punishing,” FIRE said in a statement, adding that there is nothing “unprofessional about students expressing love of hip-hop and their sexuality on social media.”
“Students don’t give up their free speech rights the day they sign up for grad school,” FIRE attorney JT Morris said. “Without FIRE, UT could have derailed Kim’s whole professional career. We were proud to fight for Kim. Her win will help protect students everywhere from campus censors at public universities.”
It’s a great time to be alive if you live in Memphis, like to browse Facebook Marketplace, and love weird figurines.
Consider this “drunk pirate figurine” posted by Boula Baskhairoun from Olive Branch.
Surly with a pistol, sword, and holding a chimp’s hand, this guy is just $29. How Boula knows the pirate is drunk, though, was not disclosed.
Posted to Facebook by Mary D. Wasson
Since you’re already down that way, swing a little further south to Hernando for Mary D. Wasson’s “Talking Trumpinator” figurine. He says, “I’ll be back … in 2024” and “hasta la vista, Biden.” Timeless fun. Only $40.
Facebook by Nea Antiques
Complete your figurine road trip in beautiful Blytheville, Arkansas, for the guy above. From a ’70s-era Lewis and Clark Expedition collection, he’s also a decanter. The drunk pirate will love him.
Posted to Facebook by Zach Runyon
If none of that interests you, Zach Runyon has 20 barrels of peanut butter back in Memphis that he’ll let go for $50 a pop.
