Category: Flyer Flashback

Memphis in May, now celebrating its 32nd year, seems like an event
that will hold a permanent place on our city’s calendars. But just 10
years ago, it was struggling to survive. In our May 6, 1999, cover
story, “At the Crossroads,” Marilyn Sadler (now senior editor of
Memphis magazine), explored the organization’s “tragedy,
turmoil, and brush with bankruptcy.”

Wes Brustad

She began her investigation by looking at the death of promoter Bob
Kelley, who had been responsible for booking most of the top musical
acts that came to Memphis:

“Whatever reasons Kelley had for ending his life — and some
say changes with the Beale Street Music Festival had nothing to do with
it — his death was one of numerous controversies that plagued the
1998 festival. Despite glorious sunny weather, attendance figures for
the music festival dropped to 79,000, a 30 percent decrease from the
previous year.

“Wes Brustad, who was hired as executive director in 1997 after an
almost year-long search, announced his resignation shortly after the
festival, but not before drawing both criticism and praise for changes
he enacted, including severing ties with Kelley.

“But the most significant legacy left by Brustad and the MIM board’s
executive directors is one that the current regime is saddled with now.
In October 1998, an audit showed a deficit of $592,375 — the
largest in the organization’s 22-year history. Reporting that MIM had
suffered a substantial operating loss, as well as deficits in operating
capital, the audit stated, ‘These matters raise substantial doubt about
the festival’s ability to continue as a going concern.'”

Over the years, reporters at the Memphis Flyer have uncovered
quite a few political scandals. Sometimes the resulting news stories
pissed off the accused pols, resulting in angry phone calls, e-mails,
and letters.

In March 1999, all the Flyer racks went missing from the
Criminal Justice Center at 201 Poplar after the paper ran two stories
about corruption at the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department — one
about an out-of-court sexual-harassment settlement between then-Sheriff
A.C. Gilless and former sheriff’s department dispatcher Louise Charlene
Taylor and another story about nepotism within the department.

According to reporter Phil Campbell’s story, papers disappeared from
the racks after the corruption stories hit stands. When Flyer
circulation manager Robbie French attempted to refill the emptied
racks, a 201 Poplar employee told him he was “wasting his time because
someone in Gilless’ office was sending two women in plainclothes to
remove the papers.”

The following week, French discovered all the Flyer racks
inside the building also had disappeared. Then-editor Dennis Freeland
filed a complaint with the Shelby County police, the security force for
county buildings. The empty racks were discovered near the freight and
service elevators inside 201 Poplar.

Though the culprit was never revealed, then-Mayor Jim Rout issued a
notice to employees to return the racks to the Criminal Justice Center.
The memo also warned employees that they would be prosecuted if caught
restraining lawful trade inside county buildings. — Bianca
Phillips

In the April 20, 2000, issue, the Flyer introduced many
Memphians to a new name they’d get to know much better over the years:
Craig Brewer.

The filmmaker, who would go on to make a splash with his Sundance
hit Hustle & Flow and who will debut his MTV series $5
Cover in May, was then a relative unknown just finishing his first
homemade feature, The Poor and Hungry.

In “Home Movies,” a feature on “the budding Memphis independent film
scene” by staff writer Mark Jordan, the Flyer captured a
28-year-old Brewer setting up a Poor and Hungry shot at the
P&H Café featuring bluegrass band the Riverbluff Clan and
watched as Brewer created a makeshift peep-show booth in his Midtown
living room while shooting the short film Clean Up in Booth
B.

“In just the past few years, a bona fide independent filmmaking
community seems to have sprouted up in Memphis, one that is apparently
thriving far away from the lights of Hollywood and all the happier for
it,” Jordan wrote. He also reported on other then-new local features
such as exploitation auteur J. Michael McCarthy’s Superstarlet
A.D. and the group project Strange Cargo, as well as two
local film festivals: the Memphis International Film Festival and
the Independent Memphis Film Festival.

Nearly a decade later, Brewer and McCarthy stand as the godfathers
for a vast, vibrant local filmmaking scene, and those two festivals,
since rechristened On Location: Memphis and Indie Memphis, have grown
alongside the local film scenes they support. — Chris
Herrington

If you work for Contemporary Media Inc. (the Flyer‘s parent
company) and you have kids, sooner or later those kids —
affectionately known at 460 Tennessee Street as “cheap labor” —
will appear as models in some special issue or advertisement in one (or
quite possibly all) of CMI’s fine publications. It’s fun for the
offspring, who get to feel like rock stars during the photo shoot. In
one case, however, the kid in question actually grew up to become a
rock star. In our April 11, 1996, issue, Andrew VanWyngarden, son of
Flyer editor Bruce VanWyngarden, had his chance to pose for the
cameras. It turned out to be good practice.

Andrew VanWyngarden, half of MGMT, the freak-rocking duo whose
Oracular Spectacular was named best album of 2008 by the UK’s
NME magazine, had his photo taken to illustrate a fad that was
(and still is) sweeping the nation: skateboarding.

“Skateboards have been around since the Beaver was a kid, but
they’re just as popular now as they were then,” wrote Linda Willis, the
Flyer‘s listings editor and “Kid Stuff” columnist. But the
article in question wasn’t really about skateboarding. It was about
fashion: baggy pants, T-shirts, and shoes “specifically constructed to
achieve maximum rail-slide and curb-flip results.”

“Skateboarding will rip through regular shoes in two weeks,” said
Brad Jackson of the local skateboard emporium Cheapskates.

Anticipating criticism from all the armchair ombudsmen who will no
doubt accuse the author of this column of currying favor with his boss,
allow me to set the record straight: Do you have any idea how many
teenaged girls will click through our website to see a photo of the
rocker in his younger days? It’s a hit!

In the issue that hit the streets in the second week of April 2001, the Flyer was concerned editorially with the uncertain future awaiting big-time basketball in Memphis. One more time for that French proverb: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Indeed they do. It’s eight years later, and the future awaiting big-time basketball in Memphis still consumes us.

Due to some miracle, John Calipari may yet walk on water down the Ohio River to its confluence with the Mississippi until he arrives back on our shores with a returning prodigal’s smile. But, assuming that new Kentucky coach Calipari won’t be around for much more than clearing up some loose ends, it’s ime for a dose of reality in the manner of our editorial that week in 2001.

The issue back then was the proposed FedExForum and the deal being asked of the city and county to coax the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies here. After grumbling that we wanted to see “the documents and the architectural studies” before abandoning the Pyramid for a massive financial effort elsewhere, we suggested that Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley spring for more of the package than he seemed wont to do.

Sensibly enough, we argued, “It appears to be a business where expenses and revenues are simply out of balance, and it would be foolish indeed for Memphis and the state of Tennessee to invest $250 million in such a venture without laying off some of the risk.”

But what really made us seem like far-seeing sages was the question we raised in the editorial: “Where is the demand for the NBA? There has been no appreciable demonstration of public support. This deal looks strangely artificial, as though all the ‘support’ has been drummed up from public relations firms and people with a vested interest.”

— Jackson Baker

How differently we looked at the Memphis Public Library’s “flagship information service” in the pre-Google days.

LINC stands for Library Information Center. In the Flyer‘s cover story this week in 1994, managing editor Dennis Freeland wrote, “Since its inception in 1975, LINC has been the crown jewel of the public library system.”

The Flyer did some field-testing of the system, and Freeland wrote, “We turned up some serious information gaps. The LINC file listed Jack Owens as the sheriff of Shelby County, Richard Mashburn as the Shelby County clerk, and W.W. Herenton as head of Memphis City Schools.”

All of that information, needless to say, was outdated. As LINC would soon be.

The notion of people calling a human being to get the answer to a question seems quaint now. But this was a few years before the explosion of the Internet and personal computers.

Today the library has a new central location, scores of computers, and usually a lot of people using them. You can get to Google or some other search site and find the answer to just about anything. Not so in 1994.

“The LINC staff expanded even further in 1992 when the Magazine and Newspaper department merged with LINC. The stress of answering hundreds of calls a day and often looking for answers in sources that have not been kept up to date have seemingly taken a toll on the 30-person staff at LINC.”

Freeland took his concerns to then-director of the library, Judith Drescher.

“I’m satisfied with how it’s working now,” she told him.

In 2007, Mayor Herenton replaced Drescher with a non-librarian. Meanwhile, cuts continue not only in information services such as LINC but, so we hear, in the magazine and newspaper business as well. — John Branston

To mark the Flyer’s 20th anniversary, we’re looking back at stories from our first two decades.

During this week in 1992, longtime Flyer staffer (now senior editor) John Branston reported that two discount bookstores — Taylors and Bookstar — planned to open locations in Memphis.

Taylors wanted to open a location in the Regalia Center, and Bookstar, which specializes in remodeling old movie theaters, planned to open its second area location in Poplar Plaza.

“The superstores tout their book selection, newsstands, and discount prices every day, even on new titles that can run $25 or more at full price. And they promise the same level of service as smaller independents,” Branston wrote.

Local independent booksellers were understandably nervous.

“I guess each one of us smaller bookstores is going to have to find our own niche,” Burke’s owner Harriette Beeson was quoted as saying.

It appears they did. Regional bookseller Davis-Kidd is still thriving in Laurelwood, and Burke’s moved from its home on Poplar to a space in Cooper-Young.

And we don’t know what happened to Taylors — as we’ve never even heard of it — but Bookstar is still in Poplar Plaza.

— Mary Cashiola

Let’s take a trip in the Way-Back Machine to the misty days of 1991. It’s the weekend of March 10th, and you’re looking for something to do, so you flip through the 28-page Memphis Flyer for inspiration.

For dinner, you’re tempted by the ad for Lupe & Bea’s Texican Restaurant, which is offering new Cuban cuisine. But then you notice the ad for Sleep Out Louie’s “Louisiana Night,” with crawfish, oysters, and soft-shell crab. Yum! Or you could head to East Memphis and try La Patisserie Bistro’s “fine French cuisine in an informal atmosphere.” So many choices.

After dinner, the options also are staggering. You could go see the local premiere of Jim Jarmusch’s set-in-Memphis flick Mystery Train at the Fare 4 Theatre. Or you could head to Poor Red’s at Park and Getwell and groove to a John Lennon impersonater and the Plastic Yo-Yo Band.

Not hip enough for you? Then get yourself over to Six-One-Six and dig the Gunbunnies. Or head to Night Moves and listen to the “badass birds in a bar” — otherwise known as the Fabulous Thunderbirds with Jimmy Vaughn. Not your style? Feminist folk singer Holly Near is at the Peabody Alley. And at the Antenna club, you can get punked by the Modifiers, the Bumnotes, and Angerhead.

And to show that some things never change, here’s the beginning of Tim Sampson’s We Recommend column: “I am so happy to be an American. There’s nothing I like better than living in a country where the police can just knock on your door and search your house anytime they like.”

— Bruce VanWyngarden