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Politics Politics Feature

Last Stop, Memphis!

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

To say it plainly, Monday night of this week was a challenge — for  candidates who wanted one last opportunity to see and be seen; for party operatives determined, by hook or by crook, to expand the next day’s turnout for their charges; for  those undecided voters who realized that their one last fleeting chance to experience specific candidates directly was at hand; for reporters whose wish was to cover the last moves of major candidates before Judgment Day on Tuesday, November 6th, and at the same time, as circumstances allowed, to check out the much-ballyhooed “Transition Report” of County Mayor Lee Harris at the FedEx Event Center (one had to wonder about the Election Eve scheduling for the event, given the competition for attention).

And complicating it all was the monsoon, a huge series of rain showers that lasted through the evening, creating flash floods and traffic jams and direly complicating all those imperative hopes and ambitions mentioned above.

Jackson Baker

Bill Lee (top) and Karl Dean with Memphis supporters on Election Eve

Still and all, it was a major night for Shelby County. It had to mean something that former Governor Phil Bredesen sandwiched in a last visit to Shelby County, at Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ on South Third, between events in Jackson and his home town of Nashville, site of his onetime mayoralty and his two terms as Tennessee governor.

Unfortunately for those Democrats who wanted to embrace all their heroes at once, their gubernatorial nominee, Karl Dean, who succeeded Bredesen as Nashville mayor, was holding forth under the roof of Hoskins Road Spiritual Kingdom Church, many miles away, accompanied by 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen. An advance ad for the event had indicated that Bredesen would be there, too — a physical impossibility and not just because of the torrential downpour.

Not only was Memphis the last stop on Dean’s long and winding trail, he was scheduled also to do a poll visit or two here on Tuesday morning. Clearly, he was a believer in the enduring nature of the Democratic blue wave, which crested here unmistakably in the runup to August 2nd, when Democratic candidates performed a clean sweep in the county general election.

And the deluge of new voter applications since, right up to the registration deadline of October 9th, had given Shelby County Election Commission officials all they could process, and then some. Moreover, even though the great Kavanaugh/Supreme Court flap had allegedly been a spur to Republican enthusiasm as well, there was no doubt that most of the new-voter gain was going to the Democrats’ side of the voter rolls.

Consequently, Dean, abetted by the ever-intensive Cohen and other attendant party stars, managed a plausible optimism in his remarks to the well-wishers who had braved the storm.

Even as Dean intended to spend the night in Memphis, his opponent, Republican nominee Bill Lee, was finishing up a last statewide dash with an address to supporters at Another Broken Egg Cafe at Park Place in East Memphis. Looking around the interior of the place, Lee described it as “packed,” and he wasn’t wrong. He proceeded to deliver a valedictory on his surprisingly successful outlier campaign that sounded simultaneously like a proclamation of victory.

And, given the apparent message of such polls and other samplings that have been taken in the general election campaign, the Franklin businessman may well have been entitled to look and sound as confident about the outcome as he did, and he elaborated once more on his running theme that redoubled efforts to expand the economy and infrastructure of Shelby County would be high on his intended agenda in office and necessary ones for the state itself to prosper.

In any case, there was no doubt that, with both Dean and Lee choosing to end their gubernatorial campaigns here, Memphis bore a prominence in this election and an influence on its results that seemed almost to hearken back to an earlier time, the Crump era, when the city was the undisputed pivot of the state’s political direction.

And, no doubt about it, the next governor of Tennessee was here on Election Eve.

It remained to be seen whether such a statement could be made about the U.S. Senate race. Bredesen certainly made an effort to show his flag, appearing here with some frequency, even before his braving of the deluge Monday night. For whatever reason, Republican nominee Marsha Blackburn, the Congresswoman whose 7th District at one point, before the last redistricting, took in a sizeable hunk of eastern Shelby County, was not so much in evidence locally.

But, during the course of things, she had had two marquee appearances with her party leader, President Donald Trump. One was at a Trump rally in Southaven last month; another was in Chattanooga, in east Tennessee, this past weekend.

• For all the bad weather and the other claims on people’s attention, a generous crowd turned out at the FedEx Event Center at Shelby Farms Monday night for a formal presentation of a report from the transition team of Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris.

The team, which numbered some 40 people, was chaired by former Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins and Paul Morris, president of Jack Morris Auto Glass. Danielle Inez was its executive director.

The transition report covered such areas as education, transportation and community development, criminal justice, health care, economic development, and government structure and metrics.

Coincident with the transition report, Harris and Shelby County Commission Chairman Van Turner recently announced the resolution of a matter that had bitterly divided the previous commission and former Mayor Mark Luttrell. That was the commission’s desire for its own staff attorney to represent its interests vis-à-vis the administration. Harris and Turner agreed on a resolution allowing Turner, as commission chair, to select an assistant county to serve the commission in that regard. That attorney will be Marcy Ingram, a longtime favorite of commission members.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Trump and the Jews

While visiting Poland in 1976, I heard about a book. It was called Anti-Semitism Without Jews: Communist Eastern Europe, and it was mentioned to me because the Jews of Poland, once numerous, had almost entirely been murdered — yet the hatred of them persisted. The title of that book popped into my head in the aftermath of the slaughter of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh by an anti-Semite. President Trump, not to mention Republicans in general, denied any connection between the shooting and the president’s rhetoric. They are either historically ignorant or moral cowards.

First, their ignorance. They do not appreciate that, in both style and rhetoric, Trump’s anti-Semitism, like that of Eastern Europe’s, is “without Jews.” He himself lacks the prejudice. He was born and raised in the resplendently Jewish city of New York. His daughter converted to the religion, and his grandchildren are being raised as Jews. His associates — once Roy Cohn and later Michael Cohen — have been Jews, and he is supported by major Jewish donors such as Sheldon Adelson, whose wife, Miriam, lost family in the Holocaust. Trump is not a Jew hater.

But he has adopted or embraced the mind-set of an anti-Semite. He does not rebut the stereotype of the villainous rich Jew, that latter-day Rothschild, George Soros, who is seen as the deus ex machina funding the caravan of the desperate wending its way north from Honduras. In Soros’ native Hungary, where he escaped Adolf Eichmann’s roundup — more than 437,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz — Soros is literally the poster boy of all the standard anti-Semitic tropes, especially that of the amoral Jewish cosmopolite.

In the United States, the cliche of rootless amoral Jews has been replaced by a media with the same odious characteristics. Jews have long been associated with journalism — in 19th-century Vienna, the word “journalist” was analogous with Jew — and in 1941, Charles Lindbergh, a steadfast isolationist, made matters clear in a speech in Des Moines, Iowa. What he called “war agitators” consisted of three groups: “the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.” These “agitators,” he added, are “only a small minority of our people; but they control a tremendous influence. Against the determination of the American people to stay out of war, they have marshaled the power of their propaganda, their money, their patronage.”

Only crackpots talk that way today. But the fundamentals remain. In Trump talk, the media remains the enemy of the American people. It lies. It lies because it is evil. It lies because it is un-American. Trump relies on the predicate for this belief, which was established years ago when the three television networks and some major newspapers were controlled by Jews — and if Trump does not know this, anti-Semites sure do. Jews no longer control, but stereotypical “Jewishness” endures.

In the belief system of Trump and his followers, the media account for so much that is wrong with America. It is false for the sake of being false, and it is false in sneaky, underhanded ways. This is nothing new, of course. President Richard M. Nixon went after the press in a similar way, and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, made it one of his themes. But no administration has made media-bashing a matter of policy — not merely a way of rebutting criticism but a way of governing, of disestablishing truth and facts.

This is a kind of fascism or, the economic program aside, communism. The ruling party doesn’t have opponents or critics, it has enemies — “enemies of the people,” in this case journalism. The rhetoric strips the opposition of any standing, any legitimacy. It is not a party in temporary opposition. It is a party in permanent sedition.

Trump had been frank about his intention. Lesley Stahl of CBS News told an audience in May that Trump told her he wants to “discredit” and “demean” the media “so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.” But it’s far less clear that he realizes what encouragement he offers to conspiracy believers, of which anti-Semitism is the most adaptable and durable.

I don’t necessarily see the homicidal act in Pittsburgh as proof of a resurgence of American anti-Semitism. A far more certain danger is the validation Trump has offered those who believe in all sorts of conspiracy theories. In spirit and in essence, this is anti-Semitism that so far lacks only Jews. History, though, warns that the vacuum will be filled. It’s up to Trump and his morally dormant Republican Party to ensure that Pittsburgh remains a spasm of the awful past — and not a harbinger of an even worse future.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

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News The Fly-By

Green Decade

CREDIT: Facebook/Clean Memphis

Project Green Fork and Clean Memphis launched 10 years ago. Now both are under the Clean Memphis umbrella. Janet Boscarino, the group’s leader, said Memphis is cleaner and greener than it was a decade ago. But there is still more work to be done. — Toby Sells

Memphis Flyer: What did Memphis look like when Clean Memphis started?

Janet Boscarino: At the time, it felt to me that we’d lowered the bar. For the large part, there seemed to be a lack of people who seemed to be concerned about the look and feel of an area.

Facebook/Clean Memphis

clean up Soulsville.

There was litter on the exit ramps and on the interstate. Some businesses, too, weren’t maintaining their property. There were weeds in the sidewalk — just lowering the bar. It reflected, to me, a lack of pride. We love our kind of grit and grind in Memphis in one aspect, which I think is very positive, but not in the sense of a regressive look at who we are.

MF: What did you want to do when you got started?

JB: I just wanted to create a space for people to become involved in [cleaning up Memphis]. You’d hear a lot of … people complaining about it but not necessarily going and doing it. Memphis City Beautiful and others were trying to do things, but what I felt was missing was a strategy in engagement to raise the level of awareness of how bad the problem was and to make it easy for people to enter that space.

MF: How did you get started?

JB: We began by helping neighborhoods identify what projects they wanted to work on. We had to learn how best to support neighborhoods. There’s a fine balance between going in and saying “this is what you should do” and working with them to help understand what they want and need to do. That’s where our heart is. How do we help support you in what you need to do and bring resources to bear? It can be very tricky.

MF: Have things changed here?

JB: We’ve improved drastically in a lot of areas. Concentrated blight is still a problem in some areas because that’s not about the attitudinal change. It’s about much more complicated issues.

There are a lot of reasons why a neighborhood might look terrible. It certainly didn’t start with people not caring about their neighborhood. You have disinvestment. You had the mortgage crisis and all the blight-related issues there. There are some behavioral things, too. And we’re trying to work on those issues.

MF: What has changed in Project Green Fork’s 10 years?

JB: What I have seen is that people are more aware whether or not a restaurant is certified by Project Green Fork. When FedEx does catering, for example, they want a Project Green Fork-certified restaurant. It aligns with their sustainability goals.

Where we do struggle is with expansion. [Project Green Fork] is very Downtown-Midtown-East Memphis-centric. So, we’re looking at how to share this message of sustainable practices all over the city. MF: Is Memphis cleaner now? JB: In many places, it is much cleaner. I still think we struggle and have work to do. I think we have that with attitudinal change and behavior, too.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1550

Dammit, Gannett

It’s early Wednesday morning. After a long, ugly campaign, midterm elections are finally over. With so much hanging in the balance, Commercial Appeal subscribers picked up their newspaper looking for results and analysis only to discover there wasn’t any. How can that possibly be? According to a report in The Nashville Scene, Gannett’s editors were informed that print deadlines wouldn’t be extended to to cover elections. “As a result, Wednesday’s editions of The Tennessean, Commercial Appeal, and Knoxville News-Sentinel will not have final results for some of the most closely contested statewide races in years,” the article stated.

“We do not believe print is a vehicle for breaking news,” Tennessean vice president and editor Michael Anastasi was quoted as saying.

The Commercial Appeal has since framed the delay — a byproduct of rising print costs and early deadlines — saying, “Election Day breaking coverage will be showcased on digital.” For 48 hours after the election, web access will be free.

Ken Doctor at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism weighed in on Gannett’s decision: “[N]ot adding any extra pages of newsprint for election results does save money … At the same time, it is those incredibly loyal print readers — the ones who have stood by newspaper companies through cut after cut in staff and in the product — who will now see that loyalty tested, again.” Doctor further explained that, as with other newspapers, a considerable percentage of Gannett’s print subscribers are over 70.

“What those numbers tell us,” Doctor writes, “is that that road to a mostly/fully digital future gets narrower month by month. Digital subscriptions are gaining ground much too slowly. Given the combination of higher prices, a lesser product, and even increasingly erratic home delivery, print subscribers may provide less of a lifeline to the digital future than Gannett and other publishers now assume in their whiteboard calculations.” Dammit.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Smash Hit!

Sierra Miller, owner of the CRAZE Memphis Rage Room, had seen a similar concept and thought it might work well in Memphis. “Memphis needs an outlet, somewhere to let loose,” she says.

The idea behind a rage room is pretty simple: Work out your feelings of anger by breaking shit. Participants sign up online, show up, and sign a waiver. Then they get outfitted in a jumpsuit and headgear. Some of the equipment provided to smash stuff to smithereens: a hammer, tennis racquet, table leg, shovel, and crowbar. No chainsaws, btw.

Memphis SMASH!

While Miller provides items to break (fish tank, computer monitors, windows, TVs), you can bring your own. One couple brought a pesky laptop that never worked quite right. Sessions are 5, 15, and 30 minutes for the truly pissed off.

As far as rules go, there’s nothing too over-the-top. You must wear long pants and closed toe shoes. You have to be at least 16. You can not hit other people. Miller says so far, everyone has behaved.

Miller says the rage room is ideal for team building, fund-raisers, date night, or bachelorette parties. It would work well for a 50th birthday party or a divorce party, too. She says one customer was advised to go by their therapist.

There is something satisfying in doing something you’re not normally allowed to do. Miller says the rage room is not only fun but has the potential to decrease the crime rate. Breaking things provides a release of pent up stress and anger — an active exhale of negative energy. One gets to the point of “Oh my god, I feel so much better,” Miller says.

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Music Music Features

Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridges, and Lucy Dacus: boygenius

CREDIT: Lera Pentelute

Julien Baker, the Memphis-bred phenomenon behind 2015’s Sprained Ankle and 2017’s Turn Out the Lights, is touring in support of a new project with fellow indie-rock sensations Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. Bridgers’ Stranger in the Alps was released last year and features a duet with Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst as well as the enormously infectious “Motion Sickness,” and Dacus has been carving out a place for herself in the indie-rock pantheon with a duo of lyrically resonant and grunge-guitar-laden albums, 2016’s No Burden and this year’s Historian. All three artists are relatively new on the scene, with Baker’s Sprained Ankle having the oldest vintage of their solo releases, but their collaborative boygenius EP project feels, both lyrically and sonically, like something put together by artists wise beyond their years.

Lera Pentelute

boygenius

On the EP, the trio give the songs room to breathe, making their harmonies feel precious, like moments of connection in lives ruled by distance and grueling touring schedules. The collaboration, initially born of an email thread and shared demos, began to coalesce once the trio booked a tour together. Baker says she knew they would team up onstage somehow. “I like to find ways to make the live set special and different. It seemed obvious to all of us that we would collaborate in some way,” Baker says. “If we’re going to write one song, we might as well write as many songs as we can.” So the trio blocked out a week and wrote and recorded their six-song boygenius EP at Sound City Studios in L.A. The EP is set to be released on Matador Records this Friday, November 9th.

The three entertainers differ somewhat in style and genre. Dacus’ music feels more classically rock-and-roll, while Bridgers’ is the most folk-tinged of the group; she’s drawn comparisons to the late Elliott Smith. Their differences work to their credit on the boygenius EP. The songs, with all three vocalists taking turns on lead and harmony duties, feel like something universal accessed via different routes. Unlike so many collaborations, the songwriters behind boygenius are united by common experiences and shared friendship rather than a strict adherence to any genre or a crass cash grab. These are three friends letting down their guard with each other and writing about how it feels to be themselves, even as they discover who they want to be.

“Those are two people that, now looking back on it, are two of my earliest, closest friends from the quote, unquote ‘music industry,'” Baker says. “I don’t feel like I know the first thing about the music industry. Especially now, living in Nashville, there’s such a world of cogs and mechanisms that I’m just not privy to.”

Perhaps owing to the speed with which the project was put together, or maybe because no one in the group is really an industry insider, nothing feels calculated on the boygenius EP. “Writing with Phoebe and Lucy opened me up in a lot of ways,” Baker says. “Now that I’m engaging with music constantly, I’ve become so much more meticulous about how I create music. And I wonder sometimes if the magic is in what’s automatic. And getting to write with them, especially in this very limited time allotment, was really amazing. It challenged me to rely more on instincts.

“I think Lucy and I are used to making records very fast, just going into the studio and grinding for a week or two weeks, but Phoebe approaches records in the ‘leave it alone’ way. [Phoebe] will not rush a song.”

There must be something to letting a composition breathe and relying on instinct, because the songs on boygenius sound like something infused with a little bit of magic. On “Ketchum, ID,” an acoustic lament about youth spent on the road on tour, one can almost hear the buzzing of fluorescent lights and echoing hallways backstage. Baker and her band mates conjure a moment of respite — with harmonies enough to bridge their distances and keep dissonance at bay.

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We Recommend We Recommend

On stage: NottageFest

Theater professor Joy Brooke Fairfield thinks the seeds for NottageFest were planted in August 2017 when she and a group of students attended a performance of Ruined at Overton Square’s Hattiloo Theatre. Set in Mama Nadi’s bar in a battle-scarred mining town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning script told the story of an African Mother Courage selling comfort to soldiers, militiamen, miners, and dealers on all sides of a shapeshifting conflict.

“It was one of those shows that made me excited to live here,” Fairfield says. Flash forward to the present: Rhodes, the University of Memphis, and Southwest Community College are all producing work by Nottage, a consistently provocative storyteller with a gift for exposing dynamics that keep marginalized communities marginalized.

Dennis Darling, director of Intimate Apparel at the U of M, elaborates: “She inspires us all to challenge social norms that betray our instincts to love freely, without prejudice.

“I love how poignant, poetic, and beautifully written her stories are,” Darling says. Set in the early 20th century, Intimate Apparel revolves around an African-American seamstress who lives in a boarding house where she sews fancy underwear for a range of clients including wealthy white women and prostitutes.

Unlike Intimate Apparel, and Nottage’s memory play Crumbs from the Table of Joy, which closed November 4th at Southwest, Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine takes the form of a farce that plays out in the semi-surreal vein of Boots Riley’s film Sorry to Bother You. Directed by Memphis stage veteran Thomas King (aka Le Tekay), Fabulation follows the downward tumble of an ambitious African-American woman as she spirals uncontrollably from success to disaster.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Lucchesi’s Beer Garden: beer, falafel, pin ball.

CREDIT: Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

There is a bar far enough away from the Highland Strip to avoid the undergrad crowd, but close enough to find a philosophy grad student boyfriend that challenges your parents’ conservative beliefs. It’s a bar free and clear of an entertainment district, but still within walking distance of Taco Bell. It’s Lucchesi’s Beer Garden, and it has some bitchin’ neighborhood bar amenities to offer.

The Beer Garden, located at 84 S. Reese, is just off Poplar behind Raffe’s Deli. The two were once connected but are no longer affiliated. Raffe’s daughter, Basma, now owns the Beer Garden with her husband, Tony Lucchesi. The Beer Garden serves up some awesome food out of a tiny kitchen adjacent to the bar including the Big Bad Blake, a panini that holds the honor of being the most expensive sandwich on the menu, and the Triple H, which the Flyer‘s own Michael Donahue proclaimed to be the best sandwich he’d had in 15 years.

While we as Memphians always celebrate cheese fries and other cheesy pub fare, a bar menu full of falafel, hummus, and gyros is a welcome change-up. The amenities don’t stop with a distinct and delicious menu, either! Pinball is quickly ascending on my list of favorite bar sports, and the Beer Garden has three pinball machines: Batman, No Fear, and The Champion Pub. I’ve never laid eyes on The Champion Pub anywhere else, and it’s just delightful. You get to fight a guy named “Knuckles O’Brien” with a ball.

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

If pinball and gyros don’t do it for you, maybe the specials will. Tony has Happy Hour all day on Sunday from 3 to 10 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. He and Basma also have a Wednesday pint night and $1 off all bottles and cans on Tuesday nights. Yeah, $1 off bottles and cans! Finally giving the omnipresent “draft night” a run for its money. Of course, the Beer Garden is a beer-only establishment, which is probably implied by the name for the more astute reader. And the beer is everywhere! It’s stacked in the corner near a sign that says “Smile, there’s beer.” It’s piled next to the record player where Tony is spinning an Elvis Costello record. They’ve curated an excellent selection, including local brews, a delicious pineapple cider, and a sour from Earthbound Brewing called “Fuzzy Pickles” that is pretty damn good.

Although the beer selection might be the selling point for someone to visit for the first time, it’s the camaraderie that keeps this place busy. Blake, the sandwich’s namesake, and Kevin are two of the bar’s regulars. Kevin started coming by when he lived in the neighborhood over 10 years ago. He says the Beer Garden is the kind of place where you can make it what you want it to be, whether you want to join in on the conversation or sit alone. That being said, “There are no private conversations at this bar,” Kevin adds. He and Tony also told me that a lot of nights when there’s nothing else on, they watch all the eclectic sports, like professional darts and curling. For all of us who, during the Olympics, took to Twitter to express our undying love for the sport of curling, this should be welcome news. Wondering where to watch it year-round? Look no further, curling fans.

From the pinball to the food to the pineapple cider and pickle beers, The Beer Garden’s amenities offer something for everyone. Tony and Basma allow it to change with the times, too. They’ve rearranged the kitchen nearly 10 times to better accommodate the ebb and flow of orders. In 2015, they cut out indoor smoking (but still allow it on the patio). They’ll put the sound on for some games and then other times, like the night I visited, it’s the Grateful Dead that you’ll hear. The regulars embraced me, as I get the impression they’ll embrace anyone who is willing to join in on the conversation. The conversation is, after all, the most important amenity.

Lucchesi’s Beer Garden, 84 South Reese, (452-3002), beergardenmemphis.com

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Cheer, Don’t Complain, for the St. Jude Marathon

CREDIT: Andrea Zucker / © Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau

Maybe you’ve noticed more people running in your neighborhood lately. Some have always been around, but you didn’t see them because being outdoors was only bearable from about 4 to 6:15 a.m. due to the humidity. The primary reason, though, is that the St. Jude Marathon is December 1st.

Some runners are crushing 22-milers as they wind down their 16-week training cycles. Others just remembered they signed up for the 10K a few months back and should probably get out there and train a little. That’s one of the many reasons the race is special: There’s room for everyone, from 5K walkers to elite marathoners.

If you’re new to Memphis, or you’ve never experienced the glorious spectacle of 25,000-plus people taking to the streets to help eradicate childhood cancer, you really should check it out. Of course, all distances besides the full marathon are sold out — so unless you casually run 40 miles a week for kicks, it’s too late to register. But there are ways you can support the runners, now and on race day.

Andrea Zucker / © Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau

Runners ready for the St. Jude Memphis Marathon

The first, easiest way is not to drive like a jerk. In wooded neighborhoods, roots and gumballs turn sidewalks into obstacle courses. One misstep can lead to a rolled ankle or worse. In other areas, sidewalks are poorly kept or nonexistent. Sometimes running in the street is the only choice. I’m constantly surprised and terrified by how fast people drive, often while looking at phones, on the residential streets where I run. Those “Drive like your kids live here” signs don’t work so great.

Sharing the road also means respecting crosswalks, those thick white stripes you’re supposed to stop behind at red lights. If you’re at a light and a runner is crossing, please let them clear the intersection before you turn. Stop before you reach stop signs so people don’t have to wait for you to go or run behind your vehicle. Basically, just do everything you were taught in drivers’ ed.

And please don’t honk your horn at runners, unless they’re in danger. Even if your intentions are innocent, understand there’s no way to tell — especially for women runners who endure street harassment regularly. Yes, it does happen. If you see someone you know running, just tell them later you saw them. “I see you getting after it! Go on, girl!” can make someone’s day, but the sincerity doesn’t quite resonate when it’s yelled from a moving vehicle.

Please donate, if you can afford it. Fund-raising isn’t required, but it’s kind of the whole point of the race. The registration fees only cover the cost of putting on the event, which is St. Jude’s biggest single-day fund-raiser. Most runners who participate have pledged to raise money as St. Jude Heroes. When a participant commits to a Bronze, Silver, or Gold fund-raising goal, they’re on the hook for it.

That’s why your runner friends are blowing up your Facebook feed with their personal donation links. Asking people for money is extremely awkward. And if you live in Memphis, chances are everyone you know knows someone else who’s raising money, too.

When you help someone achieve their fund-raising goal, you’re helping them cruise into race day focused solely on what happens between the start line and the finish. Also, you’re literally saving lives.

Finally, please don’t be that person who complains about the road closures. They’ve been doing this thing for 16 years now. The marathon is the first Saturday in December every year. The 2019, 2020, and 2021 races are already scheduled: They’ll be on the first Saturday of December, too. The route has been changed this year to lessen the impact on traffic. Signs are posted on the affected streets. All the local news outlets run stories about it. There’s an entire website (stjude.org/MarathonNeighbors) with all the information you could possibly need about the road closures. It’s less than one day out of the entire year. It raises more than $10 million dollars for pediatric cancer research and has a massive economic impact on the city.

People will still whine about it, though — in spite of those warnings. Please, if you live in Midtown or Downtown, just plan ahead. Find an alternate route to wherever you’re going. Make your grocery run Friday night. Crash at someone else’s house if you have to. I’ve had to make arrangements before; I know it’s inconvenient. But you know what’s super-inconvenient? Kids getting cancer. So keep it to yourself. Figure something out, or better yet, embrace it. Find some poster board and a folding chair and head to the nearest cheering station. Pay close attention to the names on shirts: some are angels, others still fighting. It will inspire you. I hope I see you there.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and a digital marketing specialist.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Penny’s Worth

Anfernee Hardaway is home again. As if he ever left.

On a rainy March afternoon, inside the brand-new Laurie-Walton Family Basketball Center on the University of Memphis’ south campus, Tiger athletic director Tom Bowen introduced the greatest living Tiger of them all as the program’s new basketball coach.

First gaining legend status at Treadwell High School, then later as a Tiger and an All-NBA guard with the Orlando Magic, Penny Hardaway approached the podium, and a region-wide family reunion ensued. “It’s great to see so many familiar faces from when I played, the people who have been so supportive,” said Hardaway who, at 47, is older today than his own college coach, Larry Finch, was when he coached his last Tiger game. “I want to see the Memphis flags waving from cars, see the T-shirts and hats.”

Those shirts and hats had grown scarce at FedExForum, where attendance hit a half-century low in 2017-18, despite Tubby Smith’s second team putting up a 21-13 record and junior point guard Jeremiah Martin nearly winning the American Athletic Conference scoring title. For the better part of those two years — since Josh Pastner left for Georgia Tech — community support for Hardaway taking over at his alma mater had grown — at first gentle rumbling, then later, outright public appeals. Hardaway’s ultimate hiring became the worst-kept secret in the Mid-South, with reports leaking before Smith had the chance to coach the Tigers in the AAC tournament (where they would lose in the semifinals).

Within 30 days of his hiring, Hardaway managed to convince the top two local recruits — Alex Lomax (who helped Hardaway win three state titles at East High School) and Tyler Harris (Cordova High) — to sign with Memphis. Hardaway announced Tennessee had been added to the schedule (the Tigers will host the Vols on December 15th) with the likes of Kentucky and Arkansas on the new coach’s radar. The reaction of ticket-buyers and sponsors has, in basketball terms, lit up the Memphis scoreboard ever since. Having sunk to a 48-year low in attendance last winter, the Tiger program may well set new highs in 2018-19, the program’s 15th season at FedExForum.

Guard Tyler Harris

Sharpshooter David Wingett (who scored more than 2,000 points as a prep player in Nebraska) joined the recruiting class to help fill an outside-scoring void the program has suffered for four seasons. The rookies will join Martin and four other holdovers — guard Kareem Brewton and forwards Kyvon Davenport, Raynere Thornton, and Mike Parks — to write the first chapter in a new volume of Hardaway history.

“Losing is not an option in my mind,” said Hardaway at that opening press conference. “I want to hit the ground running. People are telling me to be patient, do this or that first. But I’m not built that way. I’ll go for it all or none at all.”

Tigers Coach Penny Hardaway leads from the sidelines.

Even with a recruiting class that jumped into the nation’s top 30 when Lomax and Harris signed, the Tigers have been picked to finish as low as eighth in the 12-team American Athletic Conference. (AAC coaches picked Memphis to finish fourth — behind UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston — in their preseason poll.) This doesn’t sit well with the rookie coach, who needs extra motivation like he needed extra vertical leap as a player, which is to say — not! “It’s realistic that we will not finish eighth,” he says. “They were thinking the freshmen can’t carry us, and they’re really not respecting the staff or the guys coming back from last year, when they finished fifth.”

What — beyond himself — can Penny sell a Tiger fan-base that all but disappeared last winter? Hardaway suggests we’ll see a different brand of basketball from the season’s opening tip-off. “I think I’m a little more up-tempo than Coach [Smith],” he says. “We really want to run, fast break. There won’t be a lot of half-court [offense]. We want to get it out. Defensively, we might press more. We’ll be a high-energy team on defense, as well. I like to speed teams up, keep them off-balance. I want it to be a blur. By the first timeout, I want teams playing us to be gassed.”

For any team to accelerate pace as Hardaway envisions, guard play — and guard depth — will be critical. The new coach sees as many as five players who can handle point-guard duty, though in this era of “positionless” basketball (see the Golden State Warriors and count their trophies), the primary value a guard brings the Tigers will be his versatility.

Forward Kyvon Davenport

“You only go as far as your guards,” says Martin, a preseason all-conference selection who will be playing for his third coach in four years. The Mitchell High School alum averaged 18.9 points and 3.8 assists last season, though he missed the Tigers’ final six games with a fracture in his right foot. Martin had hernia surgery in August, but appears to be in game shape for a season of leadership. “I was never in bad spirits about my injury,” he says. “Everything happens for a reason. The team’s not just about me. It’s a process, but I sat out so long, now that I’m back, I’ve got to get back right. I’m gonna keep working hard to get there.”

Martin is prepared to attack with the ball in his hands or from the wing when the likes of Brewton (a fellow senior), Lomax, or Harris is handling the ball. If Hardaway’s vision is realized, the ball won’t be in anyone’s hands very long. “My whole life, I’ve been on the ball some, and off the ball,” stresses Martin. “I’m just a basketball player, to be honest.”

Lomax and Harris grew up as friendly rivals, Lomax playing for Hardaway with Team Penny on the AAU circuit while Harris developed with Team Thad. (Hardaway acknowledges that he tried to persuade Harris to join his team, but to no avail. Until now.) Harris is small (5’9″ and 150 pounds), but can light up a scoreboard. He averaged 30.3 points as a senior and was named Class AAA Mr. Basketball after becoming just the 12th Memphis high school player to score 2,500 career points. Lomax took home the Mr. Basketball award after both his sophomore and junior seasons at East. In his four years as a Mustang, the team went 122-18. Having played for Hardaway since he was in 5th grade, Lomax is more than comfortable in his role as a freshman, and he’s ready to join forces with Harris.

Guard Jeremiah Martin

“Coach teaches an NBA style, so it’s not all that different,” says Lomax. “He knows what it takes; he’s been through it. He relays the message, and it’s our job to go out and put it on the court. Playing with Tyler may be one of the best things that ever happened to me. We offset each other well. He does a lot of things I don’t do. If he’s open 10 times, I’ll find him 10 times. It’s a new friendship; we talk every day now.” If you doubt Hardaway’s influence on Lomax, ask him what he’d like to contribute as a freshman: “I hope I can make an impact defensively, and I just want to win games.”

Not to be lost in the guard shuffle are Brewton and another freshman, Antwann Jones. Brewton averaged 9.1 points as a junior and part-time starter last season. He was second only to Martin in assists and steals. “Everybody wants to play and get buckets,” notes Brewton, “but how are you gonna get buckets? You gotta play defense.” Already preaching the Hardaway philosophy, Brewton has embraced the program’s new culture. “There’s a lot of energy,” he stresses. “It’s a family atmosphere.”

Brewton and Hardaway each see something of themselves in Jones, the 6’6″ guard from Orlando and a third top-100 recruit Hardaway was able to capture. For Brewton, it’s Jones’ ability to score, his aggressiveness with the ball, even as a rookie. As for the comparisons with Hardaway the player, consider those a means of motivation for a player aiming to seize minutes on the floor.

A slimmed-down Mike Parks (he lost 20 pounds over the offseason) and Raynere Thornton will be counted on for muscle this season. The two combined for 8.4 rebounds per game last year, a number that needs to grow if the Tigers are to minimize opponent possessions. Junior transfer Isaiah Maurice brings additional size (he’s 6’10”) and athleticism to the Tigers’ frontcourt. With Parks sidelined by a back ailment, Maurice started the exhibition game against LeMoyne-Owen and contributed 18 points and 7 rebounds in 21 minutes.

Among Tiger big men, though, track the progress of Davenport. The Georgia native averaged 13.3 points and led the Tigers with 6.1 rebounds per game last season. He’ll be a focal point this winter, according to Hardaway. “We expect a lot from Kyvon,” says Hardaway. “There are going to be some wrinkles where we get shots specifically for him. Last year, he did it off the glass, didn’t get a lot of plays run for him. We’re going to have to get him the ball; we need him to score.”

Davenport’s length and ability to run the floor are ingredients for a difference-making finisher, one who can follow a break, receive and deliver lobs, or clean up missed shots. “[Coach Hardaway] lets everyone play their own game,” emphasizes Davenport. “It’s better for everybody. You’re gonna play your role, but you’re free. No restrictions.”

And Davenport loves the pace. “We’ve been killing ourselves in practice,” he says. “When we get to a game, it’s going to be easier for us, with the timeouts.” Davenport recognizes a sense of immediacy this season, his last as a Tiger. And he wants to make the kind of impression that lasts beyond his days in Memphis. “I want to be remembered as a great teammate,” he says, “one who helped develop the freshmen and led this team somewhere special.”

And what are we to expect from a rookie coach more famous than most of the seasoned counterparts he’ll confront? “For the most part,” says Hardaway, “coaching is understanding who you have on your team, understanding yourself, understanding situations.” As aggressively as he attacked defenders during his playing days, it shouldn’t surprise that Hardaway isn’t timid when it comes to the new gig. “My biggest strength is in-game adjustments,” he says. “We’ll have our team prepared. But every game doesn’t go as planned, and you may have to adjust. That’s where my strength comes into play. The culture we’re trying to build around here is multiple efforts, toughness, playing hard when you’re on the floor.”

If anything, Hardaway will have to resist the urge to don a game uniform when the lights are turned on and 17,000 fans pack FedExForum for a show we haven’t seen in these parts in some time. “I’m ready to get into the arena,” says the coach a fan base will continue to call by his famous nickname. “I’ve always prepared well, so practice is great. But to get into the arena . . . I want to feel the jitters. I’m anxious to get there.”