Tag: Best of Memphis

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From an Editor: The Best Around

You’re the best around. Nothing’s ever gonna keep you down! But Joe Esposito’s words (lyrics) of wisdom don’t simply belong to that plucky karate kid. Memphians have been feeling a little down this month, for many reasons. Some of the haters emerged with hysterics and hot takes, slinging insults at the city and everything it stood for, and the hurt was real. But it’s important to remember that much of the screaming and moaning is done by people who might possibly be too online, constantly regurgitating their opinions on Twitter or who knows where else. For there are two sides to every coin. Following tragedy, there was also an outpouring of reaffirmation. Passionate declarations of love for our city, from many of the locals who work here, live here, and fight every day here to continue improving Memphis. The reaction was, quite simply, the best.

But on a more tangible level, how do you even quantify “the best”? Everyone has their likes, their appeals, their interests, and sometimes it’s the intangibles that make something stand out to an individual. There’s no right answer, but what we can do is aggregate the mood of our city to gauge the flavor of the year, or see who has laid down a marker for long-term excellence in their field.

There’s an intrinsic value to releasing our quite hefty “Best of Memphis” issue every year. Who better to judge our favorite everything in the city than its citizens, and our readers? I remember arriving in Memphis more than a decade ago as a wee college freshman, complete with too-long bangs and some questionable plaid fashion choices, and looking for something to do off-campus. Where can I go to eat? Where can I hang out? The Google results threw out all the familiar names, of course: the Huey’s, the Rendezvous, and then the tourist traps and all the usual big-name establishments that frequently grab headlines and dollars. Tripadvisor and Thrillist lists are a decent starting point for newcomers, I guess, but they have a distinctly impersonal feel to them. And they can’t provide solutions to those hyperlocal problems either.

Other questions arose, too, like “How do I fix this dent that someone put in my car?” or “My friend tried to give himself a mohawk, is there a professional who can fix this?” If there’s a question to be asked, the Best of Memphis list can provide an answer, or at least point you toward someone who can help fix what could be a distinctly Memphis problem. There are some familiar faces to be found in the pages ahead, of course, but keep an eye out for new faces, too. (There’s nothing wrong with listening to the greatest hits, but sometimes you need a change of pace.) The Best of Memphis list is a receptacle of local knowledge and tastes built up over decades of lived experience by you, our readers. And honestly, the number of grand things about Memphis is too great to count. If you missed last week’s cover story, “370 Great Things About Memphis,” go check it out. It’s the perfect prologue to Best of Memphis, a curated list of some of our staff’s favorite things about the city. Nothing wrong with a double dip on positivity, right?

But again, it only scratches the surface of what Memphis has to offer. We could all use some love after this month, so why not show some to the great winners listed on the following pages? I’m sure the artists, the businesses, the restaurants, the creatives, and everyone else who earned a top-3 spot would appreciate it. And in celebratory fashion, the Best of Memphis party is finally returning after a multi-year, Covid-induced hiatus, where many can eat, drink, and be merry. There are still plenty of issues left to fix in our city, and it’s going to take a lot of work. But it’s clear that those invested in it are ready to put in the hard hours and are up for the challenge. So Memphians, don’t believe the loudest voices on the internet when they decry us (and when they do, deliver unto them a proverbial LaRusso crane kick). You’re all the best.

The Memphis Flyer is now seeking candidates for its editor position. Send your resume to hr@contemporary-media.com.

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: A New, Old Sign, Some Slacker, and Best of Memphis

Posted to Facebook by Hunter Demster

Memphis on the internet.

It’s a Sign

A piece of Memphis past is now part of Cooper-Young’s future.

The eagle-eyed Hunter Demster spotted a crew installing the above sign in Cooper-Young last week. Keen-minded commenters remembered that the sign, and the Silver Horse Shoe Motel it belonged to, used to be on Summer Avenue. That was all confirmed (as most Memphis history things are) with a link to a Memphis magazine story about the hotel by our company’s own Vance Lauderdale.

Photo: Courtesy Vance Lauderdale

Some Slacker

Posted to reddit by u/GoodOlSpence

Reddit user u/GoodOlSpence recently shared this photo to the Memphis subreddit. The image features some random dude and his high school class. Happy Elvis Week!

BOM

Best of Memphis voting closes in less than a week, folks. So remember to head over to our website and let fly your opinions on everything from bartenders to bikini waxes. (Voting closes on August 17th at 5 p.m.)

Categories
Cover Feature News

Best of Memphis 2021

The Memphis Flyer’s annual Best of Memphis readers’ poll winners are here — Memphis has spoken. From restaurants to radio, family fun and festivals, and everything in between, you chose your favorites. Winners with “BOM” next to their name dominated their category. Any ties have also been noted.

This issue was written by Samuel X. Cicci, Shara Clark, Jesse Davis, Michael Donahue, Michael Finger, Alex Greene, Chris McCoy, Abigail Morici, Julie Ray, Toby Sells, Maya Smith, Jon W. Sparks, and Bruce VanWyngarden. It was designed by Carrie Beasley with images by Justin Fox Burks and illustrations by Bryan Rollins.

Thanks to our readers — those who submitted nominations and voted, and those who didn’t. Y’all are the true Best of Memphis. And we thank our advertisers, who make it possible to keep the Flyer free, always. 

View this year’s BOM winners at this link.

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News News Blog

Watch Best of Memphis Party Tonight on WMCTV

The Flyer‘s famous (infamous?) Best of Memphis party is still rolling on tonight but it’s rolling on wheels. Car wheels. Because pandemic.

But it’ll still be a ton of fun thanks to our organizers and the Pink Palace Museum. They’ve worked together with us to make the best of a tough situation.

The event is a drive-through situation. Winners will drive themselves up to our party. There, we’ll have music by Amy LaVere (a longtime Best of Memphis favorite) and Will Sexton. The winners will get an exclusive Memphis Flyer gift bag of goodies and a cool (hopefully once-in-a-lifetime) photo op.

WMCTV Action News 5 will cover the event live with winner interviews and staff commentary. Watch it all right here from 3-5 p.m.

WMC aired a Best of Memphis piece last night with more details and a bit of history about the awards (Wayne’s World 2 was in theaters when we did the first Best of Memphis in 1994.) Check out that spot right here. 

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Be Best!

It’s the Flyer‘s annual Best of Memphis issue. Cynics among you might say being the best of anything in 2020 is like being named least homely stray dog at Memphis Animal Services. But they would be wrong. There truly is a lot to be grateful for in this seemingly unending stretch of masked weeks and days. We Memphians, along with millions of other Americans, are the living embodiment of the old cliché: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Thousands of us — businesses large and small, organizations, nonprofits, families, and individuals — have struggled and experimented and tried to learn how to adapt and scrap and hustle in order keep the bills paid, to keep some sort of revenue coming in, to survive until better times return. We’ve innovated; we’ve created hundreds of new side-hustles; we’ve found new opportunities in the darkest hours and the oddest places. We’re doing our Best.

Those of us who are lucky are getting by — juggling childcare, education, work, and tight financial straits, though there’s no clear end in sight. We’re working from our kitchens and bedrooms and dens. We’re spending hours staring at computer screens filled with our co-workers’ faces in little boxes, like some Bizarro World version of Hollywood Squares. We’re living in Zoomland! We’re making plans, discussing business, and talking smack on Slack.

Millions of Americans and thousands of Memphians are now “front-line” workers — keeping food and supplies on the shelves of our stores, teaching our children, carrying our mail, delivering our packages, treating the sick and dying in our hospitals. Thousands of people working behind cash registers and steering wheels and server aprons are risking their health to pay their bills, to feed and shelter their families. They wear masks because they come in contact with hundreds of people and are exposed to the virus on a daily basis.

They deserve our respect and gratitude — respect we show by wearing masks to help protect them and their families. It’s the Best thing we can do, and millions of us are doing it — something that visibly demonstrates that we Americans, we Memphians, are still capable of caring for others, still capable of working together for the common good.

We’re living through a sea-change year, one that will be examined and analyzed in future history books. Was 2020 the end of a short, strange, scary, and aberrant era? Or was it the beginning of the country’s descent into even more chaos and disruption and tribal antipathy? With any luck, we will know a week from now. And frankly, given how 2020 has gone thus far, we are way overdue for some luck.

Either way the presidential election goes, the remaining two months of 2020 will likely be very difficult. President Trump will remain in office until January, at least, meaning there will probably continue to be very little national leadership on tackling the coronavirus, which is surging again. If Trump loses the election, God knows what kind of chaos will be unleashed from the White House in the next two months. I can’t imagine it will be pleasant. The best scenario is that he’ll just go play golf. We can always hope.

If the Senate flips blue, the current Senate will have little incentive to do anything proactive about the virus — or anything else — and will probably just leave the whole mess — COVID, deficit, healthcare — for the next Senate to deal with. Mitch McConnell will go home, count his money, and ponder what it means to turn blue.

The holidays are coming, traditionally a time for getting together with our families — for children, parents, grandparents, and others to gather around the dinner table, to hug and tell stories, to give thanks for another year. That won’t happen for a lot of us in 2020. Traveling around the country will be difficult and even dangerous, particularly for older folks. Cramming a dozen people from all over into a single room is playing with fire. If you’re going to do it, get everybody tested first, unless you want to remember 2020 as Meemaw’s last Christmas.

Those 225,000 COVID deaths (and counting) have touched the lives of millions of Americans, when you consider that most of those who’ve left us had friends and family who cared about them and who will miss them, especially as the holidays come around. It will be up to all of us to honor their memory by being our Best selves, by doing whatever we can to get all of us — even those whose politics we don’t share — through this strange year, this strange time.

Love each other. This will end. Be Best.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Vote, Dammit: Participatory Democracy Only Works if We Participate.

It never fails. About this time every year, I start to hear the grumbling: “Not a single shop on Summer Avenue for Best Mexican.” Or, “Wait, they think who has the best pizza in town?” Or maybe, “I don’t even know who that is! How come they got nominated?” I’m speaking, of course, about the Flyer‘s annual Best of Memphis contest. Really serious high-stakes stuff.

In a year full of uncertainty and surprises, the consistency is almost a comfort. Almost, but I can’t help getting a little frustrated. We don’t pick the nominees! You do! Or at least, you’re supposed to, if you’d just vote.

Democracy tastes as fine as Dickins Cider.

So to these people, these complainers after the fact, I always say, “This is what happens when you ignore the primaries.” My guess is most folks don’t pay attention until the BOM candidates start making serious pleas for votes, but there is a nomination phase every year. You can write in anyone you want. (That, incidentally, is how “Dickins Cider” — say it out loud — very nearly won Best Strip Club last year. Cheeky.)

In college, I worked at a local pizza place, and the owner used to make everyone with an email address take turns filling out the BOM ballot. Other people make daily social media posts asking you to nominate them. None of that is cheating — it’s just grassoots campaigning. But the point is, if people don’t throw themselves into working to support their favorite taco shops, local singers, and whathaveyous, the folks with the campaign machinery in place are always going to win nominations and make it to the final ballot.

I’ll say it again: This is what happens when you ignore the primaries, when you get engaged only every four years, and then, only if the candidates really motivate you. Gee, it’s almost like I’m not talking about BOM anymore.

Okay, in all honesty, I know that centrists and far-right candidates benefit from low voter turnout. I know that much of the system is overly complicated, that districts are gerrymandered, and there is both active and passive voter suppression. Hell, we’re in the South — there’s a long, disgusting history of Jim Crow-era hoops and hurdles baked into our election history. So I’m not so much speaking to the people who try their damnedest to effect change despite generations of obstacles put in their way.

No, I’m taking aim at my more progressive friends, those who get frustrated and feel boxed out. Well, duh. If you want to bring about real, systemic change, you’re going to have to work quite a bit harder. Because if the party in power can, metaphorically speaking, tell all its employees to nominate it for Best Pizza, it’s damn well going to.

So yeah, here we are. I’ve got some progressive buddies who equate Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. Different sides of the same coin, they say. To which, naturally, I do a film-worthy spit take and sputter out something like, “Well, one of them condemned the extrajudicial murder of protesters by a teen insurgent, and the other can’t seem to bring himself to do that.” We’re ruled by the minority who has built a coalition of the most wealthy, ignorant, racist, and greedy among us. What happens if we take back even a little of their power?

This is an issue that seems, to me, to plague Tennessee particularly. Thinking back to the Senate race in 2018, I remember former Governor Phil Bredesen name-dropping Memphis in one of the debates. He talked about fixing roads, funding our rural hospitals. It wasn’t exactly awe-inspiring stuff, but at least he sounded like he had a plan. Then-Representative Marsha Blackburn, however, took a different approach. If I’d taken a drink every time she said “NRA” or “Obama,” I’d have died of alcohol poisoning. I don’t really believe that a majority of Tennesseans want assault weapons and hate Obama more than they want drivable roads and access to healthcare. But who knows?

We all know how that election turned out. Senator Blackburn took a page out of the Trump playbook and inflamed people. Now, two years later and in the middle of a pandemic, we haven’t done anything about our rapidly closing hospitals. And I call her office every week to demand she cool it on the “China virus” talk and do something to actually help Tennesseans.

So if you missed the nomination phase in the Flyer‘s BOM contest this year, maybe the best thing to do is just hold your nose and vote for the taco shop you think sucks the least. And next year, campaign for your favorite small, family-owned taco truck. Vote in the nomination period. Text your friends and remind them to vote, too. But whatever you do, for democracy’s sake, don’t withhold your vote in protest. That only helps preserve the status quo. Just vote, dammit.

Jesse Davis is the Flyer copy editor, book editor, and a staff writer.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Scenes From an Office

Scene from an editor’s office — September 2019:

Desk phone rings. The editor looks up from his computer and stares at the number on the phone. He doesn’t recognize it, but picks it up.

“Hello, it’s Bruce.”

“Oh, hi! I thought I might get a voicemail.”

“Nope. You got me. What’s up?”

“Well, my name is Heidi Snickerdoodle, and my partner, Amber, and I are opening a new massage parlor, gift shop, and body spa just off of Germantown Parkway. Kind of near Ridge Dawn Deer Crossing Terrace. It’s called CBDB …”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s really an exciting concept. We use nothing but CBD products in our oils and lotions. And our oils and lotions are guaranteed pure. ‘CBDB’ stands for ‘CBD Beauty,’ get it?”

“Yeah, got it. Sounds interesting.”

“Anyway, we were hoping the Memphis Flyer could come out tomorrow and do a story on us before our grand opening this weekend.”

“Actually, we really don’t do too many stories like that in the Flyer. I’ve got a small staff these days, and we tend to focus on news and entertainment rather than small business openings.”

“But I really think your readers would really enjoy learning about us. They’re a perfect fit for what we do. We’re a hip, on-the-edge kind of place, and we know your readers are hip, right? I really think your readers would love to hear our story. You might not be aware of this, but CBD products are huge right now. ”

“Oh yeah, I’m aware of that [sighs, rolls eyes at ceiling]. We recently did a cover story on CBD. I’ll tell you what, Heidi: Email me some promotional materials and any other pertinent information, and maybe your place will get a mention in our ‘Healthy Living’ section in January. But I can’t promise anything. Honestly, if you really want to reach Flyer readers, your best bet is just buying an ad in the paper or on our website. We even have a column called CannaBeat, and some CBD businesses advertise adjacent to it. I’d be happy to transfer you to our ad manager.”

“Oh no, thanks. We’re doing all our advertising on social media.”

Scene from Flyer editor’s office — September 2000:

“Hello, it’s Bruce.”

“Oh, hi! My name is Reggie Boondoggle, and I’ve just opened a car-detailing shop on Summer Avenue.”

“And?”

“And, well, I was hoping you could send out a reporter to interview me for a story on my shop.”

“Have you ever read the Flyer?”

“Of course, sure, I read it, uh, every month.”

“Every month, huh? Okay. Have you ever seen a story in the Flyer about somebody opening a new car-detailing shop?”

“No.”

“That’s because we don’t write stories about new car-detailing businesses. We aren’t a business publication. If you really want to reach our readers, your best bet is to buy an ad. Call 521-9000 and ask for Jerry Swift. Have a great day, Reggie.”

I’ve been editing the Flyer for 20 years, and I’ve had countless conversations like those above. As you can tell from the first example, I’m gentler with these kinds of calls than I used to be — less brusque, more understanding. That’s partly a symptom of age, I suppose. No reason to get angry with naive people trying to work an angle for free publicity. I get the hustle. No harm, no foul.

But the disconnect between a caller seeing the obvious value in having Flyer readers know about their product and not seeing the value of buying an ad to reach those readers remains frustrating. Facebook isn’t going to write a story about you.
And that’s why issues like the one on the newsstands this week are so gratifying. It’s 72 pages, and it’s filled to the brim with ads from the good folks who see the value in reaching the Flyer‘s readers, and who see the value in having this paper remain part of the intrinsic fabric of Memphis. They are all truly the Best of Memphis, and without them, we wouldn’t be here to celebrate year after year. We’re grateful to all of them — and to all of you, for reading us.

Categories
News News Blog

Beware of Fake “Best of Memphis” Awards

A company called Best Memphis Awards is sending out scamming emails to local businesses announcing that they’ve been named a “Best of Memphis” winner. The company runs similar scams in other cities under various names, i.e. “Seattle Best Awards,” “Peoria Best Awards,” etc.

For the record, “Best of Memphis” is a trademarked property of Contemporary Media and the Memphis Flyer. If your business gets a notice that you’ve won a Best of Memphis award from any source other than the Flyer, your “Best of Memphis” notification is bogus —  and the plastic plaque they are trying to sell you is a rip-off.

The Flyer is currently notifying legitimate winners of its Best of Memphis awards, which will be announced in the September 25th issue. 

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Protect the People

CREDIT: Susan Ellis

At 3 p.m. on Saturday, about 250 people gathered in Health Sciences Park around the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue.

“Whose city? Whose park?” went one chant.

“The people united will never be defeated,” went another.

Those in support of the statue weren’t overtly present, though there were some reported sightings. Perhaps it was the heat (heat index 105) that kept them at bay.

Protesters tried to drape the statue in a giant cloth banner and made some headway before the action was quashed by police.

One man yelled for the speakers to stop cussing. The response? “We’re here to take the motherfucking statue down!”

A second attempt at draping the statue led to arrests. Protesters surrounded the cop car to keep them from leaving. The car backed up, bumping into some people, which brought a brief but scary flash of Heather Heyer’s murder in Charlottesville. One woman began to sob.

And then another chant: “Protect the people, not the statue.”

At some point during the event, a call was put out for elected officials to come and speak. There was no response.

Meanwhile at the Crosstown Concourse, both Mayor Luttrell and Mayor Strickland were there for the grand opening of the $200 million project that Todd Richardson, one of the masterminds behind Crosstown, called a miracle.

That event drew between 10,000 and 13,000 people. There were two balloon drops. The balloons were green, black, and white.

The protesters at Health Sciences Park want the statues down, yes, but they also demanded equality across the board — in education, in transportation, in how they are treated by the cops.

Protect the people, not the statue.

• It appears as of now that Strickland is determined to follow the letter of the law in regards to the removal of the statues of Forrest and Jefferson Davis, but wouldn’t it be cool if tomorrow when when we woke up, the statues — poof! — were gone? Now, that would be miraculous.

On Sunday, Strickland issued a statement on Facebook after being chastised for “leaning closer and closer toward white supremacist apologetics” by a pastor in The Commercial Appeal. Strickland’s response was testy, to say the least, and read in part, “I want every Memphian to see the divisive, empty rhetoric that the media chooses to highlight. I want every Memphian to see the absurdity of someone accusing the mayor who is actually working on removing Confederate statues as being an apologist for white supremacists.”

This worked out really well for him because now people are calling him Trump.

• This week’s cover story is about the University of Memphis’ football team and primarily their quarterback Riley Ferguson. Last season, Ferguson emerged from under the shadow of Paxton Lynch and did a pretty good job of it.

My takeaway from the story is that the team will win it all.

• One last thing, this Friday, August 25th, is the last day to vote in this year’s Best of Memphis. I may have mentioned before that I will not say if you don’t vote you can’t complain. Complain all you want.

The 2017 Best of Memphis issue will be on the stands September 27th.

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We Recommend We Recommend

“Best of Memphis” at Box Gallery

Last Thursday, Joel Parsons was going through the 70 or so entries for the annual “Best of Memphis” show at the University of Memphis’ student-run Box Gallery. The show is open to all area college students taking art classes. Represented at this year’s show are Christian Brothers University, Rhodes College, Memphis College of Art, and the University of Memphis.

“It’s a really good mix of photos, paintings, and sculpture,” says Parsons. He was at the moment pondering certain groupings. He was intrigued by how artists were treating the head, everything from the selfie to portraits. Landscapes were up for consideration as well. Another was the abstraction of the body — broken or made strange.

Sarah Best Johnson, Untitled, Acrylic and Graphite on Canvas

Parsons, who is the gallery director of Rhodes’ Clough-Hanson Gallery, serves as the third juror of “Best of Memphis.” The first was David Lusk of David Lusk Gallery and the second artist Tad Lauritzen Wright.

Caitlin Hettich, of Box Gallery, says that the jurors are selected by committee, and they aim to get someone who has the time, an interesting aesthetic, and who can draw people to the gallery. She says the Lusk show was more inclusive, while Lauritzen Wright picked works that fit more into his own aesthetic. Some of the works in the past shows Hettich found amazing, some not so much. Is it the best of Memphis? That’s in the eye of beholder, and “That’s the beauty of it,” says Hettich.