Little Baby Tendencies at Cooper-Young Porchfest ’24 (Photo: Chris McCoy)
Last Saturday, April 20, 2024, was the fourth annual Cooper-Young Porchfest. More than 100 bands played on porches, in driveways, and on lawns all over the neighborhood. The weather was cool, and it was a little cloudy, but the tunes were hot all over the Coop.
I was there with a camera trying to see as many sets as I could, which was just a tiny fraction of the talent on display. In the “Cooper-Young Porchfest Mixtape” you’ll see performances from Bluff City Vice, Cloudland Canyon, Dead Soldiers, Little Baby Tendencies, Above Jupiter, and the Walt Phelan Band, with a little bit at the end featuring Moth Moth Moth’s front lawn drag show. Settle in for some of the best music the Memphis scene has to offer.
Dylan Borczak, Noe Meza, Emerson Hyndman, Akeem Ward, Carson Vom Steeg, Luiz Fernando from Memphis 901 FC soccer (Photos: Michael Donahue)
Irish eyes are still smiling after the Memphis Irish Society/Cooper-Young St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
“There was green beer flowing all over Cooper-Young that day,” says Tamara Cook, executive director of the Cooper-Young Business Association.
Patrick Reilly and DJ NaylorGina SweatTerrance Gaines and Kamilah Muhammad
The annual event drew 2,000 people this year, Cook says. “This is like the eighth one. We have them on St. Patrick’s Day every year. Next year, it will be on a Monday, although I keep asking them to have it on Sunday after the Beale Street parade. But they want to have it on the day.”
Memphis Irish Society and Celtic Crossing presented the event, Cook says. Mayor Paul Young was king of the parade and his wife Jamila Smith-Young was queen. Memphis Fire Department Chief Gina Sweat was the parade marshal.
Zach Brummett, Amy Dempsey, Lindsey Howell, Stegen Burkettback: Morgan Max, Bristol Max, Maisey Johnston, Ramanda Johnston, Keith Johnston, front: Maverick Max, Christopher Johnston, Adilay JohnstonShuntonisha Clark, Makenzie Clark, Kervin Mason, Michael Clark
This year’s parade featured 30 participants, including Memphis 901 FC soccer team, the Memphis Grizzlies, and the Memphis Police Department. There were bagpipers, horses, and dancers, including the Inis Acla School of Irish Dance step dancers. DJ Naylor opened up his Celtic Crossing Irish bar/restaurant for outdoor and indoor partying.
For years, a Bigfoot statue welcomed Cooper-Young folks from stairs close to a sidewalk. Sassy wore seasonal costumes, like the University of Memphis jersey above.
Someone stole Sassy last Monday, Jennifer Jordan posted on Nextdoor. “Please keep an eye out!” she wrote.
Heartache, Window break
Posted to Nextdoor by Alex Singh
“If anybody lives on Autumn or near High Point and you just heard a hysterical female screaming for over an hour, I am very sorry, and everybody is okay, and to anybody reading just remember they’re an ex for a reason! And they won’t change!” Alex Singh posted on Nextdoor last weekend. “Anybody fix windows?”
Back to the Pyramid
Posted to Facebook by Clark Bennett
“I visited [the Pyramid] in my 1981 DeLorean when it was being built,” Clark Bennett wrote on Facebook. “I didn’t know until I went ‘Back to the Future’ it was destined to be a Bass Pro Shop.”
Neighbors of the Central Gardens neighborhood are waiting to hear from law enforcement regarding an armed man walking “on Peabody (near Cooper)” Monday morning.
Members of the Central Gardens community on the popular neighborhood app, Nextdoor, have been buzzing about a post made by a user named Catherine Goode, who shared a photo of an armed man on the aforementioned street, and said that police had been called around 10:45 a.m.
Shortly after the post was made, some users posted that Grace-St.Luke’s Episcopal School (GSL) had gone on lockdown. A user named Michael Pongetti posted that the “school went on lockdown and sent an alert out to all families with children enrolled that the man was in custody by MPD (Memphis Police Department.)”
Another user, Allie Battle, commented that “GSL sent us a notification that the man was apprehended by the Memphis Police.”
However, the most recent update from a user named Rachel Hildebrand said that they had received a notification from GSL that “he was NOT apprehended.”
Many of the Nextdoor.com posters have questioned Tennessee’s permitless handgun policy. According to the Memphis Police Department’s website, the Tennessee Supreme Court “has previously held that simply being armed in public alone is not a legal basis for officers to detain someone.”
At this time, there is no official statement from the school or the Memphis Police Department.
Rascal Flatts once sang of sitting on the front porch, drinking ice-cold cherry Coke, but this weekend nearly 40 front porches in Cooper-Young will be for more than those cherry Cokes — they’re going to be stages for nearly a hundred bands putting on free concerts at the third-ever Cooper-Young Porchfest.
Since the inaugural festival in the spring of 2021, Porchfest has clearly grown from the 40 bands volunteering to perform on 20 porches. Its inception is not an original idea, with more than a hundred cities holding porchfests of their own since 2007, says Amanda Yarbro-Dill, Cooper-Young Community Association’s executive director. For Memphis, though, its first Porchfest came at just the right time when freshly Covid-vaccinated people were buzzing to get out and about. “A lot of bands hadn’t really gotten back to playing a lot,” Yarbro-Dill says, “so I think there was a lot of enthusiasm because of that.” But she didn’t expect that the next year the number of volunteer bands would double and that it’d even increase for this year’s fest.
“It feels like Cooper-Young Festival Junior,” Yarbro-Dill says of the event. “But it’s an entirely music-focused day instead of an arts and crafts fest day.” The acts, each lasting around an hour, range in their genres from Americana to environmental crybaby punk. You can also catch some family-friendly drag performances, including a Disney-inspired show with Taco Belle at 3 p.m. and a show with Magical Miss Mothie & Friends at 5 p.m. Since all the performers are volunteers, tips are encouraged, with most accepting Venmo or Cash App.
Photo: Brandon Dill
“It’s like if you wanted to come and spend the whole day in Cooper-Young, you can,” Yarbro-Dill says, adding that before the fest begins, the Cooper-Young Community Association will host its annual Community Yard Sale. (Find the map for the yard sales here.) “You could start out in the morning, and go to yard sales. Go to lunch somewhere here in the neighborhood; patronize our businesses. Come by the gazebo, where we’ll be selling T-shirts and then we’ll also have the map for all the shows. Then you can go to however many shows you want.”
Following the festival, for the first time, there will also be an after-party presented by Young Avenue Sound, Memphis Whistle, and Underground Art. “They’re gonna actually shut the street down there to have a street party and have bands play,” Yarbro-Dill says. Cyrena Wages, Jombi, Joybomb, and DJ Kaz will perform.
A full lineup of the day’s events and a map can be found below and at cooperyoung.org/porchfest. Porchfest is sponsored by Memphis Made Brewing Company and Steve Womack’s State Farm Insurance Agency.
Photo: Brandon Dill
Community Yard Sale, Cooper-Young Historic District, Saturday, April 15, 9 a.m.-1 p.m., free.
Memphis City Beautiful commissioner and founder of the Rainbow Crosswalk Project Jerred Price announced that the remaining three sides of the rainbow crosswalk of the Cooper and Young intersection will be installed on Saturday, October 8th, and Sunday, October 9th.
In May 2022Flyer writer Toby Sells wrote that this project was initially approved in 2019, when Price made a change.org petition to paint one side of the crosswalk. The project was painted in November of 2019. According to Price, Memphis is the first city in Tennessee to adopt a project like this.
“In 2019, I thought, ‘Why doesn’t Memphis have anything that celebrates the LGBTQ+ community that we have, especially in the Cooper-Young neighborhood?’” says Price.
According to Price, the Cooper-Young neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of “same-sex identifying households in the southeast United States.”
“With a community like that, and its diversity, support, inclusion, and equality, I thought it would be nice to have something that showcases that, and lets people know that we embrace that.”
Price says that he partnered with the Cooper-Young Community Association, who offered “overwhelming support for the project,” to bring this idea to Memphis City Council. Price also states that this was the first project to be heard by the new Public Art Oversight Committee.
Price believes that this project will showcase Memphis as a “safe haven for diversity.”
“People see that and they’re like, ‘Okay, Memphis is really leading the way here in the state because we made state history by installing that crosswalk,’” Price says. “The city has always been at the forefront of equality and standing for equality and equal rights, so I felt like Memphis needed to lead the way again, in showing the state and the LGBTQ+ population of our state and city that we do support diversity, we do support inclusion, we do support equal rights. The crosswalk, I think, when people see it, it gives them a sense of inclusion, that their city welcomes and supports inclusion and diversity.”
Once the project is completed on Sunday, there will be an outdoor drag show and installation ceremony at 3 p.m.
“What we’ve created is going to be celebrated, and we want everyone from every community there. It’ll be a fun, family-friendly show, and it’ll be a celebration of the intersection, becoming a four-way rainbow crosswalk,” says Price.
Price says that he is currently in conversation with “local CDCs in Whitehaven to make an artistic crosswalk in Whitehaven.” In partnership with Commissioner Britney Thornton, Price founded an organization called “Crosswalks For A Cause,” where they share the vision of having an “artistic crosswalk,” in each community around Memphis. Price says they intend to put plaques up by these crosswalks to teach people about the history of those communities.
“After we have a network of crosswalks throughout Memphis, we want to create an online or self-guided tour that will lure people away from the known attractions in Memphis, like Beale Street and Graceland,” Price says. “We want people to learn more about the communities that make up Memphis.”
An abandoned Cooper-Young church could get a new life as a house if it meets the approval of city officials next month.
The old stone church sits at 775 Tanglewood, tucked away in an off-the-beaten-path part of the Midtown neighborhood between York and Elzey.
(Credit: Google Maps)
Memphis-based developer Griffin Elkington Investments LLC hopes to renovate the abandoned structure. The company plans for the building to be a house with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, dining room, and a kitchen.
(Credit: Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development)
The company is seeking approval for the project from the Memphis Landmarks Commission in an application filed this month. Leaders of that board are slated to hear the case and make a decision on it at its next regular meeting on July 28th. Comments from the public to be included in the hearing are accepted until July 22nd. Send comments to margot.payne@memphistn.gov.
Few details can be gleaned from the project’s application. The outside would apparently be fixed up and the inside gutted to make way for the new rooms.
(Credit: Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development)
According to information from the Shelby County Register of Deeds, the old church was sold in 2020 by Ceylon Mooney to M-Town Properties for $85,000. M-Town sold the church and another lot close to it to Elkington in March 2022 for $165,000.
Memphis magazine, our sister publication, ran down the church’s history in a story from April 2021. In it, Memphis columnist and historian Vance Lauderdale said, “constructed almost exactly a century ago, this little church has served as home to almost a dozen congregations and more pastors than I could name (though I’ll mention some of them).”
“Cedar Grove Baptist Church opened its doors on Tanglewood in 1920. The early years are a bit confusing. The city directories don’t list a minister. Sometimes they spell the name as two words and other times as “Cedargrove.” And they can’t even agree on the precise location of the property, many years listing the street address as 783 Tanglewood, which would have placed it smack in the middle of the old Beltway Railway, which at one time ran alongside the south wall of the church.
(Credit: Lily Bear Traverse)
“Even more confusing? Those same directories sometimes claim the church was located on the north side of that rail line, and at other times, they say it was on the south side. I seriously doubt the church, or the railroad, moved back and forth over the years, but I can’t make sense of the inconsistencies with the address.
”Although the tracks were pulled up decades ago, that same railway crosses over South Cooper, just a block to the east. In fact, it carried trains along the well-known trestle that’s decorated with silhouettes of Cooper-Young landmarks.”
Read more about the history of the church at 775 Tanglewood here at the Memphis magazine site.
Cooper-Young landlords want to evict the owners of FancyStudios (formerly Heaux House) because they were “not operating a yoga studio,” as spelled out in the lease, but a “photography studio specializing in pornographic images.”
Credit: Toby Sells/The building at 2163 Young Ave.
Sharon and Dante Andreini own the property at 2163 Young Avenue, according to county data. The building is across the street from Grivet Sports and 901 Comics. Randii Reaves rented the space from them and opened Heaux House there in mid-January. In March, Reaves received a letter from Derek Whitlock, an attorney for the Andreinis, telling Reaves she violated the terms of her lease.
“It has been brought to my client’s attention by numerous neighbors, local officials, and concerned citizens that you are not operating a yoga studio as required in the lease,” Whitlock wrote. “Judging by the the advertisements you have placed in social media and in the public space you are operating a photography studio specializing in pornographic images.
You are operating a photography studio specializing in pornographic images.
Derek Whitlock, attorney
“The titling of your business as the ‘Heaux House’ further calls into question precisely what services are being offered in the premises.”
Whitlock said Reaves was operating an “adult-oriented establishment,” which violated the lease, and violated the Shelby County Uniform Code by operating such a business within 1,500 feet of a church, children’s schools, and family residences.
A mural on the side of the building once read “Welcome to the Haus. Heaux House” in large letters that spanned the entire east-facing side of the building. Reaves’ attorney Jacob Brown said the landlords said the mural was a problem. Reaves painted over the letters with black paint. The mural was in this state Monday morning.
Credit: FancyStudios/Facebook
Credit: Toby Sells
Brown said the very next contact from the landlords was that letter claiming she was running a porn studio, not a yoga studio. It was not a cease and desist letter, Brown said; it said, “basically, you need to get out. We’re terminating the lease.”
She’s not operating a pornography studio.
Jacob Brown, attorney
“I’ve reviewed the lease and I don’t think there’s any way in which Randii’s breached the lease,” Brown said. “She’s not operating a pornography studio. She’s operating a photo studio that she had the landlord’s permission to operate in connection with her yoga studio. The photography studio had sets and props that catered to boudoir themes.”
A scroll through the FancyStudios (formerly Heaux House) Facebook page shows images from several photo shoots inside the building. In many of them, women in lingerie and other revealing clothes lounge on a bed or a chaise lounge or otherwise pose on sets with props like roses, wine glasses, vases, and pillows. A January TikTok video shows a couple’s session in which a pair pose in various sex positions. The woman wears lingerie and the man wears boxer briefs for the entirety of the video.
One Facebook post sought to “clear up any misconceptions we may have” about the term “heaux.” It said the word was “not to be used in a derogatory way,” explaining that it came from the idea “that women can take empowerment back from words used so long to destroy them.” Another post says, “not tryna slut shame, but y’all could definitely be sluttier. Step it up.”
The Facebook feed is also filled with yoga videos, aerial yoga videos, and the studio’s daily yoga schedule. The company also advertised twerking classes, “Swerk” and “Twerking After Working.”
In May, Reaves announced on Facebook that she “was forced to change our name” from Heaux House to FancyStudios.
Some outside sources have been telling lies about us and sending them pictures from our social media.
Randii Reaves, owner FancyStudios (via Facebook)
“[The landlords] have never visited us or stepped foot into our business since they gave us possession,” Reaves said on Facebook earlier this month. “Some outside sources have been telling lies about us and sending them pictures from our social media.”
Credit: Toby Sells
Reaves said she tried to speak with the Andreinis to resolve the issue “but they have proceeded with their prosecution.” They sued Reaves to vacate the building. The first hearing in the case was last week. The issue is due back in court on Monday, May 23rd.
“At the worst, it’s malicious,” said Brown, Reaves’ attorney. “Maybe they’re trying to get her out so they can get someone else in if they can charge a higher rent, too. At the very least, it’s completely misunderstanding what’s going on there.”
The remaining crosswalks at the corner of Cooper and Young could soon get the same gay-pride-rainbow treatment as the one painted that way in 2019.
A petition to paint one crosswalk (the eastern side) with the design was posted to change.org in May 2019 by Jerred Price, a talk show host, entertainer, and president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association who was running for the Memphis City Council’s District 7 seat at the time. After a series of meetings, the project was approved by the council in September 2019.
Work was completed on the crosswalk — the first such crosswalk in Tennessee — in November. The paint faded on the design and it was repainted in June 2020 with a more-permanent resin material over it to protect it from weather and traffic. The $3,000 project was funded by private donors.
Credit: Memphis Rainbow Crosswalk/Facebook
Price announced on Facebook Wednesday that he had completed and submitted the application for the second phase of work for the Memphis Rainbow Crosswalk.
“This will bring the remaining three crosswalks at Cooper and Young to life with new rainbow stripes!” Price said. “The original project called for all four sides. However, we had some trial and error to do. So, to play it safe, we started with the one.”
Beale Street Music Festival brought thousands to Liberty Park this weekend for the first time in two years. But Nextdoor user Ben Nelson didn’t know.
“Lots of loud noise near the Liberty Bowl,” he wrote. “I didn’t think there were football games this time of year…. Anyone know what the heck is going on??”
Commenters answered the question many times, complained about the noise, complained they weren’t notified of the event, complained about the complainers, and, of course, complained about the redesign of Tom Lee Park.
Tweet of the Week
Posted to Twitter by @MayorMongo
“I will be announcing my full intentions on buying MySpace tomorrow,” tweeted Mayor Prince Mongo.
Big Bad What?
Posted to Facebook By Mulan
News broke last week that a Nashville company bought Cooper-Young buildings now housing Mulan and Margaritas. Owners plan to install a Big Bad Breakfast restaurant where Mulan is now.
But Mulan responded on Facebook with this: “Big bad nothing but a sad rumor going around. Mulan isn’t going anywhere. Don’t you worry your pretty little heads.”
