Flaming Lips, Kesha, B.O.B., Cee Lo, MGMT, and Wilco are but a few of the featured performers at this year’s Beale Street Music Fest. Complete lineup and schedule at Sing All Kinds blog.
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Tag: Memphis In May
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Cue the ‘Cue
About six weeks ago, Memphis In May’s executive vice president, Diane Hampton, received a call from a local reporter who was following up on an alarming, if not absurd, bit of news.
The reporter explained that she had just fielded a call from a member of one of the teams competing in the Memphis In May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest who had told her that this would be the contest’s last year.
“‘What?'” Hampton remembers asking. “I said, ‘Think about that. What would possibly be the reason we would do that?'”
And with that rumor firmly quashed, Hampton turned her attention back to the massive endeavor of producing Memphis In May’s series of events, including the Beale Street Music Festival, the salute to this year’s honored country, Turkey, the Sunset Symphony, and, of course, the barbecue cooking contest, which is this week from Thursday to Saturday in Tom Lee Park.
The contest started in 1978 with 20 teams in a lot near The Orpheum. It has since evolved into three days of pork-scented smoke, plastic pig noses, elaborate team structures, 500 trained judges, concerts, and, of course, some seriously competitive cooking by teams that have spent years, not to mention thousands of dollars, refining their recipes and methods.
This year, more than 250 teams — including one from Norway and another from Belgium — will be vying for top honors and $60,000 in cash and prizes in the rib, shoulder, whole hog, and “anything but” categories, among others.
Hampton says that in terms of notoriety and attendance, the contest has experienced a “huge growth spurt” in recent years. The 2007 contest drew a record crowd, topping the 100,000 attendance average by nearly 20 percent. The Food Network has filmed eight shows on-site in the past six years.
That growth, Hampton posits, coincides with the surge of “foodies” eager to make, taste, and experience all things culinary. “With the popularity of foodies, there’s more media interest in food and food-related events than ever before,” she says. “I’d like to think that the barbecue contest was part of that.”
Now at the 30-year mark, Hampton says they’ve gotten the competition side of the event down to a science: “We are respected around the world and have been for many, many years.”
But there’s still room for tinkering. In the past few years, complaints that there was nothing to do if you weren’t a member of a team or didn’t know anyone on a team have been addressed with the People’s Choice Judging, which was introduced in 2004 and allows the average contest-goer to try samples prepared by participating teams and then vote on their favorites. An estimated 2,500 participated last year.
Another consumer-friendly element, the Cooker Caravan, was added in 2006. It’s a popular, behind-the-scenes tour that includes visits with teams and a look at the judging process.
The challenge now for Memphis In May organizers is to grow the already-crowded event. Physically, the matter appears moot. Every inch of the 25-acre Tom Lee Park is accounted for, with the 250-plus teams taking up most of the space.
Indeed, the park may have less room to work with once the Riverfront Development Corporation’s Beale Street Landing project is finished. According to RDC president Benny Lendermon, who also sits on the board of Memphis In May, two acres of the park will be under construction in 2009. The Beale Street Landing, with a completion date in 2010, will add four acres to the park. However, it is unclear whether those acres, which will include a grass-roofed restaurant and terraces near the river, will be usable for Memphis In May events, Lendermon says.
Moving Memphis In May to another area in town — Shelby Farms, for example — is not being seriously entertained. “From a personal perspective and even organizationally, I can state with all certainty there has not been a discussion of moving the event,” Hampton says. “Part of the beauty and the whole image of Memphis In May is the barbecue cooking contest by the river. I don’t see that changing.”
Next on the agenda, according to Hampton, is to emphasize the “world” in the World Championship Barbecue Cooking contest. That means recruiting winning teams from across the country and the around the globe. Says Hampton, “If we’re going to be the World Championship, we have to draw teams from all over the world to finally and once and for all determine who is the world-championship competitor.”
Network News
In late August 2007, Memphis In May sent out a letter explaining that in order to focus its resources on recruiting teams from around the world, the organization would no longer be sanctioning the 40 or so smaller barbecue contests across the country. These contests served as a minor league for the Memphis In May contest, sending its winning teams to the big show in Tom Lee Park. Sanctioning involves having a Memphis In May representative at the event and providing logistical support, such as overseeing the judging process and making sure that Memphis In May’s rules are being followed.
The announcement caused some concern among volunteers who had worked as barbecue contest representatives, and shortly after receiving the news, they formed the Memphis Barbecue Network.
“We met two weeks later to decide: Can we do this? Do we want to do this?” says Memphis Barbecue Network president Randy McGee. He adds with a laugh, “We’re still asking ourselves that.”
While the Memphis Barbecue Network is new, it already has signed up more than 500 judges and roughly 90 teams from across the country and has been enlisted to work 32 contests so far this year. Members of the network already have begun performing the tasks associated with sanctioning. They provide these smaller contests with a list of judges and teams for recruiting. They help with scoring and introduce newer teams looking for guidance to teams with more experience.
The Memphis Barbecue Network is also training judges. “We’re taking it very seriously about the caliber of judges for these teams,” says network vice president Henry Evans. “They spend a lot of money. It’s not inexpensive for these barbecue teams. It’s $1,000 a weekend for them, easy. And they expect to have judges who know what they’re doing. Consistent, competent judges.”
McGee says the network works hard to serve as ambassadors of good barbecue and good will. Members have raised money for tornado victims, and they helped with the recent hot-wings contest on South Main.
According to McGee, there was some discussion between the Memphis Barbecue Network and Memphis In May to have an official association, but terms could not be ironed out. Representatives from both parties agree that they share an aim of promoting Memphis-style barbecue, and many of the network’s members still volunteer with Memphis In May.
“We would prefer to have an official association with Memphis In May,” McGee says. “We’re in the process of exploring associations with different barbecue contests that have approached us.”
In the meantime, McGee and his fellow networkers are focused on the job at hand. “We’re just trying to grow,” he says, “and trying to support Memphis-style barbecue.” — SE
For more information on the Memphis Barbecue Network, go to mbnbbq.com.
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Roll With It
As pivot for the Memphis roller-derby team Legion of Zoom, Elizabeth Alley sets the pace for her pack and is the last line of defense against the other team’s jammer. She’s very good at this fast, furious sport full of spills, sharp turns, and colorful language. Alley is also very good at art. In works currently on view, she records the art and architecture of Europe with her signature style of vivid colors, evocative shapes, and skewed perspectives.
Mostly shown from the thigh-down, roller-derby skaters, decked out in thick black kneepads, striped socks, and short shorts, are the subject of several of Alley’s untitled paintings in her exhibition “Don’t Leave Anything Behind,” at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts. With night lights illuminating the sweat on her angled right leg, one of these figures swivels left, darts past another player, and races counterclockwise around a rink painted a pastiche of oranges to accentuate the energy of this high-speed chase.
Many of the other quickly executed, mixed-media paintings in the Marshall Arts show are fragments of French life reduced almost to abstraction. In a beautifully atmospheric cityscape, blurred gray rectangles jut into a cobalt sky next to an orange awning. The crisp-edged, saturate rectangles on the right are a nod to Alley’s love for ethnic restaurants. Block lettering on a bright-red and creamy-white sign announces Tibetan food in the heart of Paris.
In a bird’s-eye view of Paris, we look through the hands of a huge clock face inside a train station converted into one of France’s premier museums. Just to the left of 7 o’clock, Alley lays down washes of ochre and umber to suggest the mottled facades and irregular windows of 16th-century architecture on the other side of the Seine.
Alley’s wry humor is as skewed as her perspective. An amorphous pattern of umbers and grays is backdropped by a clear turquoise sky. Adjust your eyes to this painting’s shadows, and you’ll make out a muscular body folded in on itself. A gray forearm falls between the legs. An elbow rests on a knee. The figure’s head is missing, cut off by the top of the picture plane. It’s a painting of Rodin’s The Thinker, but in Alley’s version, this forever deep-in-thought man has his head in the clouds.
“Don’t Leave Anything Behind” at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts through June 9th
This year’s Memphis In May poster saluting Spain reproduces six of Alley’s thickly impastoed oils on canvas arranged in three vertical rows. Two of these slices of Spanish life require footwork as agile as the leaps and sidestepping of roller-derby skating.
In the top right panel of the poster, a flamenco dancer’s red and black skirts and underskirts (in colors so thick they look squeezed straight from the paint tube) swirl in several directions around her legs and patent leather shoes. We see her from mid-thigh down. Her feet are flat on the floor, locked into place for an instant. Crisp strokes of raw sienna brushed in every direction add to the energy of the image and suggest the scuffmarks created as the dancer spins across an earthen floor.
We see a matador’s legs and silhouette in another panel. His feet are stationary but his shadow is full of arcs and angles. Like a dancer spinning left and right, like a skater negotiating a sharp turn around a rink, Alley captures another pivot as a bullfighter swoops his cape and abruptly pulls it back and behind him.
Rows of stucco-colored, hexagonal columns recede far into space as Alley takes us deep inside the Alhambra in the poster’s bottom right panel. At dead center in the composition, a tiny portal of light on a shadowed wall brings to mind the pinhole of a camera obscura and the eye of an artist exploring every nook and cranny, every scintilla of motion and light.
Elizabeth Alley’s poster saluting Spain is available at the Memphis In May offices, 88 Union Avenue, and at local frame shops.
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Advantage Downtown
It’s amazing how quickly Tom Lee Park is cleaned up each year after Memphis In May is over.
On Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day and near the end of a month in which the park was trampled and littered by thousands of people at the music festival, barbecue contest, and Sunset Symphony, most of the trash was gone. The tents, fences, and temporary structures had been taken down, and workmen were mowing and edging the bluff along Riverside Drive. The grass will be watered, the sidewalks hosed down, the flower beds spruced up, and with a little rain Tom Lee Park will be good as new in a few weeks — that is, if you don’t mind ground that’s as hard as concrete.
Now that’s service. Unfortunately, it’s not standard service for Memphis parks.
In 1993, a small group of Memphians, including Midtown residents, recreation directors at Midtown churches, and the principal of East High School, decided that the underused property west of the school would be a good place for playing fields, a track, and a playground. The impetus was a soccer game between Idlewild and Evergreen church teams that had to be played in Cordova because of a scarcity of fields in Midtown. With the help of Lora Jobe, who was then on the school board, and John Vergos, who was then on the Memphis City Council, the Memphis Park Commission hosted a couple of meetings, drew up some plans, and came up with the East High Sportplex.
There was a four-lane rubberized track, two baseball diamonds with backstops, drinking fountains, a football practice field, an asphalt walking path, an undersized soccer field with two goals, and a playground. Mayor Willie Herenton, who was then in his first term, presided at a modest opening ceremony, and that was that.
The total cost of the improvements was around $1 million. There were no consultants. The design certainly didn’t win any awards. There was no economic impact study. If the sportplex attracted any tourists, it was strictly accidental. The only beneficiaries were the students at East High, the little kids who play on the playground, the regulars who use the walking path, and the people who use the fields for pickup games of soccer, baseball, and touch football. The vision of a sports complex for Midtown churches and rec teams proved to be unrealistic, as bigger and better facilities were built in Germantown, Cordova, and DeSoto County. But it was a partial success.
Thirteen years after the East High Sportplex opened, it is no Tom Lee Park. The walking path is covered in spots by broken glass. One of the baseball diamonds doesn’t have any bases. Neither has any grass in the infield, and there are no outfield fences. The goals on the soccer field are falling down, and the nets are gone. If someone kicks a ball through the south goal, it is likely to roll all the way to Poplar Avenue. The football field has more sand and bare dirt than grass. Four guys working out on it Monday said they can’t ever remember it being watered. There is quite a bit of litter on all the fields.
Maybe it shows what happens when you build a public facility next to a poor neighborhood. People drink beer in the park and throw their trash on the ground and become apathetic. Except we don’t say that about Tom Lee Park, where people come to the music festival and drink beer and throw their trash on the ground. We don’t expect the patrons to come back the next day and clean the place up. The workers hired by Memphis In May and the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) do it for them. So the park and Mud Island and Riverside Drive look nice, which is as it should be.
But public parks and public facilities in other parts of Memphis are getting screwed. They’re either tended by volunteers and the Memphis Park Commission or they’re not tended at all. There’s no fully staffed and separately budgeted RDC to watch over them. There’s no $29 million project like Beale Street Landing to draw attention and public funds to them. There’s no board of directors to write letters to the newspaper at the first sign of criticism. There’s no catchy program with a shoestring budget and a name like Empty Nets or Stolen Bases or Green Fields to see that regular maintenance is done.
And that’s a shame.
Categories
A Second on the Lips
Go ahead and indulge. It’s Memphis In May’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, after all, and there’s no better time to go wild by stuffing your face with loads of ‘cue, getting covered from head-to-toe in sticky sauce, tossing back a beer or three, and giving in to your baser instincts by donning your best pig-wear. Thousands of pork enthusiasts can’t be wrong, and that is exactly why Avon is going to be there. Yep, that Avon.
The Hello Tomorrow Avon Beauty Tour hits 25 to 30 cities each year, and it’s those thousands it’s after. A representative from Avon says the tour is very “hands-on” — wet-naps, please! — and will feature tons of free items from its latest line of cosmetics and skin-care products. Beauty advisers will be on hand to dole out tips and give lip makeovers at the Lip Service station. There will also be a “Wishing Wall,” where visitors can enter to win $1,000 to make their wish come true. If Memphis receives the most entries, Avon will donate $20,000 to the local YWCA’s Abused Women’s Services.
So Avon it is. Hey, just because you’re behaving like a pig doesn’t mean you can’t look pretty while doing it.
Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, Tom lee park, Thursday-Saturday, May 17th-19th. For more information on the Hello Tomorrow Avon Beauty Tour, go to avon.com/events.
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A World of Sound
Combining the best of Memphis music past and present with some of the most legendary performers in rock and soul history and a sampling of today’s biggest bands, Memphis In May’s Beale Street Music Festival has become one of the largest music festivals in the country, routinely drawing over 150,000 fans to the banks of the Big Muddy. This year’s lineup should only help continue the festival’s popularity, bringing more than 60 acts from a variety of musical genres and generations for a three-day celebration of the city’s mighty music heritage.
The Beale Street Music Fest will divide acts among four stages in Tom Lee Park, a 33-acre site that sits at the base of historic Beale Street and stretches along the majestic Mississippi River. This year’s festival is headlined by a couple of the most interesting bands from 1970s, each of which has made high-profile comebacks.
Detroit bad boys Iggy & the Stooges, who were arguably the first punk band, will close out the Cellular South Stage Friday night, and fellow ’70s artists Steely Dan, who became unlikely radio stars with a blend of rock, jazz, and soul, will headline the Cellular South Stage Saturday night.
But the festival’s real calling card may be jam-bands, particularly ones with a distinctly Southern flavor. The Budweiser Stage on Friday is the place for fans of venerable road warriors the Allman Brothers Band, with spin-off faves the Derek Trucks Band and Gov’t Mule among the bands warming up for them.
Those who like to groove to a ’70s sound will want to stake out a good place at the AutoZone Stage Saturday night, where funk masters the Ohio Players give way to boogie-rock headliner George Thorogood. Younger listeners already nostalgic for the ’90s will want to seek out the Cellular South Stage Sunday night for a closing double-bill of the Barenaked Ladies and the Counting Crows.
There’s also plenty of exciting contemporary music to be had at this year’s festival. Soul fans can catch a back-to-back showcase of two of contemporary soul’s emerging stars on the Budweiser Stage Sunday night: British chanteuse Corinne Bailey Rae (of the smash single “Put Your Records On”) followed by Grammy favorite John Legend.
Some of the most interesting new acts at this year’s festival are ones that bring a fresh approach to roots genres, including bluegrass. Nashville’s Old Crow Medicine Show play the Cellular South Stage Saturday afternoon, and the Duhks play the AutoZone Stage earlier in the day. On Sunday, in the TN Lottery Blues Tent, the Lee Boys will try to blow the roof off with their soaring, sanctified steel-guitar sound.
Headbangers will also have plenty of modern rock to choose from this year. Australia’s Wolfmother bring their breakout freak-out rock to the Budweiser Stage Saturday night. Youngsters can swoon and thrash to the emo-style rock of Hawthorne Heights and Taking Back Sunday on the Budweiser Stage Saturday. And those with a taste for more muscular rock can take in American Idol star Daughtry and emerging radio-rock heavyweights Hinder. They close the AutoZone Stage Sunday night.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the Beale Street Music Fest without a heaping helping of blues, and this year is no exception. Former Howlin’ Wolf sideman Hubert Sumlin and Chicago blues queen Koko Taylor highlight the TN Lottery Blues Tent Friday. Eclectic blues master Taj Mahal brings the genre to the AutoZone Stage Saturday night. Sunday, blue-eyed blues will be on display at the TN Lottery Blues Tent in the form of Watermelon Slim.
The Beale Street Music Festival also remains a must-see for the musical legends of Memphis and the Mid-South. Rock-and-Roll Hall of Famer Jerry Lee Lewis will play the Budweiser Stage Friday night. On Saturday, you can celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stax records with Eddie Floyd and the Bar-Kays on the Cellular South Stage, then head over to see Beale Street’s own Bobby “Blue” Bland close out the TN Lottery Blues Tent. On Sunday, Sun rockabilly bad boy Billy Lee Riley will get things red hot on the Cellular South Stage, while Hi Records songstress Ann Peebles performs on the Budweiser Stage later that afternoon.
And you can also get a sense of what Memphis sounds like today, sampling hip-hop (Three 6 Mafia; Project Pat), blues (Richard Johnston; Daddy Mack Blues Band; and Alvin Youngblood Hart), and rock (North Mississippi Allstars; Egypt Central).
All in all, the options are daunting, but with a solid plan and some comfortable shoes, you should be able to pack your weekend with great music.
Categories
Around Town
Classic-rock radio station Rock 103 is giving local bands the chance to shine at Memphis In May‘s Beale Street Music Festival. Jeffrey James & the Haul, Arma Secreta, Organ Thief, Dan Montgomery, and nine more Memphis rockers, who can be heard on the FM station’s Sunday-night program The Great Unsigned, are battling it out for three spots at Overton Square‘s annual Crawfish Festival, slated for Saturday, April 14th, when a panel of judges will select one grand prize winner to play Memphis In May.
At press time, six-man jam band Dova Grove was in the lead, with a whopping 30 percent of the vote. But you’ve got until the afternoon of Wednesday, April 4th, to file your electronic ballot, so barring any loose chads, this is still anyone’s game. Go to Rock103.com for details.
It’s definite: After rumors, delays, and plenty of fodder for the gossip pages, Three 6 Mafia‘s Adventures in Hollyhood will debut on MTV Thursday, April 5th. The reality series picks up where the 2006 Academy Awards left off, chronicling what MemphisRap.com describes as DJ Paul, Juicy J, and Project Pat‘s “quest to establish themselves as Hollywood players.”
So far, so good: Three 6 has already appeared on television shows, including Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and an upcoming album, Da Last 2 Walk, is due to hit stores in late May. Yet burning questions remain: Can the rap clique stay true to its Dirty South roots as members pimp themselves on the streets of La-La Land? Will anyone understand their North Memphis drawl delivered via mouthfuls of gold? Does “Sippin’ on Syrup” translate to big success on the mean, big-city streets? Who knows — but expect plenty of face time with Paris Hilton, Flava Flav, and other reality-show vets.
Alvin Youngblood Hart
Meanwhile, former Three 6 cohort — and current rival — Koopsta Knicca is “fresh out of jail” and busy promoting his new album, The Return: Prophet Posse, Part 1, which was released on March 20th. Life has apparently imitated art for the rapper, whose song “Stash Spot” contains the lyrics, “Well I’m fresh up outta jail with no job/So I steal and rob.” While Paul and Juicy were shaking hands with Oscar in February of 2006, Knicca was sitting inside 201 Poplar on aggravated assault and robbery charges. Last week, however, the resilient MC was signing autographs at Spin Street, living proof that any publicity is good.
Get ready to rock in Midtown this weekend: Robby Grant‘s group Vending Machine kicks off the partying early with a free Friday-night acoustic show at Shangri-la Records that starts at 6 p.m. Afterward, head over to The Buccaneer, where Alvin Youngblood Hart and John Paul Keith are holding court, with Mark Stuart and John Argroves providing the rhythm section for both. Saturday night, Vending Machine will be playing at the Buccaneer, along with Jeffrey James & the Haul and a solo performance from Mouse Rocket cellist Jonathan Kircksey.
April marks the return of two Memphians who are making a major splash on the national music scene: Former Accidental Mersh bassist Hank Sullivant, whose group The Whigs will be performing songs from their ATO debut, Give ‘Em All a Big Fat Lip, at Young Avenue Deli on Sunday, April 1st, and Clarence Greenwood, aka Citizen Cope, who hits the Deli on Tuesday, April 3rd.
Memphis’ ’50s-era rockabilly scene is getting plenty of airtime on local PBS affiliate WKNO. The hour-long documentary The Rockabilly Legends: They Called It Rockabilly Long Before They Called It Rock and Roll, narrated by hometowner Wink Martindale, follows the creation of the genre from the cottonfield to the honky-tonk via the careers of Johnny Burnette, Paul Burlison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and, of course, Elvis Presley. It also documents the influence of Sun Studios and regional platforms such as The Grand Ole Opry and The Louisiana Hayride. Catch the program on Channel 10, then pick up the accompanying coffee-table book, published by Hal Leonard, or the four-CD box set.
It’s June. The music is over, the pigs are cooked, and the last obnoxious cannon blast of the “1812 Overture” has faded into memory. Mid-Southerners are now left with two options: Wait patiently until next year’s Memphis In May celebration or complain.
Year after year, with notable exceptions, MIM officials blame low turnouts at its kickoff event, the Beale Street Music Festival, on excessive rain, heat, or both. This year they also blamed soaring gas prices. It would be easy enough, at this point, to look at similar festivals around the country and suggest that MIM is simply out of touch, but that wouldn’t be fair. As any local club owner will tell you, Memphis’ peculiar demographics make it a tough town to book. Nevertheless, MIM is by its very nature overextended, underspecialized, and locked into a cookie-cutter formula that requires serious reconsideration.
Downtown continues to grow into a shining jewel on the river, and it’s time for MIM to take full advantage of that growth. It’s time for the festival to consolidate resources, outsource labor, and rebuild the whole of Memphis In May around its signature event: the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. It’s also time for MIM to start thinking outside the muddy, smelly confines of Tom Lee Park. For starters, the barbecue contest and music festival should be combined and re-imagined as a weeklong, multi-tiered wristband event filling the whole of downtown, from South Main to Mud Island. A stage or two near the grillers in Tom Lee Park could be filled with crowd-pleasing musical acts and top-tier headliners like B.B. King or James Brown. Everything else could be booked into downtown’s many clubs, restaurants, and outdoor performance spaces. Club owners could use their experience in filling seats night after night to book filler slots in between sanctioned festival bands. MIM should also work with the Center for Southern Folklore to fill the streets of downtown with the extraordinary local and regional acts the music festival regularly ignores. If the center’s annual Memphis Music and Heritage Festival (which has always been a free event) could be moved to coincide with the barbecue contest, it would be a marvelous gift to Memphians and music lovers. After all, not everybody who wants to participate in Memphis In May can afford to pay for tickets, food, and parking for the whole family. And nobody relishes the notion of hauling kids around the inevitably muddy, drunk-infested confines of Tom Lee Park. Given the proper incentives, perhaps the good folks at New Orleans’ Ponderosa Stomp could be convinced to bring their amazing golden-oldies show back to the Gibson Lounge to showcase the surviving cream of Memphis’ Sun, Stax, and Hi Records crop. Maybe MIM could partner with the Memphis Music Commission — an organization famous for not doing much of anything — to create a producers’ showcase featuring emerging national and international talent, modeled along the lines of Austin’s immensely popular South By Southwest festival. The barbecue contest already attracts the kind of crowds and international media attention a boilerplate event like the Beale Street Music Festival could never hope to generate. If, however, MIM worked as an umbrella for several smaller music festivals — Ponderosa Stomp, Heritage Fest, and a showcase of emerging artists — it could distinguish itself as one of America’s premier musical events. Combining a massive musical component with the built-in appeal of the barbecue contest is a no-brainer. When the air in downtown Memphis is saturated with the sounds of the world’s best music and scented with the overpowering smell of the world’s best barbecue, nobody will remember why they ever wanted to go to Bonnaroo in the first place. But before any of this can happen, Memphis In May has to think outside the box of Tom Lee Park. That’s the first step to a much brighter future.