Tag: Memphis

Letter from the Editor: Portland is the Model

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date June 21, 2007

It had been a long flight. I dropped my bags on the floor, walked into the hotel bathroom, and snapped on the lights. There was a brief flicker, and then the room was illuminated. I looked at the lightbulbs. They were the curly-cue energy-saving kind. Hmmm, I thought, nice touch.

I relieved myself and flushed the potty. There was a small, quick gurgle that lasted about a second. Ah, I thought, water-saving loos. I sat on the bed and opened my laptop to check my e-mail. The little wireless icon popped and asked me if I wanted to connect to the Internet via the city’s free wi-fi system. Yes, I did. How convenient and simple, I thought.

I spent four days in Portland, Oregon, at a newspaper conference last week, and each day I saw clear evidence of what a difference in a city’s quality of life an enlightened and progressive government can make.

I took light-rail trains all over town. I rode in hybrid taxis. The streets were immaculate. Roses and other flowers bloomed on every corner. The downtown was booming. I saw no vacant buildings, no blighted blocks.

So how do they do it? For one thing, they started 30 years ago by forming Metro, a consolidated elected governing body that is responsible for all urban planning, county-wide. Portland has no sprawl, due to a strictly enforced “urban growth boundary” that separates urban from rural land. The idea is to encourage redevelopment of Portland’s inner core and preserve its tree-lined city neighborhoods.

The Metro consists of seven elected commissioners who oversee transit, waste and recycling, parks, the zoo, the convention center, and fish and wildlife management. There is a mayor, but his role is strictly limited and mostly ceremonial. The current mayor, Tom Potter, lobbied for a reorganization to a “strong mayor” form of government, a measure that was on the city’s May ballot. It was rejected by a three-to-one margin.

As far as I know, the mayor didn’t blame unnamed “snakes” for the defeat. Maybe he just took it as a sign from God.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Tags city government, Mayor, Memphis, Portland

News

Memphis Sweaty, Other Cities Sweatier

Post author By
Post date June 20, 2007

CREDIT: nationalgeographic.com

Old Spice has released its annual ranking of the country’s 100 sweatiest cities. Last year, Memphis made the top 20 at number 18. This year, Memphis is again ranked at 18.

Phoenix was named the sweatiest city for the 3rd time in 4 years. In honor of this distinction, Old Spice sent a year’s supply of its Red Zone antiperspirant to Phoenix’ mayor.

According to a press release issued by Old Spice: the “rankings are based on the amount of sweat a person of average height and weight would produce walking around for an hour in the average high temperatures during June, July and August of 2005 for each city.”

San Francisco was judged the least sweatiest city.

Tags Memphis, Old Spice, San Fransisco, sweatiest cities

Cover Feature News

Be Cool

Post author By John Branston
Post date June 14, 2007

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

The thought of another long, blazing Memphis summer got you hot and bothered? Let the Flyer’s Summer Dining Guide help you chill out. The guide is about all things cool — from the hottest dishes and the coldest treats to the places to be seen and the spaces that must be seen. And, we’re just getting warmed up.

Best Served Cold

Sweet or savory, there’s nothing like a cold soup to bring down your core temperature when the mercury’s on the rise. As the heat soars, Sabine Baltz of Fratelli’s in the Garden (750 Cherry, 576-4118) purees avocado, yogurt, cilantro, and other vegetables and herbs into a thick, ambrosial blend and transforms the local berry harvest into low-calorie and refreshing soups. The end result? Soups that look (and taste) as lush as the landscape at the Memphis Botanic Garden, where the cafe is located.

Justin Fox Burks

Young Avenue Deli’s ‘Heat Miser,’ an unsubtle sandwich

At the Inn at Hunt-Phelan (533 Beale, 525-8225), chef Stephen Hassinger lets the Memphis Farmers Market determine the ingredients for his gazpacho, which, he says, “can be the simplest recipe in the world or include as many ingredients as you want.” He starts, of course, with tomatoes, then adds cucumber, onions, fresh herbs, and citrus or vinegar to kick up the flavors. He purees the veggies, then does a final pass through a sieve to remove seeds and skins, saving diced jicama, avocado, cucumber, and cilantro for the garnish. At the other end of the spectrum: vichyssoise, a hearty French soup that Hassinger creates from potatoes and leeks, which are cooked, then cooled.

“We prefer to do savory,” says Mac Edwards of McEwen’s on Monroe (122 Monroe, 527-7085), where — depending on the day’s specials — diners can feast on gazpacho or melon blends. When it’s really hot, Edwards pulls out his blender to make avocado soup, adapted from a shake recipe he found in a cookbook, which is served in a shot glass and topped with cilantro and crème fraîche. “A big part of our lunch crowd is men, and cold soup can be a hard-sell sometimes,” Edwards admits. “It does limit the market when you get more esoteric, but whatever’s left over can always be the sauce for the fish the next day!” — Andria Lisle

Go to Blazes

Of course we gravitate toward cooler foods when the summer heats up. Crisp salads and other chilled dishes tend to replace the heavier, hotter dishes we Justin Fox Burks

Southerners consume under less extreme conditions. But diners who really want to cool down while filling up may wish to forgo chilled dishes in favor of something extra spicy. In addition to opening up sinuses and stimulating the sweat glands, capsaicin — the chemical that makes chili peppers burn our lips — causes the body to release its natural pain killers. It is the Freon that fuels our internal air conditioners. Hot, pepper-laden dishes are the ideal meal when temperatures climb into the triple digits.

For the chile addict, the “Heat Miser” sandwich at Young Avenue Deli (2119 Young, 278-0034) is a perfect and perfectly unsubtle midday treat. Typically bland, deli-sliced turkey is marinated in a not-so-bland hot sauce, smothered in pickled jalapenos and banana peppers, and crammed into a hoagie roll that’s been smeared with hot mustard. The first flavor you taste is hotness. The second flavor? Hotness. And so on. Best served with a frosted glass of Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager.

Thai restaurants are known for bringing the heat, and it’s hard to beat the “Chef Kra Pow” at Chao Praya (3588 Ridgeway, 366-7827). This dish blends chicken, basil, chiles, and garlic in an aromatic dish that’s as unforgiving as it is irresistible.

Some of Memphis’ most searingly succulent treats find their origins in Jamaica. The jerked, slow-roasted duck at Automatic Slim’s (83 S. Second, 525-7948) is a juicy delight that brings the unbridled fury of Scotch bonnet peppers to the table, along with the sweet and savory flavors of traditional Jamaican jerk seasoning. Top it all off with a relish of pineapple and sun-dried cranberries, and you have heaven on earth and hell in your mouth. In case of excessive burning, consult your bartender for an ice-cold Red Stripe beer. — Chris Davis

Rooms with a View

Justin Fox Burks

EP’s ‘Lobster Pronto Pup’

The Flyer offices have the distinction of being within walking distance of the river bluff. On deadline days, this serves us well — expansive views are good for the soul. The same can be said of restaurants offering a room with a view.

For a noontime nosh, try Bach’s Lunch (50 N. Front, 578-3991), a downtown sandwich shop tucked away on the second floor of the Morgan Keegan building on Front Street. This 50-seat restaurant boasts leafy views of Confederate Park and the Mississippi River. Lunch offerings here are ample and tasty. A Greek chicken wrap, served warm with tangy feta cheese and olives, is fortification worth noting. So too, the hefty ham and cheese sandwich, perfectly suited to the two-fisted eater.

You’ll have a decidedly more uptown experience at The Tower Room American Grille (5100 Poplar, Suite 3300, 767-8776). Located in Clark Tower, the city’s third tallest building (365 feet), the Tower Room American Grille was once the private domain of the Summit Club. The massive dining room has been reincarnated into a still-tony public restaurant — with views to sigh for. From here, downtown is but a tumble of blocks sandwiched between an endless ribbon of earth and sky.

For lunch, the blackened snapper is most memorable, delicately seasoned and topped with an artichoke relish; even the bed of rice pilaf is flavorful. Dine after sunset on an array of surf and turf dishes, then top off your meal with a sumptuous crème brûlée.

What could surpass the sparkling views, except perhaps, sparkling conversation?

— Jane Schneider

Food on a Stick

Justin Fox Burks

Fratelli’s cold soup made of avocado, yogurt, cilantro, and other vegetables

There’s nothing quite like eating meat off a wood stick to bring out the Neanderthal in you. What could be more primal? There’s the hint of aggression (skewered food), the promise of flame (the meat’s gotta be hot), the risk of injury (hey, pointy stick), and the psychosexual element (or are you just happy to see me?).

But at EP Delta Kitchen & Bar (126 Beale, 527-1444), executive chef Michael Patrick has civilized the wild-food-on-a-stick concept with his “Lobster Pronto Pup” and given it to the world. No, Elvis probably never had one, but he sure would’ve loved it.

The origin of the pronto pup/corn dog is up for some debate. Like rock-and-roll and the Internet, pronto pups are claimed by lots of folks — as far apart as Oregon, Texas, Minnesota, Louisiana, and, yep, Memphis, with each variety popping up in the late ’30s to early ’40s.

Chef Patrick is going with the Bluff City connection. He calls his pronto pup “an interesting take on a Memphis original. Why not do something indigenous, but change it up?”

Patrick experimented with scallops and shrimp first, but neither was near meaty enough to withstand the pronto-pup pressures. Lobster seemed a natural fit. The difficult part, Patrick says, was getting the batter right. (His pronto pup is made with flour instead of cornmeal — so don’t go calling it a corn dog.)

Served as a gorgeous X-marks-the-spot, the pair of lobster pups is topped with a “river road white rémoulade sauce,” a New Orleans-style rémoulade minus the ketchup, says Patrick. Pronto pups are not typically about subtlety, but this one bucks convention. The lobster meat is light, the batter is not too greasy, and the rémoulade is a great spicy counterpoint.

Call it caveman food for the white-tablecloth set. — Greg Akers

Salsa for Breakfast

Justin Fox Burks

The view from the Tower Room

El Palmar (4069 Summer, 323-9700) smiles at motorists from its spot on Summer Avenue. The restaurant opens at 10 a.m., more conducive to weekend brunch than a quick bite on the way to work. It’s not too early for chips and salsa, though. El Palmar’s salsa is spicy and served warm with thick, unsalted chips.

The plate options may require a little translation. Huevos, eggs, can be served either with tocino, bacon, or jamon, ham. What El Palmar gives you that you won’t get at the greasy spoon with your pork and egg breakfast are ample supplies of beans, rice, and tortillas. Huevos con chilequilas is a pair of fried eggs on a bed of chile-sauced tortilla strips — tasty but not too hot. The traditional huevos con chorizo, eggs scrambled with spicy Mexican sausage, is sure to alleviate any pain from an overindulgent Friday night.

Donald’s Donuts (1776 Union, 725-5595) embodies all that is fundamentally American. (Meditate for a moment on its address number and street name.) And what do good American consumers demand? Well, donuts, of course, and Donald’s has plenty. Even greater than our craving for sugar-glazed pastry, however, is our desire for choice. Donald’s has that, too.

But the choice, fellow patriots, is no easy one: donut or breakfast burrito? The answer is that there is no wrong answer. But since we’re focusing on Mexican breakfasts, how about those burritos? Sausage and egg or egg and potato, each is a winner. Donald’s is open early seven days a week, so go ahead and address the Mexican breakfast craving midweek.

Café Ole (959 S. Cooper, 274-1504) offers unique items and good variety, too. Breakfast burritos are served with spinach and egg or bacon and egg combinations. The shrimp omelet and huevos rancheros are favorites, and the restaurant serves a kids’ breakfast and a brunch menu from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends. Unlike our other options, Café Ole serves Bloody Mary and Mimosa cocktails. — Preston Lauterbach

Liquored Up

Justin Fox Burks

El Palmar’s huevos con chilquilas, fried eggs with a side of rice and beans

Matthew B. Rowley’s new book Moonshine! (Lark Books, $14.95) offers plenty of tips for the home distiller, including recipes for exotica like Baby Step Bourbon, Japanese Rice Whiskey, Home Batch Monkey Rum, Beer Schnapps, and Muscadine Moonshine. Probably the only cookbook to come with a disclaimer, Moonshine! serves up history, diagrams of still designs, and an extensive list of resources for would-be Jim Beams. Although the laws for making your own white lightning are much stricter than those governing home breweries or wineries, it is possible, Rowley insists, to follow federal guidelines and still sip on homemade rotgut, busthead, or joy juice to your heart’s content.

To set up a home still, all you need is standard kitchen equipment like a fire extinguisher, a stockpot, and a strainer; pantry items such as sugar, fresh fruit, and some dried grains; and brewer’s yeast, available at the Winery & Brew Shoppe (60 S. Cooper, 278-2682). Stop at the hardware store for copper tubing, c-clamps, two buckets, and soldering materials, and after a few hours of work, you’ll be ready to start the fermenting process.Just don’t contact Rowley (or me, for that matter) when a federal agent knocks on your door. — Andria Lisle

“Coolierville”

Justin Fox Burks

A jar for homemade moonshine, available at the Winery & Brew Shoppe

Despite Collierville’s development and population growth, the city has been able to hold onto some of its small-town qualities. There are a few unique dining experiences in Collierville that can help diners feel a little bit cooler in this age of global warm … I mean, climate change. After all, Collierville is the land of “W”-sticker-plastered SUVs.

The Patio Café (684 W. Poplar, 853-7822) is a gem inside the Sheffield Antique Mall. Located at the far end of the spacious shopping area, the cafe offers light summery fare along with a fresh-air piazza vibe that allows diners to feel like they are eating outdoors. The food is similarly designed to appeal to customers trying to keep cool. Salads range from the standard garden variety to grilled chicken, shrimp, or salmon. The standout dish, though, is the pimento cheese sandwich. Served on a croissant, the pimento cheese, an airy concoction that is not over-mixed and has a slightly piquant taste, is one of the best in the county.

From the mall, it’s a five-minute drive east to Collierville’s historic town square. Right off the square is Mensi’s Dairy Bar (162 Washington, 853-2161), which has been around for over 40 years. The banana milkshake, made with fresh bananas and soft-serve ice cream, is a can’t-miss treat. It’s scrumptious and refreshing, and the fresh fruit makes it almost healthy. The cheeseburgers are delicious, palm-sized sandwiches that trigger all the best childhood memories of poolside snack bars. Like all the great dairy bars of yesteryear, there is no proper dining area. However, it’s hard to imagine a more idyllic summer afternoon than one spent hauling an armful of shakes, corndogs, burgers, and sno-cones over to the town square park and scarfing them in the shade of the square’s wrought-iron gazebo.

Lee Kan’s Asian Grill (255 New Byhalia, 853-6686) is a relatively new addition to the area and offers a variety of Asian foods, from Japanese sushi to traditional Chinese to more modern Asian-French fusion. The most noticeable thing about the main dining room is the giant aquarium, which would look perfectly suitable in the lair of a James Bond villain.

One offering sure to ease the torrid summer heat is “Lee Kan’s Velvet Roll,” which features crawfish, tempura shrimp, and avocado. It’s substantial enough to serve as an entrée. Some lighter starters include tuna tataki, edamame, fresh spring rolls, and Lee Kan’s lettuce wrap, which has minced chicken, roasted duck, and water chestnuts. Nothing caps off a hot summer day like a cool, adult beverage, and Lee Kan’s offers a wide selection of chilled sakes. — David Dunlap Jr.

Meet Me at the Bar

Justin Fox Burks

Cool it: Mensi’s Dairy Bar, near Collierville’s historic town square, triggers all the best childhood memories

Tourists with sites to see do it. People with business to do do it. Try it yourself sometime: Visit a hotel bar without even leaving town. It’s good for some refreshment, and it’s good for a change of pace from your neighborhood watering hole. In Memphis, you’ve got more than a couple of fine hotels to choose from. But let’s settle for just two: the Hilton (939 Ridge Lake Boulevard, 684-6664) out east and the Westin (170 Lt. George W. Lee, 527-7220) downtown. Your assignment: compare and contrast.

In terms of service, there’s no comparison. Both hotels are top-notch. You’re paying to be served, and what you get is instant service once you set foot in the door, whether it’s the lobby bar of the Hilton on Ridge Lake (that mirrored tower off Poplar you’ve known since 1979, when it was built) or the bar of the Westin Memphis Beale Street (which opened this past April). What a difference, though, a step makes.

The Hilton is the work of Memphis architect Francis Mah, but the building underwent a major renovation in 2004. No structural toying with the welcoming lobby, however. That fan-shaped ceiling you remember: It’s intact. That sense of light and air and openness: It’s intact too. Soaring windows still offer a view of the outside pool. The check-in desk is off to a far side. And off to the opposite side is the Hilton’s bar, which comes with some tables and comfortable seating. The rush-hour traffic on I-240? It’s out of sight. And inside the Hilton on a recent late afternoon, there was hardly a sound — unless you count the fountain, which serves as the lobby’s centerpiece. What’s new is the room’s riot of color, whether it’s in the carpeting and seating or the neon that brightens the wood paneling behind check-in. Altogether then, a taste of the good life to go with the drink you ordered. That standstill of cars on Poplar? Forget it.

That crowd on Beale, however … you better believe it: It’s a scene. But once inside the bar at the Westin, you’ll need reminding that just outside, in addition to Beale, are FedExForum, the Rock ‘N’ Soul Museum, and the Gibson Guitar Factory. That street scene is good and concentrated and urban, and the bar at the Westin doesn’t deny it. Windows look onto Lt. George W. Lee Avenue. But the atmosphere inside is low-key and sophisticated — a testament to the creative team at local architectural firm Hnedak Bobo. So sit awhile. Admire the dark woods of the bar and the countertops that glow in a rich onyx pattern. Watch the triple plasma screens, handsomely framed behind the bar. Low-level lighting scattered throughout the room flatters everybody. The season is summer. The heat is on. But the word for the Westin is “cool.” — Leonard Gill

Ice Ice Baby

The “Icicle Aphrodisiac” from Bonefish (1250 N. Germantown Pkwy., Cordova, 753-2220; 4680 Merchants Park, Collierville, 854-5822) will help you get in the mood. This martini is made with Skyy vanilla vodka and passion-fruit juice, which makes it taste like of a push-up pop, except alcoholic. If you’ve got a passion for sweets, this drink’s for you. But what makes the cocktail live up to its titillating name isn’t the passion in the passion fruit. It’s the watermelon popsicle, which is served on a cinnamon stick and inserted into your drink. The combination of watermelon and cinnamon is surprisingly delicious.

Pearl’s Oyster House (299 S. Main, 522-9070) has a whole section of its menu devoted to those tasty producers of pearls. One of the most delicious and inexpensive dishes is the Louisiana Gulf oysters. They’re served just the way they should be: raw, naked, and cold, making them a welcome remedy to the summer heat.

After spending all night at Bari (22 S. Cooper, 722-2244) stuffing yourself with Italian food, you’re going to need a kick. On hot summer nights, the “Espresso Gelato” is an excellent pick-me-up. The espresso-flavored gelato is topped with a generous dollop of chocolate cream, an Italian concoction with the consistency of mousse. What makes it really interesting, though, is the way it’s served. Once the dish is set in front of you, the server pours a shot of hot espresso over it. The gelato acts as a delicious ice cube, cooling the hot coffee and adding a bit of froth. It’s like having an iced mocha that never gets watered down. — Cherie Heiberg

A Straw Poll

Being what my girlfriend affectionately terms a “bev-head,” I am a sucker for ridiculous soft-drink one-offs, horribly dense milkshakes, questionable “energy” concoctions, and every conceivable form of green tea. My days are filled with impulsive drink purchases. What follows are three chilly finalists from my citywide odyssey to find healthy respites from the afternoon heat (note: the kind that won’t get you promptly drunk in the hot sun).

A green-tea obsessive by nature, I momentarily defected in the name of “Arabian Chai Tea,” iced and sweetened, at Casablanca Café (2156 Young, 725-8557). It’s one of the best Chai teas in town, and if a minor snack is needed on a suffocating summer afternoon, throw in the dolmas (grape leaves).

Smoothie outlets are becoming as omnipresent as hot-wing outlets, and with such saturation, quality will vary. Adding to the confusion are the menus that tend to have a word count greater than Infinite Jest. So I’ve had some smoothies in my day, good and bad, but none pack the flavor, punch, and staying power of the “Hearty Apple” at Smoothie King (1995 Union, 726-1300; 3452 Poplar, 454-7640). Apples (duh), cinnamon, an additional “special mix of spices,” bananas, and the optional 125-mg caffeine supplement offer a morning’s worth of coffee, without the paranoid jitters or all-out assault on your stomach lining.

Before patronizing Chang’s Bubble Tea (8095 Macon, Cordova, 737-8841), the mention of this fairly recent phenomenon conjured misguided thoughts of freeze-dried astronaut food. Bubble Tea is not unlike a partially melted smoothie. Pick the right flavor combo, and the result is viscerally satisfying. My personal winner is the watermelon and pear mix, made without the tapioca pearls. Without the tapioca, the drink is a consistency finer than a smoothie. With them, you’ll need one of the absurdly wide (at least a half-inch) straws, which is like drinking through a length of PVC pipe. — Andrew Earles

Playing With Fire

Mom probably told you not to play with fire. And she probably also railed against playing with your food. But you’re all grown-up now. You don’t have to listen to her.

So embrace your inner pyro and head to Spindini (383 S. Main, 578-2767), where the wood-fired oven takes center stage. Positioned near the bar, every seat has a view of the bright orange blaze as the restaurant’s signature flame-kissed dishes enter the inferno.

Dishes prepared in the oven, such as the generously topped wood-fired pizza, rainbow trout stuffed with applewood bacon, or stuffed brick chicken, are denoted on the menu with a small fire icon.

In a cooking process known as antico e nuovo, entrées are placed in copper vessels or terra-cotta pots or on wooden planks before entering the oven. Even the restaurant’s soft white bread and wheat olive loaf are baked fresh daily in the wood-fired oven.

After filling up on a main course, head to A-Tan (3445 Poplar, 452-4487) for a “Flaming Volcano,” the Chinese restaurant’s signature fiery cocktail. Served in a ceramic bowl with a crater rising up from the center, the drink is actually served while lit on fire thanks to a shot of Barcardi poured in the volcano’s crater.

The drink is a mix of brandy, white rum, and amaretto with orange juice, grenadine, and sour mix. Served with two straws, it’s the perfect date drink. Just be careful not to lean in too close. You might catch your hair on fire.

If you’re not burned out (pun definitely intended) with the fire foods, order dessert at Owen Brennan’s (6150 Poplar, 761-0990). The bananas Foster, swimming in a butter and brown-sugar sauce and topped with creamy vanilla ice cream and cinnamon, is generously doused with rum and flamed tableside. As the fire spreads over the plate, the aroma of burning cinnamon fills the air. — Bianca Phillips

Tags cold soup, EP's Delta Kitchen, Food, lobster, Memphis, Peabody, pronto pup, Review, summer

News The Fly-By

Going Nuclear

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date June 14, 2007

A former Department of Defense barge is headed for Memphis, courtesy of radioactive-waste disposal company Energy Solutions. The company hopes to use a massive Barnhart crane on Presidents Island to lift the 750-ton radioactive barge out of the water and onto land.

The barge, which contains nuclear contaminants from various military operations, is in Virginia while the company awaits approval of a temporary special-use permit from the Land Use Control Board. A meeting is scheduled for Thursday, June 14th, and, if approved, will also require approval from the Memphis City Council.

“The main reason it’s being done in Memphis is because of the crane,” says Mark Walker, a spokesperson for Energy Solutions. The crane, affectionately dubbed “Ichabod” after Sleepy Hollow’s Ichabod Crane, is one of the largest in the country.

The barge will be lifted onto an outdoor pad lined with layers of fabric and rock, constructed solely to dismantle the barge. The pad will be concave to prevent spillage of rainwater that may become contaminated by radiation. The dismantled barge will then be shipped by train to a radioactive disposal site in Utah.

“We will have 24-hour security seven days a week to make sure everything is safe regarding rainwater leakage,” says Dan Shrum of Energy Solutions’ environmental compliance office.

The project is slated to take about three months.

Shrum says the ship contains very low levels of radiation. “The people doing the torch-cutting and working on the barge will get the equivalent of about two chest X-rays [worth of radiation],” Shrum says.

Low-level or not, some environmentalists are still concerned. Last year, Sierra Club members fought a proposed incinerator from R.A.C.E. (Radiological Assistance, Engineering, and Consulting), another radioactive-waste disposal company on Presidents Island.

“We’re not opposed to this operation. It’s not a nuclear incinerator like they were proposing at R.A.C.E.,” says Rita Harris, the Sierra Club’s environmental justice coordinator. “But I do think this is a dangerous operation if it’s not handled properly. We’d like to see state or local authorities say they will monitor these folks.”

Representatives from the Tennessee Division of Radiological Health have confirmed that they will conduct an inspection during the dismantling of the contaminated holding tanks. At that time, an inspector will determine if a follow-up inspection is needed.

Harris is also concerned about air emissions that could be released from paint on the vessel containing toxic poly chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), as well as escaping asbestos fibers. The area where the ship will be dismantled is only two miles from Martin Luther King, Jr Park.

The company will work with a licensed asbestos contractor to remove the substance before they cut into the barge.

“We’re also going to remove the PCB paint before we use a blowtorch on the vessel,” Shrum says. “Our [planned] air emissions are below the regulatory level and were accepted by the local and state air-quality folks.”

The project does not require a permit from the local Health Department, and Energy Solutions has already gotten a permit from the state Division of Radiological Health.

Tags Ichabod, Memphis, nuclear waste, Presidents Island

Living Spaces Real Estate

New Neighbor

Post author By Greg Akers
Post date May 31, 2007

CREDIT: Renderings courtesy of Grant and Company

Harbor Town, established in 1989 — making it the granddaddy of the downtown residential revival — is getting a new neighbor. Toward the south end of Mud Island, near the Auction Street Bridge, RiverTown is going up. Occupancy is set for November.

Keith Grant, who, along with his brother David, is a principal for RiverTown, says the downtown development was a change of pace for the homebuilding team.

“In the past, we’ve done predominantly single-family housing,” Grant says. “We feel like some of the projects downtown are too contemporary or they don’t have a view of the Mississippi River. By building [RiverTown] and not retrofitting a building, we feel that we can offer something for Memphians to purchase that they can enjoy.”

Grant is president of the Memphis Area Homebuilders Association (see his monthly Living Spaces column on page 4), the third generation of Grants to be so appointed (after his father, Richard, and his grandfather, Carl).

When the finishing touches are put on it, RiverTown will be composed of 200 units in 23 buildings. Prices will range from the mid-$200,000s to the upper-$600,000s, with sizes going from 1,300 to 3,200 square feet. Some units are two or three stories high. The 3,200-square-footers will have a large patio overlooking the river and a recreation room on the upper floor.

Renderings courtesy of Grant and Company

The Signature. RiverTown on the Island offers six different building styles/floor plans.

“The best part about RiverTown are the views,” Grant says. “Every unit has a view of the river or looks back at the skyline. In some cases, they have a view of both. Every unit also has a balcony. We oversized the balconies because we knew people would be spending time on them.” Each unit comes with a garage as well.

Grant feels like he’s well suited, through his homebuilding experience, to know what people are looking for in the real estate market.

“Even though they want something that’s a little contemporary for downtown, the bottom line is that Memphians are still traditional,” Grant says.

“The styling at RiverTown is more contemporary on the outside. Yet, it has a resort appearance because the overhangs on the buildings are similar to what you might see in Florida. We aren’t just putting siding all over it. We’re putting brick, because people down here are accustomed to it.”

Grant assures that RiverTown will fit in nicely with the neighborhood.

“They’ve got a lot of good things going in Harbor Town,” he says. “It’s a nice community with a resort feel to it. That’s kind of what we incorporated into ours. We wanted to be an extension of what’s in Harbor Town now.”

RiverTown isn’t all that different from other projects Grant has been involved with, he says.

“The nice thing is that RiverTown is all on one site. [It’s] not spread out, which makes it a lot easier to supervise. It’s still wood frame. We still use a lot of the same contractors that we use on our single-family houses. So we feel we have a lot to offer coming from the single-family market.”

See for yourself by logging onto RiverTownOnTheIsland.com. In addition to floor plans and renderings of what’s in store for Mud Island, you can go on a virtual tour of what a furnished unit will likely look like. ■ — GA

LivingSpaces@memphisflyer.com

Tags development, Downtown, Harbortown, Memphis, river side development, Rivertown

News News Feature

Invasion of the Asian Catfish

Post author By Preston Lauterbach
Post date May 31, 2007

CREDIT: Ghubonamin | dreamstime.com

Paul Dees’ grandfather got into catfish farming in the 1960s during the industry’s infancy, realizing that his land’s heavy clay soil wouldn’t grow a stitch of cotton.

Dees took over the family business near Leland, Mississippi — about 200 miles south of Memphis — in 2000. His grandfather had grown the farm into one of the largest catfish producers in the state, which produces the most catfish in the country.

Today Dees’ livelihood hangs in the balance, as Mississippi aquaculture faces a foe mightier than drought or the boll weevil. “As an individual producer, there’s nothing more I can do,” he explains. “We can’t compete against the People’s Republic of China.”

But on May 3rd, state commissioner of agriculture and commerce Lester Spell ordered catfish imported from China off of the shelves of several grocery stores statewide after samples of the fish tested positive for ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin, broad-spectrum antibiotics that are banned by the FDA for use in human food.

Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have since banned the sale of Chinese catfish statewide. Wal-Mart stores have pulled the Chinese fish nationwide. Tennessee has planned no such action, nor have any shipments of Chinese catfish to the state been inspected. Though the removal actions have been criticized as political, and the specific health risks these contaminated fish pose dismissed by some as inconsequential, the incident provokes questions about how globalization impacts everything in our lives, from regional industries to the food we put on our tables.

Catfish Fever

While catfish farming hasn’t taken in Tennessee, Memphis is a big consumer of the crop. Witness the packed parking lot during the lunch rush at the Cooper-Young restaurant Soul Fish.

The eatery opened last year, and its owner — Raymond Williams, who’s committed to Mississippi farm-raised catfish — sees plenty of his peers hooked by the lure of cheap Chinese product. As Chinese catfish take a larger share of the American market, prices of domestic filets increase to offset the losses. Domestic catfish jumped nearly 20 percent in price shortly after Soul Fish opened its doors.

Not all catfish restaurants in the city are as committed to buying local, however. That crispy-fried filet you enjoy at your favorite joint may not be catfish at all but Vietnamese tra or basa. “You’d be surprised at the number of places that claim to be a catfish restaurant that don’t even sell true catfish,” says Kenneth Mitchell of Sysco, a wholesale food distributor.

Farmers in the region are battling to force restaurants to include “country of origin” labeling on their menus. They won a modest victory when the FDA barred Vietnamese fish distributors from calling tra catfish in 2001. Vietnam accounted for 84 percent of “catfish” imports prior to that ruling, but now the amount of Vietnamese imported fish has fallen off considerably. The hope is that “country of origin” labeling will have the same effect on Chinese imports.

Mitchell says that he sells 900 cases of Chinese catfish to restaurants in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi every week.

Domestic fish costs about $55 per case, while Chinese fish runs $45 per case; cases average 45 pieces of fish. It’s the marginal buyers who keep the imports coming. “There’ll always be those people who try to find the cheapest price on anything they can call a catfish,” Mitchell notes.

“We’ve been trying to get a labeling law passed, ” Dees says. “As far as the catfish industry being able to go down to Jackson and shove that through, we can’t. In the scheme of things, we’re small potatoes.”

Farmers are urging the USDA to inspect and grade catfish as it does beef to establish industry-wide quality control. “We think it may help put the difference between us and the Chinese fish,” Dees says.

Big business

Aquaculture is a booming business in China. The government took an active role in rebuilding the industry after inland development, dam construction, and industrial pollution stunted China’s inland fisheries in the 1970s. It stocked rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. The annual output of China’s inland fisheries jumped from 300,000 tons in 1978 to 1.76 billion tons in 1996.

Chinese catfish exports scarcely existed 10 years ago, but their prominence in the American market is expanding rapidly. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. has imported 10 million pounds of Chinese catfish so far this year, against four million for this time last year. The situation does not bode well for producers in the region. Arkansas catfish farmer Carl Jeffers explains: “That volume translates into a reduced processing volume for the U.S. industry. It’s only a matter of time before the price declines because of the amount of imports.”

War Eagle

Though American farmers find themselves fighting Asian imports today, the U.S. has helped enable the growth of the Chinese catfish industry. Alabama is both the second leading producer of farm-raised catfish and also home to one of the world’s preeminent fishery-science departments at Auburn University.

The Auburn fishery department transfers scientific data and know-how to developing countries. It assists in installing fishery infrastructure and works on sustainability of aquaculture crops in a variety of settings. It also brings foreign agriculture officials to the South to show them how it’s done.

“Auburn hosted a Chinese delegation in 1996 that visited my farm,” Jeffers recalls. “They took notes and were very interested in what it took to raise catfish. You might say, in a roundabout way, I facilitated the Chinese invasion.”

Neither Auburn nor Jeffers is likely to have touted the use of antibiotics in fish. The Chinese have developed their own aquaculture methods. While American-farmed catfish swim in ponds, Chinese fish are grown in pens. Water quality may be an issue. “They’re growing their fish in polluted waters,” Dees says. “That’s part of why they have to give them antibiotics, to keep them alive.”

David Rouse, chair of the Auburn fishery department notes, “We have hosted some Chinese groups, but we’ve been very careful on that, particularly in the past 10 years.”

Rouse adds that anyone who wants to start a catfish farm in China can find the needed information from a variety of sources. There are no trade secrets, he says. “All of that information is on the Internet. Anybody who wants to farm or set up a processing plant, it’s out there.”

Banned by the FDA

The substances found in Chinese catfish samples in Mississippi and Alabama, ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin, are used to treat potentially life-threatening infections in humans. The problem is that by ingesting them in food we may promote the evolution of pathogens resistant to these medicines, rendering them useless as treatment — though one would have to eat an awful lot of catfish for a long time to develop antibiotic resistance.

According to FDA records, ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin have been found in shipments of catfish and basa bound for the U.S. from China and Vietnam. Shrimp from Vietnam, Venezuela, Thailand, and Malaysia have tested positive for the antibiotic chloramphenicol. Gentian violet and malachite green, anti-fungal or anti-bacterial agents applied to fish grown in tight quarters, have been found in shrimp from Mexico, eel from Taiwan, Vietnamese basa, and Chinese eel, tilapia, and catfish.

These substances pose a variety of health risks to humans. Chloramphenicol holds a slight risk for aplastic anemia, and gentian violet has been linked to mouth cancer. A Canadian study in 1992 determined that people who eat fish contaminated with malachite green are at risk for liver tumors.

“They aren’t approved for use in human food,” an FDA spokesperson told the Flyer. “They should not be present in food in any amount.”

Outlook: Murky

Scientists and farmers see the future of the Southern catfish industry differently. “I think China’s water quality is such that they won’t be able to produce catfish very long,” Rouse says. “They have to use antibiotics just to keep the fish healthy. It’s a fish that has expensive feed, so they’re going to tend to grow cheaper, easier fish. The [Chinese] catfish are probably going to go away in a year.”

Jeffers has seen the experts proven incorrect before. “We always felt that shipping expenses would be prohibitive for going outside the U.S. and assumed that other countries were the same,” Jeffers says. “Obviously we were wrong.”

“The catfish industry has already atrophied in the last five years — there’s not much fat left to trim,” Dees adds.

Tags antibiotics, catfish, catfish farms, China, FDA, Memphis

Cover Feature News

Burning Green

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date May 17, 2007

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

It’s a sunny spring day in March, and biofuels activist Andrew Couch can’t stand the idea of staying indoors.

“Can we do this outside somewhere? I don’t care where, but it’s too pretty today to sit inside,” Couch tells me on the telephone as we make last-minute arrangements for an interview.

A couple of hours later, Couch pulls up to the Flyer‘s downtown office, the engine of his 2000 Volkswagen Jetta sounding loud, like a big rig. He powers it on biodiesel, a clean-burning fuel produced from renewable resources such as soybean oil, cottonseed oil, and even animal fat.

“My car gets close to 40 miles to the gallon,” Couch boasts.

I hop in and we head down to Tom Lee Park, where we spend the next hour on a park bench facing the Mississippi River, talking about Couch’s dream: a city running on alternative fuels.

Several years ago, when Couch was converting car engines to run on French-fry grease with his former company, Deep Fried Rides, it was a radical vision. These days, Couch’s idea of a bio-powered utopia is not too far from fruition.

Heading up the West Tennessee Clean Cities Coalition (WTCCC), one of three regional programs in the state devoted to taking the biofuel cause mainstream, Couch has helped connect numerous city agencies and municipalities with biodiesel producers and distributors.

Mainstream folks across the country are embracing the biofuels movement. Even President George W. Bush, in his 2007 State of the Union address, said “alternative fuels are essential to [his] goal of cutting U.S. gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next 10 years.” Bush called on the biofuels industry to produce 35 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2017.

Here in Memphis, a couple of local biodiesel refineries are already hard at work. Memphis Biofuels in Orange Mound and Milagro Biofuels in North Memphis began production last fall.

And all across Shelby County, various municipalities and agencies, ranging from the city of Millington to Memphis Light, Gas and Water, are making the switch from straight petroleum diesel to a biodiesel blend (a mixture of pure biodiesel and petroleum).

“It’s taken a while for people to feel comfortable enough to invest [in biofuels] here, but we’re seeing the market grow around the country,” Couch says. “People are starting to feel more comfortable.”

It’s an environmentalist’s dream come true, and if the enthusiasm continues to grow, Couch says Memphis and the rest of the country can expect cleaner air down the road.

Farmed Fuel

Tucked away on a dead-end street in Orange Mound, Memphis Biofuels looks like a factory that would be more at home on Presidents Island than near a residential neighborhood. There are massive storage bins, gleaming silver tanks, pipes, vessels, boilers, and other industrial equipment.

Built in the 1920s, the facility once housed a Procter & Gamble fats-processing company. A rail line running through the plant delivered poultry fat, yellow grease, and soybean oil to be converted into poultry feed. Years later, current owner Ken Arnold took over the factory, changing the end product to cattle feed.

“In the middle part of 2005, our business at this facility was not doing very well,” Arnold says. “We were looking at better ways to utilize our facility. I have a chemical engineering background, but I was just like the general public: completely naive about biodiesel. I started looking into it and realized it was a simple process of converting soybean and methanol.”

After talking to Couch and Frazier Barnes and Associates, a local consulting firm, Arnold drew up a business plan to convert the aging facility into a state-of-the-art biodiesel plant. He hired about 40 employees, mostly from the Orange Mound area, and began production in December 2006.

Memphis Biofuels uses soybean, cottonseed, or canola oils and poultry fat or beef tallow to produce a raw biodiesel product that’s sold to oil distributors. The distributors mix the product with petroleum diesel — usually 10 or 20 percent biodiesel to 80 or 90 percent diesel — and sell it to fleets and retail service stations.

Though the finished product used in diesel engines contains some petro, the mixture results in a substantial reduction of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and particulate-matter emissions.

“Pure biodiesel is a nonhazardous, nontoxic biodegradable fuel,” Arnold says. “It’s very similar to vegetable oil. If you have a spill, it’s not like having a diesel spill that’s very hazardous and flammable. You can even pour biodiesel on your arm or drink it.”

A jar of the thick, yellowish fluid sits on Arnold’s desk. Its color is similar to canola or low-quality olive oil.

Justin Fox Burks

Dennis Gladney at a MATA refueling station

In 2000, biodiesel became the only alternative fuel to successfully complete Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tests for health effects under the Clean Air Act. According to a Department of Energy study, use of 100 percent biodiesel results in a 78.8 percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions.

And since it comes from renewable resources rather than being extracted from below the earth like petroleum, biodiesel is credited for having a positive energy balance. For every unit of energy needed to produce a gallon of biodiesel, 3.24 units of energy are gained.

“It’s important to understand that petroleum comes from an extractive technology where resources are being pulled from a store of ancient sunlight in the ground. Then we’re emitting carbon into the air as we burn the petroleum,” Couch says. “But if we take grass [or other plants] and use that to make a fuel, that grass or that plant will grow back next year and absorb as much carbon as was released when the fuel was burned. It’s kind of a closed-loop carbon-emissions system.”

Since the raw products (mostly soybeans) used to produce biodiesel come from America’s farmland, biodiesel production benefits farmers. And of course, using less petroleum means spending less U.S. dollars on foreign oil.

Memphis Biofuels aims to produce 36 million gallons of biodiesel by the end of 2007. In 2008, they hope to boost production to 50 million gallons. But they’re not the only ones manufacturing the fuel locally. Around the same time that Arnold was trying to figure out what to do with his aging facility, Nashville native and environmentalist Diane Mulloy was pondering how she could use her time to better help the earth.

“I have three young children, and I’d stayed at home raising them. I was ready to get back to work, so I started looking at all the different industries,” Mulloy says. “A friend told me about the biofuels industry, and I just knew that was what I wanted to do. I grew up in farm country, so I have a soft spot for farmers. The petroleum prices were skyrocketing, so it seemed like a good time to give that industry some competition.”

Mulloy’s husband owns a Nashville chemical company, so he had the background needed to start a biodiesel plant. A friend, Gary Meloni, owned an old warehouse in Memphis’ newly revived Uptown district, and the Mulloys found an investor in Lehman-Roberts, a Memphis-based road contracting company.

So Milagro Biofuels, located in a converted 19th-century cotton mill on Keel Avenue, was born. “Milagro” is Spanish for “miracle,” and farmers often refer to soybeans as the “miracle crop” for its multiple uses.

Unlike Memphis Biofuels, Milagro only uses soybean oil to produce its biodiesel product — no animal fats or other types of plant-based oils.

Justin Fox Burks

Andrew Couch

“Soybean oil makes really good biodiesel. It does well in cold weather. Animal fat gets very thick in the winter. Biodiesel is more expensive to produce with only soybean oil, but it makes for a premium product,” Mulloy says.

“Another problem with animal fats specific to our location is the odor involved,” Meloni says. “Being in a new residential neighborhood, that’s the last thing we want.”

Seventeen new houses are planned for the neighborhood surrounding Milagro, so the company does its best to blend in. Unlike Memphis Biofuels, Milagro doesn’t look like a factory from the outside. In fact, it looks more like an office building. That’s because all the tanks and vessels are concealed indoors. Meloni says the equipment is quiet, and the only thing neighbors might smell is the hunger-inducing aroma of fried chicken.

Milagro aims to produce 5 million gallons of pure biodiesel per year, which equates to over 83,000 acres of soybeans per year.

The Ethanol Option

Though biodiesel can only be used in vehicles with diesel engines, another alternative fuel is catching on for gasoline-powered cars. Corn-based ethanol is produced mainly in the Midwest, where most of the nation’s corn is grown. It’s essentially a grain alcohol that can be mixed with regular gas at blends as high as 85 percent ethanol to 15 percent gasoline.

There’s only one operating ethanol producer in Tennessee: Tate & Lyle in Loudon County. But production is under way for a new facility in Obion County in West Tennessee. Two other companies, Mean Green Biofuels and Cascade Grain Ethanol, have received tax easements to build facilities in Memphis.

“Memphis can’t be in a better spot. You’ve got all this agriculture, the river, the infrastructure for distribution,” Couch says. “It’s a huge economic opportunity for local farmers. This is the biggest thing to happen to Tennessee farmers since the New Deal.”

Justin Fox Burks

Memphis Biofuel’s Ken Arnold

As the owner of a farmer’s marketing service in Brinkley, Arkansas, Carl Frein helps farmers sell their crops to big food industries, like Cargill, Inc. Frein says farmers had a hard time getting a fair price for their crops several years ago, but thanks to the biofuels boom, crops are finally pulling decent prices.

“You can blame all the good prices on the corn market and the ethanol. Now we’re not only looking at a food. We’re trading an energy and a food product,” Frein says. “As long as these crude oil prices stay above $40 a barrel, ethanol is going to work for [the farmers]. These plants are going to make money, and they’re going to make more ethanol. And we’re going to need more corn to service it.”

It’s not just good for farmers. It’s also great for local air quality. Currently, Shelby County does not comply with EPA pollution standards for ozone. Much of the pollution is due to diesel emissions along Interstate 40.

Though Bob Rogers with the Shelby County Health Department says carbon emissions from diesel don’t affect the ozone layer, he admits that increased biodiesel use would definitely clear up the county’s air.

“Right now, there are no rules or regulations having to do with greenhouse gases and global warming,” Rogers says. “That may change one day. The EPA is currently studying diesel exhaust very strongly and considering calling it a hazardous pollutant.”

Biofueled Bandwagon

Justin Fox Burks

Biodiesel ready for testing

When Germantown environmental commissioner Joe Skelley revs up his 1985 Mercedes, an appetizing scent comes from the tailpipe. Some days it smells like onion rings or french fries; other days it’s grilled hamburgers or deep-fried turkey.

The commissioner, who, along with 11 others, advises the Germantown Board of Alderman on environmental issues, powers his car on straight vegetable oil that he retrieves from area restaurants. He’s been running on grease in the spring and summer months for the past two years. That’s because pure vegetable oil tends to clog up in cold weather. (Biodiesel does not.)

“Since March 1st, I haven’t been to a service station, and I’ve driven 700 miles,” says Skelley, who also works as a chemist at a local drug company called Natureplex.

Skelley gets his grease at no charge from restaurants that would otherwise have to pay to have it hauled off. He also gets donations from friends and co-workers who don’t know what to do with leftover cooking grease. (Skelley handled his own vegetable-oil conversion, but local company Deep Fried Rides can do the work for those not inclined to do it themselves.)

Though it’s not as high-quality as biodiesel, Skelley’s project got the commission members talking about how they could bring a similar technology to Germantown’s fleet vehicles. They discussed a switch to biodiesel several years ago, and in March, the municipality announced they would begin testing five fleet vehicles (fire trucks, parks vehicles, and utility service trucks) on biodiesel fuel.

A biodiesel pump, containing a B10 mix (10 percent biodiesel to 90 percent diesel) provided by Milagro, was erected at the Dogwood Fire Station at 8925 Dogwood Road. If successful, all of Germantown’s fleet will be switched over, and Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy would like to eventually move vehicles up to a B20 mix.

Shelby County is also working toward a switch to biodiesel. Last May, Rogers and county clean-air coordinator Ronné Adkins announced that the county would soon begin testing fleet vehicles on biodiesel. At the time, there were no local biodiesel producers. Now that’s covered, and Adkins says he’s shooting to begin testing by the end of May — Shelby County Clean Air Month.

The county will start with a diverse group of vehicles — some off-road construction equipment, heavy-duty dump trucks, and light-duty vehicles.

“I have a feeling we’ll gradually move toward using biodiesel throughout the entire fleet,” Adkins says. “We haven’t set a date. That will depend on our fleet-services manager. When he’s ready to move forward, we’ll do so.”

If tests prove that biodiesel works as well as regular diesel in county vehicles while emitting fewer pollutants, about 100 vehicles will begin using a B20 mix.

There’ll be no testing in Millington, where the government switched its entire fleet to B10 biodiesel last month. The north Shelby County town was in need of new diesel tanks at its government fueling station earlier this year, so officials thought it was a good time for the conversion.

Justin Fox Burks

Joe Skelley

Biodiesel can be stored in a regular diesel tank, but it must be cleaned out first. Biodiesel acts as a solvent, loosening up diesel sludge buildup. With brand-new tanks, no cleaning was necessary for Millington.

“There’s more and more information available that shows that other fleets that have switched are running well. And they’re also seeing increases in tenths of a gallon or even a whole gallon in gas mileage on biodiesel,” says Valerie Chapman, Millington’s director of economic development. “We’re really comfortable with the role this region can play in the economy of this product. We’d be silly not to support it.”

Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) is preparing to perform biodiesel tests on its light-duty trucks, which handle gas leaks and service-outage calls.

“If all goes well, as we think it will, we’ll expand biodiesel use into our other trucks and aspects of our operation,” says MLGW spokesperson Chris Stanley.

Memphis Biofuels will provide the fuel. The utility is also planning to purchase up to 10 flex-fuel cars that can run on either gasoline or an ethanol blend.

Last summer, Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) performed biodiesel tests in 20 of their buses used to provide door-to-door service for people with disabilities. The results showed that B20 biodiesel produced lower exhaust emissions and increased fuel efficiency by .02 miles per gallon.

However, MATA declined to switch to biodiesel at the time due to cost concerns. The cost of biodiesel was several cents higher than diesel due to rising soybean costs. But these days, biodiesel is selling several cents cheaper. Earlier this month, officials at MATA announced that they’d switched over all 229 of their buses. At the current prices, MATA is saving four cents per gallon using biodiesel as opposed to petroleum diesel.

As for the average consumer, Memphians driving diesel-powered cars and trucks like Couch’s Jetta will soon be able to fuel up at the Riverside, a BP station on Riverside Drive in the South End neighborhood. Owner John Gary began working on installing a biodiesel pump earlier this month. It will be the first retail station to sell biodiesel in Shelby County.

“It’s no fun to be the first one at the dance, but somebody’s got to do it,” Gary says on his decision to sell biodiesel. “I’m excited and concerned that I’ll soon have lots of local competition. Once it’s been proven to work here, it’ll move quickly to other stores with diesel infrastructure.”

Green Islands and Grant Funds

If Governor Phil Bredesen has his way, Gary’s prediction is right on. In February, Bredesen announced several initiatives aimed at increasing biodiesel use and production in Tennessee.

Justin Fox Burks

Milagro Biofuel’s Gary Meloni (left) and plant manager Paul Sammons

One of which is the Biofuel Green Island Corridor Grant Project, a $1.5 million grant program to assist retail fueling stations along I-40 in converting and installing fuel storage tanks for biodiesel and ethanol. The Governor’s Alternative Fuels Working Group stopped taking applications for the project in mid-April.

“We hope to have a string of ‘green islands’ across the interstate system. That way a person with an alt-fuels vehicle could go no more than 100 miles on the interstate and find a station with E85 or B20 for sale,” says task-force member Joe Gaines, who also serves as assistant commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.

Bredesen is awarding $4 million in grant funds to local farmers looking to get their products in the alt-fuels marketplace.

“Currently, much of the oil being used is coming from out-of-state sources,” says Gaines. “We’re offering funds to build a soybean-crushing facility that would buy soybeans directly from farmers, crush them in the state, and then sell the oil to a biodiesel-production facility.”

There’s also $1 million in state funds set aside for counties, municipalities, and public-education institutions looking to purchase alt-fuels for fleet vehicles. And the governor is launching an education campaign to help the average citizen better understand the benefits of using biodiesel and ethanol.

The 2007 Governors Conference on Biofuels, a convention for anyone interested in learning more about alt-fuels, is set for May 31st at Montgomery Bell State Park in Burns, Tennessee.

But the state isn’t just talking the talk. Tennessee operates 60,000 flex-fuel vehicles that can run on either ethanol or gasoline. The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) converted their East Tennessee fleet to biodiesel back in 2005. TDOT’s Middle Tennessee transition is under way now, and the West Tennessee switch is expected by the end of the year. By 2008, all of the yellow TDOT HELP trucks along I-40 will be biodiesel-powered.

The government has proposed $70 million for prototype research into the future fuels from other sources. Some in the alt-fuels community fear soybeans and corn will eventually run out.

“There are limitations on the amount of corn and soybeans that can be produced in the state and nation and still maintain food production and all the other requirements we have,” Gaines says. “We’re very rich in the Southeastern U.S. in grasses and trees and other lignin-type materials. That’s where the big growth is seen five to 10 years out.”

Justin Fox Burks

No matter what sources are used down the road, much work is being put into mapping out a future for fuel sources besides petroleum and gasoline. If the country hopes to meet Bush’s goal of 35 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2017, the industry has nowhere to go but up. And the environment can do nothing but benefit.

Back on the bench facing the Mississippi River, Couch ponders the future of biofuels. Where does he see the industry in 10 to 15 years?

“Big and consolidated. Efficient and cleaner. Accomplishing more than just fuels. The bio-refinery model will take biomass and turn it into all kinds of different products,” Couch says. “What we’re seeing now is a stepping stone. We’re working our way to a more efficient and sustainable future.”

But it’s going to take more than switching to biofuels or producing bio-based products.

“If we don’t start curbing our energy use,” Couch says, “it’s not going to matter what we do. It won’t be enough.”

He squints as he points toward the bright sun hovering over the Mississippi River. “Right there, that’s all the energy in the world. That’s all we have.”

For updates on which West Tennessee retail stations will be providing biodiesel or ethanol in the future, go to www.wtccc.com.

Tags alternative gas, biofuels, Memphis

Music Music Features

Louvin at Shangri-La

Post author By Andria Lisle
Post date April 19, 2007

The Louvin Brothers were from Hanegar, Alabama, but, for a brief time in the 1940s, they called Memphis home. Brilliant harmonizers, the Louvins (Ira and Charlie) broadcast on WMPS and cut a record in Memphis before relocating to the other side of the state. They returned in ’52, holding down day jobs as post-office clerks while gigging on weekends and at night. (Their gospel sides for Capitol and MGM were favorites of Elvis Presley and his mother, Gladys.) But the Louvins uprooted again and again, moving to Knoxville and Nashville, where they found even greater success recording hillbilly laments such as “Knoxville Girl” and “When I Stop Dreaming.”

The Louvins have been long revered by the alternative set: Gram Parsons was just a teenager when Ira Louvin, the duo’s high tenor and mandolin player, died in a car accident, but soon after, Parsons began unearthing their classic country compositions “Cash on the Barrel Head” and “The Christian Life” for inclusion on albums such as The Byrds‘ Sweetheart of the Rodeo and his own Grevious Angel. By then, Charlie Louvin, who possesses a whisky-smooth voice and a mournful guitar style that mellows with age, was a well-established solo artist with a handful of top-selling country hits. His career has carried him into his 70s and through a resurgence of interest in Louvin Brothers material by such disparate artists as Emmylou Harris, Southern Culture on the Skids, Nick Cave, Uncle Tupelo, Johnny Cash, and The Raconteurs.

Charlie Louvin returns to Memphis this Friday, April 20th, for a free show at Shangri-La Records. He’s promoting his new eponymously titled album, an indie-rock-meets-country collision that includes contributions from Jeff Tweedy, Tom T. Hall, Will Oldham, and George Jones.

“I’m psyched,” says Shangri-La owner Jared McStay. “[Louvin’s] manager called and wanted to do it. They’re planning to film it for a documentary. It’s just another cool thing we can do here.” Showtime is at 6 p.m. For more information, visit Shangri.com, or call 274-1916.

Last fall, I was impressed when “Jump Back Jake” Rabinbach took over the microphone at Wild Bill’s, with a band that included local soul session legends Leroy “Flick” Hodges and Hubbie Mitchell. Now I can’t get Rabinbach’s self-released, five-song debut off my CD player. Recorded at Young Avenue Sound during the last two days of December, Already Sold harkens back to the blue-eyed country-soul sound perfected by Tony Joe White, Dan Penn, and George Soule. Rabinbach’s band, composed of musicians plucked from Third Man (formerly Augustine) and Snowglobe, hits an incredible groove, Greg Faison driving the group from a funky pocket and Paul Morelli and Nashon Benford holding down the horn section.

The self-produced CD epitomizes Rabinbach’s love affair with this town.

“I thought that between Big Star, Hi, Stax, Elvis, and Sun, there has to be something down here that’s fueling everybody,” says Rabinbach, a native New Yorker, who, with his girlfriend Eileen Meyer, moved to Memphis last year. He signed up for an internship at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music upon his arrival.

“I interviewed Jim Dickinson for the Stax archives, and those three hours changed my life,” he says. “I met Jack Yarber and Harlan T. Bobo, and I really identified with the way they jumped from style to style. I began to see myself continuing that tradition of weird Southern white boys — Doug Sahm, Tony Joe, Eddie Hinton — who play soul music.”

Rabinbach and Meyer formed Dirt Floor Films to shoot a documentary about their Memphis experience, which has the working title My Happiness: An Outsider’s Love Affair with Memphis Music.

“So far, we have 40 hours of footage. The most exciting thing we’ve done recently was a shoot with R.L. Boyce and Lightnin’ Malcolm. We’re doing fund-raising for live shoots, and we’re looking for some archival footage [of other musicians]. It’s weird making a film where I’m also the subject,” he muses, “but we wanted to capture the evolution of an outsider who immerses himself in this culture.”

Jump Back Jake and his band — which includes bassist Brandon Robertson and guitarist Jake Vest — will be playing at the Hi-Tone this Friday night, with Giant Bear opening the show. For more information, visit Rabinbach’s MySpace page, MySpace.com/JumpBackJake.

Tags Charlie Louvin, Memphis, Music, Stax, Sun

Cover Feature News

Lords of the Ring

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date April 19, 2007

Jerry Lawler says he ain’t gonna wrestle with Hulk Hogan on April 27th at FedExForum. Does that necessarily mean the King ain’t gonna wrestle somebody on April 27th at FedExForum? Well, does it?

In the world of professional wrestling there’s something called “heat.” The expression is used to describe public animosity between wrestlers and the degree to which any given feud is whipping the fans into a frenzy. Heat is desirable. It’s the brutally elegant currency of professional wrestling, and, at 57, Jerry “The King” Lawler still has it.

On April 12th, only a month after his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame, Lawler walked into FedExForum, faced a bank of television cameras, and told a roomful of reporters that, in spite of recent announcements, he wouldn’t go toe-to-toe with 54-year-old Hulk Hogan or participate in Memphis Wrestling’s “Clash of the Legends,” an evening of fictional fighting that local promoter Corey Maclin has described as the largest independently produced wrestling event in the pseudo-sport’s history.

Lawler looked unusually trim as he swaggered up to the mic. His Pepsodent smile and baby blue eyes flashed against his dark Hollywood tan as he excused himself from the bout, citing a conflict between his employers at the Paramount/NBC-owned USA Network and Hogan’s contractual obligations to Viacom’s VH1. Then he left the building.

“I had to get out of there before Hulk came in and VH1 started shooting him for his reality show [Hogan Knows Best],” Lawler explains. But can you trust a wrestler? And more importantly, can you trust Lawler, the man who helped turn wrestling into performance art and blurred the line between entertainment and reality when he teamed up with Taxi star and late comedian Andy Kaufman to perpetrate the greatest entertainment hoax of the last century?

Moments after Lawler’s hasty exit, Hogan stalked up to the stage wearing a tight black T-shirt and his trademark bandanna. In typical wrestler fashion, he bad-mouthed Lawler for breaking his vow that their fight — a grudge match 20-odd years in the making — would go on, no matter what the WWE’s owner and chief ringmaster Vince McMahon had to say about it. Shortly thereafter, former WWE superstar Paul Wight, Lawler’s last-minute replacement, took his turn dissing the WWE.

And so the classic David and Goliath storyline was redrawn: Wight and Hogan would throw down under the banner of Memphis Wrestling as an act of defiance against the all-powerful networks, the WWE, and McMahon’s lapdog, the cowardly and duplicitous King Lawler.

“I wish it really was all just part of some big storyline,” Lawler says, fidgeting with his ever-present Superman ring and swearing that he won’t even be in Memphis on the night of the big fight.

“It’s all about the networks,” he says with a shrug, disappointed that the biggest hometown match of his career has been yanked out from under him. “This is reality and kind of a personal thing [between Hogan and the WWE],” he says. “And it’s a shame, because that kind of reality is what makes for the best storylines in wrestling. When you have something reality-based that has a personal side to it, you can get the fans’ interest much better than you can with ‘Hey, here’s two guys wrestling for a championship belt.'”

Still, sitting on a barstool in his comfortable East Memphis home, surrounded by his Coca-Cola memorabilia, his jukeboxes, and his Disney collectibles, Lawler radiates contentment. And why shouldn’t he? He’s the host of Raw, the longest-running weekly entertainment series in the history of television. “I suppose I could get all mad and quit,” he cracks, only half sarcastically. “But I’m on the top-rated show on USA. And I can have that job for the rest of my life if I want it.” At this point in his career, Lawler has nothing left to prove to anybody. Except maybe Hulk Hogan.

“I was really looking forward to [fighting Lawler],” says Hogan. “I was hoping we could work it out where, at some point, he’d throw a pot of coffee in my face” — a reference to the famous moment in 1982 on Late Night with David Letterman when Lawler appeared to smack the hell out of Andy “I’m from Hollywood” Kaufman, who was still wearing a neck brace from the pair’s clash at the Mid-South Coliseum. Kaufman responded to the attack by tossing a cup of coffee on Lawler and uttering a litany of bleeped profanities that left the famously unflappable Letterman … well, flapped.

That exchange, named by the Museum of Radio and Television as one of the top 100 moments in the history of television, marks the moment that professional wrestling made its jump from niche sport to lucrative mainstream entertainment. McMahon’s over-the-top empire was, to a large extent, erected on Lawler’s and Kaufman’s shtick.

As the WWE became an international phenomenon on cable television, smaller regional wrestling organizations fell by the wayside. Memphis Wrestling, buoyed by some diehard fans, is about all that’s left of the old school. Since Lawler first joined WWE in 1993, the organization has allowed Lawler to work with Memphis Wrestling and put on a show for the home crowd now and then. But when Hogan came into the picture everything changed.

“Sometimes in the wrestling business you cut off your nose to spite your face,” Lawler says. “Pairing me with Hulk Hogan would have generated a lot of interest locally, but now there’s much more national appeal with Hulk going against Paul Wight. After all, that’s the match [the WWE] wanted but couldn’t get for WrestleMania 23.”

Maclin, the Memphis wrestling promoter behind “Clash of the Legends,” agrees that McMahon may have made a mistake, but he also says he was surprised and let down when Lawler, who has worked so hard to keep independent wrestling alive in Memphis, caved to corporate pressure. Maclin, who had already made a $10,000 deposit on FedExForum and placed orders for T-shirts and other merchandise when he got the news that Lawler was out, promises that if this event is as successful as he thinks it will be, there will be more.

“When you can’t deliver the fans what you’ve promised them, you’ve got to bring something better,” Maclin says. “That’s what I think we’ve done. I understand that Vince McMahon has a job to do in New York, but we’ve got a job to do in Memphis too.”

“In a way, McMahon shot himself in the foot at the very beginning,” says Lance Russell, the iconic Mid-South wrestling announcer who began his career in the early 1950s. “All of his original talent came from these regional territories, and when the regional organizations went away, he lost this wonderful training ground. He lost his farm team — where the Hulk Hogans, the Randy Savages, and the Jerry Lawlers learned how to do what they do.”

Russell, who, at 80, is a walking encyclopedia of wrestling history, traces the origins of the modern entertainment back to Gorgeous George, a blond, boa-wearing grappler from Texas who made everyone else in the business seem boring by comparison. And he cites Memphis as the place where all the gaudy pieces came together: the wild characters; the treacherous alliances; the high-stakes storylines; cage and scaffold matches; and a business model built around television. In the 1970s and ’80s, Championship Wrestling was the top-rated Saturday-morning show in Memphis.

“Memphis was like the Wild West,” Hogan says. “Nowhere else have I dodged more razor blades thrown at my head.”

When Hogan was learning his moves in Memphis, Lawler was already the King. In 1975 — six years before Kaufman first visited Memphis, Hogan appeared in Rocky III, and McMahon purchased the Capital Wrestling Corporation (forerunner of the WWE) from his father — City of Memphis magazine reported that Lawler was the driving force behind unprecedented sellout crowds at the Mid-South Coliseum and personally raking in over $90,000 a year.

“He’s the smartest guy in the business,” says Jackie Fargo, Lawler’s trainer, friend, and mentor. “There’s a reason why he’s living in that big old house.” Fargo’s assessment is echoed by Russell, who points to Lawler’s involvement with Kaufman as proof of his business savvy.

“Andy tried to go other places first, but nobody wanted some comedian from a sitcom coming in to make fun of them,” Russell says. “But Jerry saw the potential. And Andy was perfect because he was so genuinely fascinated by wrestling and wanted to learn everything. Andy was particularly amazed at how a wrestler like Lawler could just raise his hand and whip the crowd into a frenzy or into rage.”

“At first, I had no plan to fight Andy,” Lawler still contends. “I was just trying to catch a little heat of the big star who was coming to town.” Before the release of the Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon in 1999, 17 years after the comic first came to Memphis to wrestle women, Lawler finally ‘fessed up, admitting that everything had been a hoax, saying that the two men were friends all along.

“If Andy was still alive, there would have been no question as to who would have inducted me into the Hall of Fame,” Lawler says. “Andy would have done it.” (In Kaufman’s absence, William Shatner performed the honors.)

Helen Stahl, Lawler’s high school art teacher, describes him as one of the five most gifted students she ever taught. “I would look at his drawings and tell him he should be working for MAD magazine,” Stahl says.

Lawler never went to work for MAD, but his photograph did appear in the humor magazine’s most recent issue. And one of Lawler’s lifelong fantasies was fulfilled only a few months ago, when DC Comics invited him to draw Superman for an upcoming comic book project. Lawler claims that art (and Helen Stahl) saved his life, when a commercial-art scholarship to the University of Memphis got him out of Vietnam.

His first big break as an artist was also his first break into the world of the ring. Russell started showing Lawler’s caricatures of local wrestlers on television, and that exposure led to a job painting signs for Fargo, who, along with country-music singer Eddie Bond, co-owned a nightclub and the adjoining Bond-Fargo Sign Painting Company on Madison Avenue. During the time he spent slinging paint for Fargo, Lawler also held down the 7 to midnight shift spinning country records for KWAM radio.

“I remember going into Eddie’s office when he was on the phone,” Lawler says. “He motioned for me to sit down and pick up the other receiver. And it was Jackie on the other end. He didn’t like that I was talking about these outlaw shows on the radio, just like the WWE doesn’t want me doing this outlaw show in Memphis. And he was saying, ‘The kid doesn’t need to be over there wrestling with those punks. Maybe we needed to get a bunch of the real wrestlers together and drive down to West Memphis on Saturday night and break some arms.'”

It was all a bluff, and Lawler called it. No arms were broken, and a week later Fargo invited him to fight on TV in Memphis. All Lawler had to do was talk about Memphis wrestling instead of West Memphis wrestling on the radio. And right up until the time he was fired for playing Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” on a country station, that’s exactly what he did.

In his early days, Lawler served as a whipping boy for regional stars like Fargo, Tojo Yamamoto, and Nick Gulas. He paid his dues by allowing himself to be beaten up repeatedly for $15 a week.

“I honestly thought wrestling was something I only wanted to try one time, like jumping out of an airplane or riding a bull,” Lawler says. “Now I’ve never tasted a sip of alcohol or done any drugs, but that’s what I compare that first time to: It was like somebody shot me with some kind of drug, and I was hooked right away.”

Chris Davis

Superman: Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler

Nearly 40 years and 111 title fights later, Lawler is still excited about wrestling. “I never get tired of it, but I do get tired of the travel,” he admits, flipping through his datebook. “This weekend I’m off to San Juan, Puerto Rico, then on to Milan, Italy, then back to San Juan, then to London. It sounds exotic, but it’s all one big security check or waiting in line at the rent-a-car place. It gets old fast.”

Jim Ross, Lawler’s Raw co-host, agrees that being on the road every week is the kind of life that only someone truly devoted to their career would ever want to live.

“It takes passion,” Ross says, “and Jerry’s full of it. And he knows more about wrestling than just about anybody.”

“There are a lot of reasons Lawler has had such a long, successful career,” Maclin says. “He’s helped a lot of people get their breaks. And because of Lawler some of those people are now millionaires.”

Hogan makes no bones about why he agreed to stage his comeback show in Memphis: He thought he was going to use and abuse Lawler the way Lawler used and abused him at the Mid-South Coliseum back when he was still an unknown learning his way around the ring.

“I don’t know why Lawler would break his word to me,” Hogan rails, maintaining the heat.

And just as steadfastly, Lawler maintains he ain’t gonna wrestle the Hulk on April 27th at FedExForum. But with this kind of storyline, how could Memphis’ greatest media prankster not show up, throwing fireballs, pile-driving the bad guys, and yanking the shoulder strap on his singlet down around his waist to show he means business. Memphis, after all, is his city — and he is still its King.

Tags Hulk Hogan, Jerry Lawler, Memphis, wrestling, WWE

Cover Feature News

Blue Crush

Post author By Preston Lauterbach
Post date April 5, 2007

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Thirty-four turned out to be Mario McNeil’s unlucky number. The 34-year-old African-American man and a friend headed to a favorite hangout, Divine Wings and Bar, the afternoon of March 16th. As the men entered the restaurant, an assailant opened fire on them. According to eyewitness accounts, the gunman jumped into the passenger seat of a Chevy Lumina and sped off. McNeil’s friend survived the attack. Paramedics rushed McNeil to the emergency room at the Med, but McNeil died as the result of gunshot wounds. He was the city’s 34th homicide victim of 2007.

Justin Fox Burks

Operation Blue Crush targets crime hot spots around the city and uses police resources to reduce illegal activity.

Police describe the suspect in the shooting as an “unknown black male.”

The vast majority of murders in Memphis are of the so-called black-on-black variety. The annual number of these crimes has grown from 83 in 2004, to 99 in 2005, to 106 in 2006. These totals account for 65 to 70 percent of all homicides in the city each year.

The Memphis Police Department (MPD) made a staggering 102,000 arrests last year. Yet the homicide statistics as a whole, and the black-on-black murders in particular, have swelled. MPD has instituted a new, technologically sophisticated strategic tool. Now Memphians will see if a new system of crime-fighting can suppress an old problem.

The city has battled its bloody image for over a century. An editorial in the October 10, 1870, edition of the New York Sunday Mercury included the line “to those desirous of shuffling off this mortal coil, to those weary of life, but who have not the courage to shoot or hang themselves, we recommend a trip to Memphis.”

In the early 1920s, a statistician for the Prudential Life Insurance Company named Frank Hoffman dubbed Memphis “murder-town.” Mayors Rowlett Paine andS. Watkins Overton financed research and publications debunking both the claim and Hoffman’s annual rankings of America’s bloodiest cities. While the mayors found plenty of caveats to attach to Hoffman’s numbers, neither could dispute the high total of homicide victims in the city.

Unable to solve the problem of violence, the city’s public-relations efforts turned to consolation. A headline in The Commercial Appeal in September 1928 spoke directly to the fears of a violent, racially split city: “Few Negroes Kill Whites.”

Justin Fox Burks

Richard Janikowski

That trend has held firmly. The stubbornness of residential segregation and the nature of crime in general, and of homicide specifically, have kept interracial murder rates relatively low in Memphis. MPD statistics list 15 homicides involving white victims and black suspects in the three years from 2004 to 2006.

Public attitudes on the issue of black violence in Memphis can be difficult to gather. Reporters asking questions tend to put folks on their best behavior. In the relative privacy of online communication, however, observers of black violence in Memphis speak openly.

An article on WREG.com entitled “Black on Black Crime Growing in Memphis,” which included homicide statistics for the first half of 2006, was posted on the American Renaissance Web site last year. American Renaissance is a self-described “publication of racial-realist thought.” Readers of the site are able to leave comments about articles posted. The responses to the black-violence article revealed a wide range of reactions to the problem.

One post reflects a misperception: “[B]lack on white crime is actually more common … nobody ever even mentions black-on-white crime.”

Another says, “It’s because of the stats like this that the locals near Memphis call the place ‘Memphrica.'”

Many commenters left messages similar to this one: “Well, white folks certainly DO have a stake in this, but how is it their responsibility? How is the weight on them? What are they supposed to do, walk around the city waving their fingers sayin’, ‘Now, now — don’t you go killin’ nobody.'”

Another sums up the frustration with standard — albeit disempowering — explanations: “It’s been said before but deserves to be said again. You can’t put all the blame on poverty, that’s way too simple.”

Richard Janikowski chairs the criminology and criminal justice department at the University of Memphis. As the architect of the much-ballyhooed operation Blue Crush, Janikowski hopes to bring Memphis policing strategy from behind the curve to the cutting edge.

Blue Crush is the local version of data-driven policing programs like CompStat in New York City and I-Clear in Chicago. MPD implemented Blue Crush operations beginning with a pilot program in August 2005, and the program went citywide last October. “The entire guiding principle behind Blue Crush is to get the right resources into the right place at the right day and right time,” Janikowski explains.

“There are criminologists around the country who say that the only way to cure crime is to cure all social problems,” Janikowski says. “This is the old ‘root causes’ thing. The lesson of the last two decades is that we can affect crime without affecting the root causes. Police make a difference. We can use innovative techniques to suppress crime.”

Blue Crush takes a geographic approach to fighting crime. It locates concentrations of offenses in a given area and charts the day, time, and nature of offense. “We track arrests … and look at Part I crimes [murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and arson], the most serious offenses, reported to the FBI,” explains Janikowski, though Blue Crush does not target homicide.

The program also does not track the race of an offender. “[Ethnicity] doesn’t directly figure in the data,” Janikowski says. “The reality is that [with] arrests in Memphis, just like nationwide, the overwhelming number identified in criminal activity are young African-American men.

“Geography trumps ethnicity,” he says.

Justin Fox Burks

Larry Godwin

The Blue Crush program generates weekly crime reports that identify hot spots — zones of heavy criminal activity within a precinct — to MPD, which then focuses resources on where police are most needed. Police inspectors — the rank of most precinct commanders — can decide the day, time, and tactics to launch a Blue Crush operation on a hot spot. Patrolmen credit Blue Crush with getting the proper number of officers on the street during operations.

Blue Crush also supplies MPD with the finances necessary to keep extra manpower in the hot spots. Officers work Blue Crush operations on their days off and earn overtime without costing the city. “Because we are the university, we have access to grants. Part of our job is to push the edges,” Janikowski explains.

The hot-spot approach feeds off of criminal psychology, which, as Janikowski explains, is not unlike regular human behavior.

“We tend to go to work the same way every day, go to the places we know and are comfortable in,” Janikowski says. “Offenders are the same way. They’ll offend in the neighborhood they’re used to.”

Janikowski has taken the geographic approach to reducing crime in Memphis due in part to some of the city’s unique historical and demographic features.

Urban renewal and the abandonment and reclamation of downtown in the past half-century have shaken up the city’s residential and criminal patterns. “As public housing closed down, we dispersed people,” Janikowski explains. “Offenders became more mobile than they used to be, and crime has expanded into areas that weren’t necessarily targeted before.”

While the idea that Memphis crime is expanding its horizons may not reassure residents, Janikowski insists that the situation aids crime-fighters. “The advantage to having offenders operating where they aren’t comfortable is that that’s when they make mistakes and get caught,” he says. “A group started doing robberies in Collierville. They robbed a woman in her driveway. Collierville PD got them because those fools got themselves lost in the subdivision.”

Susan Lowe

On the scene: an MPD officer at work fighting crime.

Every Thursday morning, high-ranking officers from each of the city’s police precincts gather at Airways Station to discuss the results of the previous week’s Blue Crush operations and announce plans for the next.

Director of Police Services Larry Godwin and 20 lieutenants, majors, and inspectors from across the city sit at a horseshoe-shaped table that faces a screen and podium. The scene recalls DC Comics’ Justice League of America, albeit with more guns and less colorful costumes. Another 50 police personnel sit at rows of tables to observe. One officer likens it to a scene from the TV series The District.

Janikowski welcomes a couple of guests to the meeting, pointing out that they can help themselves to a cup of coffee “and — of course — there are donuts.”

Godwin kicks off the meeting with a general address. He’s nothing if not concerned with the public perception of his officers. After receiving complaints about cops talking on cell phones while on duty, he urges greater discretion. “I could pull up beside an officer on the phone [in his car] and put a bullet in the back of his head, and he’d never know it,” he told those gathered at the meeting.

After Godwin’s address, those in the horseshoe take turns giving PowerPoint presentations from the podium detailing statistical breakdowns of particular crimes in their respective precincts. They flash graphs and tables on the screen. They compare the given week to the three leading up to it, as well as the same week in the previous year. If certain tactics fail to suppress a problem in a hot spot, they try something else. “Precinct commanders have to decide where police will operate in their precincts based on the [Blue Crush] data packages they receive. They know their area. They’ve got to decide how to best use their resources,” Janikowski says.

Crime does go down in the hot spots. The question remains whether or not Blue Crush reduces crime across the board.

Through these snapshots of weekly Part I crimes in the city, one learns that residential burglaries occur in nearly epidemic proportions. If “epidemic” seems too strong a word, ask yourself if 82 new cases of avian flu in a month in Hickory Hill would alarm you. Residential burglaries outnumber every other crime in virtually every precinct in the city.

Blue Crush in action deploys combinations of visible patrolmen to suppress criminal activity and plainclothes officers to gather intelligence on the street. Though officers are generally pleased with the extra manpower that Blue Crush operations mobilize, some wonder if full-time undercover officers could enhance results.

A white officer joked that he and his partner going plainclothes had little to no effect in their predominantly black precinct. He mocked the idea of two whites driving around asking groups of young blacks, “Got any dope?”

Street cops have other concerns. Some say that attrition in their numbers from retirement and relocation outpaces the number of new recruits. One officer said that he counted only 40 graduates from the MPD training academy since Mayor Willie Herenton’s call for an expanded force last fall. (The idea of a new publicly funded football stadium is unpopular among those who have not received a pay raise in two years.)

Janikowski explains that increased efficiency and proper usage of resources could address some of the force’s manpower issues. “Blue Crush is reengineering the entire police department and restructuring things,” he says.

“The TAC unit [the Memphis equivalent of a SWAT team] does barricade and hostage situations and dignitary protection. The rest of the time, they’re working out and shooting, and they look really tough while they’re waiting to get called out. They’re the best trained, in the best shape. Give them warrants each day to go and chase some folks. This has been happening over the last six months,” Janikowski explains.

While the issue behind much of the city’s crime is easily identifiable, it remains difficult to solve. “If I was going to pinpoint a particular problem, it would be gangs, because it relates guns, drugs, robberies, and burglaries,” Godwin says.

Janikowski adds that predominantly African-American gangs drive crime statistics disproportionately. “The gangs are making their money in the drug market, in guns, and in stolen goods,” he says.

Godwin notes some incremental progress: “About eight months ago, we locked up 55 known gang members. That doesn’t sound like a lot when you’ve got 5,000 gang members [in the city]. But when you’re hitting the upper echelon in those gangs, it puts them in turmoil.”

Janikowski, however, says that Memphis gangs are highly fluid institutions with high turnover rates and no hierarchy. “They’re not these solid, corporate structures like the Mafia. Even gang allegiance changes. Some guys have tattoos from the Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords,” he says, adding that they show resilience to arrests, deaths, and defections from within the organizations. “They’re like any other employer. When they lose an employee, they hire another one,” he says.

Gangs’ modi operandi feed the police strategy for fighting organized crime. “We embed undercover officers in the gangs,” Godwin says. “I’m a firm believer in the undercover program in the gangs. I don’t think going around in a car that has ‘gang unit’ written on it is going to get you into the gangs and get you those good arrests. You’ve got to be one of them. You have to buy the guns, buy the drugs, and watch them deal in prostitution. Then build cases that way and make them stick.”

“Good arrests” for the police are federal crimes, since state-level convictions seldom result in more than half of a sentence served.

“We get a lot of information from being embedded [in gangs]. We’re living with them. It’s like any other rumor mill. You hear things within the gangs. We start to try to verify those things and substantiate whether or not it’s a possibility that a hit is coming down here,” he says, adding: “I’m all for reaching out to gangs and saying, ‘One of your members was shot. Let the police handle this instead of retaliating.’ I wish we could reach out more and make that arrest before the other gang can retaliate.”

Which brings us back to unlucky 34. The proverbial word on the street says that an organized crime outfit wanted Mario McNeil dead. McNeil was, by various accounts, a devoted father, a small-business owner, and a singer in his church’s choir. Those mourning McNeil’s murder left 15 pages of remembrances on his online obituary guestbook.

Whether McNeil’s murder was the result of gang activity or a random act of violence against an innocent, his story is symptomatic of an old problem that could prove immune to new cures.

“There’s no magic bullet. I think that is something that the media tries to feed [people]. ‘If we had this, it would solve it,'” Janikowski says.

No one disputes the prevalence of black-on-black violence in Memphis. The numbers don’t lie. MPD strategy, however, is, technically speaking, color-blind.

“We don’t address [black violence] in any way different from any other crime. We look at areas. Some of those may be predominantly African-American [parts of the city], but we address them all the same. A crime is a crime to us,” Janikowski says.

The future of crime-fighting might also be impacted by this year’s Memphis mayoral election. Though Herenton stands firmly beside Godwin, mayoral candidate Carol Chumney promises to devote fresh energy to the issue of crime. Though Janikowksi favors the long view of crime statistics and advocates patience with the progress of any crime remedy, Chumney says that Blue Crush should be scrapped if it isn’t working.

“Nothing’s immune to politics,” Janikowski says. “As it becomes ingrained in the police department, as the public sees effects over time, it’s going to be the way we do business in the future. It may not be called Blue Crush, but this idea of data-driven policing is here to stay.”

Tags black, black on black crime, Blue Crush, Crime, data system, Memphis, racism, White