Mint Cream Market – Memphis Flyer

Are you wondering how you’re going to spend Valentine’s Day? Perhaps you will go out to eat with your significant other or a love interest and be showered with chocolate-covered strawberries or a teddy bear. Or maybe you don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day at all. Either way, you are guaranteed to fall head over heels for the Galentine x Valentine and the Love Will Tear Us Apart pop-up events hosted by Mint Cream Market.

The Black- and woman-owned pop-up market hosts monthly events in Memphis and Nashville, and both of the aforementioned events will give guests the opportunity to enjoy live performances, gain new experiences, and support small businesses. “Mint Cream Market is where I bring in vendors like crafters, artists, collectors, vendor stores, so people can set up a booth in the market. So, it’s a collaboration,” says Amy Dobbins, the market’s founder.

The Galentine x Valentine pop-up will feature live performances from women musicians and DJs, as well as women-owned vendors. The event will be held at the Ghost River Brewery Co. from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday, and anyone 18 years and older is welcome to attend.

If you are more of a lover, or even a heartbreaker, then the Love Will Tear Us Apart pop-up event is just for you. “We will have a well-known Goth DJ in Memphis, DJ Plastic Citizen,” says Dobbins. “He does industrial cold wave. We will also have a rocker DJ, Amy D — which is me. I’ll be spinning love songs. So, you got me spinning the love songs, the sweet stuff, and we got DJ Plastic Citizen spinning dark wave.”

And if that’s not satisfying enough, there will be lots of merchandise that fits with the lover and heartbreaker theme of the event. The Love Will Tear Us Apart pop-up will be this Sunday at Memphis Made Brewing Co. from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.

For more information regarding both events and future events visit mintcreamarket.com/home.

If you like beer, books, and nostalgia, you better book it to Soul & Spirits Brewery this Saturday for the brewery’s first-ever Skol-astic Adult Book Fair.

In case you didn’t catch on to the pun there, Skol-astic is a nod to those Scholastic book fairs from childhood, with the “skol” part being the Scandinavian word for “cheers.” “We wanted to recreate that feeling of being so excited to buy new books, but with beer,” says Blair Perry, who planned the whole shebang with her friend Mandy Martin. “We wanted to create an event that is very different than any other event in town and that is geared towards people who love books because a lot of times readers are kind of introverted” — and sometimes introverts want to be social, too.

For the day, Martin and Perry were able to get all the bookstores and book vendors in town to set up shop at the brewery, with each focusing on a “niche style of book,” says Perry. Friends of the Library, the nonprofit that supports Memphis Public Libraries, will sell used books; Novel will bring bestselling contemporary fiction while Burke’s Book Store will bring books by Memphis authors and a classics collection. Online vendors Cafe Noir (which is set to open a brick-and-mortar location later this year) and DeMoir Books & Things will sell BIPOC classics and Afrofuturism books, respectively. Plus, South Main Book Juggler will bring children’s books and YA novels.

“For every $10 that you spend [on books], you’re going to get to pick from the little freebie bags like you did as a kid,” says Perry, adding that every time you purchase a beer, you’ll also get entered into a raffle for a bigger prize. “Every 30-ish minutes, we’re going to be drawing a ticket for a free prize that our vendors have donated.”

The brewery is also releasing a special beer for the book fair. “It’s a surprise,” says Perry, “but I’ll say that it’s bookish-related, so something that you would enjoy drinking while you’re reading.”

Perry and Martin have also partnered with Amy Dobbins of Mint Cream Market, who has recruited literary-themed vendors and local authors to discuss and sign their books, while Paper Plate Pavilion and Tacos Mondragon will have food available for purchase.

And, don’t worry, there will be a quiet space for those who want to read (and drink) in peace in the Low Tones Room, which also happens to be where the brewery hosts its Beers and Books Club every first Friday of the month. “We don’t tell you what book to read,” Perry says of the club. “We just provide a quiet space for a couple of hours for anybody to come in and read.”

Skol-astic Adult Book Fair, Soul & Spirits Brewery, Saturday, August 12, 1-7 p.m.