mud island – Page 2 – Memphis Flyer

Katie Nesling | Dreamstime.com

Okay, so maybe I spent one too many Saturday nights riding around in a van airbrushed with a pot leaf motif to understand all this, but why do I keep seeing disturbing headlines about the FIFA World Cup. To tell you the truth, the real, honest truth, I wasn’t even sure what this was, so, yes, I did a quick Google search and learned that

FIFA stands for “Fédération Internationale de Football Association.” And all this time in the back of my mind, I thought this was a soccer championship. So is it football or soccer? Or is football in other countries what we consider to be soccer in the United States, further separating us from the rest of civilization?

Actually, it really doesn’t matter to me if it’s football or soccer. I don’t keep up with either. I used to watch New York Yankees baseball games sometimes but now that Derek Jeter is retiring, why bother? I also used to be a huge Grizzlies fan until they traded Shane Battier. Oh, I still love them and root for them and all that stuff but I’m still bitter. Very, very bitter about that trade. Plus, I have a really difficult time in FedExForum.

I have, oh, four or five hundred different neuroses when it comes to height and motion. I have nightmares about heights almost every single night. It usually involves being in a glass elevator that begins to horribly malfunction on its descent from the top floor to the lobby. It becomes detached from its main cable and swirls around the high-rise hotel in a circular motion while plummeting to the ground. Sometimes my nightmares involve driving. I don’t drive on the interstate — or anywhere else for that matter — more than 45 miles per hour. I have some kind of physical reaction to it that renders me almost to a state of vertigo. Bridges: Uh, no. No driving over even small bridges. When I go to Harbor Town, I have to drive all the way around Mud Island down Second Street into that weird sort of inner-city rural area and back around down the street along the river until I get to the entrance where the leasing office is, and then I get completely lost trying to find wherever I am going. It’s a beautiful place to be lost but it still throws off my equilibrium. But back to FedExForum and all that commotion that goes on in there. For me, there is way too much going on at one time, with all of the music and noise and lights and speakers and such. I used to do fairly well at The Pyramid but FedExForum, even with seats near the court, is sensory overload for me. And, yes, I know most people love it, as they should, and it’s just me. I went to see Elton John there a year or so ago and was in one of those private suites, but I still had to hold onto something while trying to get up to it. And, once seated, if I looked up at the very top seats in the arena, my legs turned to ice from the kneecaps down. I also recently went to a Memphis Redbirds game. A foul ball slammed into the section where I was sitting (yes, in a suite again, watching it through the glass), and I felt like a cat with one life less than the nine I was given. But it was fun. Other than almost being killed or living the rest of my life in a home for the sports-injured.

But I digress. I digress a lot. It doesn’t take a lot to make my attention span scatter all over the place. So back to the World Cup and God and murders. I keep seeing stories about places in the Middle East, where huge groups of people watching the World Cup are being attacked and killed by terrorists. I even saw one story about an Italian man who murdered his wife and two kids just before leaving to go watch the World Cup at a bar with his friends. There are tanks at the Rio de Janeiro main airport, in anticipation of angry scenes after airport workers announced a 24-hour wildcat strike. There are angry protests in Sao Paulo. And then, there is this news report from Iraq: “Shocking footage has emerged showing Sunni insurgents of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) beheading a police officer. In the clip, the militants knock on the door of the police officer’s home at night. After he answers, they blindfold him, cuff him, and behead him with a knife. After the decapitation, the militants took a picture of the officer’s head and posted it on Twitter with the comment: “This is our ball. It’s made of skin. #WorldCup.” The brutal act has sparked outrage on Twitter.

And this is about soccer? Or is it about using soccer as an excuse to just be evil? I’m going back to ignorance is bliss on this one. Same with Twitter.

BY

JOHN BRANSTON | JUNE 21, 2007

When you’re selling the glories of Mud Island River Park to people old enough to remember its grand opening 25 years ago, you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.

That’s what the Riverfront Development Corporation’s support tag-team did at the Memphis City Council. The purpose of the presentation wasn’t clear. The council voted to keep $29 million Beale Street Landing in the budget last week. The RDC won. So move on, and make the best of it. The RDC may, after all, be right.

But RDC President Benny Lendermon and his board members sound more like they are trying to talk themselves into believing their own Power Point propaganda.

One slide displayed Tuesday called the intersection of Beale Street and Riverside Drive the most important historic tourist destination in America. Take that, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington Monument, Golden Gate Bridge, and Grand Canyon!

Beale Street Landing’s biggest fan is city councilman Joe Brown, who thinks it will put the Memphis riverfront on par with the Chicago lakefront and the St. Louis Arch. He praised the tranquility of the Mississippi River and its benefits on community mental health.

Miraculously, other council members in the meeting managed to keep from bursting out laughing. A couple of weeks ago Brown publicly called a colleague “retarded,” prompting a memo to all council members urging decorum.

Board members said they had rounded up $10 million in state and federal funds for Beale Street Landing that would go unused if the project is stopped. In other words, we are spending $19 million in local money to save $10 million in “free” money.

The presentation on Mud Island, which is part of the RDC domain, was condescending. Whatever you think of their arguments, Friends For Our Riverfront is comprised of conscientious long-time Memphians who don’t need to be lectured and — unlike the RDC’s staff and consultants — work for nothing.

As anyone who goes there knows, Mud Island River Park is nicely maintained and the river model is impressive — to visitors seeing it for the first time. The concerts have been a welcome addition. But attempts to jazz up the park with boats and overnight camping suffer from one obvious problem: It is too damn hot in Memphis in the summer, especially before 5 p.m. when the park closes. The place downtown where you can actually see people on the riverfront at all hours of the day is the Mud Island Greenbelt, which offers nothing more than a sidewalk, parking, acres of well-cut grass, pretty views, and some shade.

A few years ago, Memphis architect Frank Ricks proposed putting a ferris wheel at the tip of Mud Island. Throw in a sprinkler park for kids along with some shade and a portable concession stand at Tom Lee Park and clean up the cobblestones, and that’s still the best and most economical idea I have heard for improving the riverfront.

But it looks like the battle is over. Bring on the boat dock, and let’s hope it works.