North Carolina – Memphis Flyer

Perspective can be challenging when it comes to basketball in Memphis, Tennessee. That talented team at East High School aside, you’d think soul-crushing roundballs were falling from the sky these days, at least from FedExForum to the Larry Finch Center on the University of Memphis campus.

The Memphis Tigers lost six of their last eight games, the last two by 41 and 30 points, to finish the season 19-13 and shut out of postseason play a third straight year. The honeymoon for Hall of Fame-bound coach Tubby Smith ended around Valentine’s Day. Can he recruit? Can he manage a game? Can he fill empty seats at FedExForum?

A recent five-game losing streak had followers of the Memphis Grizzlies questioning everything from rotation dysfunction to Chandler Parsons’ social life. When Parsons’ on-court struggles came to an end with the announcement last week he requires knee surgery, the loss of a starter seemed like a blessing. Related or not, the Grizzlies now find themselves on a four-game winning streak, the latest a takedown of the mighty San Antonio Spurs Saturday night. Exhale.

However trying this winter has been in our fair city, this week should prove palliative, and considerably so. Three other cities may be hosting regional finals in the NCAA tournament, but make no mistake: Memphis will be playing in the center ring.

Larry Kuzniewski

Headed to FedExForum for games this Friday are three of the top eight teams in the country (according to the AP rankings): 8th-ranked UCLA (31-4), 6th-ranked North Carolina (29-7, the region’s top seed), and 5th-ranked Kentucky (31-5, coached by one John Vincent Calipari). The Ringo Starr of the South’s foursome is Butler (25-8), a team that has been to the championship game twice this very decade. With Memphis transfer Avery Woodson a key member of the Bulldogs’ rotation, this is the closest the Tigers have gotten to the Sweet 16 since 2009 (when, yes, Calipari called FedExForum his home arena).

But pull back for the broad perspective of this weekend’s three games. North Carolina is seeking its 20th trip to the Final Four and sixth national championship. UCLA is aiming for a 19th Final Four appearance and 12th crown. Calipari’s Wildcats are clawing their way toward an 18th Final Four slot (fifth under Calipari) and hope to raise their ninth championship banner at Rupp Arena in Lexington. If college basketball teams were Avengers, Memphis will host Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor this weekend.

Phoenix hosts the actual Final Four next weekend and won’t come close to the historical weight under FedExForum’s roof come Friday. A confluence of this magnitude is extraordinarily rare. We saw a similar gathering at the 2008 Final Four (remember that one, Memphis fans?), when UCLA, North Carolina, and Kansas were all there. You have to go back to 2005 to find a regional (hosted that year by Austin, Texas) that approximates what we’ll have in Memphis this week. Duke, Kentucky, and Michigan State played that weekend in Texas. The Spartans have been championship contenders for most of Tom Izzo’s tenure in East Lansing, but they’d be in the Falcon category on our team of Avengers.

On top of all the history, we have Calipari’s return to Memphis. (Has it really been eight years?) Do Memphians celebrate the Kentucky coach for the remarkable heights his Tigers reached under his watch for nine years? Or do Memphis basketball fans curse Calipari for setting a standard that cannot be matched, whatever the expectations or hopes? Even when you subtract his 38 wins from the 2007-08 Final Four season (those vacated for the Derrick Rose test-taking affair), Calipari is one of two Memphis coaches to win 200 games here. He would not be Kentucky’s coach were it not for the success he enjoyed in the Bluff City.

Enjoy this week of basketball, Memphis. Cheer and jeer like it matters (because it does). UCLA’s Lonzo Ball will be a top-three pick in this year’s NBA draft and he may play his final college game at FedExForum (as Blake Griffin did in the 2009 South Regional). Malik Monk (Kentucky) and Justin Jackson (North Carolina) will soon be wearing pro uniforms, too. So relish this chance sighting. And go ahead and let the rest of the country know where Hoop City can be found this Friday.

As the U.S. battles over transgender rights, one smartphone app is making it easier for transgender people to access safe, public restrooms.

Refuge Restrooms — an app that indexes and maps inclusive bathrooms across the county for transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming individuals — has identified only six trans-friendly restrooms in Memphis. It lists two at the University of Memphis, one at Otherlands Coffee Shop, and three at Starbucks.

Refuge’s initial 45,000 nationwide entries were borrowed from a now-defunct database named Safe2Pee. When the Safe2Pee app became inoperative, California resident Teagan Widmer founded the Refuge app out of personal necessity.

bathrooms.

“I started publicly identifying as transgender [in 2010] while I was in graduate school in Richmond, Virginia,” Widmer, 27, said. “I found myself scared for my safety a lot and didn’t have the confidence I have now.”

In North Carolina, Refuge users have dropped pins at about 400 secure restrooms since Governor Pat McCrory signed House Bill 2 — nicknamed the “bathroom bill” — into law. The new law requires transgender people to use public restrooms that correspond with their sex at birth. A similar bill failed to pass last month in Tennessee.

The bathroom debate has sparked a national conversation about trans rights, and last week, it led President Barack Obama to issue a directive that public schools across the country should adopt trans-friendly bathroom policies or risk losing federal education funding. Governor Bill Haslam has expressed disagreement with Obama’s directive.

Anti-trans legislation, such as the North Carolina bill, passes when there’s pervasive misinformation, says assistant University of Memphis journalism professor Robert Byrd, who researches gender in the media.

“For decades, the only transgender representations people have been exposed to are the images on television and film, which were generally of sick or deviant people with a propensity for crime and violence or just the butt of a joke,” Byrd says. “It’s easy for some to believe the argument that transgender people in bathrooms that correspond to their expressed gender poses a threat to children because the narrative we see in popular culture supports that notion. This lack of knowledge helps fuel the fire of the bathroom bills.”

Lisa Michaels Hancock, a transgender woman living in Memphis, says public restrooms should be gender-neutral.

“I am a 6-foot-3 amazon that looks butch,” Hancock said. “On more than one occasion, I have been told I’m in the wrong restroom. My reply is ‘I have a vagina,’ which shouldn’t matter, but it usually shuts them up. I tell my girlfriends in advance that I won’t carry on conversations in restrooms because some women get thrown off by my voice, which isn’t very feminine.”

The problems Tennessee transgender people face extend beyond the bathroom. A court-ordered name change and letter certifying reassignment surgery must be presented with an application to change name or gender on any Tennessee identification. Tennessee also prohibits changing an individual’s sex on their birth certificate.

Since one in five transgender people experience homelessness, according to the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council, Widmer says she would like to eventually see Refuge serve as a housing resource for the transgender community.

Her app meets the needs of people who Widmer didn’t consider, too, which she was pleased to learn.

“One woman wrote me and explained that her adult son has severe Downs syndrome, and she uses Refuge to find gender-neutral restrooms that are single stall where she can accompany her son to assist him,” Widmer said. “It’s really easy to get caught up in the fight of it all, but ultimately for me, it’s about the people who are being affected. My only goal is to make their lives easier, and I think Refuge does that.”