Tennessee Open Meetings Act

Did you read about that cool thing happening in Memphis? We’re sure you probably did somewhere (maybe here), but did you actually go out and do the thing? No? That’s all right, we get it. Routines are important. They provide a warm blanket of security and reliability in what’s been a chaotic couple of years.

But there are just so many cool things happening in Memphis, and so many other cool things to see. And you’ll feel much better for having experienced them, we promise. So instead of reinventing yourself for the new year, make an effort to step outside and see some of the new experiences our city has in store. Our reporters did that, looking at new ways to interact with the Mid-South in both personal and professional capacities.

Let the Sun Shine

Reporters don’t clap.

Impartiality is the heart of what we do. I’ve never given to a political campaign or posted a candidate’s sign in my yard. I’ve never sought a board seat or even been loud and proud about any nonprofit. If I had to cover them later, my impartiality would be in question and I couldn’t do my job.

But there is one issue reporters can get behind without question: transparency. Sharing information with the public (and for the public good) is what we do. Bringing light to facts is why the Tennessee Open Meetings Act is sometimes called The Sunshine Law. It’s also why The Washington Post adopted its first-ever slogan in 2017: “Democracy dies in darkness.”

In this analogy, Memphis is pretty dark now. The process to get public information now is so broken that we might as well not even have a system at all. Getting public records takes months. Getting an interview with city administration officials (especially with the Memphis Police Department) is nigh on impossible. If you have a question about an important issue, you get a bland statement instead and should be happy about it.

I’ve whined about this for ages. That’s not a good look.

Next year, I’ll work to put my complaints into action. There are numerous groups I can support as a reporter, the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, for one. I can also continue to file open records requests and get peskier in my media requests of public officials.

Reporters don’t clap. They should push. And I aim to do just that.

— Toby Sells

T.O. Fuller State Park (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Memphis Road Trips!

I made a recent foray to T.O. Fuller State Park, which has great walking trails and natural areas spread over the hilly terrain of a former golf course and environs. Afterwards, on a whim, I started driving south from the park on Boxtown Road, and when I reached Sewanee Road, I just kept driving south. It was a route I hadn’t driven before and it took me through Boxtown and some interesting, ruralish parts of the city we’d never imagined existed.

It got me thinking about how many parts of the city I’d never seen, and how easy it is to just take a “road trip” without leaving the city. If you live in Midtown, venture out of your comfort zone and take Jackson Avenue north to Egypt Central and turn right, then turn right on New Brownsville Road, which soon becomes Old Brownsville Road, which takes you through some parts of “suburbia” you probably never knew existed.

Here’s another good one: Quince from East Memphis to Winchester. Also, Chelsea Avenue, from north of Downtown to the outer I-240 loop is a very interesting drive. And don’t sleep on Warford Street. Take it north off of Jackson until it turns into New Allen Road and from there goes deep into the north Memphis hinterlands.

Explore Memphis! It will open your eyes — and kill a couple of hours.

— Bruce VanWyngarden

Get a makeover from one of Memphis’ beauty professionals. (Photo: Kayla Frazier)

Glam Up

Some of my most formative memories involved all things glitz and glamor. My parents regularly treated me to silk presses at the hair shop, and I earned my first authentic Hannah Montana wig after a Libby Lu makeover at the mall.

I grew up during the peak of the beauty guru phase on YouTube. Before influencers condensed their hours-long beauty routines into bite-sized videos on TikTok, we were treated to in-depth videos helping us to perfect bold cut creases and mermaid wand curls. With this being said, I mastered the art of doing my own makeup, as well as a few other beauty-related things pretty young.

It’s a habit that I’ve practiced since I was 14, and 10 years later I’ll still opt to try my own eyelash extensions or blowouts. It’s mostly out of convenience, but recently I’ve been enamored by the immense amount of talent in the beauty community in Memphis. While it’s easy to look up a quick DIY video, it’s also nice to be pampered and let the professionals handle it.

For the new year, I’m hoping to have more beauty services done by local artists and professionals.

“We have so many talented and professional people who love what they do in our community,” says Kayla Frazier, a local makeup artist in Memphis.

Whether it’s a trim from A Natural Affair Beauty Lounge or a makeup look perfected by Frazier, I’m looking to leave my beauty needs in the hands of Memphis’ top professionals.

— Kailynn Johnson

Become the next pinball wizard at Crosstown’s Flipside. (Photo: Chris Mccoy)

Play Some Games

The music was perfect as we entered Flipside, Crosstown’s pinball bar. The jukebox was playing “Rebel Yell” by Billy Idol, an anthem from the golden age of coin-op arcades, 1983.

During the pandemic, my wife LJ and I spent many hours playing simulated pinball on our iPad. When Flipside opened, we wanted to get back to the real thing. Flipside is part of a trend of places that are more than just watering holes, offering games to accompany your pizza and beer. With a Black Lodge membership, you can munch on totchoes while you play any console game from the last 30 years or take a whirl on their vintage cabinets. (I recommend CarnEvil, the scary-clown-blasting queen of the light gun games.) Nerd Alert, a classic video game arcade, recently announced they were moving from Cooper-Young to Collierville so they could expand and add more games.

Flipside is all about pinball. On a typical winter evening, families, teenagers, and grown-ups tried their hands at classic machines like The Six Million Dollar Man from 1977, and those of more recent vintage, like the much-in-demand Foo Fighters table. I got distracted by constructing the perfect arcade playlist at the jukebox, including Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love,” and Madonna’s “Get Into the Groove,” while LJ fed tokens to the whirring, clanging machines. Turns out, playing real pinball, with all of its imperfections and foibles, is different from simulated ball physics on an ideal surface.

But with a Gotta Get Up to Get Down in the drink holster, pinball is still a blast, no matter now bad you are at it.

— Chris McCoy

Step outside and meet your friendly tree neighbors. (Photo: Alex Greene)

Get to Know Your Tree Neighbors

One simple, homespun way to put a new spin on the old familiar routines is to look for signs of a parallel universe coexisting with your perceived world. Suggested starting point: the secret lives of trees. Just outside your door there awaits (for most of us) a strange new world, complete with altered time scales, coded messages, and otherworldly beauty. You only need to look up, then recall that a tree’s roots grow as deep as its branches grow high. A root system really is a parallel universe, right under our noses.

Furthermore, according to authors like Suzanne Simard or Peter Wohlleben, all these limbed giants that make life in Memphis what it is, from summer shade to ice hazards, are talking to each other down there. Threads of fungi connect the roots of trees over acres, sending nutrients, hormones, and even alarm signals from tree to tree in sprawling interactive networks. Maybe it’s time we at least learn these talkative neighbors’ names.

Pair that with ecologist Doug Tallamy’s concept of a “homegrown national park,” composed of the sum total of all our yards, trees, and gardens laid out in a patchwork across America. It’s really a call to our imaginations, to envision each yard as a mere segment in a gigantic ecosystem, humming with communications between its species — a veritable Tree Nation. No wonder so many of our arborists, neighborhood arboretum enthusiasts, or followers of the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council have that special smile of those who glimpse the invisible threads of life in our midst.

— Alex Greene

No New Year’s resolutions required for *this* good boy, he claims. (Photo: Abigail Morici)

Who Let the Dog Out?

My mother is embarrassed of me. Plain and simple. She says she can’t bring me anywhere. Could it be the fact that I jump on nearly everyone I meet? Or that I pee when I’m excited to see people? Or that I pull and pull and pull on my leash? These are just mere quirks, dear mother. That’s what I told her the day I convinced her to (finally) bring me with her to Crosstown Concourse, my puppy eyes finally working. I’m a charmer, what can I say?

We started at Madison Pharmacy, an errand for her. I jumped on the counter, simply to say my hellos (also in hopes that there might be some treats, alas there were none). We then trotted past the ladies getting their nails done and I sat in one of the chairs outside the Gloss Nail Bar, for attention of course. I got some oohs and aahs, and the ladies asked if I wanted to join them. But I wasn’t falling for any tricks. No one will ever touch my nails. (Hear that?)

And then we walked and walked to the red staircase, and I wanted to go upstairs and my mom said no because she was scared I’d pee on the artwork in Crosstown Arts. She has no faith in me, I tell you. I let some people pet me and I was so good, so pretty. Even some kids pet me, and they made fun of my name. (And my mom just let them! She even agreed that my name is silly, and I’m over here like, woman, you were the one who named me Blobby. Blobby?!)

And then — oh this is the best part — we got MemPops — well, I got MemPops. I got a Pupsicle. I ate it in, like, four seconds. Count it: One. Two. Three. Four. And bam. Gone. Did I chew? No one will know. But I know that I’m going to be begging to go to more dog-friendly places in 2024. It’s going to be the year of Blobby in Memphis. — Blobby

Our writer pictured at Zoo Lights just moments before wipeout. (Photo: Courtnee Wall)

Skater Boy

My after-work routine has turned into a bit of a predictable cycle once I turn off the computer monitor at my remote “office.” Perhaps the TV might click on to replay the day’s soccer highlights or to host a quick play session of Mario Kart. Maybe there will be a restaurant visit or a stop at a brewery (probably Wiseacre HQ or Crosstown) followed by a coerced viewing of Big Brother on Paramount+ (you know who you are). It can all feel a bit rote at times, so I began to think of other things to do that could spark just a little extra bit of joy.

Thoughts quickly turned to some of the activities that 10-year-old me enjoyed doing, and in the spirit of the cold winter season, I slapped on a pair of skates and found myself stumbling about the miniature ice rink at the Memphis Zoo Lights.

As I swished (struggled) across the ice like a Mid-South Michelle Kwan, it felt almost freeing during the moments I wasn’t sticking my blade into the ground, crashing into the wall, or trying to avoid other relapsed ice skaters. In need of a new hobby to scatter the winter doldrums, I expect to lace up at least a couple more times, my own mortality be damned. The rink and dazzling lights at AutoZone Park’s Deck the Diamond event made for a pleasant Downtown holiday experience, while I’ve heard the Mid South Ice House is the best year-round option to sharpen my blades of glory. For now, this skater boy is bidding “see you later, boy,” to 2023.

— Samuel X. Cicci

When a state legislative committee, spearheaded by Memphis legislator Ulysses Jones, first proposed amending Tennessee’s Open Meetings Act some weeks ago to permit some unattended private discussions among public officials, there was a hue and cry from points

across the political spectrum. With prosecutions and other publicized misdeeds of officeholders still fresh memories and with polls and other indicators showing the prestige of legislators — local, state, and national — to be at an all-time low, how could Tennesseans be expected to stand for shutting the doors on public scrutiny?

Yet when not-much-push came to not-much-shove, the members of the Shelby County Commission backed the proposed liberalization to the hilt. In an 11-0 vote Monday, commissioners endorsed the idea of amending the state law to permit private discussions among members of city councils, county commissions, school boards, and other public bodies, so long as the number of officials participating fell short of an official quorum.

No commissioner — not one — would carry a brief for the current law, which, as unamended, prohibits private discussions among groups of two or more. (As an illustration of the absurdity of so complete and literal a prohibition, one commissioner was prepared to offer another a ride back to his office after Monday’s meeting was over but then thought to suggest, only half-facetiously, that the two would need to ask a reporter to come along for the ride.) Of the two commissioners who did not vote aye for the amendment proposal, one, Mike Ritz, was absent but had previously voted for it in committee, while the other, James Harvey, merely abstained on the ground that he owed it to his constituents to survey their opinions more completely.

Commissioner Steve Mulroy, who usually finds himself walking a tightrope between the views of his fellow Democrats (for whom he has often served as the decisive vote in 7-6 party-line situations) and those of his mixed district’s constituency at large, spoke convincingly for the amendment, and he was joined on this occasion by two voices which, in wholly disparate mode and manner, normally speak for the commission’s Republicans. After noting that he was “not at all in favor of secret government,” Chairman David Lillard said the current law was an obstacle to the needs of constituents because, among other things, it prevented one commissioner from filling in another on pending issues which the latter may have missed on first hearing. More importantly, said Lillard, the law can actually “sideline … the most effective advocates” for constituents who have petitioned their own representatives for specific forms of relief.

Wyatt Bunker, who sees himself as a conservative’s conservative, agreed. The current law “hinders the process,” he said.

So far, so good. But, as Lillard also noted after Monday’s meeting was over, the law, as amended, might require honing by way of further amendment. “I think there are situations, such as the election of officials to fill vacancies, on which it might be desirable to limit contact,” he said.

Hopefully, that doesn’t mean that the lockbox, once loosened, doesn’t turn into a Pandora’s box of unforeseen consequences.