Paul Ryburn’s Journal

Breaking news: The City of Memphis is working to bring a Hard Rock Hotel to Beale Street adjacent to Hard Rock Cafe’s new 126 Beale location.

Memphis Made Brewery’s beer will be available in bottles beginning this weekend. They have bottled Reverberation, their coffee stout which is a partnership with local coffee company Reverb, in 750 ml bottles. Those bottles will be sold at the Madison Growler and Bottle Shop, located in the Cash Saver at 1620 Madison, beginning Saturday. The brewery will release a second beer, Southern Julep, in bottles next week.

If you’re coming Downtown Friday night, be aware that there will be a 5K for autism being run which will block some streets at times. Second, Beale, and Riverside will be among the streets on which the runners will run. The permit lists 6 to 9 PM as the time range in which streets could be blocked.

Huey’s has posted a blog about 2014 Beale Street Wine Race and they have video of the grape stomp and wine relay.

Remember Gilbert Arenas, who played a few games for the Grizzlies in 2012 and hasn’t played in the NBA since? That didn’t stop him from being the 30th highest-paid athlete in sports in 2013. That is because the Orlando Magic amnestied him in 2011. His salary doesn’t count toward the Magic’s cap, but they still have to pay out his six-year, $111 million contract.

If you’re a fan of singer Charvey McLemore, he’ll be making a Downtown appearance this Saturday. He’ll be performing at Harbor Town Crawfish Festival from 5 to 8.

Developer Henry Turley is backing a proposal to light South Main underpasses.

To end this post, I have information about two beer events happening Downtown next week as part of Memphis Beer Week. Bardog will host a Sierra Nevada beer dinner next Wednesday, April 23, at 7 PM. Here are the pairings:

Course 1: Shrimp & Lobster Salad, Avocado, Citrus Vinaigrette
Paired with Kellerweis, Banana and Clove

Course 2: Marinated Chicken and Pineapple Kabobs, with Red Onion, Cherry Tomato, Torpedo Mole
Paired with Summerfest, Golden & Crisp

Course 3: Chef John’s Smoked Baby Back Ribs, infused with Sierra Nevada Porter, Sierra Slaw, Roasted Red Potatoes
Paired with Porter

Course 4: Chocolate Pudding infused with Sierra Nevada Stout, Captain Crunch Crumbles, Rumchata Whipped Cream
Paired with Stout

$35 includes tax and tip. Call 901-275-8752 to get your ticket to the dinner.

These dinners are usually held in the Underdog Room, so most likely Wednesday poker is not happening at Bardog next week.

Thursday night of next week, April 24, Central BBQ Downtown will host “Brews and ‘Que Bites” from 5 to 8 PM. There you will be able to relax and enjoy beers from local and regional breweries.

Featuring beers from
Ghost River
Yazoo
Memphis Made

Appetizers:
Panko Crusted Boudin
Pulled Pork and Smoked Tomato Empanada
BBQ Shrimp
BBQ Eggplant Sliders

$25 for beers and apps. For tickets call 901-672-7760 or email jc@cbqmemphis.com. Of course, you must be 21 for both events. These events will sell out, so if you are interested in either I recommend you make reservations as soon as possible.

That’ll wrap it up for this very newsy Thursday. Back tomorrow with more.

If you’re Downtown at lunchtime, check out the Downtown Alive! events running through the end of this month. Most of them are in Court Square. Today there was a Grizzlies pep rally. Tomorrow Hope Clayburn will perform. There will also be a tour of the Shelby County Courthouse tomorrow. The complete event schedule is here.

The Silly Goose has been getting a lot of requests for a night dedicated to electronic dance music (house, techno, progressive, etc.) They are going to make that happen on Friday nights. DJ Cody will kick it off this week, then MLW will have it next week.

Holly has a post on the I Love Memphis Blog about the Bootstrap City Lecture Series happening three days next week at the High Point Ballroom at 330 N. Main. Talks will include changing development patterns as the economy changes, changing the culture of a city, and how we measure the city.

Speaking of changing a city’s culture, the latest High Ground News has an excellent article about our BBQ team sponsor Start Co., whose goal is to make Memphis a venture city. By the way, it was great seeing Richard from e-book publisher Screwpulp the other night. Screwpulp is one of Start Co.’s biggest success stories.

WREG has a video that will show you the proper way to eat crawfish. There are two crawfish festivals coming up Downtown, in Harbor Town this Saturday and the Rajun Cajun festival on Riverside a week from Sunday.

An MPD officer was struck by a car this morning in a garage at Fourth and Washington. The driver of the car had a medical condition and lost control. Best wishes for a speedy recovery for both.

Neely’s BBQ may be moving back into their original location at 670 Jefferson. The owners have applied for a $67,500 loan for renovation.

The big event Downtown tonight, of course, is Grizzlies vs. Dallas at the FedExForum at 7. This is effectively a playoff game, because the winner will secure the 7th seed in the West and win the prize of not having to play San Antonio in the opening playoff round. I’m not making any predictions but it must surely be tough for Dallas to come in and play a team that has won 13 in a row at home.

I’ll lead off at the Silly Goose after work and watch at least the first two quarters of the game there. It’s hard to beat $1.50 happy hour PBR.

The Great Beale Street Wine Race happened yesterday afternoon. It was a beautiful day, the rain held off, and many people gathered to watch the four Wine Race events. I haven’t been happy with my photo albums for recent years’ wine races, because I tended to drink multiple Call-a-Cabs from Wet Willie’s and have had to go home to take a nap before the last event, the wine relay, was under way. So I decided to take a different approach to Wine Race this year – I didn’t drink. As a result, I got a much more complete photo album in years past.

The race kicked off with a parade. (Note: The photos on the blog are going to be somewhat Blind Bear-centric, but I tried to get good photos of every team and especially the Downtown ones. At the end of this post I’ll provide a link to the entire photo album.)

The Blind Bear float pre-race

One of the most original outfits in the parade. I believe this was Fleming’s steakhouse.

Double J

Parade winners Club 152

Bella

The second event was the Queen of the Vine. Ladies from each participating restaurant dance on stage and try to impress the judges. Each contestant is asked a question to give her the chance to show that she possesses brains and talent as well as beauty.

The judges. That’s musician Muck Sticky on the end in pajama pants.

Hanin answering her interview question

Ruffin leading the cheers for Hanin

For the first time ever, the judges’ vote ended in a mathematical tie. The audience was asked to break the tie between these two. They were each given one final chance to show what they could do.

And the winner was…

She represented Mesquite Chop House Southaven, if I remember correctly.

I have to say I was impressed with the Queen of the Vine contestants this year. None of them were trashy, none of them were ghetto, none of them were pregnant (as far as I could tell). Big improvement over previous years.

The next event was the grape stomp. I didn’t get to take pictures of this one because I was catching up with an old friend who just moved back to Memphis. Each contestant gets a tub filled with grapes and is given a certain amount of time to stomp them. At the end, the juice is poured out, strained, and measured. The contestant who produced the most juice won. This one went to Huey’s.

The final event is the wine relay, where four runners from each team run wine bottles and glasses up and down Beale. It’s important to get a good spot to watch all the action. Some of my friends were upstairs on the balconies at Jerry Lee’s, but after going up there for a minute I decided it was a bad idea. I could get better photos from street level, especially the expressions on the runners’ faces. Also, if I stayed at Jerry Lee’s I’d be obligated to buy a drink, and as I said I was trying to avoid drinking until Wine Race was over. So a few friends and I went back to street level and staked out an excellent spot.

Jermaine getting a few dance moves in prior to the start of the race

Uncle Ray

Backey from the Silly Goose making his run

… and running back because he forgot the team corkscrew. At Wine Race, teams are scored not only by their finishing time. They are also scored on the volume of wine they bring back, and whether all the bottles, glasses, corks, and corkscrew are on the tray.

This guy had things well under control, until he decided to skip to the finish line. That turned out to be not such a good idea.

Spectators were asked to stay out of the relay lanes, a request ignored by the Jack Binion’s Steakhouse team.

Hoop making the run for Silky’s

Suzy’s leg of the race for Double J didn’t go very well. I think Suzy should have run the race in a tube top.

Note that the wine bottles are on their side. The wine relay was pretty much a disaster for Double J.

Wilbur

After dropping three of his bottles, this guy decided to pour the fourth bottle over his head.

Colin

Jamie

Jeannette

… and you saw what happened to the Blind Bear in the fourth leg of the race. Whitney was doing very well until she lost control of her tray about 20 feet from the finish line. Congratulations to Huey’s, who won the race. They must spend considerable time practicing. I don’t know if I could run that fast without carrying a tray and bottles.

After the last heat wrapped up, it was time for post-Wine Race festivities, or “the shitshow” as many Downtowners call it. However, I had to figure out which shitshow to take part in. Some of my friends from the Squeal Street BBQ team were going to the Beale Street Tap Room to watch the end of the Masters, but I couldn’t care less about golf so I looked for another option. Flying Saucer? Nope, I decided that would be too tame since they didn’t have a team in Wine Race. Since I had a Blind Bear shirt on, I figured I might as well go to the Bear and see what would develop.

Remember how I said I didn’t drink any Call-a-Cabs at Wine Race? Well, some other people didn’t have that plan. Here’s Daniel (on the left) having just woken up from a long nap on the Blind Bear’s couch in the back.

Why am I posting a photo of a glass? Well, here’s the deal. My friend Mike and I were hanging out at the Blind Bear’s bar with three folks who were off-duty after day shift at the Saucer. A round of car bombs came out. Four of the five of us finished their car bombs. Who didn’t? You might be inclined to guess me, if you know that I hate car bombs. But no, it was Mike who didn’t get the job done. Be sure to ask Mike about that the next time you see him.

After much heckling from the rest of the group, Mike finally finished off his car bomb, after it had gotten all curdled. Yuck!

Here I am with my BBQ teammate Gary and Naomi and Cassie from the Saucer. I seem to remember several shots of Fireball around this time.

I didn’t play the Bear’s Sunday poker game. I always skip poker when I have the day off the next day. It was much more well attended than I would have thought, to the point that they had three tables running and the blinds reached the rarely-seen 40,000/80,000 level.

An excellent Sunday with friends. Spring festival season for 2014 is now in full swing. Next weekend will be relatively slow due to Easter, but the weekend after that we’ll have the opening of Tennessee Brewery Untapped and South Main Dirty Dozen’s Carnaval de Panama on Friday, Memphis Brewfest and Hot Wing Fest on Saturday, and Rajun Cajun Crawfish Fest on Sunday. We’ll probably have Grizzlies playoff games to watch too. It’s that time of year when things are getting exciting!

Tonight is the first fireworks night of the season at AutoZone Park. After the conclusion of the Redbirds game, there will be a fireworks display set to Memphis music. This is the first of 14 fireworks nights this season. Select Redbirds players will be in the plaza signing autographs from 5:00 to 5:30. PRO TIP: Get those autographs. From what I’ve been told, the Redbirds are loaded with talent this year, and many of the players would be called up to the majors except for the fact that the Cardinals are loaded with talent also. You could find yourself holding some major-league autographs within a year. Free 2014 Redbirds schedule magnet to the first 3000 fans. First pitch is at 6:05 PM.

If you feel like a trip to Midtown, the Overton Square crawfish festival is happening today from 12 to 6.

It’s also opening day at Mud Island River Park. Park opens at 10 and there will be a rock ‘n’ romp there this afternoon.

If you’re going to the Memphis Farmers Market, check out South Main Book Juggler afterward. At 1 PM they will have an after-the-market reading by Mississippi poets.

I want to send a shout-out to Tamp & Tap. A friend of mine is a member of a social organization that throws parties around Memphis, and he needed to set up its monthly happy hour. After not having calls returned by another Downtown business, he called Tamp & Tap. They told him repeatedly, “we’ll take good care of you” and indeed they did, reserving a private area with plenty of room for the 25+ attendees of the happy hour.

Shawn from Kooky Canuck tweeted that the restaurant is getting ready to launch some new menu items in the next two weeks: Maple Bacon Burger, Poutine Grilled Cheese, & Bacon Waffle Monte Cristo.

A bill has passed the Tennessee Senate allowing high-gravity beer to be sold in grocery stores. The House now has to pass a similar bill. The bill would allow beer with up to 8% ABV to be sold in groceries.

Time to start off my 3-day weekend right, at Panda’s bar at Bardog at 11. High of around 80 is predicted for today. Tube top weather!

This morning Paul Morris, who runs DMC, made an announcement on Twitter: Sweetie Pie’s Kitchen has signed a lease on Beale Street. The restaurant serves Mississippi style cooking and is quite well-known in the St. Louis area.

Opening night for the Redbirds is tomorrow night, with the first pitch at 7:05. The plaza area will be open for a block party from 5 to 7, as it will be every Friday this season, with $2 beer specials and live music by the King Beez. First 3000 fans will receive a T-shirt commemorating AutoZone Park’s 15th anniversary.

The Bluff City Backsliders will play Cafe Keough tomorrow night at 8. There is no cover for this show, and they have a full liquor bar now.

The 19th annual Overton Square crawfish festival is Saturday, from noon to 6 PM, on Madison between Morrison and Cooper.

Congratulations to the Blind Bear, which won “Hippest Bar Setting” in Memphis Magazine’s recent restaurant poll. I like to think that my tenure as Foursquare mayor of the Bear had something to do with the “hippest” recognition. Just kidding.

This doesn’t surprise me one bit: Memphis ranked 6th among large cities for urban sprawl

Excellent win by the Grizzlies last night. By beating the Heat, a team we were expected to lose to, we’re back in the playoff conversation. We’re still in 9th place, a game behind Phoenix. However, Phoenix has a tougher schedule for their last four games than we do, and we own the tiebreaker if we finish with identical records.

Don’t forget that the first South Main bocce tournament happens at Main and Talbot tonight starting at 5:30.

That’s it for now. I’ll be out tonight as usual, leading off at the Silly Goose around 5ish.