Friday night and Saturday morning there will be events to save a Downtown Memphis treasure. You may have seen a beige ’50s Caddy driving around Downtown. It’s owned by Tad Pierson, and his company American Dream Safari gives tours of Memphis. If you want to really get in touch with Memphis music/culture and its roots, Tad is the person to take you there. You could find yourself visiting a juke joint you never knew existed, or maybe a site in Tupelo.
Besides the Caddy, Tad has a space on Madison behind Stop 345 which is an indoor trailer park. You can rent the trailers and stay in them overnight. However, he’s in danger of losing the space and his friends are coming together to help him. Kerry did a fantastic job writing about the party at the indoor trailer park Friday night, November 18, starting at 6 PM, so check her blog for full details on the various ways you can attend and help Tad.
If you can’t make it, there are two other ways to help. On Saturday the 19th at 10 AM, there will be a big community yard sale at the trailer park. Another option is to make a donation to save the place. I got online this morning and made a donation. If you appreciate all that Tad does to promote Memphis and make this city interesting and unique, I hope you will consider donating too.
In other news: Today’s Groupon deal is the Green Beetle. For $6, you get $12 worth of their homestyle cooking. I haven’t made it through as much of the menu as I’d have liked, but the times I’ve eaten there have been excellent. Family recipe lasagna, meat and two dishes, the Beetle Burger, and more.
My iPhone 4S arrived yesterday! I have to give major compliments to the AT&T Store on Goodman Road in Southaven. They took excellent care of me from start to finish, activating the phone and even putting on the case I bought. If you’re looking for a phone, I give their customer service a perfect 10 out of 10.
I took it to the Saucer, where one of the bartenders had got the 4S (her first iPhone ever) a few days before I did. “Let’s play with Siri,” she said, referring to the voice-controlled “personal assistant” that is a new feature on the iPhone 4S. We asked Siri about the weather, who won the Tigers game, typical stuff. “What else can we ask it?” said the bartender.
“Ask Siri to find me a hooker,” I said.
So she did. “Siri, find me a hooker,” she said, and a moment later she laughed. Siri replied, “I found three escort services near you.” One of them was 0.1 miles from my current location! Well, this blog is all about making you aware of “services” Downtown you might not have known about, and I certainly did my job in this post!
Speaking of the Saucer, they made a change to their Tuesday night trivia last night. Format is still the same, but they brought back John May to call trivia. John is a manager at the Fish, a former manager at the Saucer, and was the trivia guy when our team first started playing there in 2005. Gotta give him credit, he got the games done quickly. First game started at 7:30 and ended at 8:55. Second game started at 10 and was over around 11. We haven’t played in a while, but I tweeted that May was back, and my teammate Darrin asked if I wanted to re-start the team next week. I’m up for it. If any other team members want to come back too, come on!
Downtown Dining Week tip: If you plan on going to a restaurant, not only make reservations, but let them know that you plan on ordering from the Downtown Dining Week menu. That will help ensure that the restaurants don’t run out of the DDW food.
All right… I easily have another 10 paragraphs of news, but I need to cut it off for now and go get lunch. There will definitely have to be a second post later today. Check back, because one of the items is THE BEST DOWNTOWN GIFT CARD DEAL OF THE YEAR. Holiday events will be covered as well.