Thur update: Burger Fest bands and participating restaurants, Redbirds, homeless grant, Fire Museum exhibit, Double J adds poker, Saucer stein-holding contest pics, Goose patio and more

Best Memphis Burger Fest made a couple of tweets this morning with more information about the festival. There will be several live bands, including Burn the Sun, Grand Theft Auto Memphis, Saved by Zero – the ’80s Tribute Band, and Denise and the Sofa Kings. The burger competition is open to anyone with a grill, but several restaurants have chosen to compete, including Bleu, Patrick’s, Owen Brennan’s, Cafe Eclectic, and BGR the Burger Joint. The festival is Sunday, September 30 at Minglewood Hall and I’m one of the celebrity judges. Come on out and try some burgers!

Congrats to the Memphis Redbirds, who renewed their affiliation with the St. Louis Cardinals through 2014.

Also congrats to the City of Memphis, which scored a $5 million federal grant to keep homeless families together in temporary housing. Right now, in many cases the men have to go to one shelter and women and children to another.

The Fire Museum has added a new exhibit. It’s called “9-1-1 Safety Theatre” and will teach kids and adults when it’s proper to call 9-1-1. For example, it is not proper to call 9-1-1 because you need an ambulance to give you a ride to the convenience store so you can buy a beer. No kidding, that happens. The Fire Museum is on Adams Avenue just east of Main.

Another poker night is being added Downtown. I’ve been informed that Double J Smokehouse and Saloon is adding a Wednesday night poker game. I wasn’t sent a lot of details, but will find out more before the first game. If you want to play poker Downtown, here’s the complete list of where you can do it. All these games are free to play.

  • Sunday: Blind Bear, 6:30 PM, hosted by Michael Bean
  • Monday: Silly Goose, 8:30 PM, hosted by Muruako
  • Tuesday: Blind Bear, 8:00 PM, hosted by Jamie
  • Wednesday: Bardog, 7:30 PM, hosted by Poker Jon; and Double J, time and host TBA
  • Thursday: Max’s Sports Bar, 7:00 PM, on Buzztime monitors and boxes

I was late for trivia last night because I wanted to cover a contest happening at the Flying Saucer. It was Sam Adams Oktoberfest glass night, and they had a special contest. They had these huge steins, which when filled with water weighed 5 pounds. There was a contest to see who could hold the stein with their arm straight out, no bending, the longest. Winners in the men’s and women’s division would advance to the semifinals on Monday, then the finals next Wednesday, with winners getting a trip to Munich for Oktoberfest. Hmmm, doesn’t Oktoberfest start in, like, 10 days? Gonna be kind of difficult for the winner to get time off work, and a passport if they don’t have one, in such a short period of time. I brought this up to one of the Saucer girls, who commented, “Yeah, the winner’s going to have to be someone with no life and no job.” Here are a couple of photos I took.

Men’s division
Women’s division

So, a little after 8, I walked over to trivia at the Blind Bear. As I passed the Silly Goose, I noticed that the bar had made another change: They have replaced the iron tables and chairs outside with wood benches. That seems like a good move – will probably add an extra 10 seats to the Goose’s Covered patio.

Our trivia team was rather depleted this week for various reasons: Work, a concert nearby, Wednesday night kickball. However, the five of us who were there managed to pull out a first-place win to add $50 Bear Bucks to our coffers. We never seem to win Best Team Name though. Every week the best name is announced, and most weeks I think, “God, that name sucks,” and then I realize we couldn’t come up with anything better.

Stuff going on tonight: Deering and Down play Bleu at 7:00, $10 cover; sports trivia night with Kevin Cerrito at the Green Beetle, 8:00 PM; DJ Cody at the Silly Goose, 10 PM.

Outta here for lunch. Probably going to play poker at Max’s tonight.