A newsy Thursday update

Exciting news for the NBA and for the Memphis metro: The NBA’s developmental league, currently known as the D-League, will become the G-League next season thanks to an expanded partnership between the NBA and Gatorade. The Memphis metro will get a yet-unnamed team that will play its home games at the Landers Center in Southaven. The new team will be affiliated with the Grizzlies. Currently, the Iowa Energy are the Grizzlies’ D-League affiliate, but that agreement ends at the end of this season.

Soulful Food Truck Sunday will happen at Clayborn Temple on Sunday, March 12 from noon to 6. It’s an event to celebrate the final day of Memphis Black Restaurant Week. There will be five food trucks, serving everything from BBQ to southern comfort food. Local beer and wine will be on sale. There will also be a Soulful Concert featuring Jerome Chism, Keia Johnson and Courtney Little. Tickets will be $10 in advance. At the door they will be $15 for adults, $5 for children 12 and under, with children under 2 free.

Given where I live, I got some great news yesterday that I am excited to share with my neighbors. The CCDC has given a developer a $80,000 grant for improvements to the building at Madison Avenue and S. November 6th Street (119 Madison). That’s the four-story building next to the Goodwyn. The plan is to put a speakeasy-style cocktail bar, with alley entrance, on the ground floor.

Wait a minute… you know where else there is a door opening onto November 6th Street? The back door of my apartment building! We are going to have a bar just steps away from where we live! Construction is not set to start until summer, so don’t get too excited just yet… but just thinking about it, when my building has its holiday party in December 2018, perhaps we will be saying to each other, “You remember when we had to walk all the way to Bardog to get a drink?”

The ground floor of the building will also house a coffee shop. The upper floors will be converted into three market-rate apartments. Good plan for a building that has been vacant for a long, long time. With several boutique hotels opening on Madison this year, the timing is perfect for the ground-floor bar and coffee shop.

I do have to make one comment here, and I am not going to mince words. If the cocktail bar with the alley entrance is to be a success, something must be done about the bums who hang out on the block of Madison between Main and Second. No, I am not going to refer to them as “panhandlers” (which would be politically correct). I am not going to call them “homeless people” (they’re not). When you beg for money all day and then go to CeCe’s Liquors and buy rotgut booze and you drink it then toss the bottle on the sidewalk, and harass passersby and act in a disorderly manner and then start begging again so you can get another bottle, YOU ARE A BUM. End of story. They are terrible on that block. They hang out at the northbound Madison trolley stop on Main. They hang out in front of that convenience store at Second and Madison. They hang out in front of CeCe’s. Patrons won’t feel comfortable going in an alley entrance until their presence on the block is completely eliminated.

News on the event for kids at AutoZone Park on Saturday:

Wiseacre is having a My So-Called Beer, the 90s release party tomorrow, Friday, February 14, from 4 to 10 in their taproom. The beer is a pale amber ale, “the kind that ran wild in the pre-21st century world.” Nirvana will be playing on the big screen and there will be ’90s jams all night. Wear your best ’90s gear for beer discounts.

The NCAA is modernizing the way it picks March Madness teams, moving away from RPI in favor of more modern ratings systems. Congratulations, by the way, to my Arkansas Razorbacks, who probably punched their dance card last night with a road win over a top-25 team at South Carolina.

Bardog got creative with its special today:

Facebook alert: Beware of private messages from Facebook friends that read something like “(your name) is this you?” along with what appears to be a YouTube video with hundreds of thousands of views. Do not click on the link! It will take you to a fake Facebook login page that, if you fill it out, will give hackers your username and password. More information here.

I’m browsing the tweets about Trump’s press conference this morning and all the “messes” he inherited. George Takei had the best tweet of all, that Trump’s mission is to boldly go where Nixon has gone before.

I got a pleasant surprise at the Blind Bear last night. I was sitting at the bar watching TV when out walked the members of Squeal Street BBQ from the back room. They were having a full-team meeting. Smart of them to do that so early in the year! As for my team, the Moody Ques, we are having a board meeting on Saturday to take care of the legal business associated with being an LLC, and then we will plan a full-team meeting, probably for sometime in March. Deputy Director of Public Relations Perjorie T. Roll had an idea for the full-team meeting that I will discuss with the board on Saturday.

Back tomorrow with more news. I plan to be out at the Silly Goose for happy hour as usual, drinking alcohol because I can.