Yesterday I saw something I’ve never seen before. I was driving back from a grocery run at the Poplar-Cleveland Kroger. Just west of Manassas, there were UT Health Science Center police with radar guns, clocking eastbound traffic on Poplar. Can they really pull people over and write tickets for speeding on a public street that is not a part of their campus?
Oh dear Lord… the Bird scooters are back in the news, and not in a good way. Every night, people who want to make a little extra money can pick the Birds up and take them home to charge overnight, then put them back out on the streets. They make a small fee for each scooter charged. So Monday night, three people were collecting scooters near B.B. King and Madison, when a woman pulled up next to them, blocking their vehicle with hers. She pulled a gun and demanded they let her have the scooters. She was ID’d in a lineup and charged with two counts of aggravated assault.
Tonight is Toast the 901 at Old Dominick Distillery. It’s close enough to South Main Trolley Night where you could easily do both if you choose.
New Wing Order has created a Facebook event for their Downtown grand opening. The food truck will be at Ghost River from 4 to 8 on Saturday, September 8. View the food truck menu
Sunrise Memphis, with the help of Central BBQ, is celebrating 9/01 Day tomorrow with some special menu items. They’ll have a combo of a Central BBQ biscuit, hash browns, and coffee for $9.01. They’ll also have a Central BBQ burrito and Central BBQ avocado toast.
The Redbirds playoff game next Friday, September 7, will be a Bark in the Park game. $15 gets you and your dog in, and you also get a free hot dog, soda, Redbirds hat, and a Hollywood Feed goodie bag.
Grizzlies rookie Jaren Jackson Jr. has signed an endorsement deal with Nike.
Wiseacre Brewing Co. recently bought some Zuper Saaz hops, and decided to get an extra 30 pounds in case any home brewers want to give the hops a try. $7 a pound, on sale starting at 1 PM today until they run out. It’s BYOB (bring your own bag).
Phillip Ashley Chocolates and Whiskey Church Productions LLC are hosting The United States of Whiskey: A Chocolate Tasting on Saturday, November 17. You’ll be guided through 9 whiskeys paired with 9 chocolates. You’ll also get a cocktail hour with hors d’oeurves, a tour of the distillery, plus a bottle of whiskey and a chocolate gift to take home.
Ghost River’s Get Lit Book Club book of the month for September is Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. The book will be discussed Thursday, September 20 at Ghost River’s taproom. Nice to see one of our local breweries having success with a book club!
Did you notice a blimp flying over Downtown this week? It’s a Carnival Cruise promotion, but it’s also a fundraiser for St. Jude. Use the hashtag #ChooseFun on Facebook, Instragram, or Twitter, and Carnival will make a donation to St. Jude.
Sooner or later, one of the local breweries had to make a beer called Malfunction Junction. Crosstown Brewing Co. did. Bardog Tavern currently has it on tap.
You can buy right-field bluff tickets for tomorrow’s soccer exhibition at AutoZone Park for $9.01.
This is your brain on PBR and Jameson: Last night I posted to Facebook that more bars and restaurants need to carry green bean casserole as a side. If a lot of people don’t eat the green bean casserole, that’s fine, they can give it to me to take home at the end of the night.
Anyone else read the Daily Beast on your phone, and it drains your battery? I watch a percent tick off about every 10 seconds. It’s getting to the point where I have to make a “read later” note in Evernote and throw the URL to the article in there. Daily Beast mobile is just so overloaded with ads ‘n crap that it’s not worth the loss of battery life to read. Too bad because they write some really good stuff.
KFC will pay you $11,000 if you name your baby Harland after founder Colonel Sanders.
Visit us, just for the grill of it is the theme at the Memphis Farmers Market this Saturday. The market is the place to pick up meats, seafood, and veggies to throw on the grill for Labor Day. UTC College of Pharmacy students will be there dispelling “are they safe” questions about over-the-counter drugs. They will have interactive games to make the experience fun. The kids’ crafts corral (8 AM-noon) will be the place where kids learn which farm animals labor to provide us with nutritious food. Miss Sue with the Cossitt Library will be there with Labor Day reading recommendations for the kids. Want to volunteer for the Market’s fundraiser, Farm Fest, at 409 S. Main on Sunday, September 30? Stop by the information booth at the Market tomorrow and sign up.
Okay, if you don’t want to read what I have to say about politics, you can leave now… but I hope you’ll stick around.
Yesterday President Trump, with the support of House Republicans, announced the cancellation of a 2.1% cost of living raise for nearly 2 million federal workers. Trump cited budgetary concerns. Wait a minute… there was room in the budget for $1.5 trillion for tax cuts to the very wealthy, but there wasn’t room for a small increase for the average Joes and Janes who go to work every day to keep our government running?
Not to mention that those tax cuts for the wealthy are massively ballooning our deficit, although Trump lies and says they are not. Not that it matters to Trump… the next generation will be the one that has to deal with the deficit problem. By then he will have died of causes related to dementia, or he will have been whacked by the Russian mob because he couldn’t accomplish what they told him to do as President, or he will be imprisoned for life thanks to Mueller.
“With the support of House Republicans”… you all should remember that Marsha Blackburn is currently a House Republican. If it makes you mad that she’ll vote to make the rich richer but take money away from common folks like you and me, you need to get to the polls in November (or October if you early vote) and pull the lever for Phil Bredesen. Marsha is a lot like the Grinch who stole Christmas in that her heart is three sizes too small.
I remember a federal worker, on the day after Trump “won” the election (with Russia tallying up more assists than Mike Conley that night), was going on and on about how “when Trump gets in office, we’re going to start seeing the de-wussification of America.” Is this pay raise cancellation the kind of thing you were talking about?
Mad Dog Pac is selling Traitor Tot balloons for $20. Traitor Tot… that’s the best nickname for Trump I’ve seen yet.
Great Twitter account to follow: @LincolnsBible. Lincoln’s Bible has an excellent view on the Trump family’s ties to the mob. I have read that if you do construction in Manhattan worth more than $2 million, you pretty much have to do business with the mob. You have no choice. You do it or your building somehow doesn’t get built.
Lincoln’s Bible claims that the Trump family company has been mobbed up since the 1950s when The Prime Minister of the Underworld, Frank Costello, was the acting boss of the then-Luciano crime family. When Costello retired in 1957, it became the Genovese crime family. In a sense you could say Donald Trump was born into the mob lifestyle… and so were Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. (Thankfully Marla Maples has done a good job keeping Tiffany away,) When Trump became president of his father’s company in 1971, it was so mobbed up that he couldn’t change if he wanted to (and he didn’t want to – he wanted to get rich).
The Genoveses suffered a major blow in the 1990s when family boss Vincent “Chin” Gigante was convicted on RICO charges and sent to prison along with the other La Cosa Nostra bosses. At that point the Russian mob swooped in and took over, and the Trump Org has been tied to the Russian mob ever since. That’s how Trump came back from bankruptcy, using Russian money to crawl his way back at a time when no principled banker would loan him a dime. Trump was attractive to Russians because he’s a developer of real estate and casinos, both great places to launder money.
Just some stuff to think about. Okay, if I were working, I would knock off early to start the Labor Day weekend. So I think I will knock off early today. There’s a seat at Bardog calling my name. Back tomorrow with more news.