Let’s get right to the good stuff.
Video: Brawl leads to shooting in Downtown Memphis. I believe this is the intersection of Second and Peabody Place. Is that the Saucer in the background?
Gossip on the street (which I have not confirmed) is that a Memphis restaurant got busted Friday night for running an illegal speakeasy. Meaning, at 10 PM, the mandated closing time for restaurants under Health Directive No. 11, they turned off all outward indications that they were still open, but if you knew, you could still get in and drink. I won’t name the restaurant, but it is not located Downtown.
4537 fans watched the Memphis Tigers struggle to pull out a win against the Arkansas State Red Wolves yesterday at the Liberty Bowl. I am not surprised it was close. A-State is a good team! They will likely get to a bowl, if there are bowls this season, which there probably won’t be.
Leave it to the Tennessee Vols to screw up the first Saturday of college football season without even playing a game. They had to cancel scrimmage yesterday because 44 players were unavailable. The head coach said “seven or eight” (you’d think he’d know the exact number) players had tested positive for COVID-19, and others were out due to contact tracing concerns or injuries. Sounds like the ‘rona is tearing through Tennessee’s team in a way that usually only the Florida Gators can.
Memphis 901 FC drew with Birmingham last night at AutoZone Park.
I saw an early draft of the Blind Bear’s new menu, set to roll out toward the end of this week. Just let me say this… the past 8 years, people walking out of the Peabody Place parking garage onto the Main Street Mall have asked, “Where are we going to go drink, Blind Bear or Silly Goose?” The new question is going to be, “Where are we going to go eat, Blind Bear or Majestic?”
News from the World Championship Hot Wing Contest, whose People’s Choice award went virtual last weekend:
Part of the event last week was to raise much needed funds for @RMHMemphis and our 24 competition teams came through in a BIG way! Thanks to their fundraising efforts and the support of people like you, $17 thousand was raised for the families of Ronald McDonald House!
— World Championship Hot Wing Contest & Festival (@WCWingContest) September 4, 2020
I have to brag for a minute. Overnight, I TRIPLED my lifetime income as a paid writer for Medium.com! Readership of the articles I wrote caused four cents to trickle into my September earnings, on top of the two cents I earned for the month of August.
Here’s the way I look at it… that 16-foot-long, 1200-pound crocodile who lies in wait in the Nile River and dines on an endless buffet of wildebeest, zebra, and antelope was once a 3-inch long hatchling. He struggled to learn how to close his mouth at precisely the right time, and one day he got it right and caught his first prey, a dragonfly.
My time as a well-paid writer will come, but for now, I gotta eat my dragonflies.
And with that, I will bring this post to an end. Labor Day can be a slow news day, so it may be Tuesday before I’m back with more news.