Author: paulryburn

The Peabody has announced its lineup for Thursday night rooftop parties for the first part of the 2012 season. Here’s the list:

April 19: FreeSol with Chris Rene
April 26: Dr. Zarrís Amazing Funk Monster
May 3: Party Planet
May 10: Kevin & Bethany Paige
May 17: Lord T & Eloise
May 24: G3: The Garry Goin Group
May 31: Mudflap King

Admission will be $10 and includes one drink, except for the April 19 party which will be $15. Ladies free until 7. VIP Passes for the entire 2012 season are available for purchase at the door. The passes include admission to all 18 parties with event valet parking, a 20% discount on Peabody logo merchandise in Peabody Deli & Dessert, and a 10% discount in Capriccio Grill and Chez Philippe throughout the 2012 Rooftop Party season – a $500 value – for just $100. VIPs will be treated to food and beverage tastings from the Peabody Chefs and Budweiser in the Stella Artois themed VIP Lounge. (Just make sure you get to the food tastings early, before the Nuh-Uh Girl eats it all.)

The Memphis Daily News has a good article about Beale Street Landing, which will open on April 27 as the American Queen steamboat arrives in port. The article has details on the restaurant in the landing, which will open in July. Because the landing takes up part of Tom Lee Park, Music Fest and BBQ Fest (assuming it remains on the river) will be slightly more cramped this year.

There was a magnitude 7+ earthquake in Mexico today. Hope all my Mexican friends who read this blog are safe, although most of them live in the Monterrey area which is safely far away. I wasn’t able to find anything about the cause of the earthquake on the University of Memphis’ Center for Earthquake Research Institute site, but fortunately pro wrestler The Iron Sheik explained what happened on Twitter: “Earthquake in mexico because the tito santana take shit that look like king kong bundy ass.” Well all righty then.

The Memphis Business Journal reports that it’s about to get harder to receive unemployment benefits in Tennessee. Recipients may be required to submit documentation of two weekly work searches to continue to get benefits. Also, they’ll be required to participate in case management sessions including skills assessments and remedial education.

Poker at the Blind Bear has been moved back a half hour to 8:30 tonight, because Jamie’s custom poker chips are ready and he has to go pick them up. Fine with me – gives me an extra half hour to drink beer at the Saucer before I walk over there! I’ve been running hot at the poker tables lately, and hopefully I’ll bring home the $50 Bear Bucks first-place prize.

If you want to hear some Memphis music in two very comfortable venues, the South Main district of Downtown is the place to be tonight.

At 7 PM, Brad Birkedahl takes the stage for an acoustic set at Double J SmokeHouse and Saloon. When he played his initial gig last week, it was described as “country with some 50s and 60s thrown in.” Having heard him play in the past, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear covers from artists like George Jones, Jerry Reed, and Johnny Cash, and it’s totally possible he’ll throw a little Elvis in too.

Then at 9, Dynaflow takes the stage down the street at Earnestine & Hazel’s. Good old fashioned rock and roll, played through vintage amps. There are few places in Memphis that have as much soul as E&H, a former brothel turned into a bar. If you’re hungry, try one of their Soul Burgers. Check out the memorabilia on the walls. If you look around you can even see daily lunch menus from the early ’80s, when E&H was still half bar, half brothel.

To get to both venues, take the Main Street Trolley all the way south to the end of the line. You’ll see Earnestine & Hazel’s on the corner, at G.E. Patterson. Double J is a half block walk east down G.E. Patterson.

Happy 85th birthday to Elvis’ clothier, Bernard J. Lansky. You can visit his clothing store in the Peabody and wish him a happy birthday in person. By the way, in coming weeks I’ll have details of a trunk show and designer appearance by Robert Stock, chief creative officer of the Robert Graham clothing line.

There’s a Groupon today for a team entry into the Urban Dare Adventure Race for $45, a $90 value. Teams of two people decipher clues, perform playful stunts, and navigate the city while raising money for breast cancer research. The race is on Saturday, April 7 and the starting point is the Flying Saucer.

I finished 3rd out of 17 in poker at the Silly Goose last night. I’ll give it a try again tonight in Jamie’s game at the Blind Bear at 8.

The City of Memphis will hold a Town Hall meeting Downtown this Wednesday, March 21. Meeting will be in the first floor auditorium of MLGW, 220 S. Main. Town hall meetings are a place for discussion between government and citizens. The meeting will be facilitated by George Little, the city’s Chief Administrative Officer. His office handles neighborhood services, employee services, youth services and business services. This is your chance to connect directly with city government, so come with your questions and concerns.

The Memphis Business Journal reports that a new salon and day spa will open on Beale. It will be called Kingdom Kreations, and it will occupy the second-floor space above Alfred’s.

The Memphis Flyer posted a yummy photo of LunchboxEATS pineapple upside-down cake. Remember that LunchboxEATS, normally a lunch-only place, stays open late the evenings of Grizzlies games, giving those who don’t work Downtown a chance to try their food.

The Wirecutter reviewed the best iPhone battery cases. These are cases that are also a spare battery, that recharge your iPhone to extend its battery life by up to 100% longer. I’d always heard Mophie made the best cases, but the review indicates that the PhoneSuit Elite has taken the lead. Read the review here.

In other iPhone news, free, ad-supported apps kill your phone’s battery. If there’s a paid version of your favorite app, might be worth upgrading to preserve battery life.

Time for beer. Saucer is my first stop of the evening, for Pint Nite with most drafts $3. I’m 50/50 on whether I’ll play the 7:30 poker game at the Silly Goose.

Revive, a new women’s boutique, is now open for business on Second Street, just north of Union in One Commerce Square. This is kind of a successor store to Coco & Lilly, owned by the same people. Coco & Lilly lost its space when the Peabody Place mall closed last year. Here’s an MBJ article about Revive.

Speaking of One Commerce Square, there’s a second new business in that building – Independent Bank, accessible through the entrance at Main and Monroe.

One of my favorite bands, ’60s British Invasion cover band Jeffrey and the Pacemakers plays Downtown Huey’s tonight. They take the stage at 8:30 PM.

John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats moved on in the NCAA tournament yesterday with a victory over Iowa State. Calipari is trying to add to the one Final Four appearance he previously had as the coach of UMass*, Memphis*, and Kentucky.

Yesterday turned out to be a drama-filled St. Patrick’s day, due to an incredibly rude and creepy post that someone made to Facebook. It got screen captured and texted all around Downtown. The post itself didn’t shock me as much as the fact that some of my friends continue to associate with this individual. He didn’t get invited to be on the new BBQ team (he probably blames me, incorrectly, for that) and yesterday’s behavior was a classic example why. I heard he plans to “drop some money on Squeal Street” and hang out in their booth all weekend at BBQ Fest since he wasn’t invited to ours. Have fun with that, guys!

Anyway, due to that drama, I got thrown a little off schedule for St. Pat’s. I missed the parade, but I did make it to Brass Door, Saucer, Silly Goose, and Bardog. I hate it that I didn’t get back to the Brass Door for some of the bands. At least I got their delicious fish & chips, with curry sauce, to start off my day right. And at least I got to see Panda Manda walk on the bar at Bardog in a plaid skirt and tiny green shorts underneath.

MemphisWeather.net reports that a high of 84 is expected today. That’s 20 degrees above normal! Should be an awesome Sunday Fun Day. Going to kick it off with mimosas at the Majestic at 11.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day! The first St. Pat’s to fall on a weekend in several years, this is sure to be a day of celebration and debauchery. I posted a list of St. Pat’s parties earlier in the week, but here are a few final thoughts before I venture out.

I still think the Brass Door’s alley party is going to be THE place to be. View the Facebook event listing for a full list of bands. I have absolutely no problem paying the $10 cover for an event of this quality. I plan on making it my first stop, not long after it opens at 11, and I’ll be coming and going all day.

Besides the alley party, the Brass Door will be showing the Ireland vs. England 6 Nation Rugby match at noon.

I also plan on spending quite a bit of time at Bardog today. Panda Manda and Jean will be wearing their extremely short green shorts, which is reason enough. Plus, there will be drink specials. And besides, I really like hanging out at Bardog!

The St. Patrick’s Day parade happens on Beale Street at 4. Most likely I’ll be there for that. Insider tip: It isn’t green, but a Call-a-Cab from Wet Willie’s is an excellent beverage to enjoy while watching the parade.

Insider tip #2: If you’re driving, ignore the previous insider tip, or you might end up seeing blue rather than green later in the evening.

I also plan on making quick stops at the Saucer and the Blind Bear to say hello to friends. Saucer I plan on doing early in the afternoon – remember, St. Pat’s is the second biggest Amateur Night of the year after New Year’s Eve, so I expect it to get stupid in there later. Bear doesn’t open until 6 so that will have to be an evening stop.

Due to the number of excellent options in the core where I live, I doubt I’ll get down to South Main today. However, if you make it south, there are a lot of reasons to go to the Double J. One, as I previously reported, is the $2 PBR they’ll have all day today. In addition, all the other draft beers will be happy hour prices all day. They’ll have Pam & Terry 7-10 and Lance Strobe and Friends 10-2 tonight. They have acquired the Cadillac convertible they had been hunting for, and they’ll put the longhorns on the hood today.

If your plan today is more about watching basketball than doing the St. Pat’s thing, my recommendations would be Max’s Sports Bar (South Main/smoking) or Flying Saucer (Downtown core/nonsmoking).

Regarding Amateur Night: A general rule of thumb is, the closer the bar to the tourist district, the more likely it will be to fill up with amateurish douche who don’t know how to party, especially between the hours of about 8 and 1 tonight. One exception: Silky’s patio is always a good idea on St. Patrick’s Day, even though it’s on Beale.

What to wear? My only green T-shirt is a work T-shirt, and I don’t like the idea of getting wasted with my company logo emblazoned across my chest. That just seems unprofessional. I have a green long-sleeved windbreaker shirt but it’s way too warm to wear that. I guess my solution will be my drinking partner today, Ms. Tube Top (see photo). She hangs off a set of green beads, so technically I will be wearing green.

I’m ready to rumble but the bars don’t open for another 40 minutes. Guess I’ll pop a PBR open and do a little pre-gaming at home. Hope to see you out today!

The word of the day is basketball. The 8th seeded Memphis Tigers taken on 9th seed Saint Louis today at 5:50 PM. The game will be televised on TBS.

Speaking of the Tigers and March Madness: One of my favorite political blogs is FiveThirtyEight, written by Nate Silver. It has detailed statistical analysis predicting the outcome of upcoming elections, and it was nearly dead on with the 2008 presidential election. Nate Silver is a basketball fan too, and here are his percentage projections that each team in the tourney will make it to each round. As of the time of this post, he has the Tigers at about a 9% chance to reach the Final Four. No other 8 seed is anywhere near 9%.

The Tigers aren’t the only big news in Memphis basketball today. The Grizzlies have a home game tonight at the FedExForum, and it looks like we’re going to get Zach Randolph back. Remember when he got injured, and people said we’d be lucky to hang around .500 until his return? We did a little better than that – 24-17 and fourth place in the Western Conference. Welcome back Z-bo!

There’s a job opening for a Collections Manager/Registrar at the Metal Museum. It requires a Master’s degree, preferably art-related, and 5 years’ museum experience. Details of the job can be found here.

I found this online this morning, and figured it might be useful to some of you: Online PDF to HTML converter.

The Downtown Neighborhood Association is having a happy hour tonight at the Green Beetle at 6. You don’t have to be a member to join them for a pint or two. Tip: Come hungry and try the food.

Time for some quick Chinese food and then a few more hours at work. I’ll be out somewhere to watch the Tiger game.

So, I headed down south to Max’s Sports Bar to play poker tonight. It’s a bit different than Monday-Wednesdays. It’s only a $15 prize. Also, it’s a true freezeout tournament, and you start with 10,000 chips at 25/50. For those reasons it’s more like “real poker” than the other games Downtown.

Tonight I won. However, I got on Twitter a little while afterward and found that some people think I got lucky or caught cards.

Those people know who they are, and I’d like to invite them to prove their point by playing me in a $1 small blind/$2 big blind cash game. Buy in for whatever feels comfortable, up to 100 big blinds. We’ll find a place to play and chips. Due to variance this won’t absolutely settle who’s the best player, but it will be a start.

The Memphis Daily News has a long article about the St. Patrick’s Day celebration at the Brass Door. They’re going to have an outdoor alley party with 8 bands, as well as food specials in the bar including corned beef and cabbage and $5 fish and chips. Their last alley party, their grand opening last summer, drew 800 people. There are a lot of events going on Downtown Saturday, but I tend to believe this one will be the biggest and the best. I plan on getting there early in the day, paying the $10 cover, and then coming and going throughout the day (I’m assuming they’ll have wristbands or some kind of system that will make this possible).

The article is worth a read not only for info about the party, but for what managing partner Seamus Loftus has to say about St. Patrick’s Day. He grew up in the western part of Ireland, where the holiday is celebrated much differently than in America. It’s treated as more of a solemn religious event there. That said, Seamus very much likes the fact that Americans have turned it into a party, a celebration of being Irish.

In other St. Patrick’s news, I’ve learned that Double J SmokeHouse and Saloon will have $2 PBR all day Saturday to celebrate.

If you want to watch the NCAA tournament at lunch tomorrow, Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Restaurant in the FedExForum will be open – not only the restaurant, but the patio. You’ll be able to watch the game on 20 TVs. They’ll have the following lunch specials, all with a Pepsi beverage included:

Spicy Popcorn Chicken w/fries $8.50
Sausage & Cheese Plate $8.75
Chicken Wings with celery, carrot sticks and ranch $8.50
Old No. 7 Half Pound Burger with fries $9
Cajun Catfish Basket with fries $8.75
Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad $7.50

They’ll also have 16 ounce domestic beers for $5 (for the Forum that’s dirt cheap). Free parking in the Toyota garage. Promotions and giveaways will be happening during lunch. They’re open for lunch and game viewing today too, but since I don’t do my lunchtime post until around 1 PM on weekdays, it’s probably too late to do any good.

Rumor has it that Sam Young is being traded to the Philadelphia 76ers. Sad to see him go, but it’s a win-win – it reduces the Grizzlies’ payroll so we don’t have to pay the luxury tax, and it will probably get him more playing time. Thanks for all your hard work here, Sam. Memphis will miss you.

The Peabody Hotel Group has launched a new duckmaster blog. The Memphis, Little Rock, and Orlando duckmasters will blog about their jobs. View it here.

That’ll do it for now. Time to grab a quick burger then back to work.

The Downtown Memphis Commission is supporting an intriguing plan to turn the Chisca Hotel at Main and Linden into apartments. Paul Morris, who runs DMC, said the units would be smaller square footage studio apartments that would rent for less than the Downtown market average. The group that hopes to redevelop the Chisca is the same group that is working to redevelop One Commerce Square. The Daily News has more details.

I think it is fantastic that these kinds of apartments are being developed. We haven’t had anything like that Downtown since the William Len closed in 2005 to be redeveloped as a hotel. It’s near impossible to find anything Downtown for less than $700 a month. I’ve said for years, we need affordable apartments down here to attract teachers, artists, college students and others who will make the community more diverse. I hope this project moves forward.

Besides, as Morris points out, the Chisca in its current state is a huge psychological barrier. It stands at the gateway between the core and South Main, and gives a huge impression that Downtown is still boarded up, dilapidated. Something needs to be done with it sooner rather than later.

The Riverfront Development Corporation has chosen an operator and concept for a restaurant/bar in Beale Street Landing. Riverside Grille & Dockside Bar will open by July 1. It will be operated by successful Beale Street restaurant owner Bud Chittom and his partners. Bud runs several properties on Beale, including two of my favorite places to eat, Johnny G’s Creole Kitchen and Blues City Cafe. Makes sense to go with someone who’s already been there, done that and been successful several times. That restaurant will be in too important a location to fail. More info on the restaurant in the MBJ.

Tonight is Open Mic Night with Diamond Dave at the Brass Door. They’ve got a full PA, a piano, and some guitars in the Cavern, so come on down and show ’em what you’ve got. It’s also Wine Down Wednesday at the Brass Door, with $3 house wines, $3 pints, and $3 wells.

Meanwhile, over at the Saucer, it’s Buy the Beer, Keep the Glass night. Tonight is the St. Patrick’s Day glass, featuring new (to Memphis) brewer Green Flash. You can get the glasses starting at 7 PM, unless you’re a Master of the Universe (5+ plates on the wall) in which case you can get it earlier.

Brad Birkedahl and his lovely wife Anna Marie performed an acoustic set last night at Double J SmokeHouse and Saloon. If you missed them, this morning the saloon announced that the former Dempseys frontman and his wife will be back. They’ll have a regular Tuesday night gig on the Double J’s Front Porch stage from 7 to 11. Blast it all, that’s going to be tough for me to get to for a few weeks. I’m trying to accumulate points in Blind Bear’s Tuesday poker league to get to the final table and win an iPad. There are four weeks left in league play I believe. Soon as I can get down south and hear Bradley D, I will.

Time to go eat a dull Zaxby’s lunch and wish I was Downtown eating at Lunchbox Eats or Majestic or a food truck. I’ll be out somewhere tonight. Too nice to stay in.