Paul Ryburn's Journal

Weird… I’ve had very little news to post the past two weeks or so, and now today is so newsy that I had to bust out a second “update” post. Here goes:

Kind of a unique thing going on at Escape Alley Sundry Friday night from 7-9: “Memphis Vic” will spin classic vinyl from the Sun Studio era. Vic works at Sun and loves the music. Sounds like a chance to experience Memphis’ music heritage at its finest. The venue is kid-friendly and does not allow smoking. (They do have beer, though, including PBR.)

When the Chilean miners were being rescued last fall, you probably heard that one of them was a huge Elvis fan, and he entertained his fellow miners with Elvis songs. That miner, Edison Pena, will be the Peabody’s honorary Duckmaster Friday at 5. Come out and see him; maybe he’ll sing you a song!

South of Beale’s new winter menu has been posted to Marks Menus, with pics. View it here.

The Majestic Grille is inviting its customers to vote on their favorite Classic Cocktail. Cocktails include Majestic Manhattan, Strawberry Basil Martini, Berries & Cream Martini, Tangerine Drop Martini, Majestic Irish Coffee. The winning cocktail will be on sale for $5 the week of January 23-29, with the winner announced the morning of the 23rd. Vote on their Facebook page, or on Twitter at @MajesticGrille. I have a favorite but I guess I shouldn’t skew the voting by announcing it here. This is part of a 5-month-long celebration leading up to their 5th anniversary in May.

Stuff is on sale at Shelton Clothiers and Christine by Shelton Clothiers. Men’s suits and sport coats are 30-50% off, and all men’s and ladies’ fall and winter clothing is 50% off. It will still be cold outside for another of couple of months, so plenty of time to wear what you buy. (Although, as far as I’m concerned, the sooner tube top season gets here the better.)

Undecided where to watch the (21) Memphis vs. (unranked) UT game tonight… Saucer is where I’m most comfortable but I’ve heard they’re not turning on the sound… Max’s is a bit cold to walk when it’s this cold… Local will have it on the big screen but there are too many UT fans there… maybe Silly Goose… or maybe I’ll just deal with the lack of sound at the Saucer. Anyway, I have to hours to kill before the game comes on, and what better way to kill those hours than beer? Over and out.

The South Main Association has announced their January meeting. It will be next Tuesday, January 14, at Bar None. It will be an important meeting for two reasons: One, there will be a vote on the proposed slate of 2011 board members. Two, Center City Commission president Paul Morris will deliver the annual “state of Downtown” address. Social at 6, meeting at 6:30. Food by Bar None and happy hour prices.

A&R Bar-B-Q at Third and Court has announced they will start doing “Down Home Sundays” for the month of January. They will be open from noon to 6 and will have baked chicken, fried corn, fried chicken, turnip greens, BBQ ribs, green beans, catfish, mac & cheese, cornbread, cornbread, rolls, candied yams, and all kinds of desserts.

The Flying Saucer is once again giving away a Fat Tire bike on Fat Tuesday. Win the bike pictured below:

Fat Tire will be the Fire Sale every Tuesday between now and Fat Tuesday, March 8. Drink Fat Tires to get entries to win the bike. Be sure they actually record your entry (usually they have you sign your name on a slip of paper, or that’s what they did last year, anyway) to make sure it counts. You have to be present on Fat Tuesday for the drawing to win the bike.

For those of you who use WordPress to blog or as a CMS, there’s a meetup tomorrow night at Republic Coffee. I really need to attend one of these sometime.

Well, I screwed up all over the place in a recent post. I reported that the building at 115 Union is being renovated into apartments, office and retail space, and hopefully Rio Loco and Sawaddii would get a new neighbor on the ground floor soon. I failed to remember that Sawaddii closed over a year ago and is now Bangkok Alley. Also, Air Traffic Mike corrected me about that being the old Union Jax space – that turned into Buckley’s and then Rio Loco. According to ATM, Blue Light Studio was the last business to occupy the ground floor of 115 Union. Oops. Sorry.

I made a beer discovery last night, as I walked down South Main to watch the Sugar Bowl at a friend’s condo. Not wanting to be “that guy” who shows up empty-handed and then drinks everyone else’s beer all night, I stopped at Frank’s to buy a six-pack. I bought Sea Dog Apricot Wheat, having never seen it before. At the watch party we had Indian food – chicken curry and spicy Indian potatoes – and the apricot beer was excellent with it! A perfect match.

Thanks to my friends Stevie G and Sarah for opening up their place for us. Gotta love Stevie G – he yells for the Hogs even louder than I do, and he too owns a vintage ’70s-’80s Hog Hat. Disappointing game. Arkansas receivers really need to learn how to catch a football.

Tonight it’s the (21) Memphis vs. (unranked) UT game at 8:00. It’s an away game, so I’ll be out at one of the bars watching. It will be the last appearance for the Bruchebag for a while, as he has to sit out the next 8 games as mandated by the SEC. Go Tigers! Let’s hand Pearl one more “L” on his way out.

It’s time to CALL THOSE HOGS!!! Ryan Mallett and the Arkansas Razorbacks play Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl tonight at 7:30. Attn trivia team: I’ll be absent tonight, as I will be watching the game with other Hog fans.

Sports writer Doc Hancock wrote a good analysis of how the Razorbacks are viewed nationally. They need to step it up. If Mallett and our defense play like we did against LSU, then we’ll beat Ohio State. If we get sloppy as we did in the fourth quarter vs. Bama, then we’ll continue to be seen as a second-tier football school and it will be our own fault.

If you’re on Twitter this afternoon and are mentioning the game, be sure to mention @ArkRazorbacks and use the #WPS (Woooo Pig Sooiee) hashtag. We’re trying to get the Hogs to become a trending topic today.

In Downtown news today: After 40 years in Overton Square, Paulette’s has announced that it is moving to Harbor Town. The old building became too costly to repair. Paulette’s will take a space inside the River Inn, where it will have access to additional space for large banquets. Once they open, they’ll add daily breakfast to their current lunch, dinner and weekend brunch hours. Expected opening date is March 1.

Deadline to get your Winter Warmer tickets before the price goes up has been extended to 10 PM Thursday night, January 6.

Stuff going on tonight: Grizzlies vs. Oklahoma City Thunder at the FedExForum at 7; the YMCA is offering the first in a series of foxtrot lessons that will be held every Tuesday and Thursday in January (8 PM, $25 for members, $50 nonmembers); trivia night at the Flying Saucer at 7; pint night at Bardog Tavern from 7 to 3, all pints $3; Kirk Smithhart at Bar None, 8 PM. If you’re looking for a place to watch the Sugar Bowl, Max’s Sports Bar on GE Patterson would be a good call – 10 TVs, $2.50 PBR and Max is a Razorback fan.

One quick piece of Downtown news before I head out for the evening… The Memphis Business Journal reports that construction is ready to move forward at 115 Union. That’s the building next to Sawaddii and Rio Loco, once the home of Union Jax pub which unfortunately closed before I moved down here. It’s been vacant for quite a while. In 2008 a plan was submitted to refurbish it into 18 apartments on the upper floor, office space on the second floor, and retail on the ground floor. However, the building’s design was later changed, and it had to be re-submitted to make sure it met historic preservation standards. That step is now complete. Yay for more apartments Downtown, and hopefully a cool new restaurant or store will locate on the ground level.

All right, time to go to the bar for a celebratory beer. What am I celebrating? The neighbors next door with the tiny little dogs that barked every morning at 6 AM moved out last weekend! Finally, I am going to start getting full nights’ sleep again. My regrets to whomever finds themselves living next to those barky little shitdogs. I’ll be celebrating at Pint Nite at the Saucer, with $3 draft pints. Other options tonight include trivia at Huey’s (9 PM) and I think the Downtown Monkey still does trivia at 8; poker at the Silly Goose at 9; half price pizza and wine at Spindini; and, of course, Stanford and Virginia Tech play tonight at the Orange Bowl, so it’s a good night to mosey on down to your favorite watering hole and watch the game. The first week of January through St. Patrick’s Day weekend is the slow season for area restaurants and bars, so let’s get out there and support locally-owned businesses that take such good care of us all year.

If you’re planning on going to the Winter Warmer Brewfest but you haven’t bought your tickets yet, you might want to get it done today or tomorrow. The tickets, currently priced at $33, go up to $36 on Wednesday. You can buy tickets on their website or at the Downtown Blue Monkey.

The brewfest is on Saturday, January 15 at Central Station from 4:00-7:30 PM.

For the past month I’ve written about Beerby, the social network where you can check in the beers you’re drinking, see what beers your friends are drinking, and earn “badgers” for certain beer-drinking accomplishments. Last night, I was reading through Twitter and discovered that there’s a similar social network for people who love tea.

It’s called Steepster. On this network, you can see what teas your friends are drinking and get recommendations from them. You can also write a tea journal. You can view a map on their website of places to drink tea near your current location. You can connect your Steepster account to Facebook and Twitter and broadcast your teas on those networks.

It’s different from Beerby in that there’s no smartphone app, at least that I could find – you manage your account and record your teas via the Web.

Probably not a network I’ll ever join, but I thought it might be of interest to some of you.

Credit for finding this, by the way, goes to an account I follow on Twitter, @abbisiler. I’ve never met her in person but she runs a social media business, Local2Social, in eastern Arkansas. I think I started following her when I missed BarCamp Memphis but was using Twitter to keep up with what was going on there.

In other news: Thanks to the people who invited me to the house party on Main last night. Had a good time, and what a cool apartment on Main.

Up early… my presence has been requested at brunch at the Majestic Grille, as we say goodbye to a friend whose job is moving to another city. Future Sunday Fun Days will be less fun without him here.

In early 2006, an important part of the week for our Sunday brunch crew was sifting through the electronics ads in the Sunday paper. John D, Mikey, Otto and I and whoever else was part of the crew at the time would carefully read the Best Buy, Target and Circuit City ads. Now and then I’d find an especially good deal on a laptop or MP3 player or USB drive, and since I was already writing this blog I’d post a “Deal of the Week.”

After I’d been doing it about a month, I got an e-mail from the Commercial Appeal. They were expanding what they were doing with blogging, and wanted to bring “Deal of the Week” to their site. So we struck an agreement. The money I’d be getting ($10 a week) was inconsequential – for me the big thing was that I could tell people I was writing for the CA! The largest print publication in town! I’d hit the big time. After a couple of years of blogging, I thought, I’d gone legit.

So, for most of 2006, I took my laptop to Sleep Out Louie’s every Sunday, sifted through the ads, and posted a deal. Meanwhile, I continued to write my personal blog, the one you’re reading now, as my own project.

As the year went on, the Deals became just another thing I had to get done on Sunday, and the glamour of writing for a big, important media corporation kind of wore off. On the other hand, I was having a lot of fun writing this blog. My readership went from about 100 a day at the beginning of 2006 to 600-700 by the end of the year (and almost none of it was referral traffic from Deal of the Week). I found out that the Flyer was reading my blog for story ideas. I found out that people at the Center City Commission read my blog. When I complained about crime Downtown, people listened and things eventually got done. This blog started showing up very high in Google results for searches on many Downtown businesses. I placed in the Flyer’s Best of Memphis poll for the first time that year, for this blog, not Deal of the Week. I found that I had a voice, and it was my voice, not my identity as a writer for someone else.

In December 2006 I notified the CA that I was quitting. I didn’t need it anymore.

Why am I bringing this up now?

In the past couple of months, I’ve found some very good Twitter accounts to follow. They’ve tweeted stuff going on in Memphis that would have otherwise missed my radar. Through their retweets I found even more good Twitter accounts. I really benefited, both in terms of stuff to do personally and for content on my blog, for having followed them.

Last night I met the owner of one of those accounts, and found out that her tweets had actually been an audition, sort of an online job interview. The CA had told her, and several others, to tweet for a month, and if the CA liked what it saw, they’d be hired.

The person I talked to last night ended up not getting the job. However, it does not change the fact that she was tweeting EXCELLENT stuff. I want to encourage her, and others like her, to keep it going. Build your own brand and don’t worry about the CA. You’re building an identity. You’re building an asset. It’s frustrating sometimes that it’s not an asset convertible to a full-time paycheck, but it’s still an asset that will benefit you in unknown ways down the road.

Besides, there are a lot of advantages to being independent. I don’t have to get my work approved by a copy editor. If a local business screws up, I can rant on them without being worried about offending an advertiser. I can post sidebar links to my Amazon stores, which are starting to make a significant bit of money. I don’t drop the f-bomb much on this blog anymore, but when I feel it’s necessary I can and I will. I can devote an entire month of posts to the subject of tube tops. I can help a local ad agency create a buzz about a fake bath house supposedly to be located Downtown.

So, in summary, to those Twitterers to whom I’m referring: Keep it up. Don’t give up just because you didn’t get the job you were trying for. You’ve built a valuable asset. Keep going. Keep adding value, and unexpected opportunities will come your way.

Huge congratulations to Trolley Stop Market, which was named by Jennifer Biggs of the Commercial Appeal as Memphis’ best restaurant of 2010 (tied with Sweet Grass). I’ve only eaten there a couple of times, I’m ashamed to say, but when I did the food certainly lived up to the compliments in Biggs’ article. The market features dishes made from locally grown food – tasty treats like Neola Farms meat loaf, Lake’s catfish, and Whitton Farms veggies. Delicious pizza too. Trolley Stop Market is located at 704 Madison, on the Madison Avenue trolley line.

This CA article points out that for the first time since 1978, Memphis finished the year with less than 100 criminal homicides. Despite what you hear on the news, Memphis is getting safer. Thank you to all the police officers out there for your fine work!

Better New Year’s Eve than most yesterday. I started the day at the Flying Saucer, where I enjoyed an afternoon of conversation and beer with good friends. The Saucer closed at 6 to get ready their New Year’s Eve party, and I headed home to rest for an hour. By the time I came back out it was raining cats and dogs, so I took the unusual step of taking an umbrella with me to South Main. Trolley Night was more or less rained out, so I just parked myself at Max’s Sports Bar. Here are some pics.

Full photo album here (about 70 photos, I didn’t count.) Don’t forget that Max’s is open early today for bowl game action.