Paul Ryburn's Journal

This week I didn’t forget.

• Mean Green Music Machine on the Peabody rooftop.  6-10 PM, $5 cover, ladies free ’til 8.  This is the next to last rooftop party of the season, and don’t forget, it’s Wired Memphis night, where IT, marketing, advertising, PR, and entrepreneurial professionals are invited to network.
• Reba Russell on the Madison rooftop, 5:30-10:30 PM, $7 cover.
• Jazz and blues by two people whose names I can’t remember on the rooftop of the River Inn of Harbor Town on Mud Island.  Also Ladies’ Night at Tug’s restaurant with half-off drinks for ladies.
• Party on the Patio with the Mississippi Mudslingers and Q107.5 at EP Delta Kitchen, 9:30-’til
• Deep Shag at the Flying Saucer, 9:30 PM, $3 cover.
• Gabby Johnson at the Red Rooster
• Eric Hughes Blues Band at Ground Zero
• Frankie Hollie and the Noise at Alfred’s
• ’80s for the Ladies Night at Hollywood Disco (Raiford’s) with doors opening at 9, mixed drinks and Bud Light quarts served
• Boy does our crowd suck night at Club Atlas
• Team trivia at TJ Mulligan’s Pinch

I’m going to try to make it to the Peabody rooftop tonight to do some “Wired Memphis” networking and dance and drink.  After that, don’t know… Saucer or Rooster probably, will play it by ear.

The Red Rooster is throwing a Christmas-in-July block party, with music inside and outside this Friday, July 25 from 6 to midnight.  The important thing to know is to get there early, because THE DEMPSEYS will play inside from 6 to 7.  The Plaintiffs will play inside from 8 to midnight, and Frankie Hollie and the Noise will be outside.  Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and a portion of every ticket goes to Make-a-Wish.

Friday is South Main Trolley Tour, but with the Dempseys kicking it off at the Rooster, it looks like I’ll be arriving late for Trolley Tour, if I get there at all.

A couple of readers have e-mailed to let me know that there is going to be a Trader Joe’s in Tennessee… but in Nashville.  Looks like the ability to sell wine in the stores is not the only issue… one reader speculates that Trader Joe’s believes there is the desire for its products in a city as unhealthy as Memphis.

Maybe we should push for a Trader Joe’s in West Memphis.  It’d be right across the bridge, and at least they’d be able to sell wine there.

Another reader writes that the beer, wine, and liquor scene as we know it in Tennessee would drastically change if wine were sold in grocery stores.  Big chains, he writes, would do business directly with the wineries, cutting the distributors out.  The loss of the revenue to the distributors would hurt their ability to bring in other products, such as import beer above the 6% threshold that is sold as liquor in TN.  So businesses like the Flying Saucer, Blue Monkey, etc. would be hurt by the change.  So I guess there are pros and cons to both sides.

Back later with details of a charity event coming to Downtown Memphis this weekend.

This morning I posted that there’s a Facebook group that has been created to recruit Trader Joe’s, an upscale health-food store that is very popular, to open a location in Memphis.  Since then I’ve been told that it’s not gonna happen, given the current Tennessee state laws.  Specifically, Trader Joe’s derives a significant amount of its revenue from the sale of wine in its stores.  Wine is not allowed to be sold in grocery stores in the state, so there’s a huge disincentive for Trader Joe’s to relocate here.

A reader sent me a link to a site called Red White and Food which is petitioning to get Tennessee’s archaic liquor laws changed, to allow the sale of wine in grocery stores.  Regardless of whether you drink wine, you should be concerned about this, especially as Downtown residents.  A grocery store like Trader Joe’s would be a great fit for Downtown, and would sell not only wine but a variety of healthy items at reasonable prices, items that would not be found elsewhere in Memphis.  The outdated liquor laws get in the way of recruiting this kind of store.

Why haven’t the laws been changed?  Because the liquor distributors spend a lot of money lobbying the state legislature to keep the current, closed system.  They’ve been getting rich off the current system for many years and are not interested in seeing it change.  Once again, the politicians are looking out for special interests, not your interests.

Check out the site, and sign up to help if you want to see the laws changed.

I didn’t attend the public forum on the possible re-opening of the Main Street Mall to vehicles last night, but friends of mine did.  They told me the response from citizens and business owners was very heavily AGAINST re-opening the street to traffic.   If the CCC moves forward with this idea, they’re very much going to be working against public sentiment.  Hopefully their plan is dead and buried as of last night.

Dr. Booze has a new post about a site called Local Wine Events.  You select your city and the search engine tells you what upcoming wine, beer, and spirits events are in your area.  If you own a restaurant or bar, or if you are throwing an event, you can log in and add your own listings.  Currently only one event comes back as a search result but several more should… I know there are restaurants throwing wine dinners in the next couple of months, and someone needs to put Art on Tap on there.

In the news:  Rachael Ray is coming to town today to visit a gorilla from the Memphis Zoo who is a big fan of hers.  The gorilla has a TV in his cage and loves to watch when she’s on, especially when she’s cooking.  Her visit will be filmed and will air in September.

Also in the news… MPD’s eye in the sky spotted a vehicle break-in at Main and Peabody Place at 2:30 AM yesterday.  They caught the suspects about a block away.  Glad to see that program is working… the bad guys don’t have free run of the neighborhood anymore.  They never know who’s watching.  Also, the bum patrol told me that one of the area’s top parking-meter scammers has been cited for panhandling for the third time in two weeks.  That means he has three court dates.  If he misses one of them a warrant will be issued and he’ll be hauled off to jail.  The bum patrol has been catching him in the act so often, he’s going to have to spend some of his panhandling money on a PDA to keep up with his court appearances.

There’s a Facebook group called “Trader Joe’s – Please come to Memphis!”  It was my pleasure to join that one.  I lived in San Diego for 6 months and shopped at Trader Joe’s… it’s a health food store, but with better products and more reasonable prices than Wild Oats.  If we got a Trader Joe’s, my health guru AL might be more successful altering my eating habits.

Congrats to the Rapscallions, who took first place in trivia last night, bringing the gift certificate total for our next party to $360.  That sounds like a lot but we have close to 30 people who have participated in the past month or so.  Third-round bonus question that gave us the win:  Name the three most populous islands – islands, not island nations – in the world.  The answers were Java (where Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, is located), Great Britain, and Honshu (Japan’s largest island).

My Internet connection is down.  Gotta call Comcast at lunchtime and find out what’s wrong.  Thanks to my neighbor “linksys” for supplying the bandwidth that made this post possible.

The Peabody is positioning its regular Thursday night rooftop parties as mixers for various industries, featuring a different industry each week.  This week’s theme is one that may be of interest to a lot of readers of this blog:  “Wired Memphis.”

According to the memo they sent me, it’s a night for technology, advertising, marketing, PR, and entrepreneurial professionals to get together and network.  I guess I’ll have to go to that one; I still haven’t made it to a rooftop party yet this year.  Besides, it’ll be the second-to-last rooftop party of the season – the last one is July 31.

If you’re not in one of the industries listed above, don’t worry, you’re invited too.  Entertainment will be by the Mean Green Music Machine.  $5 cover, 6-10 PM, ladies free until 8.  It will have cooled down a little by then – highs expected to cool down to the low 90s – but it will still be plenty warm enough to show off that new tube top.

I’ll have a complete “what’s going on Thursday night” post later in the week, unless I forget like I did last Thursday.

If you want to put in your two cents’ worth about the re-opening of the Main Street Mall to vehicular traffic, there’s a public forum this afternoon at 5 PM in the Riverbluff Room of the Memphis Cook Convention Center (mezzanine level).  Participants will be given two minutes each to speak their mind.

There are some very heated opinions on this matter.  If yours is one of them, make sure to stop by the Convention Center and make your voice heard.

Sunday we were brunching at the Blue Monkey and I noticed this sticker on the cooler:

A lot of people are excited that local bars now carry products from Colorado brewery Fat Tire.  The Downtown Blue Monkey now has 22 oz. bottles of the beer for $5.75.  That’s quite a bargain for a quality beer.  I’m assuming the Midtown Monkey has Fat Tire for the same price.

Announcing the launch of my latest online store:

Hawaiian Shirt Paradise

This is a store that sells Hawaiian shirts in all colors and sizes. There are hundreds of them, and in addition to grouping by color, I’ve grouped them by themes, such as shirts with cars and airplanes on them, shirts with beers and cocktails on them, parrot shirts, flamingo shirts, and so on. They even have Hawaiian shirts for your dog!

As is the case with many of my sites, this is an Amazon.com storefront, so when you order, you’re protected by Amazon’s world-class secure payment system and return policies.  I build these stores in order to organize particular Amazon niches – which can often be very disorganized – into an attractive shopping experience that’s much easier to browse than Amazon itself.

The hardest part of building this site was resisting the temptation to buy about 10 of these shirts for myself.

You may ask, “Isn’t late July the wrong time of the year to launch a Hawaiian shirt store?  It’ll only be Hawaiian shirt weather for a couple more months.”  True, but here’s the thing… after about August 1 it gets hard to find Hawaiian shirts in stores at the mall.  They’ll all be removed to make way for fall and winter inventory.  So where will people go to shop for Hawaiian shirts when they can’t find them at their local Macy’s?  The Internet, that’s where… and as soon as Google indexes me, they’ll start finding my store.

This is the quickest store I’ve ever created – the idea came to me around 5 PM Friday, so I got it up over a weekend.  It’s very similar in organization to my existing store the Tube Top Boutique, so there wasn’t a whole lot to figure out with this one… just a matter of picking categories and items.

I’ll be at Pint Nite a little after 5, probably with my laptop starting to work on my next store.  I have ideas for about five to ten more, so I’m going to be cranking them out in rapid succession.

It’s been a while since I posted a panhandler pic on the blog, but this guy made me do it. Multiple people have been approached by this guy trying to sell them a free magazine (e.g. Downtown Merchant Guide), telling them it’s a dollar donation for St. Jude. When confronted he will not be able to produce ID, and will then change his story. He’ll then admit he’s not associated with the hospital and is not really collecting money for them, but he’ll tell you he still wants a dollar.

How low can you go, claiming to be raising money for a children’s charity. I have multiple witnesses who have personally been approached by this panhandler. Mike King who co-moderates the Handling-Panhandling forum with me got hit up by this guy. Also, a blog writer for the Discovery Channel came to town and got approached by this guy with the same story. If anyone from St. Jude is reading this, I can put you in touch with Mike who can give you the full details of what this panhandler said and did – just e-mail me at paul@paulryburn.com.

Mid-South Peace and Justice Center: NOW do you understand what we’re doing? We’re not persecuting the innocent homeless, nor is anyone else Downtown. Rather, I am, and we all are, sick and tired of these scamming scumbags being allowed to do their thing on the streets all day, every day.