Paul Ryburn's Journal

There’s a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath cottage for rent on Greenlaw Place in Uptown.  This is a new house (less than 5 years old, part of the recent Uptown redevelopment project) with stained concrete floors, and all appliances are included.  Parking pad is large enough for two cars, and there are cute front and back porches and a partially fenced yard.  Large pets are welcome.  $1100 rent includes professional landscaping and alarm.  Utilities are cheap because all the houses were built to EcoBuild standards.  The cottage overlooks a nearby park and the neighbors are very nice (it was one of the neighbors who asked me to post this).

If interested, you can either contact me (paul@paulryburn.com) or get on the blog The Musings of Another Working Mom (that’s the neighbor) and contact her from there.

I just took a walk around Downtown, and realized that today is the first day of the annual COGIC convention.  That means that Downtowners have additional dining options for lunch:  Every year several food vendors set up shop at the corner of Main and Exchange to serve the COGIC crowd.  Most of these vendors sell soul food.  I’ve walked up there the past couple of years for lunch, and it’s GOOD.  The vendors don’t care whether you’re a COGIC member or not, at least not from what I’ve experienced; if you have money, they’re happy to sell you food.  With sunny weather and temps in the 70s at least through Wednesday, why not walk or trolley up there and give them a try?  It’s something different than the usual Downtown lunch spots, and you can find park benches nearby on the Civic Center Plaza where you can sit and eat.

The COGIC convention has also made me realize, it’s time to bring back The Window Game.  This is something we created last year, where we count what we see from the Flying Saucer’s windows in various categories:  bums, cars going the wrong way down Second, cars turning left from other than the left lane, appearances by Downtown homeless person Scratchy, police cars, etc.  You can also invent your own custom categories (in the spring and summer I add a “tube top” category).  It’s a lot of fun to sit there and drink and play the game.

The Window Game: COGIC version is even more fun, because we add COGIC courtesy cars and vans as a new category, and also sequined hats.  Last year we ran out of room on the scorecard counting those.  This year I think I’ll print up some full-page scorecards so there’s plenty of room.

Since I can make my own schedule these days, I’m going to back up my arrival time at Pint Nite to 4:30, so I have a better chance of getting a window seat.

More to come this afternoon:  I just learned that one of those really cool new enivronmentally-friendly houses in Uptown is for rent.  Details to be posted in a couple of hours, after I get some work done.

“Ahhh.  It’s good to be home.”

That’s likely what I’ll be saying tonight around 5, as I squeeze a lime into my first Dos Equis Lager of the evening, one of nearly 70 beers that will be on sale for $2.75 tonight at the Flying Saucer.

It’s been a fun weekend at RiverArtsFest, and I’m glad I had Calhoun’s as an alternate base of operations while partying in the South Main area.  But it’s good to be back in the core, and it will be good to be back home at the Saucer.

If you want some other Monday night options for fun, it’s trivia night at Huey’s and the Blue Monkey.  Huey’s starts at 9.  Not sure of the Monkey’s start time.

Plenty of cheap PBR around town tonight… it’s dollar PBR night at the Tap Room.  Bardog has it for the happy hour price of $1.50 from 5 to 7, then it goes up to a still-very-reasonable $2.50.  Calhoun’s has it for $1.50 all day long, every day.

Then there’s “if we turn on Monday Night Football, sell $2 34 oz. Super Cold Coors Light drafts, and $3 blue kamikazes, and $4 100 proof tequila shots, and 24 wings for $9.99, then maybe we can convince someone to come sit at the bar when Meghan is working” night at Big Foot Lodge.  You can get these specials at the tables as well, if you don’t feel like listening to Meghan run her mouth while you eat and drink.  They should get a continuous-loop tape player behind the bar, that plays, “Shut up, Meghan.  Shut up, Meghan.  Shut up Meghan,” whenever she is working.  Or get a parrot or myna bird and teach it only that one phrase.  Or program Buck the talking/singing deer next to the bar to say it over and over.

Then there’s basketball… the Grizzlies take on the Golden State Warriors tonight at 7 PM at the FedExForum.

So, as you can see, there’s plenty to entertain you on this Monday night.  I’ll be at Pint Nite ’til I feel like I’m ready for a change of venue, then probably walk over to Bardog to finish the evening with a PBR or two.

The Downtowner pictured below wanted to do something in honor of Spindini’s runaway win for “Best Cougar Bar” in the 2008 Memphis Flyer Best Of poll.  So he dressed up as the Spindini Cougar.  Here’s a shot of him walking out of Calhoun’s, taken on Halloween night.

Read about it on ESPN.

It was a second beautiful day for RiverArtsFest yesterday, and I spent the day wandering around, looking at art, talking to people, and popping in Calhoun’s for a PBR now and then.  Several people commented that, due to the weather and the fact that it wasn’t as crowded, RiverArtsFest was better than Cooper-Young Fest this year.  I picked up several flyers promoting stuff going on Downtown, and I’ll recap the best of them below.

I’ve been asked to mention the Rumba Room, Downtown’s first Latin and salsa dance club, which is now open on South Main in the space next to Pearl’s Oyster House.  They have salsa nights Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, and the Red Hot Lindy Hop group does swing dance lessons and parties there on Wednesday nights.  Their menu includes flautas, quezadillas, tamales and pupusas.  You can go to their website and sign up for their newsletter.  Note that they have a “business casual” dress code, which includes no shorts and no tennis shoes.

A group called Memphis Art Park is proposing a plan for the Downtown Promenade, the blocks along Front Street from Union to Adams.  They want to put an arts center, performance venue, parking garage and rooftop park in that space.  You can read more about their vision for the promenade here.

Need a haircut?  Downtown will have a new hair stylist soon.  Wilfredo Rodriguez will move into the space next door to the Butcher Shop at 109 S. Front.  He does hair styling, color, makeup, and art, and has over 20 years’ experience.  He’s done styling for Cubana television, the Tropicana Nightclub, and the National Ballet of Cuba.  His salon will be called “Revolution” and will be open mid-December.

These weren’t the only flyers being handed out at RiverArtsFest.  There were some kids who were very aggressively handing out flyers to get flu shots at the Memphis Music Foundation.  Note: When you see someone eating BBQ nachos, it probably isn’t the best time to hand them a flyer.

Then there was Mikey, who was a walking, talking commercial for Calhoun’s the entire weekend.  I mean, I like the place a lot and they did have the best beer deals, and I sent many people there myself over the course of the two days.  But if you talked to Mikey, you’d get the idea that Calhoun’s holds a religious significance for Downtowners similar to that of Mecca for Muslims; that Calhoun’s is where Jonas Salk discovered the cure for polio in 1954; and that the beers served at Calhoun’s have rejuvenating qualities that cause skin to look younger, teeth to look whiter, and hair to re-grow.  Calhoun’s stayed packed throughout the duration of the festival.

(Sigh) And now it’s Monday, and a great party weekend has come to an end.  Guess I’d better get some work done.  I have a new website to launch (actually it’s a re-launch of a long forgotten site), and I need to get back to someone with a quote on a freelance web design project.

More posts to come later today… I’m about ready to do the post on how to recognize Memphis douchebags who are worthy of being on the Hot Chicks with Douchebags site.  If not later today, I’ll get to it sometime this week.

Still completely undecided where to watch the election tomorrow night.  I need to look around and see if there are any election-night drinking games.  I have a feeling Dr. Booze may do a post about that within the next 24 hours.

Yesterday at RiverArtsFest couldn’t have been nicer… not a cloud in the sky, high was 74 degrees but it felt more like 80 on the street.  Tasty food, good music, and lots of art you can buy to decorate your home.  If you missed it yesterday, it’s going on from 10 to 5 today.

My picks for food at the festival:  Crepe Maker, which is toward the northern end of the festival (around Main and Nettleton I think).  Also, Central BBQ, at the far south end of the festival past all the artists’ booths.  Central BBQ was where I ate yesterday, getting a heaping pile of BBQ nachos for only $5 – that’s a bargain.  There’s also a vendor down there selling Italian roast beef sandwiches and Philly cheese steak sandwiches for $6, and that’ll probably be my lunch today.

My pick for art:  Shane Paris Art.  Shane got lucky and got one of the best booth locations at the festival.  It’s right in front of Gestures, and it’s also unusual in that it’s a brown tent rather than white like most of them.  In addition to the digital artwork he sells, you can talk to him about custom photo collages, pet photos, logo design, and ad layout.  Also, if you need a website with custom logos and artwork for your business, Shane and I can team up to do it for you.

My pick for beer:  Calhoun’s!  Everyone was talking about the $5 32 oz. Bud and Bud Lights they were selling at the window, how that’s a better deal at the festival beer (and you don’t have to deal with stupid drink tickets).  However, that’s not even the best deal.  Go inside, to the bar, and order a PBR in a to-go cup for $1.50.  Don’t forget to tell them it’s to go.  They have several other beers on tap (I saw a lot of people buying Yuengling) that can be put in a cup.

There are 183 artists and I could easily spend several thousand dollars decorating my apartment with the great stuff they have there.  Probably your best chance of the year to see so many different artists’ work in one location in Memphis.  Great weather again today.  The Weather Channel is predicting a sunny day, 10% chance of rain, high 80.

I’ll be back down there around noon, and will be there until it ends at 5.

Halloween was the expected clustermess and I didn’t make it to any of the expected parties.  Got to the Saucer early to “wait tables,” and after drinking a couple of Roaring Lions (fake Red Bulls on tap) to wake up, I was about to leave to head to my own apartment building’s party… but then, they brought out one of the great promotions of the past.  Mystery beer.  You pay $2 to stick your hand in a tub full of bottled beer, many of them worth way more than $2, and you drink whatever you pull out.  So, for example, you might find yourself drinking a stout followed by a Mexican beer followed by an IPA.  “Drinking all those different beers right after one another is a good way to get really sick,” commented Bicycle Bobby.  Yeah.  No kidding.  By the time I walked back to my apartment building I was feeling a little dizzy, and having to walk in those 4 1/2 inch platform shoes didn’t help.  There will definitely be a new costume next year, one that doesn’t involve platform shoes.

The building’s Halloween party didn’t look like it had drawn that big a crowd.  “I’ll run upstairs and eat something, then come back down,” I thought.  So I heated up a frozen dinner and surfed the web for a few minutes.  By the time I was done eating, I thought, “You know, three of the next four days are going to be big days, with RiverArtsFest Saturday and Sunday and a big Election Night celebration on Tuesday (unless McCain somehow pulls a rabbit out of his hat).  I’m not that into Halloween this year, I’m going to get a good night’s sleep and be rested for the coming week.”  And I did.

RiverArtsFest today and tomorrow during the day… be sure to look for my friend’s booth Shane Paris Art, and remember that you can find $1.50 PBR and hot bartenders at Calhoun’s.

I’ve heard some interesting info this weekend that makes me think I’m going to have some new places to hang out.  I’ve learned that Automatic Slim’s is going through a makeover… more details to come soon, but suffice to say that they’ve hired some of the best people from the recently departed McGuinness Pub and Hoop’s Bar.  Slim’s has never been on my radar before, but from what I heard this weekend, it now will be.  I also learned that Melis’ who used to bartend at Itta Bena is now working several nights a week at LoLo’s Table.  LoLo’s has always had one of the best happy hours Downtown, so I’ll probably be showing up there more in the future.  They’ve always tended to put exceptionally cool people behind the bar, and Melis’ certainly fits right in.  Besides, I like to start at her boobies.

On the RealClearPolitics map this morning, even more bad news for John McCain… his home state of Arizona has moved into the “toss up” column.  Obama has 311 electoral votes projected solid or leaning, with 132 for McCain and 95 toss up.  270 are needed to win the election, which means McCain will not only have to win all the toss-ups, but pull some states out of Obama’s “leaning” column.

Also, Ronald Reagan’s son has officially endorsed Obama.

You’ve probably heard by now that there’s going to be a white supremacist convention in town next weekend – actually, just over the border in Mississippi, but still, in the Memphis metro area.  Next weekend is also the COGIC convention.  Imagine having both of those groups in town at the same time.

Time to head to RiverArtsFest… PBR, here I come!

Here are some more pics of “Killer,” a gray, tan, and black male Yorkie lost last Saturday at the Famers Market (Front at GE Patterson).  He’s wearing a tan jacket.  There’s a $1000 reward.  Call 262-6367 or 493-4387 if you find him.

Use extreme caution in your attempts to rescue this animal.  One need only take one look at this dog to realize he is a killing machine.  This blog cannot be responsible if you are mangled beyond recognition as you try to return Killer to his owner.

Seriously, though – the owner misses him very much and would like to have him back, so please keep your eyes peeled, especially around the Farmers Market area.

Wouldn’t it be funny if celebrity panhandler “J.J.” who works the South Main area found Killer and collected the reward?

I’m sitting here eating a crawfish dinner that I got from On the River Seafood & More at 51 S. Main.  It came with hushpuppies, and I chose spaghetti with meat sauce and fried okra as my sides.  It is DELICIOUS.  Check this place out, if you haven’t yet.  They’re open until 8 (10 weekends) so you still have a chance to try them if you can’t be Downtown for lunch.

Ughhhh… didn’t sleep well last night.  I had a nightmare where I went to a bar and Godzilla was behind the bar in a bee costume, serving beers.  At least they were Godzilla-sized beers.  It seemed so REAL, like it actually happened.

Lost dog pics to come in the next post.