Paul Ryburn's Journal

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.

The Steve Cohen event at The Warehouse was a great event.  Good music (haven’t heard the Bluff City Backsliders in a couple of years), great beer (Naked Lion Copper Flask!), great people.

I do have one suggestion.  When I walked in, I went to the counter by the door, where there was a guy handing out Cohen stickers, buttons, and literature.  “Is this where I drop off my donation?” I asked.

“Nah, I guess you can just give it to the bartenders,” he said.

So I went over, got a beer, and handed them the $25 suggested donation.  But I could have just as easily handed them a $1 bill and no one would have batted an eye.  They missed a huge chance for fundraising there.  I understand they can’t require donations, but someone should have been standing at the door saying, “Admission is free, but if YOU WANT TO DONATE (waving tip bucket in people’s faces), most people are giving $25.  Also, if you want to leave your name, e-mail address, and phone number (waving clipboard in people’s faces), we’ll get back with you with opportunities to volunteer for Steve’s campaign.”  I’m just saying, a lot of money went home in people’s wallets that could have gone home in Steve’s campaign war chest if the volunteers had been more assertive.

Why I will always write for myself and no one else:  Last night I was going to do a Cohen party photo album, but I had to be careful not to take photos of members of the media or of quasi-government nonprofit agencies who have to appear neutral.  I understand that’s how it has to be, but it’s why you’ll never see me writing for the CA or working for an official agency that promotes Memphis.  I refuse to give up my voice.

And since I have my voice, I want to state my opinion:  Nikki Tinker scares me. It’s not because I disagree with her on the issues – I don’t know that I do, because she hasn’t spoken about any of the issues.  Rather, it’s that she just doesn’t seem to possess the intelligence necessary to succeed in the office for which she’s running.  I worry that if she gets elected, she’ll be in over her head, and will become prey to people who want to use her office for their personal gain – lobbyists, special interests, people and corporations who don’t have the public’s best interest in mind.  I had a similar fear about a presidential candidate 8 years ago, and unfortunately, he won and went on to prove me right.

So now it’s Sunday, and this week, I’m not skipping brunch.  It’s Blue Monkey week 1 in the rotation and I’ll be there at 11.  Afterward, it will be time to kick Pete’s ass at pool at the Saucer, and later in the day I may very well participate in one of these fine Sunday activities in Downtown Memphis (although, I won’t be riding the trolley, since it shuts down too early).  Later in the day, I’ll probably go get my laptop and return to the Saucer for round 2, because I’m very close to rolling out my newest online shopping website.  Look for an announcement later today.  My friend Bicycle Bobby will love this one.

Also, check back tomorrow at 8 AM for a look at someone who is quite possibly the biggest ASSHOLE in all of Downtown Memphis.  I’ve already typed the post, but have set it to post Monday at 8 AM because Monday tends to be the blog’s highest-traffic day of the week.  No, it isn’t a post about His Honor our Mayor.

Speaking of whom… blogger Thaddeus Matthews also heard the rumors that King Willie was being indicted Thursday.  Even though nothing came of it, Matthews said he heard from multiple sources in law enforcement that Herenton was taken away in handcuffs.  Matthews’ sources also tell him it’s not a matter of if, but when, the mayor will be indicted, and that Willie’s cronies are worried that some of the mayor’s dirt may get on them.

Time for Sunday Fun Day.  Check back later today for more…

Last week a Memphis Business Journal reporter came to my company’s office in the Falls Building to interview our CEO and VP of Marketing. She asked the VP of Marketing, “Does Paul Ryburn really work here?” (apparently a lot of people at the MBJ read my blog) and the VP brought her by to meet me.

“I didn’t think you really had a job!” said the reporter.

She did a great article on the company, which appeared in this week’s Memphis Business Journal and is also on the DowntownMemphis.com website. You can read the article here.  The company sells employment verification services, and everything is accessible from a convenient, secure web-based control panel.  We do all kinds of verification, from sniffing out lies about education and employment history on applications, to checking terrorist watch lists, sex offender registries, drug test results, and much more.  In the interview, our CEO talks about how the Memphis branch has expanded from 6 people in 2003 to 55 people currently, and plans to hire 40 more.  In fact, the New York office is closing and moving operations to Memphis, due to better cost of living and central location.

I’ve been there 8 months, and still enjoy working there, although I’ll admit it’s getting a bit crowded with all the hiring.  We’re about to expand into most of the rest of our floor, though, so more space is coming soon.

Still taking recommendations for where health guru AL and I should have our next culinary adventure.  Suggestions so far include Encore, Saigon Le (“you have to try the lemon grass tofu!” – yuk, tofu), Denny’s (I hope they were kidding), and a place I hold in even lower esteem than Denny’s (“I refuse to darken the door,” to use a Mikeyism).  Keep the suggestions coming.

With temps in the 90s today, I’m staying inside, building my next online store.  I’ll be at the Steve Cohen rally for a little while this evening at the Warehouse, probably out with friends at a bar or club afterward.

The manager of the Saucer just told me that he’s heard from 5 different people that the Saucer girls have been named the most beautiful bar staff in town. It’s on some Memphis website, but he can’t find it anywhere. Anyone know where the site is located? I’d like to see it and so would he. Shoot me an e-mail (paul@paulryburn.com) if you know where to find this article.