Paul Ryburn's Journal

Justin Gignac, a New York City artist, spends his days scouring the city for trash, which he then turns into art and sells. Here’s a link where you can buy garbage from the annual NYC St.Patrick’s Day Parade for the low price of only 50 euros (about $66).

The bums in Downtown Memphis, who spend the day digging through garbage cans anyway, may want to consider following Justin’s example. They could turn this idea into a career.

There’s an article in this week’s Memphis Business Journal about Blues City Pastry, a new pastry shop and coffee bar that will open by May. It will be at the corner of Main and Peabody Place, in the old Viking Culinary location.

According to the article, it will have 52 seats inside and cafe seating outside. It will serve espressos, lattes and cappuccinos, and the owner is working with a coffee importer to produce an exclusive blend. They will have a pastry chef with 15 years experience, and the bakery will produce pastries, wedding cakes, danishes and muffins.

The article says they’ll have Wi-Fi access. Awesome – that means I’ll be laptopping there all the time. They’ll be playing blues music and displaying the works of local artists.

This is great news for Downtown – we haven’t had a good, locally owned coffee shop in the Downtown core since Empire closed a couple of years ago. Looking forward to its opening, and I have a feeling a lot of my future blog posts will be created there.

The Sunday before Sleep Out Louie’s closed for the last time, I got there right when the doors opened and took pictures of the place from every conceivable angle. Just wanted to create a complete photo album of the way the place looked, so we can remember it and maybe show it to our kids 20 years from now and say, this is where we all hung out.

Here’s a link to the album.

In other news: The 55″ HDTV that was formerly at Sleep Out’s has been relocated to the Tap Room. They’ll have all the March Madness games on the big TV, and according to bartender Niles, if you want them to turn the music off and turn on the sound to the game, all you have to do is ask.

Didn’t make it to the press conference about the new arts festival yesterday, but CA arts writer Christopher “Skippy” Blank has the info here.

(2) Memphis vs. (15) North Texas, 11:30 AM today. You can watch the game live online here. I’ll be watching it at the Second Street branch office.

– Those of you stuck in cubicle hell need to check out this product – looks like something that can make cubicle life a little more bearable.

– Today at 4:30 PM there will be a press conference at Jay Etkin Gallery to announce the name, logo and site plan of the new fine arts festival to be held in the South Main Arts District October 26-28. Glad to see a new festival coming downtown, and if Jay’s involved you know it’s going to be good.

– Dr. Bob, the New Orleans artist who currently has a studio at 10 South Main, told me he has an exhibit at the Brooks Museum from now until June. Make sure you get by and see it and support a talented local artist. I still need to find out how much he’ll charge me to make one of his “Stamp Out Seriousness” signs.

– Speaking of 10 South Main… the apartment building has added a sticker to their outdoor sign advertising “HUGE SPECIALS on 1 and 2 bedroom apartments.” So, if you’re looking to move downtown, now might be a good time to do it. There’s a reason I’ve renewed my lease with them five times – it really is the best apartment building downtown. Full size W/D in every unit, rooftop deck with a hot tub and restaurant-quality grills, gym with cable TV in the basement, great neighbors, best Halloween party downtown every October, etc. Their number is 543-8356 if you want to call and make an appointment to see a unit… tell ’em you heard about it in my blog.

– With St.Patrick’s Day on a Saturday this year, you can bet a lot of the local bars will have parties. The one I recommend is the Sham-ROCK Green Carpet Bash at Big Foot Lodge, from 10 PM to 3 AM. $2 green 34 oz. Big Foot Beers, $2 green Jello shots. No cover charge, a live DJ, FM100’s Jill Bucco as the host, and a cash prize for the person wearing the most green. Shawn and the folks at Big Foot know how to throw a great party, believe me, so put this one at the top of your list.

I haven’t heard whether Dan McGuinness is throwing a St.Pat’s party this year, but I assume they are. I hope they’ve learned their lesson from last year, when the security they hired to work the doors turned out to be EXTREMELY rude and confrontational. I know for a fact that some of the regulars didn’t go back to McGuinness for a long time after that night. I’ve heard that McG has realized they screwed up and plan on handling things differently for future parties, so I think they’re worth a second chance.

– The City Schools are giving the people in the admin building a mini-spring break – we get to go home at 2 today and get tomorrow off. Yay for free time! I guess I’ll attend the press conference this afternoon, then spend most of the rest of the weekend watching March Madness and doing St.Pat’s stuff. Right now it’s back to the cubicle for a couple more hours though.

More posts to come this weekend. On deck: A pool-related post (meaning billiards, not swimming pools), a new dance organization in town, another idea to fight back against the panhandlers, and one last set of Sleep Out Louie’s pics taken at the final Sunday brunch.

Blue Man Group will be performing at the DeSoto Civic Center Friday night on their “How to Be a Megastar Tour 2.0.” I’ve seen these guys on guest appearances on the Tonight Show for years and years and they are all kinds of awesome – their stuff is performance art at its finest, combining visuals, lights, sounds, rhythm, etc. If you like the musical Stomp you will looooooove these guys. Highly, highly recommended.

Dammit… why did this have to happen on Friday night? My Hogs play Friday night, against 5-seed USC, at 8:55 PM CDT I believe. All week I’ve been looking forward to watching the Razorbacks on the Saucer’s HDTV… now I’ve gotta choose between them and Blue Man Group, who I’ve wanted to see live for years. Blast it all. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do now.

By the way, the Flying Saucer is currently short a couple of waitresses, so if your career aspirations involve wearing a short skirt and serving beer, now would be a good time to put in an application.

I’ll also miss The Raising of the Goat on Beale Street if I go to the Blue Man show. Theoretically I could do both, since the announced time for the goat is 6 and the show starts at 8… but we’re operating on “Silky Time” here so the goat probably won’t go up until around 7:30. For those of you not familiar with this important Memphis tradition, here’s how it works:

There’s a goat.

And they put him on a platform.

And they raise him high in the air.

And people look at the goat and drink green beer.

Clearly this is one of the most essential celebrations of the year in Downtown Memphis. I can’t miss it, I just can’t! I really don’t know what to do… dammit… why couldn’t Blue Man have come here in February when nothing was going on?

The High Point Coffee location on Union Avenue now carries pre-made hoagies from Downtown’s South Philly restaurant. So if you work in Midtown, it’s a good place to stop for lunch – they have a hoagie, chips and drink combo for $6.50.

Congrats to the Rapscallions on their second-place finish at trivia last night… we now have our first gift certificate in the stash ($25) toward the next party. One of the questions was, “Name the four countries that have one-syllable names,” and you’d think that team member Chad would have come up with “Chad” as one of the answers but someone else got it. We figured out two of the others – France and Spain – but got stuck on the fourth. Then Chad asked, “Is Crete a country? Or is it part of Greece?,” not even realizing that he had inadvertently come up with the fourth correct answer.

Chad is also in the doghouse with the Nuh-Uh Girl for not mentioning to me that it was her birthday last Saturday, so I could wish her a happy birthday on my blog. Happy belated birthday to the Nuh-Uh Girl.

This past weekend I received a rumor, which I was told came from a fairly reliable media source, that Books-A-Million may take over the space in Peabody Place Mall formerly occupied by Tower Records.

There are currently no Memphis Books-A-Million stores (there’s one in Southaven) but I’ve been to the Little Rock location before. They typically have racks and racks of closeout books at deep discounts, and they also carry the current bestsellers. I’ve never known Books-A-Million to have in-store cafes in their locations, which is something I’d really like to see… but then again, with Starbucks right upstairs, an in-store cafe might be redundant at Peabody Place.

I hope this one is actually true… I’ve said for years that one of the key things downtown is missing is a large-scale book retailer that is open evenings and weekends. This is one of the remaining pieces of the puzzle involved in turning downtown into a real neighborhood.

Downtown developer Henry Turley will speak tomorrow night at a wine and cheese reception hosted by Mpact Memphis’ Toastmasters chapter, tomorrow night, March 14 at 6 PM, at the Emerge Memphis building (corner of Tennessee and G. E. Patterson). I’ve heard Henry Turley speak before, and was very impressed – despite his position of power in Downtown Memphis, he’s not afraid to speak candidly and tell it like it is.

This will also be a good chance to learn about Toastmasters. If you have a fear of public speaking, Toastmasters will help you get past it, as you give presentations and get support and constructive feedback from a group of your peers.

Should be a good event, and of course any time free wine is on the agenda there’s a good chance I’ll show up. Hope to see you there!

Taken on the upstairs patio at Alfred’s. Bud tattoo and butt cheeks… it just don’t get much more Memphis than that.

There was an article in the Commercial Appeal this morning about Beale Street cracking down on panhandling. Street leaders claimed a new, more aggressive crowd had moved in, and they were determined to take steps to stop them.

So, I decided to put it to a test. Tonight I walked down to Beale about 6:00, bought a dollar PBR at the Tap Room, and took it out to the street and sat on the concrete blocks in front of Silky’s. I was all by myself – a sitting duck – and with a Grizzlies game at 7, I expected to be swarmed by bums. Normally, if I sat there for an hour, I could expect to be hit up for money 4 to 6 times.

Tonight I got hit up ONCE. A guy in a Denny’s uniform swaggered up to me and sat down and say, “Hey, partner, hey bro, let me aks you for one small favor.” He asked for money for the bus home. But he didn’t strike me as a working man just trying to get home after a hard day… he struck me as a bum. He had the same walk, the same approach that they all do. It felt like he had done this at least 100 times before. I told him to go away. Then he hit up people sitting at the tables outside Silky’s front door and they gave him a couple of bucks.

Still, one bum in an hour alone on Beale is a vast improvement. Security down there must really be tightening up. Good job.

Afterward, I went to the Saucer to see my waitresses, then to the Majestic to see Tif(one f)any and eat dinner. Now I’m off to bed… I have many, many topics planned for posts this week so check back often.