Paul Ryburn's Journal

– After an absence of a month or two, Sharp Dressed Bum is back on the streets of Downtown Memphis. Last night I was sitting in the window of the Flying Fish, eating grilled tilapia (“Make it snappy!”) and I saw SDB on the sidewalk in front of the Peabody, conducting “business.” I grabbed the camera and took the pic shown on the left (click it to see the image in a larger size).

As you can see, SDB dresses better than most panhandlers (hence the nickname) – lately he’s had on a khaki golf shirt with dark collar, white casual pants, and leather sandals. He’ll walk around Second, Union, Monroe, and Beale, trying to be all friendly, especially to tourists, offering to show them around. But, at least in my experience, when you turn down his requests for money, his demeanor changes – he’ll start cussing and threatening you, even physically acting like he’s going to come at you. Several of my readers have reported similar encounters with Sharp Dressed Bum.

Now you have a face to put to a name. If you see this guy coming, I recommend crossing the street, ducking into a store, or whatever you can do to avoid having to talk to him.

– You know, this gives me an idea, since I’ve got a digital camera… perhaps I need to make a photo album of all of Downtown’s street people. I wouldn’t necessarily post it publicly, but I’d let people know it’s available by request, if they have been the victim of harassment or a crime Downtown and are trying to find a pic to show to the police.

– The Memphis Business Journal reports that Memphis may soon have a local brewery. A Germantown resident has started a company called Naked Lion Brewing. A former Coors brewmaster, the CEO is currently brewing the company’s first offering, Copper Flask, out of a brewery in Wisconsin, and has distribution contracts all over the South and Northeast. Although he’s currently making the product out of state, he hopes to eventually have enough volume to build a brewery here in the Memphis area. So if you see Naked Lion Copper Flask in stores or bars, please buy it and support the home team.

– Lantana Projects will have an open studio visit with guest resident artist Eric Knoote Friday night, July 6 from 7-9 PM at Marshall Arts, corner of Marshall and Monroe. Knoote is the artist who recently put up an exhibit at the empty building space at Jefferson and Main.

– Thursday night party options:

Gabby Johnson on the Peabody rooftop, 6-10
Symbiosis on the Madison rooftop, 5:30-10
Garry Goin and G3 with Q107.5 at EP’s, 8-mid

Looks like KIX 106 is taking a week off from its Thursdays on Beale concert series to promote a Trace Adkins concert at Snowden Grove Ampitheatre.

Not sure where I’ll end up tonight, but I can pretty much assure you it WON’T be the Trace Adkins concert.

Time to get some work done, so I can afford to go out tonight. May be back with more entertainment options once I see this week’s Memphis Flyer.

The new non-smoking law won’t be enforced until October 1, but businesses are already starting to implement it. The first sign I saw of the new law was last night, when I went to the Saucer for our weekly trivia match. A team member showed up and started looking for an ashtray… and found that there weren’t any ashtrays in the inside room.

He asked a manager about it. “The indoor room is nonsmoking until 8,” the manager told him. (8 PM is when they stop admitting people under 21.) “You can still smoke in the Garden, as long as all the garage windows are up.”

I hadn’t noticed any difference until my friend inquired about smoking… but afterward, I did. For one thing, I noticed that I wasn’t coughing every few minutes. I also noticed that the air in the room was clear for a change, instead of a smoky haze. I kind of liked it.

As more team members showed up, a discussion arose about the smoking ban and whether government is going too far intruding into people’s lives. Hmmm. I’m not 100% in support of the new law, but on the other hand I wouldn’t characterize it as “going too far.” I mean, we pass laws to prohibit corporations from releasing chemicals, toxic chemicals that kill people, into our rivers and streams. Is it really that different to prohibit individuals from releasing chemicals, toxic chemicals that kill people, into our air?

Anyway, the new law is what it is, and it appears to be here to stay. I still wonder what smokers at the Saucer are going to do in January – they’ll want the garage windows raised so they can smoke, but then everyone who sits in that room will freeze to death.

The Rapscallions took third place last night, bringing our gift certificate stash to $290. We’ll cash them in before the next trivia night.

Had to run the car out to Saturn this morning for repairs… got a pop-up headlight that won’t pop up. The lights are one of the main reasons I bought my ’95 SC2 in October 1994… they make the car look like a miniature Corvette. I’ve always thought the ’91-’95 SC2 was the best-looking car Saturn ever made.

Wasn’t such a big fan of the car this morning, though. They handed me a bill for $404 – $373 for a new motor for the headlight, and another $31 because I told them to go ahead and do the 3,000 mile oil change and inspection so I wouldn’t have to come back. Then they told me they didn’t have the motor in stock and I’d have to bring it in next Tuesday. So I get to come back anyway. Goody.

So I got out of the dealership around lunchtime and realized I was in an area with a large Hispanic population, so I decided to poke around and see if I could find a good Mexican restaurant. And right up the street, at Raleigh-LaGrange and Covington Pike, I found one. They brought me a huge basket of chips and 3 salsas – the traditional red salsa, a hot green tomatillo salsa, and a reddish-brown salsa. They then pointed to the lunch specials on the back, but I wanted something a little more adventurous than the “Speedy Gonzales” (taco, enchilada, and choice of rice or beans) or the “Burrito Especial.”

So I looked over the rest of the menu and ordered a plate with a Gordita on it, figuring it had to be better than Taco Bell’s version… and it was… ground beef and melted cheese between two ground corn patties. Really good, especially with the green sauce spooned on top of it.

I could have been even more adventurous and tried the “lengua” (beef tongue) but decided not to. Maybe next Tuesday.

Back to the car… they inspected it and said that, despite having 145,600 miles and being almost 13 years old, it’s in perfect running condition. I guess if you have to have something break down on a car, a pop-up headlight motor is the kind of thing you want it to be. Looks like the car will be around for a while longer, as I’m in no mood to drop 25 grand for a new car when there’s a perfectly running one (albeit an old one) out in the garage.

Tonight: Beer. Trivia. Waitresses. It’s the trivia team’s last chance to increase our $280 gift certificate total before we have our next party. We’re minus a few members due to July 4 plans, but so are all the other teams… and since we have 20 members, we’re in a better position to withstand a few absences. Hopefully I’ll be reporting on our first-place victory later tonight or in the morning.

If you check the “Discount restaurant gift certificates” menu bar on the left side of my blog, you’ll see that I’ve added a couple of Downtown’s favorite restaurants – EP Delta Kitchen and Bluefin. In each case, you can buy

• $100 face value certificates for $40
• $75 face value certificates for $30
• $50 face value certificates for $20
• $25 face value certificates for $10

Also, for Bluefin, you can buy $10 face value certificates for $3.

There are also new discounts for restaurants in other parts of town – if you check my Memphis Discount Dining website, you’ll see that there are new gift certificate offers for Dish, Blue Fish, Zinnie’s East, several Sekisui locations, Harry’s Detour on South Cooper, Tucker’s, and others. There are over 100 gift certificate offers for Memphis restaurants, so check it out.

For my friends in Little Rock, there’s a Little Rock Discount Dining site as well.

How this works: The links on this blog and on the Discount Dining sites are affiliate links of the national website Restaurant.com, which has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and other media outlets. I don’t recruit restaurants to sign up – the national site does that – but I get a commission when people buy certificates after clicking through from my site’s links.

Is this legit?: These links have been on my sites for months and many of my readers have bought and used the certificates successfully. If I didn’t know for a fact this was 100% legit, there’s no way I’d put my name on it. If you have any doubt whether a restaurant will accept the certificates, by all means I encourage you to call them and ask if they accept Restaurant.com gift certificates.

Please keep in mind that each restaurant has conditions which must be met: In almost all cases the certificates can be used for food only, not alcohol. There may also be minimum purchase amounts, times of day/days of week when they can be redeemed, etc. Please read your restaurant’s conditions carefully before you purchase.

Happy dining!

…whoever it was that suggested I try the Parmesan Garlic wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. Can’t remember who told me about them. This morning I worked for a few hours at a coffee shop, then stopped by BWW for a to-go order on the way home. The Parmesan Garlic wings were awesome. Thanks for suggesting them – normally I wouldn’t have tried anything outside the “hot/spicy” section of the menu without a recommendation.

Let’s see what we have in the ol’ Inbox today.

Subj: che@p OEM soft//are ships //orldwide

//ow, this is cert@inly gre@t news. I //@s just thinking, I //ould like to buy some new soft//ware, @nd I don’t //@nt to spend @ lot of money. @nd it’s @ good thing th@t they ship //orldwide, since their e-mail @ppears to have come from Chin@.

From: Gerardo Arrendondo

Subj: Hi I am 25 yo girl and I am bored. I want to chat tonight.

From: Emmett Holmes

Subj: Hi I am 25 yo girl and I am bored. I want to chat this afternoon.

From: Antony Hunyh

Subj: Hi I am 25 yo girl and I am bored. I want to chat

I guess giving girls very masculine-sounding names was all the rage among people who became new parents in 1982. And Antony needs to learn to use his, um, I mean her, spam software better.

Subj: Give your GF the gift of a larger penis!

You want me to buy penis enlargement for my girlfriend? Um, dude, I don’t know what kinds of women you think I date, but I prefer women WITHOUT penises.

Subj: URGENT PLEASE OPEN THIS MESSAGE. we’ve got what women want and need!

Oh cool, it must be a Tupperware sale!

(Okay, I admit it, I stole that one from Les Nessman on WKRP in Cincinnati.)

Subj: If uniwa is not up, send it to munnari and munnari will get it to uniwa eventually.

Huh?

Good to know munnari is on top of things though.

Subj: SU ATENCION POR FAVOR

Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish. (delete)

Subj: YOU’RE A WINNER PRIZE CONF# xl-17is324106

I won a prize! I won a prize!!! Of course, I’ll need to send them my Social Security number, date of birth, bank card PIN#, and permission to withdraw $599.99(*) from my bank account in order to confirm my identity, but that’s all right – I won a prize!!!

(*) Possible additional fees to accrue.

Subj: Buy Vi@gr@ and Ci@li$! E@sy p@yment and $hipping!

Hey, it looks like the guy who sells cheap OEM software has added a side business. Good for him, there are plenty of ways to make money in today’s global economy.

And that’ll do it for the mail bag today. See you later!

Last night I spent most of the evening on Barton Flats’ rooftop. Got a video of some of the fireworks, which I’ll post later on. After the fireworks, one of my fellow Downtowners came up with a very interesting idea.

“How about a march against panhandling?” he said. He was upset about constantly being panhandled on Beale, and about being swindled by a vagrant posing as a parking attendant. “Everyone down here is sick of it. Let’s have a march along the parade route where they do their begging. It would have to include Beale Street.”

“And it would have to pass by Jack’s Food Store and Easy Way on the Main Street Mall,” I added. “There are always five or six of them out there.”

“And the liquor store at Main and Madison,” said another rooftop attendee. “They hang out there, or in front of the Walgreens across the street.”

Hmmm…. if it got widespread support, a march against panhandling might be a good way to show government leaders how fed up we are all with the problem Downtown.

It’s that time of year again. Every year around the first or second week of July, Downtown Memphis gets some international visitors – gorgeous girls from Eastern Europe who come here on their summer vacation from college. They usually stay until early October. They are legal to work here for up to 4 months – it’s called a J-1 work visa – and they usually get service industry jobs in local restaurants and bars. The most beautiful girls tend to be from Romania, but we’ve also seen Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Serbs and other nationalities.

They’ll likely be coming around to area restaurants, looking for server jobs in the next week or two. In my experience Romanians and other Eastern Europeans tend to be excellent servers (there was one very notable exception, but she’s no longer a student and therefore not eligible to come back). They also tend to draw new customers in, and turn occasional customers into regulars, because they’re so pretty and charming.

So, if you want to spruce up your business, hire some Romanians. Downtown Memphis will thank you.

I headed out to Trolley Tour about 6 yesterday, starting at the northernmost stop, Shelton Clothiers on the Main Street Mall. I’m not a suit-and-tie person but they still had plenty of stuff I would wear – trendy club shirts, casual linen shirts. They also had some wallets and money clips I liked – may go back and buy one next week. Still dealing with the Costanza wallet.

After that I hit the art auction pre-party at the Orpheum, which was PACKED. So packed that I gave up trying to view the artwork and left, after saying hello to fellow blogger Amy W and to blog readers Mendi and Meredith. Meredith had a tube dress on. I forgot to take a pic though.

Walked down to South Main, and for the first time in almost a year I managed to hit every gallery on the tour. Usually I get caught up talking to people and miss half of them. Saw some pieces in Jay Etkin’s gallery that I would have loved to take home, but they were four grand apiece, so no art purchases for me this month.

At 9 I moved on to Earnestine & Hazel’s for Crash Kole and the BlueSouls, which proved to be the high point of my evening. Here are a couple of pics:

I had planned to only stay for a few minutes, but extended my stay at E&H when the band turned out to be FANTASTIC. Their name describes their music well – bluesy, soulful rock. They played “Who Do You Love,” some Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile,” lots of other good stuff. It was loud and rough and perfect for the venue – the music blended in with the smell of soul burgers, the grimy walls full of pictures of celebrities. I stayed over an hour and when they went on break, I walked up the street and recruited a friend to come back and see them.

Attn Sleep Out Louie’s refugees: The next time Crash Kole and the BlueSouls play E&H, I am DRAGGING your asses out. They are that damn good.

So I walked back into E&H with my friend Chuck, and since the band was still on break I showed him the upstairs, which he had never seen. I told him about the building’s history as a brothel. “So you mean, 60 years ago, this is where gentlemen came to pay for some quality time with a lady?” he asked.

“60? More like 20,” I responded. E&H was still a brothel into the 1990s.

While upstairs at E&H, a fellow Downtowner offered us a tour of his condo above the Recording Academy on South Main. I snapped this pic of the South Main District from his roof:

Afterward, I got a ride back up to the Saucer, but it was just stupid packed so I didn’t stay. I headed to EP Delta Kitchen, equally packed. Hung out with some friends on the patio, but after they left I started to tire out… went downstairs, where regular blog reader L told me there was “good dancing tonight” and I really wanted to stay, but I was hitting the point of exhaustion. So I wandered home. Good thing I did too, because one of my consulting clients had an emergency that I had to troubleshoot at 8 in the morning.

Heading out… the tentative plan for today is 1) Flying Saucer; 2) Barton Flats rooftop; 3) my own rooftop; 4) walk down to Main and Jefferson to view Lantana Projects’ exhibit; 5) probably back to my own rooftop (maybe Barton Flats) to view fireworks; 6), 7), 8) and beyond… who knows. Most likely I’ll end up at EP’s again.

Don’t forget, today’s the last day of Tube Top Month. Not that I discourage the wearing of tube tops after today, but this is really a good occasion to send the month out with style. And what says “style” more than a tube top!

Outta here… maybe I’ll see you out tonight.

One of the most unique musical acts I’ve ever seen is coming back to Memphis – the Sauce Boss, at Blues City Cafe Wednesday, July 18 – Saturday, July 21. Slide guitarist The Sauce Boss sings songs about gumbo while he cooks gumbo on stage. At the end of the show, the gumbo is ready and everyone eats.

I saw this guy at Sunset Symphony 2001 – he stole the show. Put this one on your calendar now. He has CDs, recipes and hot sauce on his website.

Sunset Symphony 2001 – if I remember correctly, that’s the year that those one-shoulder tops were a big deal, a precursor to tube tops making a comeback the following year.