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Remember the “telephone” game from elementary school? The teacher would tell a student on the front row a “secret,” and that student would pass the secret on, whispering it into the ear of the kid in the desk behind them, repeating until each person had heard and passed the secret all the way through the classroom. The last in line would then tell the class what the secret was. In every case, the message had been misheard, wrongly told, or changed along the way, turning the original into something different. The truth morphed as the message went through 30-some-odd children, and it showed us youngins you can’t always believe what you hear, and this was how rumors spread. Today, a much larger game of telephone, via the internet, is being played.
This is especially apparent in comments sections on social media, particularly pertaining to the political landscape. Or even in the “news” itself. Everything is funneled through filtered algorithms, biases, and, these days, even AI trickery, making the actual truth nearly impossible to pinpoint. For example, regarding the recent protests in L.A., there were two different basic stories: 1) These were successful peaceful protests, and 2) These were chaotic and destructive riots caused by the protesters themselves. A peek into that rabbit hole could lead to other strange places: i.e., the rioters were paid MAGA actors, sent to escalate the situation, or there were no riots at all. Deception is too easy, and so is believing something you already want to believe. Confirmation bias does not a fact make, yet someone will take a bit of info they scrolled past online, without even reading the story or doing any research, as fact — and pass that on to everyone they know. Every share, every retelling changing ever so slightly until we don’t know what is what. I wasn’t in L.A., so I can’t tell you with absolute certainty what happened. But plenty of people out there, from Memphis to Nowhere, USA, have come to their own conclusions based on what they’ve seen and heard in their echo chambers.
As a test, my boyfriend and I compared some of the news-adjacent info filling our separate social feeds, and we found a lot of contradictions. Stories in his feed supported the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was painted as nothing but a criminal, a gang member and human trafficker. Mine, however, showed a person wrongfully taken, and people working diligently and passionately to bring an innocent family man home. This is but one example of current events being skewed in one direction or another to sway the people. What you deduce depends, to some degree, on your previously held beliefs. Many lump all illegal immigrants into one category: criminals. And that is clearly not the case. Even now, Trump is backtracking on his deportation crackdown to exclude some service employees, like those working at hotels, farms, meatpacking plants, and restaurants. So the illegal immigrants who do dirty work, who “serve” us, can stay? But we were told they were all bad! Where is the logic?
In a nonpolitical example of how misinformation spreads, take this past weekend’s unsuccessful Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. The four-day fest was canceled on its second day due to rain and flooding in the venue’s campgrounds. I watched the drama unfold in a Facebook group, where reactions ranged from disappointment to full-blown anger. Some insisted this was Live Nation’s plan all along — to cancel after a full day of events so they could get an insurance payout. Others gave the organizers the benefit of the doubt, saying they had no other choice but to call it for everyone’s safety. People vehemently argued both sides. “I heard xyz!” “Well, I heard this and that!” In the end, none of us truly know the reasoning or motives, if any. Sorry to rain on your parades.
Speaking of parades, while the president’s big birthday bash went on last weekend — to the tune of an estimated $40 million in tax dollars — millions took to U.S. streets to protest against him. From the videos circling, the crowd at the Army’s 250th anniversary celebration looked more like one at Overton Park on a Sunday afternoon, surely not what Trump had hoped for. One clip showed a tank slowly screeching its way down the road, no cheers to be heard over the chalkboard-scratching squeal. It appeared as though someone needed to lead the defeated-looking Trump to bed for a nap. But, for the record, I wasn’t there.
In today’s world, with so much information control, conspiracy theories, and algorithms programmed to stir the pot, it’s more important than ever to do your own research, check sources, and do your best to discern truth from fiction. Don’t be a victim of the telephone game.
Maybe I’m suffering from political fatigue. Maybe many of you are, too. Now, with even more tumult stirring here and abroad, what are we supposed to be but exhausted? My boyfriend jokingly asked me last weekend, “So what are you wearing to World War III?” My response? “I’m probably just going to go lay down.”
Shara Clark shara@memphisflyer.com
www.mosdkids.org
www.mosdkids.org
fly-by
MEM ernet
Memphians joined the national No Kings movement Saturday at the corner of Poplar and Highland. Here are some of our favorite images. Check the Memphis subreddit for a ton more.
{ WEEK THAT WAS
By Flyer staff
Questions, Answers + Attitude
Edited by Toby Sells
Lee’s Food Cuts, Crime Labs, & Budgets
Shelby kids cut from summer food, report vouches for lab here, and group wants a “moral” budget.
LEE CUTS FOOD FOR KIDS
For the rst time in ve years, the majority of low-income students across Tennessee will not receive supplemental grocery funds this summer to help bridge the months when they aren’t receiving school meals.
Last week, Tennessee sent one-time $120 payments to an estimated 25,000 lowincome students in 15 counties to help pay for summer grocery costs. Tennessee’s largest counties, including Shelby and Davidson, were excluded from the program.
PHOTO: JAKUB ŻERDZICKI | UNSPLASH
e Moral Budget Coalition has asked the city and the county for increased funding in housing, transit, youth services, public safety, and more.
e program is a signi cant rollback of Tennessee’s previous summer food bene ts initiative, which served an estimated 700,000 students across the state each summer since 2020 with the help of a state-federal partnership.
at program, known as Summer EBT or SUN Bucks, ended this year when Governor Bill Lee declined to continue the partnership, e ectively rejecting an estimated $75 million in federal funds that provided the summer grocery bene ts. Lee did not want to pay the administrative costs of running the federal program and announced a smaller state-run e ort without federal dollars.
However, it’s now costing Tennessee $3 million to distribute bene ts in 15 counties, while under the federal program Tennessee was responsible for around $5 million in administrative costs to serve 95 counties.
REPORT ON CRIME LABS
e Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) found that upgrading current Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) crime lab facilities could help in expediting evidence testing. ey also recommend potentially expanding crime lab services throughout West Tennessee.
Even though TBI has recruited 50 forensic scientists to address the surge in evidence testing, a dra report from TACIR shows that the lack of physical space has limited timely turnarounds.
Delays in evidence testing in the Eliza Fletcher case caused public outcry, prompting TACIR to work on the report. Cleotha Abston, the man who pleaded guilty to
killing Fletcher, had been investigated in a separate sexual assault; however, the Senate Democratic Caucus said that the DNA evidence “sat untested due to backlogs.”
TBI’s median turnaround time exceeded the national median in almost every category, the report said. It said turnaround times in sexual assault cases decreased from August 2022 to December 2024. But it saw an increase in analyzing evidence in biological forensics in violent cases.
A bill to build a crime lab in Shelby County failed in the Tennessee General Assembly this year.
GROUP ASKS FOR “MORAL” BUDGETING
As city and county o cials prepare to nalize their budgets, community advocates are asking for additional support in underrepresented areas.
e Moral Budget Coalition has formulated its ideal proposal a er talking to di erent community members and partners. ese ideas are proposed in hopes of making the community “thriving, healthy, and whole.”
e organization asked for increased funding in housing, transit, youth services, public safety, and more. Improvements include additional funding for the Memphis Area Transit Authority to “restore pre-2024 service levels” and expansion of youth mental health services.
O cials are requesting a budget of $69.5 million from the city and $49.5 million from the county. Tennessee Lookout contributed to this report.
Visit the News Blog at memphis yer.com for fuller versions of these stories and more local news.
The Hot Tamale Capital of the World invites you to enjoy an eclectic collection of events and entertaining stops.
» MAY « Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Festival, including Frog Fest and Leland Craw sh Festival LelandChamber.com
Future Tour Golf Championship
» JUNE « Delta Soul & Celebrity Golf Event facebook.com/DeltaSoulGolf
Lake Washington’s “Straight O The Lake” Music Festival
» AUGUST « MS Delta Duck Boat Races at Lake Washington
» SEPTEMBER « Delta Blues & Heritage Festival deltabluesms.org
Gumbo Nationals greenvillespeedway.net
Sam Chatmon Blues Fest facebook.com/SamChatmonBlues
Stephone Hughes Old Time Gospel Fest
» OCTOBER « Delta Hot Tamale Fest facebook.com/ DeltaHotTamaleFestival
Highway 61 Blues Festival highway61blues.com
Monuments on Main Street Historic Greenville Cemetery Tour facebook.com/Monuments-on-Main-Street
YMCA Cotton Classic 10K/5K Run racesonline.com/ymca-cotton-classic
» NOVEMBER « Roll’n on the River Car Show facebook.com/redwinecarshow
» DECEMBER « Christmas on Deer Creek LelandChamber.com
Memphis Air Gets an ‘F’ {
CITY REPORTER
By Kailynn Johnson
Group alerts feds on the city’s “unhealthy” ozone air quality, especially with xAI and TVA.
Memphis leaders have partnered with regional policy experts and advocates to continue ghting for cleaner air standards, just as the summer months bring heightened risks from the city’s smog.
Last week, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) led a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asking the agency to redesignate Memphis as an area that does not meet ozone air quality standards. e ling was done on behalf of Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP); Young, Gi ed & Green; and the Sierra Club.
e ling noted that smog increases the likelihood of respiratory illnesses, emphasizing that Memphis has been designated a “national asthma capital” by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Most recently, the American Lung Association gave Shelby County an “F” for ozone pollution.
Representative Justin J. Pearson said Memphis’ declining air safety conditions aren’t a “coincidence” but rather “cause and e ect.” Polluters like xAI and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) are contributing to the smog problem, Pearson said, “and yet, local health o cials have failed to act. Not only did they miss the EPA’s deadline to submit a pollution reduction plan, they have turned their backs on families struggling to breathe.”
e SELC is asking the EPA to exercise its authority under the Clean Air Act to determine that Memphis is in violation of the federal standard limiting the amount of ozone pollution allowed where air might potentially be inhaled by the public.
“ e last four years of air monitoring data show that the Memphis metro
area is violating national smog standards,” SELC claimed in a statement. “Recent data shows that the problem is getting worse — not better.”
Caroline Cress, SELC senior attorney, said they have been tracking Memphis’ ozone issues for a while, speci cally how local agencies have been addressing the issue. ey’ve also been advocating for the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) to take “swi er” action in addressing this issue.
“Ideally, the local government agency would have acted a long time ago to prevent the area from slipping into this violation of the federal standard to begin with,” Cress said. “ ey have been participating in voluntary programs that EPA facilitates.”
PHOTO: SAHEJ BRAR | UNSPLASH Group says air quality violates federal law.
“Local health officials have failed to act.”
Cress said ling the petition was their way of intervening a er noticing a lack of urgency from local governing authorities, with SELC reaching out to the EPA to pursue federal oversight of air quality.
Speaking of xAI, Cress added that “their facility emits a lot of pollutants that react with heat and sunlight to form [smog], which makes [xAI’s presence] particularly egregious: ey
came to town, set up shop, and started running these gas re turbines without a permit — which was required — when the air quality in Memphis was already unhealthy.”
e petition also mentioned that the operation of xAI’s gas turbines have further complicated this issue, with the project expected to “operate certain voluntary air pollution controls.” Cress said Memphis’ air quality problems predate xAI, but their timing intensi es air threats.
Cress said the next steps are for the EPA to review and respond to their petition. In the meantime, SELC is hoping to persuade local government to take the air quality issue more seriously and take action to “reduce emissions.”
POLITICS By Jackson Baker
‘Ready to Rumble’?
Budget-wise, both city and county are pushing the deadline.
As the calendar makes perfectly clear, July 1st, the beginning of scal year 2026, is just around the corner, and the budgets of neither the city of Memphis nor Shelby County are in nal form to everyone’s satisfaction.
e city’s situation is complicated by successive acts of compromise by Mayor Paul Young and the city council which may have made gures add up technically but may be in con ict with the city’s existing nancial obligations.
e matter became public via a statement from the law rm of Snider & Horner characterizing the Memphis Fire Fighters Association Local 1784, which the rm represents, as being “very disturbed” by “what appears to be a blatant breach” of the city’s standing agreement with the union.
e county commission scheduled two emergency meetings this week — one on Monday to work on outlays of concern to the sheri ’s department, another on Wednesday to examine a variety of other projects and amendments competing for scal attention.
Meanwhile, controversy continues as to whether County Mayor Lee Harris’ pro ered tax rate of $2.73 is in conformity with the state’s established base tax rate of $2.69.
e state rate is set at a level meant to ensure that the amount of revenue raised will not exceed the amount that would have been generated under the current tax rate of $3.39, which was set prior to the most recent county reappraisal. is is the so-called “windfall rule.”
Critics of Harris’ tax rate say it amounts to a 4 percent property tax increase. Harris insists otherwise.
e issue has to do with a formal compact achieved a year ago between the city and the re ghters granting a 5 percent pay increase for both scal 2025 and scal 2026.
e problem is that the budget approved last week by the council authorizes an across-the-board pay raise in scal 2026 for all city employees amounting to only 3 percent. And this budget seemingly ignores the prior carryover raise of 5 percent for the re ghters.
Says the law rm: “ e pay rise for Memphis re ghters was expressly agreed to in writing … and literally signed o on by the mayor, chief operating o cer, chief human resources o cer, and city attorney. … If the city is blatantly ignoring what they agreed to do in writing for its re ghters how can these re ghters — or the citizens of Memphis — trust them?”
e statement goes on to threaten a lawsuit: “We will be expecting the city to get this corrected before the deadline of July 1 … [to] do the right thing, honor their written commitments so that legal options will not have to be explored. … We’re ready to rumble.”
To underscore its dissatisfaction, Snider & Horner posted on its Facebook page a mocked-up version of the re ghters’ logo (see image).
For its part, the county government is still very much in the bargaining process, with compromises yet to be reached.
• Meanwhile, the ranks of contenders for the o ce of Shelby County mayor in 2026 got one more formal entry last week — the long expected one of Criminal Court Clerk Heidi Kuhn. ere is no surprise in the fact of Kuhn’s announcement, although the manner of it — speci cally, the optics — have occasioned some ba ement in the political community.
e announcement by Kuhn, a sometime professional model, juxtaposes a brightly lit version of her facial image against a deeply dark background symbolizing the gloom of what she designates, without speci cs, as the county’s ongoing “crisis” and promises “hope with Heidi.”
Gotta say, that one is di erent.
PHOTO: SNIDER & HORNER, PLLC | FACEBOOK Fire ghters ask for a previously agreed-upon pay raise.
By Katie Stephenson
Improve Your Outlook
Five ways a nancial plan can help.
Most people realize the importance of saving and investing for the future, but only 32 percent of Americans have a written nancial plan in place to help them prioritize their goals and track their progress.
If you’ve been putting o establishing a nancial plan, you may want to reconsider. Following are ve ways a comprehensive nancial plan can help improve your nancial outlook.
1. A nancial plan serves as map to guide you toward achieving your nancial goals.
One of the bene ts of creating a personal nancial plan is that it identi es and prioritizes your goals and objectives. Achieving major goals such as planning for retirement, paying for a child’s college education, making a large purchase, paying down debt, etc. requires focus and determination. A nancial plan can guide your decision-making and coordinate the various elements of your nancial life to help ensure they’re working together toward achieving your goals.
helps you build wealth but can also help you protect it. If not properly planned for, risks such as a medical emergency, an accident, a lawsuit, or a natural disaster can quickly jeopardize everything you’ve worked so hard to accomplish.
A thorough and well-designed nancial plan will include personalized insurance and asset protection strategies to help protect your wealth and loved ones from unexpected risks.
4. A nancial plan can guide your investment strategy.
Without a nancial plan in place, it can be di cult to determine whether your investment strategy meets your ever-evolving needs and goals. Instead, a well-cra ed plan recognizes that your investments play a crucial role in supporting you as you navigate the di erent stages of your nancial life. By having a nancial plan in place, you can implement long-term investment strategies that allow you to take advantage of opportunities during periods of volatility while also protecting your assets against loss during market downturns.
Have a written
plan in place to prioritize goals and track progress.
2. A nancial plan can help you feel more con dent about your future. A study conducted by Charles Schwab indicated that 54 percent of people with a nancial plan feel con dent they’ll be able to reach their nancial goals, yet only 18 percent of those without a plan have the same level of con dence. Creating a comprehensive nancial plan to guide your decision-making can be a big step toward helping you feel more con dent and in control of your nancial future.
3. A nancial plan can assist in protecting your family and managing your risk.
A comprehensive nancial plan not only
5. A nancial plan can assist you in leaving a nancial legacy. If your goals include leaving a nancial legacy for the people and causes that matter most to you, it’s important to have a proper plan in place. Incorporating estate planning as part of your overall nancial strategy can help ensure your assets are distributed according to your wishes and in the most tax-e cient manner possible.
Your nancial plan can also help you identify opportunities to support charitable causes both during your lifetime and a er your death, such as through a donor-advised fund or charitable trust.
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PHOTO: TIERRA MALLORCA | UNSPLASH
nancial
MY HEALTH is our health
Since welcoming little one, life expanded while my world contracted.
More complexity, less time
Every day I advocate for my baby whether it’s at daycare or the doctor’s office.
And every day, I push off one thing—my own health.
Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer of new moms, with risks can last for months post-partum.
So, I’m taking action and starting the conversation, with not just my doctor, but with other moms I know, too.
Because not only do I want to be a great mom I want to be a mom for a very long time.
Locally supported by
LARGE
By
Bruce VanWyngarden
No Faux King
Last Saturday was a good start.
Like millions of Americans, I ventured out to my local “No Kings” rally last Saturday. e Memphis version was held at the corner of Poplar and Highland, which to be honest, is a less than ideal site for a rally of 4,000 people. I get that it’s the spot where a group of dedicated folks goes to protest every Saturday, but the nature of the site — situated at the corner of two busy commercial streets — does not lend itself to a cohesive large rally.
But enough kvetching. It was an inspiring event, lled with humans of many ages and genres holding an enormous number of clever, provocative, and incisive signs. It was for sure a lot more fun than Taco Donny’s Birthday Dirge in Washington, D.C. — and probably better attended.
with no moral center, a feeble old man in an ill- tting suit who bends to the will of those who own him. Last week, we saw how Trump’s patrons in Big Agriculture and the hospitality sector got him to back o deportations of farm and hotel workers. Seems the CEOs are not amused that they don’t have anybody to harvest their crops or clean their rooms. Of course, it never crosses Fearless Leader’s mind that if he really wanted to stop illegal immigration, all he would have to do is start arresting and charging the employers who hire undocumented workers. But that won’t happen because employers give politicians money, and demonizing the working poor is much better politics.
Stopping the deportation of farm and hotel workers will make things worse for brown people just walking into Home Depot or school or church, or to their court hearings, where the latest trickery by ICE is to “drop charges” on someone who’s come to court for a minor o ense and then corral them and haul them away outside the courtroom.
It needs to keep happening. e momentum swung for one day, and you could feel it, coming as it did on the heels of weeks of actions taken by this administration to intimidate and separate Americans into competing subgroups.
It’s the same song and dance that’s been used by tyrants for centuries: Create villains, evil “others,” in this case, a race of people who are predisposed to eat cats and dogs, and murder and rape, and who — men, women, and children — need to be deported. Also, we need to be afraid of people who dare to love their own gender, and people from “bad” countries who are taking jobs and privileges away from good Americans. Keep them out! Lock them up! Send them away! Only I can protect you, says the tyrant. (And only I, says the subtext, can pick you up o the street and take you away. Be afraid.)
at’s why last Saturday was so important. And why it needs to keep happening. Nothing scares a tyrant more than millions of people in the streets celebrating their freedom and making fun of those who attempt to rule by intimidation. ey don’t call Trump “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) for nothing. He is a coward
Conservatives and moderates get upset when analogies are made between what’s happening in the United States and what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. ey accuse progressives of unnecessarily “escalating the rhetoric.”
My friends, the rhetoric needs to be escalated. Heavily armed, masked, nonuniformed men are sweeping up people o the streets of our country without warrants, without a badge, without any justi cation for doing so except for the fact that said people have brown skin and might possibly not have proper immigration status. e proper terminology for these men is “secret police.”
e people they pick up are o en “disappeared” — sent to corporate-owned detention centers or foreign prisons, or summarily deported without due process. Here’s how Merriam-Webster de nes a concentration camp: “a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or con ned under armed guard.”
Sound familiar? It should. e United States of America now has secret police, and concentration camps where people are held without access to the legal system. It’s unconstitutional. It’s immoral. It’s outrageous. And it’s on us to x it. Last Saturday was a good start.
PHOTO: LAURA JEAN HOCKING Protesters gathered at the corner of Poplar and Highland for No Kings.
Unbearable Familiarity
’ve seen this story before. e images coming out of Los Angeles — militarized streets, protesters met with force, another round of justi cations for escalation — hit me with the dull weight of déjà vu. It’s not that I’m shocked. It’s that I remember.
My political awakening happened in California. I was 13 years old when I saw the Rodney King video. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I asked my father how it could be possible — how people with badges and nightsticks could commit such violence and walk away unpunished. e following year, the city exploded. e 1992 uprising etched itself into my memory — not as lawlessness but as outrage born of injustice and mismanagement. I’ve spent years studying those events, learning what we could’ve done better. We should’ve de-escalated; we should’ve listened; we should’ve shown restraint.
But we didn’t. And we still aren’t.
sualty. And it signals to law enforcement: Anything goes.
Meanwhile, the politics behind these deployments reveal everything about our national priorities. I’ll never forget January 6, 2021 — when a violent mob stormed the Capitol and Trump did nothing. No tear gas, no troops, no swi and visible response. We were told to be patient. Contrast that with the armored vehicles that meet peaceful immigrants’ rights protests or the overwhelming force deployed in Black and brown neighborhoods when people demand accountability. e hypocrisy isn’t just galling — it’s deadly.
And Americans are noticing.
A majority of Americans have consistently opposed mass deportations. Overall, Trump’s approval has plummeted — the lowest 100-day rating of any modern president. e New York Times reports that 66 percent of voters describe Trump’s second term as “chaotic,” and 59 percent as “scary.” ese aren’t just immigration gures — they’re indictments of a cruelty-as-policy approach. People are not just dissatis ed — they’re alarmed. We protest because we still believe in democracy. Dissent is not a threat; it’s a patriotic obligation. We demand that the laborers, caregivers, coaches, teachers, and neighbors among us — regardless of citizenship status — be treated as the human beings they are, not threats. e lie that they are terrorists must end.
NORTH MISSISSIPPI
Years later, I found myself in Cleveland, marching peacefully to protest the killing of George Floyd. I wasn’t near any confrontation or property damage, but tear gas was deployed indiscriminately. e burn in my eyes and throat lingered for hours. Despite decades of practicing and preaching nonviolence, I felt a rage stir in me that I had forgotten. I didn’t act on it, but I understood in that moment how state aggression can turn even the most peaceful among us toward hopelessness or fury. I remembered the gra ti from ’92: “You did this.”
Escalation invites escalation. It’s predictable. It’s avoidable. And it happens anyway. e National Guard is not trained in the nuance of civilian crowd control. eir presence o en exacerbates tension. It tells the public: We are at war with ourselves. It tells communities: We do not trust you — truth is always a ca-
When protected speech is met with troops, when dissent is painted as chaos, and when a government rewards violence with silence and punishes peace with brutality, we are no longer in a democracy — we are teetering on the edge and sliding to something else.
I can’t watch what’s happening in Los Angeles because I’ve watched it before. I’ve felt it. I’ve tasted the tear gas. I’ve studied the history. And I know where the road we are on leads. We can still choose a di erent one. But that choice will require courage — not from the protesters, who are already showing it, but from those in power who must nally listen, and honor the oaths they swore.
No more lies. No more hypocrisy. No more silence in the face of force.
Wim Laven, Ph.D., syndicated by PeaceVoice, teaches courses in political science and con ict resolution.
PHOTO: BRPHOTO | DREAMSTIME.COM
Riot police use rubber bullets during anti-ICE protest in Downtown L.A.
Historic Hernando, MS,
From NY to BOM
Geo Calkins has maintained the title of Best Sports Columnist in the Flyer’s Best of Memphis awards since 2007.
eo Calkins, the wellknown sports columnist, is not a Memphis native. Shocker, right? He was actually born and raised in Bu alo, New York, and grew up in the small town of Hamburg. By the age of 12, Calkins discovered his love for sports.
“I think a lot of people who love sports fell in love with it as a kid. And so, it still connects me to the 12-year-old boy who fell in love with the Bu alo Bills once upon a time,” says Calkins. But what inspired him to pursue a career as a sports columnist? Because of his love for sports, he would immediately ip to and read the sports section in the e Bu alo News. He always said to himself that he wanted to be just like the guy in the newspaper who wrote sports stories.
nist and hosts his podcast, e Geo Calkins Show. roughout his career, Calkins has received several awards commemorating his hard work, including the Gary Lundy Sports Writer of the Year award and ve Green Eyeshade awards (the nation’s oldest contest that recognizes the best journalists in the Southeastern region). Calkins was even named best columnist in the country ve times by the Associated Press.
Calkins attended Harvard University and was the editor-in-chief for e Harvard Independent. He even worked for the Miami Herald. One would think Calkins would jump straight into the career of journalism, but he began to feel his dream of becoming a sports journalist was a little far-fetched. Instead, he decided to enroll in law school at Harvard and became a lawyer. Shortly therea er, he ran into a huge problem with the job: He absolutely hated it. “I worked at a big 500-lawyer law rm. And I just didn’t care who won, who lost. I wasn’t invested in the result. e process itself bored the hell out of me,” Calkins says. “So, I thought, what would I rather do? I’d rather be telling stories.”
And telling stories is what Calkins has been doing since moving to Memphis in 1996. He started his career as a sports columnist at e Commercial Appeal and worked there until 2018, the same year the Daily Memphian was founded. Today, Calkins works for the Daily Memphian as a sports colum-
With the many awards he has received on a national level, it’s no surprise Calkins is a perennial winner here in Memphis with the Memphis Flyer’s Best of Memphis awards. “I really feel like Memphis has become [a] home for me. It feels like I’m the Huey’s hamburger of journalists,” Calkins says. But what’s his secret? How has he been able to keep the title of best sports columnist for years doing what he loves? It’s quite simple actually: dedication and never deserting the community that has always believed in and valued his work. “Well, rst, there’s a lot of other wonderful journalists in Memphis, and there have been over the course of my career working for all kinds of publications,” Calkins says. “But the main thing is, I try to connect with the city; that’s sort of the job — to connect with readers in the city.”
Aside from connecting with readers, Calkins stresses the importance of impact as well. Even though writing stories related to sports is Calkins’ expertise, he believes his work impacts Memphis tremendously. “Whatever our jobs call upon us to do, we all should try to have an impact in some way to try to elevate [Memphis]. [People] begin to trust what you say. ey begin to understand where you’re coming from,” says Calkins. “And only then can you have an impact on people — by proving, day in and day out, that you’re putting in the work, such that your words are to be taken seriously.”
And making an impact on the Memphis community is what Calkins will continue to do for years to come. “For Memphis to vote me as their favorite journalist for all these years suggests that maybe I’ve been able to contribute something to a place that has been so important to me,” says Calkins. “I’m honored.”
PHOTO: HOUSTON COFIELD | DAILY MEMPHIAN
Geo Calkins
Toby Sells
What ever Happened To …
Big projects come and go in Memphis — new buildings, new street designs, new public amenities.
For some of them, leaders eventually grab big scissors and cut oversized ribbons, smile into cameras while a crowd applauds. Some fade, like e Clipper. Remember e Clipper? It was to be a huge skyscraper hotel/o ce/retail project near the FedExForum. It was announced on its website in February 2019. en news about e Clipper on that site stopped in July 2019.
Some projects, though, make us ask, “What ever happened to XYZ?”
A few years ago, we ran an occasional series called “What Ever Happened To …,” in which we updated some of those projects, especially splashy bike and pedestrian projects that every Memphian could enjoy.
It turns out that a er our updates then, we still need updates now. For them, we asked city and county leaders for help. ey got to work over a week and a half, checking in with many di erent departments that then had to check in with so many contractors. In the end, they provided us with a pretty good update to satisfy our burning question: “What Ever Happened To …”
We’ll start with a couple of examples of completed projects.
I-55/Crump Boulevard Interchange
• Announced: 2015
• Status: complete
e Flyer started writing about the I-55/Crump Interchange project back when it
We catch up on a decade-old plan for Cobblestone Landing and other city projects seemingly lost to time.
was announced in May 2015. ( ough public hearings on the idea began in 2009.) By the end of July 2015, Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) o cials punted the plan for a year. Opposition rose as the plan called for the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge (the Old Bridge) to be closed for nine months, redirecting all of its tra c to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge (the New Bridge).
e old cloverleaf design was built in the mid-1960s. It was meant to handle 28,500 vehicles daily, with 8 percent truck tra c, according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). In 2015, tra c averaged 60,330 vehicles daily, with 26 percent trucks. By 2035, the interchange will see 84,500 vehicles per day, according to FHWA projections.
Mayor AC Wharton called it “malfunction junction.” ey remained resolute to x it. e plan returned in 2022 and would only close the Old Bridge for two weeks. Construction began that year. And, as we know now, the new interchange opened to tra c in May.
Peabody Avenue Paving Project
• Announced: 2018
• Status: complete
We reported back in 2018 that “the city has plans to give the 1.7-mile stretch of Peabody from Bellevue to Cooper a makeover that includes fewer lanes for cars. … e street will be resurfaced and bike lanes, along with tra c-calming con gurations, will be installed.”
At the time, public meetings were scheduled to present two di erent designs. One design would have put the bike lanes right against the curb and parking spots on the road to act as a bu er to protect cyclists. As we know now, the design that won put bike lanes out against moving tra c.
Questions and opposition to the plan slowed the process somewhat.
e plan put Peabody on a “road diet,”
reducing its two car lanes to one and adding the bike lane. Residents worried the plan might congest tra c and add confusion.
e paving project was completed in 2022. Aside from smoothing out the rough road deck, its bike lanes were to help connect bike lanes to Martin Luther King, which it did, and to Cooper, which did not have bike lanes at the time. It did that, too, once Cooper’s bike lanes opened in 2022.
However, all of those bike lanes were hoped to reach farther east to, one day, connect Downtown and Shelby Farms Park. To do that, though, the city had to build “the Shelby Farms Greenline bridge that will extend the Greenline to Tobey Park.”
Greenline Connector from Tillman to Cooper
• Announced: 2016
• Status: Construction could begin in 2026
is is a three-project endeavor that aims to nally connect the Shelby Farms Greenline to Midtown and beyond, with improvements to what one city planning map calls “ e Last Mile.”
e rst project would connect the COVER STORY By
With this and more, John Schroer, the TDOT commissioner at the time, called the interchange “the worst interchange we have in the state of Tennessee.” en-Memphis
Greenline where it now ends at Tillman to the end of Flicker Street at Union. To do this requires a second project, a new bike and pedestrian bridge over train tracks. e third project would connect that bike and pedestrian path from Flicker to Cooper Street, which then hooks up to bike lanes all the way to Downtown, Big River Crossing, and, eventually, Arkansas.
Since this idea was announced, three di erent people (and one orange guy twice) have occupied the White House, Kanye West came out as a Nazi (and recanted his Nazism), and Elon Musk, who publicly gave the Nazi salute twice, built a supercomputer on President’s Island.
Here’s how the rst two projects were described by the City of Memphis Bikeway and Pedestrian Program’s website in October 2016: “ e scope of this project is from the Greenline’s current terminus at Tillman Street to Flicker Street. Due to the necessity of crossing an active railroad, the city will construct a bicycle and pedestrian bridge in between the Union Avenue and Poplar Avenue viaducts.”
When I checked last week, the
Greenline still ended at Tillman, where a grassy patch leads to a wall of dense, green brush. No signs of construction were apparent on the Flicker end, either. However, it’s likely that city o cials are waiting on word about the bridge project before they start clearing that connecting path.
When we checked back in on this project in 2022, a city o cial said the federal funds for the project came with a lot of red tape. Nicholas Oyler, then the manager of the city’s bike and pedestrian program, said the feds required a ton of environmental review for the project. Because the bridge would go over those train tracks, it added another level of scrutiny and boxes to check. Back then, planning and design was underway thanks to some environmental clearances. Oyler predicted construction could begin as soon as 2023.
Now, however, city o cials said they hope to submit plans for the bridge to TDOT by year’s end. If approved, construction could begin in the rst half of 2026, they said.
Once that project is complete, the nal project — the Shelby Farms
Greenline Midtown Connector — would then pick up at a trailhead on Flicker and run west to Cooper.
Originally, this connector would have pushed through Tobey Park and into Liberty Park (what was called the Mid-South Fairgrounds when the plan was announced). A city website said in 2021, though, that o cials were mulling other possible routes in a larger area that spans Cooper to Flicker and Avery to Central.
PHOTOS: (LEFT) CITY OF MEMPHIS, (BELOW) TOBY
A bike-and-pedestrian-friendly crossing was announced in 2014 for Cooper across Poplar and into Overton Park. ere’s no construction timeline for the project.
Cooper-Poplar Connector to Overton Park
• Announced: 2014
One rendering from the City of Memphis Bikeway and Pedestrian Program website shows a neat-o bridge over East Parkway (using the rail line there) to connect at Harbert. But it’s unclear if it’ll ever materialize.
City o cials did not give any dates or solid timelines for this project.
“ is project is still in the early concept and design stages, and the city is waiting for the go-ahead from TDOT to o cially get started,” city o cials said. “It would extend the Shelby Farms Greenline from Flicker Street to a spot in Midtown that’s still being decided.”
• Status: nal design due in September, no construction timeline Announcements for the Cooper-Poplar Connector — the project to make a bike-and-pedestrian-friendly crossing from Cooper across Poplar and into Overton Park — came as early as 2014, the same year (spoiler alert) Jo rey was killed o on Game of rones. e need for the connector arose in a 2013 study that said “it is dangerous and uncomfortable for pedestrians” walking to, from, or along the perimeter of the park. It was also “di cult” for cyclists to cross North Parkway, East Parkway,
continued on page 16
SELLS
PHOTOS: CITY OF MEMPHIS Construction for “ e Last Mile” of the Greenline could begin in the rst half of 2026 if plans are approved.
or Poplar to get to the park. Bike and pedestrian improvements, the study said, “are long overdue for the most prominent park in the city park system. ese improvements are also driven by the inconsistent condition of bike/pedestrian facilities in the park vicinity and strong community interest in this project.”
City o cials said the project got o cially underway in 2016, when Harambe memes were inescapable online. A design consultant began work in 2017, the year that sparked the #MeToo movement. And the federal environmental review of the project was completed in 2020, when everyone was talking about Tiger King
When we checked in on this project in 2022, the city was prepping Cooper for bike lanes. ose were to connect Poplar to crosswalks, a protected bike crossing at the tra c signal, a new landing pad on the park side for bikes and pedestrians, and a new path that was to connect to the park’s trail system.
“Once this plaza and that connection goes in, it will be made more seamless and it’ll feel a lot safer getting across,” Oyler said at the time.
Here again, he said the federal funds tied to the project and a surprise environmental review from the state slowed the work. At the time, he expected to break ground on the project in mid-2023.
“Good things take time,” reads a quote from author and life coach Sanhita Baruah. “Great things take a little longer.” It’s a quote recently used o en in Downtown Neighborhood Association’s emails on its many projects, including bringing music back to Mud Island.
Here, though, everyone knew the Wolf River Greenway would take a little longer. e thing was ambitious from the jump.
Almost as soon as the Wolf River Conservancy was formed 40 years ago, its leaders envisioned a 12-foot-wide trail across Shelby County that would roughly follow the river and eventually connect Mud Island to Germantown and Collierville. Phases of the trail have opened over the decades, and once it’s complete, it will connect 22 neighborhoods over 26 miles.
through the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program.
“ is RAISE grant will fund construction costs for two remaining sections of the Greenway in historically disadvantaged communities in North Memphis,” the conservancy said at the time. “ e project will navigate over and under major transit infrastructure (a railroad and state highway) that are barriers to parks, neighborhoods, and everyday destinations.”
City leaders said some nal designs were delayed from May 2024 through April 2025. Parts of the design had construction on or near the levee, which meant the project needed permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to make sure it was safe. at review brought design changes
e Better Je erson project was to help cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists with resurfacing and striping, sidewalk and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) upgrades, enhanced pedestrian crossings, tra c signal modernizations, bicycle facilities, tra c calming, and landscaping elements.
Five years a er it was announced, Je erson is still the same old Je erson. However, city o cials said the design phase of the project could be wrapped up in 2026. e timing of that process will inform a construction start date and, maybe, a completion date.
Memphis Cobblestone Landing
• Announcement date: 2015
• Status: Construction could be complete by November ose cobblestones at the river’s edge have vexed leaders here for decades. ey’re uneven, treacherous, especially for any tourist traversing them from a big tour bus to a river boat. But they’re historic, too, the oldest intact cobblestone port in the United States. If the Mississippi (or the Platte, or the Missouri) is “too thin to plow, too thick to drink,” the cobblestones are too rough to keep and too cool to throw away.
In 2025, o cials said the nal roadway design is due to TDOT in September. ey didn’t expect any new right-of-way to be acquired. Also, utilities for the project and TDOT approval should only take two or three months, they said.
But it hasn’t just been the slowturning gears of government that has held up the Cooper-Poplar Connector to Overton Park project.
“ e project was e ectively on hold from 2020 to 2022 due to Covid-19 impacts and sta transitions within the city of Memphis,” o cials said. “During this period, the consultant’s contract expired. In 2023, with the arrival of the new [project manager], the contract was renegotiated and subsequently extended in 2024, allowing design work to resume in July 2024. Several environmental permits had expired and were resubmitted in fall 2024.”
Wolf River Greenway Final Gaps
• Announced: 2024
• Original project began: as early as 1985
• Status: Construction could be nished by 2029 or 2030
e project is a partnership with the conservancy, the city, and the county.
e Flyer has kept up with the project over the years. Bianca Phillips wrote about the groundbreaking of the John F. Kennedy Park extension in 2015, 10 years ago. Abigail Morici wrote about a temporary public art exhibit along the trail in 2023.
Nearly every story we’ve written about building the project, though, has included a dollar gure. Great things, turns out, take money, too. e “ nal gaps” project got some big money help last year from the state and federal government.
e Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), through the Tennessee General Assembly, granted the conservancy $10.3 million to build out 3.9 miles of the greenway that conservancy leaders call “the critical link” connecting Kennedy Park to the Shelby Farms Greenline.
Shortly a er that award was announced, city o cials told the conservancy it had been granted $21.8 million for the greenway project
Once the Wolf River Greenway is complete, it will connect 22 neighborhoods over 26 miles.
for the trail. ose changes will have to be approved again. If they are, that could mean new land acquisition to build the actual trailway.
City o cials said nal plans will be sent to TDOT for review in September. Planning work will continue next year. Bids on the construction of the project are expected to go out in February 2027. Leaders expect construction to be nished by 2029 or 2030.
“Better Jefferson” Road Project
• Announced: 2020
• Status: Design could be nished in 2026, no construction timeline known “A two-mile stretch of Je erson is targeted for a $4.2 million makeover to help increase transportation options in the heart of Memphis,” the Flyer wrote in 2020. “ e goal is to move Downtown, the Medical District, and Midtown together.”
A 2008 Flyer story had a river boat pilot bitching about the stones. A 2009 story had two disparate riverfront groups agreeing that “the riverfront’s historic cobblestone landing is in dire need of repair.” In a 2014 timeline of Beale Street Landing, a 1987 Center City Commission plan called to restore the landing. A 2015 Flyer story said a $6 million plan was emerging that would keep the cobblestones’ history but make them easier to walk upon.
“ at plan would create the Cobblestone Landing Accessible Trail, a sidewalk that will run along the wall below Riverside Drive,” the story said. “It will stretch from Court to Monroe with handicap-accessible ramps on both sides. e walk will feature two bump-outs for viewing and will be even with the cobblestones in the center.”
Any “new” plan for the cobblestones really began three decades ago. In the summer of 1994, the city built a foundation at the foot of Beale Street to be used for the relocation of the Tom Lee monument. For it, crews removed a large section of cobblestones, and the project was halted by the USACE for historic preservation. A number of government agencies have piled onto the cobblestone project over the years. But in all that time, the cobblestones themselves have largely remained untouched.
In 2025, city o cials said, “At this point, the project is 95 percent complete. River stage permitting, work is expected to resume in September, with completion targeted for November 30, 2025.”
PHOTO: COURTESY WOLF RIVER CONSERVANCY
steppin’ out
MUSTACHE BAND
We Recommend: Culture, News + Reviews
Juneteenth Community Day
By Morgan Thomas
is year the National Civil Rights Museum will host its fourth annual Juneteenth Community Day. is day is for families and people of all ages to learn about and bring awareness to Juneteenth.
e museum’s chief engagement o cer, Veda Ajamu, describes the event as a day not only to get educated but also to honor the strength of the people who continued to ght for equity. Ajamu says, “It’s really about community and a way to bring the community together. It’s also for people to tour the museum and get educated on the history of Juneteenth.”
e event will have arts and cra s, entertainment, the 20242025 Miss Juneteenth student speaking on what Juneteenth means to her, food trucks, and fun giveaways. DJ riller, also a historian, will spin tunes while integrating history and facts about Juneteenth throughout the day. Baptist Memorial Health Care and Baptist Health Sciences University will also lend a health equity focus with screenings, wellness information, and resources.
is family-friendly and educational event will be held on June 19th at the National Civil Rights Museum from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. e museum will have free admission all day.
THUMPDADDY
e Jukewell Sessions : A Summertime Parlay e Medicine Factory, 85 Virginia, ursday, June 19, 7-11:45 p.m., $25+ Inspired by the raw, red-clay soul of the Mississippi Delta, e Jukewell Sessions is a reimagined juke joint experience celebrating Juneteenth through art, sound, and deep cultural expression. is summertime parlay is a tribute to Southern Black joy and resistance, reviving the feel of the juke joint as a sacred space for storytelling, release, and rhythm.
Expect a live performance by Talibah Sa ya; visual installations by Kid Kardiac, Noah Stewart, and Kylon Wagner; live DJs Co Drop and SOLA of V$NR, spinning a blend of Afrobeats, house, old school, and R&B; and an open bar and small bites to keep the energy owing.
Purchase tickets at tinyurl.com/ 4w8fmjzm.
Family Reunion: A Juneteenth Co ee Kickback Situation
3386 Bowen, Saturday, June 21, 2-7 p.m., free Cx eeblack, Unapologetic, and the Gloria Smith Foundation are linking up for the most serious of “siptuations.” Celebrate Black joy, avor, and freedom. Pull up, sip something rare, and savor the fruit of what liberation really tastes like.
Expect an Ethiopian co ee ceremony, jute sack relay race, coffee cousin run, kids zone (bounce house, chalk, races), yoga stretch session, live painting and art walk, and music by Unapologetic and Cx eeblack DJ.
RSVP at tinyurl.com/m72uevj6.
Memphis Brewfest
Shelby Farms Park, 6903 Great View, Saturday, June 21, 12-5 p.m., $65
Get ready to party with the best brews Memphis has to o er at Memphis Brewfest, a day lled with great brews, delicious food, and live music. e Memphis Brewfest will showcase 40 local, regional, and national cra breweries and beverage producers, all with representatives from each brand present at the festival. In addition to great beverages, the festival will o er a local artisan vendor village, a variety of food from some of the best food trucks in town, and live music throughout the day. Tickets will include a custom tasting cup, drinking water, and beverage samples from all participating breweries, with over 100 di erent beers to taste. Get tickets at tinyurl.com/ 44t3nfs3.
JUNETEENTH COMMUNITY DAY, NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM, THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 9 A.M.-6 P.M., FREE.
PHOTO: COURTESY NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM
National Civil Rights Museum hosts its annual Juneteenth Community Day.
MUSIC By Alex Greene
‘If It Rips, I’m About It’
Joybomb levels up, opening for ird Eye Blind’s Live at the Garden show.
hen Joybomb takes the stage at the Radians Amphitheater in the Memphis Botanic Garden, opening for ird Eye Blind for Live at the Garden’s kicko concert of the summer this Saturday, June 21st, the band will be where it was always meant to be, in a sense. Sure, the group has cut their teeth in local clubs like Bar DKDC, Growlers, and the Hi Tone, but a quick listen to their wall of sound con rms that they were destined to rock festival stages.
“Some bands lean into the lo- , and that’s a signature part of their sound,” re ects the band’s front man, singer, and songwriter, Grant Beatty. “But I don’t know, for Joybomb, I want to feel the drums in my chest. I want to hear the guitar soar in the le and right speakers. I think some of those alt-rock, pop punk records of the mid-aughts by, like, Taking Back Sunday and Jimmy Eat World, from 2005 to ’06, just sound so good.”
It’s a huge sound, one that the band has embraced from the beginning. And that’s due to Beatty’s earliest encounters with the rst music that moved him in the mid-aughts. “When I was a kid,” he says, “I got into punk rock and went to the Warped Tour, and there was Rock Against Bush. ‘Political punk’ sounds so cheesy, but at the time, you know, there was a war going on. Being a kid, I was super inspired by a lot of that stu and those bands, even going back to the Clash, you know?
Protest music through the power of good lyricism and clever writing and rock-and-roll.”
And he’s serious about the rock-androll. His guiding mantra has kept him focused on that, as he’s aimed to “will myself to just make the best shit that I can and just bring the rock, you know? Just strive to melt face and then make it undeniable, I guess is my inner motto,” says Beatty. at’s also staying true to his inner teen, dating back to his youth in Mississippi. And for much of his life, that just meant having fun, even when he moved to Memphis a er completing his undergraduate degree from Mis-
“For Joybomb, I want to feel the drums in my chest. I want to hear the guitar soar in the left and right speakers.”
sissippi State University in Starkville. His bass player at the time moved here soon a er, and “we made Memphis our new home, our new launch pad. So for a few years a er that, Joybomb played places like the Hi Tone, and we’d occasionally go to Nashville, stu like that. But we were kind of treading water. We were having fun, making friends, sowing our wild oats. But I don’t know, I wasn’t really goal-oriented with it, or trying to spread our wings, and then I just got it got to a point where that made me sad. I wanted to do something for real. I wanted to give it my best shot, like a real e ort.”
To be sure, that still included fun, but, for the record, “Joybomb” is not a playful take on the phrase “Soy Bomb,”
which artist Michael Portnoy scrawled on his torso before jumping onstage during Bob Dylan’s appearance at the 1998 Grammy Awards. “No,” says Beatty, “it was a compromise between two di erent names, and so we just smooshed them together and decided on Joybomb.”
All names aside, the group, while going through some personnel changes since those early days, has only leaned into rocking harder since becoming a quartet a couple years ago. “We were a four piece by the middle of ’23,” says Beatty, “because we did two singles in ’23 that had a fourth member. So that was when Joybomb was really coming together, although I’ve been with my bassist Conner Booth since ’21.” e
other players in the current lineup are Luki Luvsik on guitar and vocals and Xander Sinclair on drums. And ultimately, having a four piece helped the band esh out their arrangements to create that big, anthemic sound that Beatty has always loved.
Also crucial to perfecting their bigger sound was starting to record with Matt Qualls at Easley-McCain Recording.
“We have worked with him since cutting the singles in ’23. And honestly, he hit home runs with those. He just really knew his background. He was really from that era that I was talking about, the early- to mid-aughts, punk, hardcore, metal kind of stu . And so he really gets the hi- , big rock album thing.”
ose singles, like “Visions” and “Tell Tale Boys,” come on hard and heavy with angular ri s that give way to lighter, sparkling guitar textures and background vocals. at continued into last year’s tracks, collected on the Modern Scripture EP, a collection that strikes a perfect balance between heavy slabs of ri age and shimmering pop ourishes. Now, about to open for ’90s hitmakers ird Eye Blind, Beatty sees them as kindred spirits.
“ ird Eye Blind are icons because their music is just baked into the psyche, at least the hits, right? at rst record is really interesting and chock full of bangers, dude! at was a super hi- , well produced record, but it was just really interesting, too. ey’ve got hooks. ey’ve got thick, really interesting guitar tones. I salute bands that are able to do something without being super ashy, and it just delivers in a catchy way.”
In other words, they pair well with Joybomb, though the local band’s love of heavy ri s may well surpass ird Eye Blind’s — a predisposition which should t a major stage like the Radians Amphitheater to a T. “I love rock, right?” Beatty notes. “So I like anything that throws down, whether it’s ’80s thrash and hair bands or, I mean, like Black Sabbath, one of my all-time faves. I’m informed by decades of that. If it rips, then I’m about it.”
PHOTO: ABBY COOKE Joybomb
AFTER DARK: Live Music Schedule June 19 - 25
Wendell Wells
Ashton Riker & The Memphis Royals
ursday, June 19, 8 p.m.
B.B. KING’S BLUES CLUB
Baunie and Soul
Looking for something to do on a Tuesday night? Head down to Blues Hall on Beale Street and enjoy some live music. Tuesday, June 24, 7-11 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE BLUES HALL
Blind Mississippi Morris
Friday, June 20, 8 p.m. |
Saturday, June 21, 8 p.m.
BLUES CITY CAFE
Earl “The Pearl” Banks
Tuesday, June 24, 7 p.m.
BLUES CITY CAFE
Eric Hughes
ursday, June 19, 7-11 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE
Flic’s Pics Band
Led by the legendary Leroy “Flic” Hodges of Hi Rhythm.
Saturday, June 21, 4 p.m. |
Sunday, June 22, 2 p.m.
B.B. KING’S BLUES CLUB
FreeWorld
Friday, June 20, 7-11 p.m. |
Saturday, June 21, 7-11 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE
FreeWorld
Sunday, June 22, 8 p.m.
BLUES CITY CAFE
Ghost Town Blues Band
ursday, June 19, 7 p.m.
BLUES CITY CAFE
Memphis Soul Factory
ursday, June 19, 4 p.m.
B.B. KING’S BLUES CLUB
Soul Street
Wednesday, June 25, 7-11 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE
Sunday Evenings with Baunie and Soul
Sunday, June 22, 7 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE
The B.B. King’s Blues Club Allstar Band
Vocalist Jerome Chism is a force of nature. Friday, June 20, 8 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 8 p.m.
B.B. KING’S BLUES CLUB
Vince Johnson
Monday, June 23, 6:30 p.m. |
Tuesday, June 24, 6:30 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE
Ledisi
Joined by special guest Marsha Ambrosius. Ledisi is a Grammy Award-winning artist hailed as one of the most captivating vocalists of her generation. $40.50-$130.50. Saturday, June 21, 7:30 p.m.
ORPHEUM THEATRE
Peabody Rooftop Party
Featuring Memphis Soul Remedy
With DJ Sledro. ursday, June 19, 6 p.m.
THE PEABODY HOTEL
Honky tonk, cow jazz, and barnyard blues songs about religion, politics, freedom, oppression, love, and money.
Sunday, June 22, 1:30-4:30
p.m.
MFS BREWING
Boneyard
Friday, June 20, 8 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
El Ced & Groove Nation
Sunday, June 22, 3 p.m.
HUEY’S POPLAR
Elmo & the Shades
Wednesday, June 25, 7 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
Glory Dayz
Saturday, June 21, noon
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
Java Trio
Wednesday, June 25, 5:30 p.m.
HUEY’S POPLAR
John Williams & the A440 Band
ursday, June 19, 8 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
Live at the Garden: Third Eye Blind
With Joybomb. Saturday, June 21, 8-11:45 p.m.
RADIANS AMPHITHEATER AT
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
Rob Haynes Band
Sunday, June 22, 4-8 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
The Deb Jam Band
Tuesday, June 24, 6 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
Thirty Minute Ego
Friday, June 20, 9:30 p.m.
ROOSTER’S BLUES HOUSE
Van Duren
e singer-songwriter, a pioneer of indie pop in Memphis, performs solo. ursday, June 19, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
MORTIMER’S
Walrus 22nd Anniversary Show
Saturday, June 21, 8 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
day, Friday at 3 p.m. Free. Wednesday, June 25-June 28.
GRACE-ST. LUKE’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH
Carlos Ecos Band
Saturday, June 21, 5 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
Cody Clark Band ursday, June 19, 7 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
Davis Coen & the Change Sunday, June 22, 3 p.m.
HUEY’S MIDTOWN
Deborah Swiney Duo ursday, June 19, 7-10 p.m.
THE COVE
Devil Train Bluegrass, roots, country, Delta, and ski e. ursday, June 19, 9 p.m.
B-SIDE
Electric 30 Saturday, June 21, 10 p.m.
B-SIDE
Elevation Memphis: Tina Turner Tribute Experience Sunday, June 22, 5 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
Emo Memphis Presents Totally Warped Saturday, June 21, 9 p.m.
HI TONE
Equinox Wavelength Consortium Sunday, June 22, 10 p.m.
B-SIDE
Alejandro Escovedo (Orion Free Concert Series)
In 1998, No Depression magazine named him Artist of the Decade. For this musician, though, that was just the start of a life that twists and turns wherever Escovedo’s clearly uninhibited imagination takes him. Free. Friday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.
OVERTON PARK SHELL
Bases 2003
With Swag2digital, Sveltedy. ursday, June 19, 8 p.m.
HI TONE
Belvedere Chamber Music Festival
A festival produced by Luna Nova Music, featuring masterworks of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as new works by young, aspiring composers. Evenings at 7 p.m. and urs-
PHOTO: COURTESY CROSSTOWN ARTS
Willie Farmer and Ryan Lee Crosby
Ethan & the Parallax Tuesday, June 24, 10 p.m.
B-SIDE
FERB & Friends
DJ FERB delivers premium sound with a heavy emphasis on hip-hop and EDM. $5/ door. Friday, June 20, 9:30 p.m.-2:30 a.m.
CANVAS
Folk All Y’all + Crosstown Arts Present: Mia Borders is renowned singersongwriter has captivated audiences with her soulful voice. “Mia’s voice is an instrument of exquisite beauty.” — Hu ngton Post. $20/general admission. Saturday, June 21, 7:30 p.m.
THE GREEN ROOM AT CROSSTOWN
ARTS
Heavy Pour EP Release Show
Saturday, June 21, 9 p.m.
HI TONE
Howling Giant With Deaf Revival. Friday, June 20, 8 p.m.
GROWLERS
Jazz Jam with the Cove Quartet
Jazz musicians are welcome to sit in. Sunday, June 22, 6-9 p.m.
THE COVE
Joe Restivo 4 Guitarist Restivo leads one of the city’s nest jazz quartets. Sunday, June 22, noon.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
LadyCouch (Orion Free Concert Series)
Free. Saturday, June 21, 7:30 p.m.
OVERTON PARK SHELL
Level Three
Wednesday, June 25, 10 p.m.
LOUIS CONNELLY’S BAR
Lew Apollo Tuesday, June 24, 8 p.m.
B-SIDE
Logan Crosby
Not just for TikTok anymore, this singer-songwriter has a soulful take on country music. $21.80/general admission. ursday, June 19, 8-9:30 p.m.
MINGLEWOOD HALL
Madaline Collins Live
Get ready to welcome summer with a splash of avor and music. Friday, June 20, 5 p.m.
CROSSTOWN BREWING CO.
Memphis Local Presents With Magik Hours, FWS, Pyrrhic Vic. Friday, June 20, 8:30 p.m.
HI TONE
Mustache the Band Friday, June 20, 9 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
Pants Tour
With Squib Kick, Wicker, the Acorns. ursday, June 19, 7 p.m.
GROWLERS
Pants Tour
With Slumdog, the Narrows, Wicker, the Acorns. Friday, June 20, 7 p.m.
LAMPLIGHTER LOUNGE
Taylor Women in Memphis Music kicks o the summer with a powerful double bill featuring two dynamic voices: D’Vonna Taylor and Runi Salem. $10. Wednesday, June 25, 7-10 p.m. BSIDE
Duane Cleveland Band Sunday, June 22, 6 p.m.
HUEY’S SOUTHAVEN
Hudson Westbrook Westbrook’s unique style blends infectious melodies with a modern yet sentimental touch. $30/general admission.
Friday, June 20, 8 p.m.
GRACELAND SOUNDSTAGE
Pell (Orion Free Concert Series)
Free. ursday, June 19, 7:30 p.m.
OVERTON PARK SHELL
Por Fin Verano
With DJ Mala Leche, DJ Oddyssey, DJ Larry. Saturday, June 21, 9 p.m.
GROWLERS
Project Pat e ree 6 Ma a legend makes a rare live appearance, fresh o his collab with Unapologetic. $33.55/general admission. Saturday, June 21, 8-9:30 p.m.
MINGLEWOOD HALL
Pynk Beard
Sebastian “Pynk Beard” Kole rst gained fame as a songwriter, and now delivers electrifying performances. $27.60/general admission. Friday, June 20, 8-9:30 p.m.
MINGLEWOOD HALL
School of Rock
Friday, June 20, 6-8 p.m.
B-SIDE
Sorry, It’s Over With Shorty & the Grooves, Squib Kick, Crum B [Small Room-Downstairs]. Wednesday, June 25, 8 p.m.
HI TONE
Sprickets
With Subperceptual. $5. Sunday, June 22, 6 p.m.
LAMPLIGHTER LOUNGE
Take 12
Saturday, June 21, 9 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
The Darts
With Service, Turnstyles [Small Room-Downstairs].
Sunday, June 22, 8 p.m.
HI TONE
Tomarum
With Saidan, Epoch of Unlight [Small Room-Downstairs].
Friday, June 20, 8 p.m.
HI TONE
Willie Farmer and Ryan
Lee Crosby
e Mississippi Delta’s Willie Farmer and Rhode Island’s Ryan Lee Crosby come from di erent backgrounds, but they are each dedicated to performing Mississippi blues music.
Friday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.
THE GREEN ROOM AT CROSSTOWN ARTS
Live In Studio A Summer Series with 926
Stax Music Academy
Alumni Band ese are singers and musicians who have graduated from our world-renowned Stax Music Academy and are now either attending college or have graduated college and working as professional musicians. Free. Tuesday, June 24, 2-4 p.m.
STAX MUSEUM OF AMERICAN SOUL MUSIC
The Java Trio Sunday, June 22, 6 p.m.
HUEY’S OLIVE BRANCH
Concerts in The Grove with Tropical Fusion Latin Band
A vibrant and dynamic blend of traditional Latin rhythms and contemporary music styles that promises an unforgettable experience. Kids under 18 are free. $9. ursday, June 19, 6:30-8 p.m. THE GROVE AT GERMANTOWN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Happy Friday at the Grove
Featuring Josh relkeld. Friday, June 20, 5 p.m.
THE GROVE AT GERMANTOWN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Jack and the Fat Man
Sunday, June 22, 6 p.m.
HUEY’S MILLINGTON
Tequila Mockingbird
Wednesday, June 25, 5:30 p.m.
HUEY’S GERMANTOWN
The Pretty Boys
Wednesday, June 25, 5:30 p.m.
HUEY’S CORDOVA
Twin Soul Duo Wednesday, June 25, 5:30 p.m.
HUEY’S MILLINGTON
Wendell Wells & The Big Americans
Honky tonk, cow jazz, and barnyard blues songs about religion, politics, freedom, oppression, love, and money.
Wednesday, June 25, 6-9 p.m.
MI PUEBLO WEST MEMPHIS
WiMM Presents Runi Salem & D’vonna
CALENDAR of EVENTS: June 19 - 25
ART AND SPECIAL EXHIBITS
“2024 Accessions to the Permanent Collection” is series honors new additions to the museum’s permanent collection. rough Nov. 2.
METAL MUSEUM
Alaina NJ: “Bird Sanctuary”
Notes NJ, “ is series aims to bring together vivid gardens and happy birds, in layers of bold color and texture. Each piece intends to capture a moment where nature feels abundant and intimate.” rough June 30.
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
Art by Carol Sams
An artist working with oil on panel, watercolors, and fabric collage, including threedimensional crocheted and woven works. rough July 23.
CHURCH HEALTH
ARTSmemphis:
“GRANTEDTime Exhibition”
An exhibit curated by Brittney Boyd Bullock, a visual artist working ber, mixed media, and abstraction. rough Aug. 5.
ARTSMEMPHIS
Bartlett Art Association
Exhibition: “Summer Arts Fest”
Works by members of this non-pro t organization chartered in 1988 to encourage, educate, improve, exhibit, and support ne art. rough June 29.
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
“Beauty in the Boundary”
Featuring examples of architectural ironwork in the Metal Museum’s permanent collection. Ongoing.
METAL MUSEUM
Becky Ross McRae: “All About Color”
McRae’s high-resolution photos are printed on metallic paper, mounted on aluminum, and covered with a thick layer of acrylic, giving them a threedimensional e ect. rough June 29.
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
“Bleeding Together – A Correspondence”
A collaboration between Andres Arauz, who specializes in photo collage, design, and photography, and Abby Meyers, a visual artist, poet, and award-winning lmmaker. rough Sept. 14.
CROSSTOWN ARTS AT THE CONCOURSE
“Building a Bright Future: Black Communities and Rosenwald Schools in Tennessee”
e Tennessee State Museum brings the award winning temporary exhibit into every part of Tennessee. Davies Manor is thrilled to host this exhibit the farthest west it has ever been. rough July 31.
DAVIES MANOR HISTORIC SITE
CBU Spring 2025 BFA Exhibition
Christian Brothers University is proud to present the 2025 Spring BFA Exhibition, featuring works by graduating seniors in the department of visual arts. Free. rough July 11.
BEVERLY + SAM ROSS GALLERY
Colleen Couch and Dolph Smith: Walk in the Light
“Walk in the Light” traces the arc of Smith’s work, presents new pieces by Couch inspired by Smith, and highlights recent collaborations between the two. rough June 29.
THE DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS
“[Fe]ATURED
AR[Ti]STS”
Works created and curated by sta members of the Metal Museum. Just as elements are the building blocks of artists’ materials, the museum is built on creativity, collaboration, and tradition. rough Sept. 14.
CROSSTOWN ARTS AT THE CONCOURSE
“Landshaping: The Origins of the Black Belt Prairie”
Learn about the geologic event known as the Mississippi Embayment and its e ect on this region. Fossils and farm tools will be displayed alongside photographs by Houston Co eld. rough Oct. 12.
PINK PALACE MUSEUM & MANSION
Leigh Sandlin Solo
Exhibition
e works include vibrant abstract paintings in cold wax, linoleum, and mono prints, as well as encaustic collages. rough June 26.
GALLERY 1091
Leslie Holt: “The Sound of Your Own Wheels”
Abstract impressionism blends with intriguing text and wordplay in this artist’s work. rough June 21.
DAVID LUSK GALLERY
“Light as Air” Explore the beauty in tension: a balance of forms, the contrast between heavy and light, and the signi cance of negative space. rough Sept. 7.
METAL MUSEUM
Send the date, time, place, cost, info, phone number, a brief description, and photos — two weeks in advance — to calendar@memphisflyer.com.
DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS, ONGOING WEEKLY EVENTS WILL APPEAR IN THE FLYER’S ONLINE CALENDAR ONLY. FOR COMPREHENSIVE EVENT LISTINGS, SCAN THE QR CODE OR VISIT EVENTS.MEMPHISFLYER.COM/CAL.
PHOTO: COURTESY METAL MUSEUM
From hand-forged fencing to doors, “Beauty in the Boundary” showcases works that combine design and function.
“Overcoming Hateful Things”
e exhibition contains over 150 items from the late 19th century to the present, including items from popular culture and images of violence against African-American activists. rough Oct. 19.
PINK PALACE MUSEUM & MANSION
Sean Nash: “Cosmic Produce”
Nash’s sculptural paintings from this series are hybrids that take their shaped forms from marine organisms, painted in vivid splashy and dappled colors, orders of magnitude larger than reality. rough Sept. 14.
TOPS AT MADISON AVENUE PARK
“Speaking Truth to Power: The Life of Bayard Rustin”
“Speaking Truth to Power” explores Bayard Rustin’s innovative use of the “medium” to communicate powerful messages of nonviolence, activism, and authenticity. $20/adult, $18/senior, college student, $17/children 5-17. rough Dec. 31.
NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM
Summer Art Garden: “A Flash of Sun”
Immerse yourself in the radiant spirit of summer with these geometric sculptures that cast vibrant hues in the shi ing sunlight. rough Oct. 20.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART “Summer Break”
Featuring work from Justin Tyler Bryant, Sai Clayton, Coulter Fussell, Carl E. Moore, and Melissa Wilkinson. rough July 26.
SHEET CAKE
“Summer Opener” Art Exhibit
Exhibit by Jane Brakin, Anna Carr, Randy Parker, Pat Patterson, Jeanne Seagle, Angela Stevens and Lance David White. rough July 15.
ST. GEORGE’S ART GALLERY AT ST. GEORGE’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH
Tad Lauritzen Wright: “Zen on the Installment Plan” Contemplating humanity, nature, and repeated histories through photo abstractions and sculptural works constructed from salvaged wood. rough Sept. 14.
CROSSTOWN ARTS AT THE CONCOURSE
The Art of the MidSouth Cartoonists Association
See the artwork collection of the Mid-South Cartoonists Association members. Free. rough July 17.
PLAYHOUSE ON THE SQUARE
Tributaries: Leah Gerrard’s “Longline” Seattle-based fabrication artist Leah Gerrard, the museum’s newest Tributaries artist, shapes ethereal steel forms, blending basketry, jewelry, and large-scale pieces. Free. rough Sept. 14.
METAL MUSEUM
ART HAPPENINGS
“Flipside: Two Views of Digital Artwork” Opening
A dual show of vibrant digital art by Amy Pennington-Boyce and Todd Boyce, showcasing 26 original, non-AI digital works that reveal two divergent yet complementary approaches to digital media. Free. Friday, June 20, 5-7 p.m. ANF ARCHITECTS
Like Really Creative
June Collage Party with IMAKEMADBEATS & UrbanArt Commission With curated tunes by IMAKEMADBEATS. Free 6-by-6 canvases will be provided by UrbanArt Commission that you can submit to their Canvas For A Cause exhibition. Collage with a creative community. Materials, scissors, glue, water, soda, and light snacks provided. Wednesday, June 25, 6-9 p.m. THE UGLY ART COMPANY
“The Matriarch Art Show”
Experience the beauty and power of “ e Matriarch Art Show,” a collection of painting, photography, mixed media, poetry, and more that celebrates femininity, strength and creativity. $15/entry. Friday, June 20, 5-7:30 p.m.
OFF THE WALLS ARTS
BOOK EVENTS
A Novel Book Club: The God of the Woods
When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide. Wednesday, June 25, 7 p.m. NOVEL
Sara Reardon: Floored:
A Complete Guide to Women’s Pelvic Floor Health at Every Age and Stage Board-certi ed pelvic oor physical therapist Dr. Sara Reardon helps women prevent and overcome common pelvic oor issues so they can trust and enjoy their bodies again. Tuesday, June 24, 6 p.m. NOVEL
The Book Mixer
Get ready for a lit night. Free. Sunday, June 22, 5-8 p.m. THE COVE
CLASS / WORKSHOP
Cemetery Salons
With opening remarks and a topic introduction from salonniere Kim Vodicka, followed by a brief performance or presentation related to the selected topic. Free. ursday, June 19, 6-7:30 p.m. ELMWOOD CEMETERY
Figure Drawing (Clothed Model)
Figure drawing is back by popular demand. Artists of all levels can practice and increase their skills drawing the human form at Memphis’ art museum. $18/general admission. Saturday, June 21, 10 a.m.-noon.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART
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COMEDY
Comedy Night with Ben Pierce Freewheeling hilarity on the open mic. Thursday, June 19, 7 p.m.
BAR DKDC
Open Mic Comedy Night
A hilarious Midtown tradition. Tuesday, June 24, 8 p.m. HI TONE
COMMUNITY
Heart & Soul: A Men’s Wellness Collective
A conference to inform, educate, and inspire men to be proactive with their mental health. The Grizz Girls and Grizzlies Grannies & Grandpas will be at the event, along with actress Elise Neal. Saturday, June 21, 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m.
AGRICENTER INTERNATIONAL
Juneteenth Community Day
Learn more about the origins and importance of the holiday and the stories of hard-fought freedom for all. With free museum admission and a focus on health equity. Free. Thursday, June 19, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM
Memphis Music Strategy Reading Room
Dive into the Memphis Music Strategy’s 25 recommendations and identify actionable priorities. Wednesday, June 25, 5:30-8 p.m.
MEMPHIS LISTENING LAB
Moxy Memphis Downtown’s Puppy Pride Parade
Get ready to sing, dance, and slay all day with your furry friends at the third annual Puppy Pride Parade. Saturday, June 21, 9:30-11:30 a.m.
MOXY MEMPHIS DOWNTOWN
Say Their Names
Juneteenth Celebration
Celebrate Juneteenth and remember those who suffered. Free. Saturday, June 21, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
HARRIET PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Wakanda on Main
A Wakanda-themed block party on Main Street between Jefferson and Adams: food, music, and vibes straight out of the Black Panther movie.
Thursday, June 19, 5-10 p.m.
MAIN STREET
DANCE
An Afternoon With Misty Copeland
A moderated conversation with Misty and performances by local dance companies. Plus, there will be a screening of her short film “Flower,” a ballet-on-film. Saturday, June 21, 12:30-3:30 p.m.
CANNON CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
EXPO/SALES
Southern Flea Market
Starts at 8 a.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. Sunday. Saturday, June 21-June 22.
LANDERS CENTER
Tennessee Bridal and Wedding Expo
An expo with an incredible selection of wedding professionals on hand. Sunday, June 22, 1-4 p.m.
CANNON CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
Turbo Expo 2025
Choose among 1,000-plus technical presentations to discover new ways to build, test, and develop power and propulsion technologies.
Monday, June 16-June 20.
RENASANT CONVENTION CENTER
FAMILY
Blondale’s Mindful Adventure
Author Courtney Jolly will read her latest children’s book.
Saturday, June 21, 10:30 a.m. NOVEL
Family Fun Paddle on the Wolf River June 2025
Paddle the section of the Wolf River from Germantown Parkway to Walnut Grove Road, a surprisingly pleasant three and half mile stretch of the Wolf River that parallels the Shelby Farm trails. Sunday, June 22, 12:30 p.m.
WOLF RIVER CONSERVANCY
Get Outside Fitness:
KidoKinetics
Through age-appropriate games and activities, young children build confidence, coordination, and a love for active play through a variety of sports in an encouraging, noncompetitive environment.
Thursday, June 19, 5 p.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
Get Outside Fitness: Kids Yoga
Kids yoga is designed to be fun and engaging, teaching basic yoga poses with playful names that build strength, flexibility, balance, and mindfulness. Parents are welcome to join, too. Wednesday, June 25, 5-6 p.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
Picnic for Pachyderms
A delicious lunch with upclose, incredible encounters. Proceeds from this event go to Elephants for Africa, a charity in Botswana committed to protecting the endangered African elephant. $65. Saturday, June 21, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
MEMPHIS ZOO
Pre-School Story Time
Enjoy stories, songs, art activities, and creative play that connect with Collierville history. Friday, June 20, 10:30-11:30 a.m.
MORTON MUSEUM OF COLLIERVILLE HISTORY
CALENDAR:
JUNE 19 - 25
FOOD AND DRINK
Canoes + Cocktails
A guided sunset paddle on the lake followed by specialty cocktails provided by Old Dominick, snacks from Cheffie’s, yard games, and music. A “cocktails only” ticket omits the paddling part. $35-$80. Friday, June 20, 6 p.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
Cigar, Whiskey & BBQ Festival
Enjoy the ultimate combo of smoky barbecue, smooth whiskey, and fine cigars. 21+. Saturday, June 21, 11 a.m.5:30 p.m.
AGRICENTER INTERNATIONAL
Memphis Brewfest
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to sample a wide variety of craft beers from 35 local and regional breweries, with live music and food trucks. Saturday, June 21, noon-5 p.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
Rolling Flavors: Food Trucks
Taijiquan with Milan Vigil
This Chinese martial art promotes relaxation, improves balance, and provides noimpact aerobic benefits. Ages 16 and older. Free. Saturday, June 21, 10:30-11:30 a.m.
THE DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS
TGYF Yoga
Designed for beginner to intermediate yoga practitioners, variations are offered to accommodate each individual’s level with an emphasis on correct alignment. $5/suggested price. Thursday, June 19, 10-11 a.m. | Tuesday, June 24, 10-11 a.m. UNITY CHURCH OF PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
Wednesday Walks
Take a casual stroll around the Old Forest paved road! Wednesday, June 25, 4-5 p.m. OVERTON PARK
Yoga
Story Time at Novel
Recommended for children up to 5 years, Story Time at Novel includes songs and stories, featuring brand-new books in addition to wellloved favorites. Wednesday, June 25, 10:30 a.m.
NOVEL
Super SaturdayUnderwater Scenes
Inspired by the remarkable works of Calida Rawles, dive into the vibrant world of the underwater realm. Saturday, June 21, 10 a.m.-noon.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART
Twilight Tours at the Zoo
An after-dark ed-venture at the Memphis Zoo and an after-hours experience to see what the animals are up to once the sun starts to set. Bring the family or a significant other. All ages. Saturday, June 21, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
MEMPHIS ZOO
FESTIVAL
Juneteenth Douglass Freedom Festival
Celebrate Black culture, music, art, and community at the 32nd Annual Juneteenth Douglass Freedom Festival in North Memphis! Friday, June 20-June 22.
DOUGLASS PARK
FILM
A Minecraft Movie
Thursday, June 19, 3 p.m. | Friday, June 20, 3 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 3 p.m. | Sunday, June 22, 3 p.m. | Monday, June 23, 3 p.m. | Tuesday, June 24, 3 p.m. | Wednesday, June 25, 3 p.m.
PINK PALACE MUSEUM & MANSION
Film at the Museum: Moonlight Immerse yourself in a poignant cinematic experience showcasing an acclaimed film that delves into the intricate nuances of identity and self-discovery. $5/general admission. Sunday, June 22, 2-4 p.m.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART
Movies and Brews: Jurassic Park
This screening of Spielberg’s classic reptilian romp includes exclusive pre-show programming chosen to enhance your enjoyment and knowledge of the featured film. One free beer included with ticket. $25.75. Saturday, June 21, 5:30 p.m.
PINK PALACE MUSEUM & MANSION
The Secret World of Arrietty
The Clock family are fourinch-tall people who live anonymously in another family’s residence, borrowing simple items to make their home. Then their teenage daughter Arrietty is discovered. Monday, June 23, 7 p.m.
MALCO PARADISO
T. Rex: Greatest of All Tyrants
The most dazzling and accurate giant screen documentary ever made on this legendary predator — and its carnivorous Cretaceous cousins. Thursday, June 19, 11 a.m. | Thursday, June 19, 2 p.m. | Friday, June 20, 11 a.m. | Friday, June 20, 2 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 11 a.m. | Saturday, June 21, 2 p.m. | Sunday, June 22, 11 a.m. | Sunday, June 22, 2 p.m. | Monday, June 23, 11 a.m. | Monday, June 23, 2 p.m. | Tuesday, June 24, 11 a.m. | Tuesday, June 24, 2 p.m. | Wednesday, June 25, 11 a.m. | Wednesday, June 25, 2 p.m.
PINK PALACE MUSEUM & MANSION
Take your lunch break to the next level with Rolling Flavors, a June weekday food truck series on the Soulsville Campus. Friday, June 20, noon-2 p.m. | Monday, June 23, noon-2 p.m. | Tuesday, June 24, noon-2 p.m. | Wednesday, June 25, noon-2 p.m.
STAX MUSEUM OF AMERICAN
SOUL MUSIC
HEALTH AND FITNESS
Get Outside Fitness: Body Combat
A YMCA-led mix of martial arts moves that will get you fit, fast and strong — and leave you feeling fierce and empowered. Class is entirely noncontact; no martial arts experience required. Wednesday, June 25, 9 a.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
Get Outside Fitness: Mat Pilates
A full-body, low-impact workout that emphasizes dynamic core work to enhance strength, balance, and flexibility. The session is designed inclusively for everybody. Friday, June 20, 4:30 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 8 a.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
Hobby Kick-Start: SelfDefense with Midtown Krav Maga
Krav Maga is simple, effective self-defense that everyone can learn. It will be a workout, so wear comfortable clothing and get ready to have some fun. $25. Thursday, June 19, 6-8 p.m.
THE DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS
Lunchtime Meditations
Visit the Dixon for free meditation sessions every Friday. Friday, June 20, noon-12:30 p.m.
THE DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS
Strengthen your yoga practice and enjoy the health benefits of light exercise with yoga instructor Laura Gray McCann. All levels welcome. Free. Thursday, June 19, 6 p.m.
THE DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS
LECTURE
Munch and Learn: Why I Love Museums (and Why You Should Love Them, Too)
Enjoy lunch alongside this weekly lecture series featuring presentations by artists, scholars, and Dixon staff sharing their knowledge on a variety of topics. Dorothy Svgdik (she/her) is the membership manager at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens and is passionate about connecting people to museums. Wednesday, June 25, noon-1 p.m.
THE DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS
PERFORMING ARTS
Dragstar Galactica: Return to Luminarus
Get ready for the long awaited sequel to Memphis’ interstellar drag show, set on the extraterrestrial world called Planet Luminarus.
Saturday, June 21, 8 p.m.midnight.
OFF THE WALLS ARTS
Thee Last Friday: A Night of Poetry
An evening filled with powerful poetry and tributes to the legends who have paved the way for us. Celebrate their legacy and honor their contributions to the world. 21+. Wednesday, June 25, 6-9 p.m.
RUMBA ROOM
Windows & Wishes
See comedy, burlesque, and music galore in this “emergency benefit show.”
Saturday, June 21, 9 p.m. LAMPLIGHTER LOUNGE
PHOTO: COURTESY MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN In Alaina NJ’s “Bird Sanctuary,” each piece captures a moment “where nature feels abundant and intimate.”
SPECIAL EVENTS
CBC Field Day!
Remember field day? Now imagine it with beer and zero supervision. Saturday, June 21, 3 p.m.
CROSSTOWN BREWING COMPANY
Christ Methodist Church 70th
Anniversary Celebration
Christ Methodist Church celebrates 70 years of God’s faithfulness with one special worship service. Sunday, June 22, 10:30 a.m.-noon
CHRIST METHODIST CHURCH
Color As The Lead Trivia: Celebrating Black Icons
Celebrate Juneteenth with a trivia night that shines a spotlight on Black excellence in music and film. Thursday, June 19, 7 p.m.
CROSSTOWN BREWING COMPANY
Mahjong Open Play
This event is designed for those already skilled in mahjong — an opportunity to practice, challenge yourself, and connect with fellow enthusiasts. Sunday, June 22, 12:30 p.m.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART
Morrighan’s Bluff, Amtgard of Memphis
A medieval/fantasy live action roleplay game. Join the adventure. Saturday, June 21, noon.
W. J. FREEMAN PARK
Sally’s Saloon: A Western Soulful Murder Mystery
Celebrate the grand opening of Sally’s Saloon as the atmosphere hums with food, drink, music, laughter, and plenty of cowboy charm. Then the spotlight turns to the theatrical presentation. A long-lost sibling returns, accusations fly, and secrets spill faster than a tipped-over whiskey bottle. Just when you think you have it figured out, the plot thickens, leaving you questioning everyone in the room. Now it’s time to step into the action! Put on your detective hat and work together with other guests to uncover the truth. Through a series of crafted and interactive games, you’ll gather clues, interrogate suspects, and piece together the puzzle. 18+. $82/all-inclusive price. Sunday, June 22, 3-5 p.m. | Sunday, June 22, 7-9 p.m.
HALLORAN CENTRE FOR PERFORMING ARTS & EDUCATION
SPORTS
Memphis Redbirds vs. Norfolk Tides
Thursday, June 19, 7 p.m. | Friday, June 20, 7 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 6:30 p.m. | Sunday, June 22, 1 p.m.
AUTOZONE PARK
U.S. Mounted Shooting Mid-Summer Championship
With concessions on site and a farmers market across the street. Potluck Friday night. Please register your buckaroos early. The second annual Gunslinger Challenge (on foot) allows friends and family that don’t ride to also join in. Holsters not needed. Let organizers know if you need to borrow guns; otherwise, bring your own. Blanks will be provided. Friday, June 20-June 22.
AGRICENTER INTERNATIONAL
THEATER
A Bronx Tale
Step into the vibrant streets of 1960s Bronx with this captivating musical adaptation of a beloved play and film that delves into themes of respect, loyalty, and the unbreakable bonds of family. Journey alongside a young man torn between admiration for his father and the allure of becoming a mob boss. Please note the production contains adult language and mild violence. Friday, June 20, 8 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 8 p.m. | Sunday, June 22, 2 p.m.
PLAYHOUSE ON THE SQUARE
Ain’t Misbehavin’
Five performers are featured with rowdy to risqué songs that reflect Fats Waller’s view of life as a journey meant for pleasure and play.
Thursday, June 19, 7:30-9:30 p.m. | Friday, June 20, 7:30-9:30 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 7:30-9:30 p.m. | Sunday, June 22, 2-4 p.m.
THEATRE MEMPHIS
Clark Gable Slept Here Hollywood’s hiding a lot more in the closet than tuxedos, and agent Jarrod Hilliard’s going to keep it that way. When the corpse of a male prostitute is found in his client’s hotel room during the Golden Globe Awards, Hilliard and hotel manager Gage Holland are left to sweep things under the rug. But when you work in the make-believe world of movies, everyone’s acting.
$20. Friday, June 20, 8 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 8 p.m. | Sunday, June 22, 2 p.m.
THEATREWORKS @ THE SQUARE
Her Needs, His Needs: Part 2
This comedic stage play dives deep into the reallife complexities of marriage, exploring what it truly takes to meet the needs of both a husband and a wife. Friday, June 20, 7 p.m.
ORPHEUM THEATRE
ACROSS
1 Luau greeting
6 Feudal worker
10 City choker
14 Sights along lane closures
15 “The very ___!”
16 Nickname for Dad
17 *Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band with the hits “The Flame” and “I Want You to Want Me”
19 Caustic solutions
20 South African money
21 Actress Witherspoon
22 “___ No Sunshine” (1971 hit for Bill Withers)
23 Et cetera
25 Hockey puck, e.g.
27 Install, as carpet
Kimberly Akimbo
A new musical about growing up and growing old (in no particular order), and the winner of five Tony Awards including Best Musical. Kimberly is about to turn 16 and recently moved with her family to a new town in suburban New Jersey. In this “howlingly funny heartbreaker of a show” (The New Yorker), Kim is forced to navigate family dysfunction, a rare genetic condition, her first crush … and possible felony charges. $29-$130. Tuesday, June 24, 7:30-10 p.m. | Wednesday, June 25, 7:30-10 p.m.
ORPHEUM THEATRE
Mystic Pizza
A “slice of life” jukebox musical based on the 1988 film of the same name that starred Julia Roberts. Follow the lives of three young waitresses at the Mystic Pizza restaurant in Mystic, Connecticut, during the 1980s. Friday, June 20, 7:30 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 7:30 p.m. | Sunday, June 22, 2:30 p.m.
HARRELL THEATRE
Once On This Island, Jr.
A Caribbean-inspired fairy tale and musical about Ti Moune, a young girl who falls in love with Daniel, a wealthy boy from a different part of the island. Ti Moune’s journey is one of love, loss, and ultimately, the power of love to transcend social barriers. This musical, adapted for young audiences, highlights the strength of love and its ability to overcome prejudice. Thursday, June 19, 10:30 a.m. | Friday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.
Crossword
28 Spicy Chinese cuisine
32 Intimated
35 Where chewing tobacco is placed
36 “Eww, you’ve said quite enough!”
37 Lone Star State sch.
38 With 28-Down, multisubject photos … or a hint to the answers to the four starred clues
39 Den denizen
40 Had a little lamb, say?
41 What to call it when it’s over
42 “Willy ___ & the Chocolate Factory”
43 Seeks the opinion of
45 Adorer
46 Lab container
47 Rainbow mnemonic
51 Weaver’s device
53 “That is to say …”
56 Patron saint of lost causes
57 “Othello” villain
58 *Actor’s stand-in
60 Amaze
61 A panda, for the World Wildlife Fund
62 “Raw” or “burnt” hue
63 “America the Beautiful” pronoun
64 Bible garden
65 Tablets with Retina display DOWN
1 Ghana’s capital
2 Lindsay of “Mean Girls”
3 Upright
4 *Relative of a facepalm
5 Egyptian cobra
6 Ambulance sound
7 Falco of TV and film
8 Letters accompanying college applications, for short
9 Pretentious, in modern lingo 10 Cannonball dive effect
11 Dance floor request
12 Store window sign
13 Basic point
| Saturday, June 21, 2 p.m. | Saturday, June 21, 7:30 p.m. | Sunday, June 22, 2 p.m.
HATTILOO THEATRE
TOURS
Backbeat Tours: Memphis Mojo Tour
The Home of the Blues comes alive on this city tour aboard the nation’s only music bus. All of the guides on this tour are professional Beale Street musicians who play and sing selections from the city’s rich musical heritage, while entertaining you with comedy, history, and behind-the-scenes stories of your favorite Memphis personalities. $35/adults, $33/seniors, $20/ children 5-12. Through Oct. 31.
BACKBEAT TOURS
Juneteenth Tour
Black history, doctors, dentists, businessmen, attorneys, saints, musicians, and the South’s first Black millionaire are all a part of this informative tour of Elmwood Cemetery. Thursday, June 19, 6 p.m.
ELMWOOD CEMETERY
Sightseeing Cruise
A 90-minute tour that takes you down the Mighty Mississippi with a live historical commentary. $25/General Admission. Through July 31.
MEMPHIS RIVERBOATS
Edited by Will Shortz No.
18 Setting for the “Iliad”
Palindromic boy’s name
Youth-oriented Condé Nast publication 35 Reviews of books and such: Abbr.
Fall-for-anything
*Track-and-field event 41 Sine ___ non
“Believe it,” as a retort 44 See 31-Down
ARTS By Kailynn Johnson
A Hoochie Homecoming
“Hoochie
Historian” Zorine Truly celebrates Black women pioneers outside the Eurocentric beauty standard.
Being known as “ e Hoochie Historian” is much more than internet virality for Zorine Truly.
e North Memphis native — known for her bite-sized lessons on “Hoochie History” — has gained a dedicated following of more than 150,000 people on TikTok. And while educating viewers about a unique subculture has allowed her to give Black women their well-deserved owers, it’s also been an opportunity for her to reclaim the narrative for the community.
“I talk a lot about the in uence of Black women across generations and how hoochie culture plays a role in storytelling, legacy, and beauty practices,” Truly explains.
Truly refers to a community of Black women known for owning their sexuality and identity unapologetically, making beauty and style practices synonymous with their personas. Notable gures include Chrystale Wilson, rap artist Trina, and, of course, the late Memphis legend Gangsta Boo.
“ ey are pioneers in whatever genre they touch,” Truly says. “Whether that’s music or style, it’s their in uence.”
As the creative began to educate her audiences, solidarity formed, and there was a groundswell of support for hoochie culture to be recognized. is turned into the rst HoochieCon celebration in 2023 in Glendale, California.
Now, Truly will bring her cultural touchstone back home with Hoochie Homecoming on June 20th through 21st. e event will be held at the Artifacts Gallery on 980 East Brooks Road and will be the ultimate celebration of Black culture featuring a hoochie art gallery, a Black-owned vendor market, and “ ee HoochieCon Biggest Hoochie Contest.”
“ e festival came about from the community,” Truly says. “ ere was a need and a want for hoochie culture to be celebrated, but not in the typical way that most people think of.”
She goes on to explain that many people associate hoochies solely with ’90s Freaknik culture, stemming from an annual spring break festival centered on historically Black colleges and universities, which has recently re-entered the zeitgeist. Rather than minimize the contributions of these women, Truly and her community wanted to emphasize what it really meant to be a part of the movement, which she says means blending history
PHOTOS: COURTESY ZORINE TRULY In uencer Zorine Truly owns her hoochieness.
“What being a hoochie means is being a founder,” Truly says. “It’s like being the foundation of memory. Somebody who preserves culture.”
and the present.
“What being a hoochie means is being a founder,” Truly says. “It’s like being the foundation of memory. Somebody who preserves culture. e earrings, the nails, the clothing — all of this is a cultural reference to our aunties, our cousins, and our moms. Somebody who is a hoochie is an ‘it girl’ but also somebody who preserves all the in uences from our direct ancestors.”
Growing up, Truly saw the women
Truly says that Hoochies are the ultimate arbiters of style and notes that many modern-day trends stem from their innovations. While blinged-out acrylics and grills may be the latest on the rotating trend cycle, these are everyday aesthetics for the women who pioneered them.
With the reemergence of these fashions, it can also be easy for those outside of the community to appropriate the culture. As a result, these women go uncredited for their contributions.
“It’s an opportunity to reclaim a lot of what has trickled down into popular culture without being named and credited [to Black women],” Truly says. “When we don’t point out and credit these types of cultures and subgroups, once they become mainstream, they’re credited to people who didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Celebrating hoochie culture also shows that Black women are not monolithic, Truly says, and the celebration serves as an opportunity to applaud “all walks of Black womanhood.”
in her family and community in North Memphis positively impact her identity. She found this refreshing, as she says she never strove for a Eurocentric beauty standard.
“I always wanted to look like the girl who lived up the street from me,” she says. “I was always in uenced by the clothes, the music, and the style of the people I went to school with or my big cousins. My neighborhood has always been a direct re ection of what I nd beautiful.”
“Just like other cultures have subcultures and subgroups from their primary culture, so do Black women,” Truly says. “A lot of times we don’t get to discuss or celebrate the different branches of what it takes to be a Black woman.”
Truly says she’s excited to show respect to where she’s from and who she’s been inspired by, and invites the community to do the same.
MAKE YOUR CLOSET HAPPY, MANE. MANE.
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
By
the editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication
You Again?
white egg emerged. “In all the years we’ve been doing that [work], we’ve never encountered it,” Gruner said. The snails are a threatened species, and the department has been caring for several thousand snails and eggs since 2006, when Solid Energy coal mining began an operation in the snails’ sole habitat. [The Guardian, 5/7/2025]
She Has the High Ground
Rescues are not uncommon on Mount Fuji, but one climber may have used up all the good will of the Shizuoka prefectural police, who were called to save the man near the mountain’s peak twice in a span of four days. The imprudent adventurer, a 27-year-old Chinese student living in Japan, began suffering from altitude sickness and was airlifted to safety after calling authorities on April 22; the Associated Press reported that he returned to the mountain on April 26 “to look for his cellphone and other belongings left behind,” according to police. When another climber found him suffering altitude sickness and unable to move, authorities were called in to rescue him once again. There is no penalty for climbing Mount Fuji during the offseason, and no charge associated with being rescued — even twice in the same week. [The Associated Press, 4/28/2025]
Lay Off Me, I’m Starving
A judge in London, England, recently awarded Lorna Rooke, former training and practice supervisor for the National Health Service’s Blood and Transplant division, a whopping $38,729 for being compared to Darth Vader, The Guardian reported on May 7. In 2021, Rooke and her co-workers were asked to participate in a team-building exercise featuring a Star Wars-themed questionnaire that would reveal which character from the sci-fi fantasy franchise their personality most resembled. Rooke didn’t participate but found out later that co-workers had filled it out for her, and the result came up Sith Lord. Though the quiz described Vader as a “very focused individual,” Rooke called the comparison “highly unflattering” and said it made her “super unpopular” around the office, leading her to resign a month later. [The Guardian, 5/7/2025]
Taking It For the Team
Anyone familiar with A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories knows bears love honey and will go to great lengths for the sweet stuff. So it’s not exactly surprising that Jeff Bonner of Bazetta, Ohio, recently caught a bear on the motion-activated cameras he had set up to protect his apiary. What was surprising, Bonner told WFMJ-TV, was what little remained in the aftermath of the bear’s late-night snack attack. “He ate the frame, the wax that was there, and the bees,” Bonner said. “He literally ate a whole hive of bees.” Bonner estimated the hive had held some 10,000-50,000 bees. He expects the bear to return to the newly found food source, and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources recommended that he increase the apiary’s security with more cameras and an electric fence. [WFMJ-TV, 5/8/2025]
That’s a First Team members at New Zealand’s department of conservation recently bore witness for the first time ever to the egglaying process of Powelliphanta augusta, a large, carnivorous, hermaphrodite snail that mates and lays eggs through a hole in its neck. Ingrid Gruner, the department’s regional biodiversity liaison, told The Guardian that the team had “struck lucky” when video taken during a routine weight check of one of the snails captured the moment the small
In an effort to build up an immunity to the venom of lethal snakes, herpetologist Tim Friede, 57, of Wisconsin allowed himself to be bitten over 200 times and self-administered more than 650 venom injections over 18 years while steadfastly documenting the effects, The New York Times reported on May 2. Now, as described in a study published in the journal Cell last week, scientists have used the unique antibodies in Friede’s blood to create a drug that fully protected mice from the venom of 13 deadly snake species. Researchers hope Friede’s work (and blood) will lead to the creation of a universal anti-venom. “I’m really proud that I can do something in life for humanity,” Friede told the Times. [New York Times, 4/25/2025]
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries writer Joseph Campbell was a worldrenowned mythologist. His theories about the classic hero archetype have inspired many writers and filmmakers, including Star Wars creator George Lucas. As a young man, Campbell crafted the blueprint for his influential work during a five-year period when he lived in a rustic shack and read books for nine hours a day. He was supremely dedicated and focused. I recommend that you consider a similar foundationbuilding project, Aries. The coming months will be an excellent time for you to establish the groundwork for whatever it is you want to do for the rest of your long life.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In Japan, komorebi refers to the dappled sunlight that streams through tree leaves. It names a subtle, ephemeral beauty that busy people might be oblivious to. Not you, I hope, Taurus! In the coming weeks, I invite you to draw on komorebi as an inspirational metaphor. Tune in to the soft illumination glimmering in the background. Be alert for flickers and flashes that reveal useful clues. Trust in the indirect path, the sideways glance, the half-remembered dream, and the overheard conversation. Anything blatant and loud is probably not relevant to your interests. PS: Be keen to notice what’s not being said.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Tides don’t ask for permission. They ebb and flow in accordance with an ancient gravitational intelligence that obeys its own elegant laws. Entire ecosystems rely on their steady cyclical rhythms. You, too, harbor tidal forces, Cancerian. They are partially synced up with the earth’s rivers, lakes, and seas, and are partially under the sway of your deep emotional power. It’s always crucial for you to be intimately aware of your tides’ flows and patterns, but even more than usual right now. I hope you will trust their timing and harness their tremendous energy.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Some jewelers practice an ancient Korean art called keum-boo, in which they fuse pure gold to silver by heat and pressure. The result is gold that seems to bloom from within silver’s body, not just be juxtaposed on top of it. Let’s make this your metaphor for the coming weeks, Leo. I believe you will have the skill to blend two beautiful and valuable things into an asset that has the beauty and value of both — plus an extra added synergy of valuable beauty. The only problem that could possibly derail your unprecedented accomplishment might be your worry that you don’t have the power to do that. Expunge that worry, please.
By Rob Brezsny
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Some Indigenous cultures keep track of time not by clocks but by natural events: “the moon when the salmon return,” “the season when shadows shorten,” “the return of the rain birds.” I encourage you to try that approach, Virgo. Your customary rigor will benefit from blending with an influx of more intuitive choices. You will be wise to explore the joys of organic timing. So just for now, I invite you to tune out the relentless tick-tock. Listen instead for the hush before a threshold cracks open. Meditate on the ancient Greek concept of kairos: the prime moment to act or a potential turning point that’s ripe for activation.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Botanists speak of “serotiny,” a plant’s ability to delay seed release until the environment is just right. Some pinecones, for instance, only open after a fire. What part of you has been patiently waiting, Libra? What latent brilliance has not been ready to emerge until now? The coming weeks will offer catalytic conditions — perhaps heat, perhaps disruption, perhaps joy — that will be exactly what’s needed to unleash the fertile potency. Have faith that your seeds will draw on their own wild intelligence.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): One of your superpowers is your skill at detecting what’s unfolding beneath the surfaces. It’s almost like you have X-ray vision. Your ability to detect hidden agendas, buried secrets, and underground growth is profound. But in the coming weeks, I urge you to redirect your attention. You will generate good fortune for yourself if you turn your gaze to what lies at the horizon and just beyond. Can you sense the possibilities percolating at the edges of your known world? Can you sync up your intuitions with the future’s promises? Educated guesses will be indistinguishable from true prophecies.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarius-born Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) got a degree in law and economics and began a career teaching those subjects at the university level. But at age 30, he had a conversion experience. It was triggered when he saw a thrilling exhibit of French Impressionist painters and heard an enthralling opera by Richard Wagner. Soon he flung himself into a study of art, embarking on an influential career that spanned decades. I am predicting that you will encounter inspirations of that caliber, Sagittarius. They may not motivate you as drastically as Kandinsky’s provocations, but they could revitalize your life forever.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In Finnish folklore, the Sampo is a magic artifact that generates unending wealth and good fortune. Here’s the catch: It can’t be hoarded. Its power only works when shared, passed around, or made communal. I believe you are close to acquiring a less potent but still wonderful equivalent of a Sampo, Gemini. It may be an idea, a project, or a way of living that radiates generosity and sustainable joy. But remember that it doesn’t thrive in isolation. It’s not a treasure to be stored up and saved for later. Share the wealth.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The ancient Egyptians revered the River Nile’s annual flooding, which brought both disruption and renewal. It washed away old plant matter and debris and deposited fertile silt that nourished new growth. In the coming weeks, Capricorn, I suspect you will experience a metaphorical flood: a surge of new ideas, opportunities, and feelings that temporarily unsettle your routines. Rather than focusing on the inconvenience, I suggest you celebrate the richness this influx will bring. The flow will ultimately uplift you, even if it seems messy at first.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Medieval stonemasons worked not just in service to the immediate structures they made. They imagined eternity, laying foundation blocks in cathedrals they knew they would never live to see completed. I think you are being invited to do similar work: soulful construction whose fruits may not ripen for a while. A provocative conversation you have soon may echo for years. A good habit you instill could become a key inheritance for your older self. So think long, wide, and slow, dear Aquarius. Not everything must produce visible worth this season. Your prime offerings may be seeds for the future. Attend to them with reverence.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In the frigid parts of planet Earth, some glaciers sing. As they shift and crack and melt, they emit tones: groans, pulses, crackles, and whooshes. I believe your soul will have a similar inclination in the coming weeks, Pisces: to express mysterious music as it shifts and thaws. Some old logjam or stuck place is breaking open within you, and that’s a very good thing. Don’t ignore or neglect this momentous offering. And don’t try to translate it into logical words too quickly. What story does your trembling tell? Let the deep, restless movements of your psyche resound.
FILM By Chris McCoy
Human Resources
Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans ail at romance in Materialists
irector Celine Song’s lm debut was 2023’s Past Lives. In it, a pair of childhood friends, Na Young and Hae Sung, are just getting old enough to feel the rst stirrings of young love when Na Young’s family immigrates to the United States. A decade later, Na Young, now known as Nora Moon, gets a message from a friend that Hae Sung is looking for her on Facebook. ey connect and have increasingly intimate conversations on Skype before dri ing apart again. en another decade passes, and Hae Sung is going through a bad breakup. He decides to visit Nora in New York City — but Nora has a serious boyfriend now, and the embers of love that were kindled 20 years before are slowly snu ed out.
Past Lives was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, ultimately losing out to the Oppenheimer juggernaut. Song’s strengths as a playwright and radical theater director (she once mounted a virtual production of Chekhov’s e Seagull in e Sims 4) were evident in the humanity she brought to the screen. e lm was a compelling character study of three people navigating an impossible situation. ere were no good girls, no bad boys, no high stakes, just the low-key drama of everyday life. Its unhurried editing and patient cinematography marked it as the most prominent of the “slow cinema” movement which emerged during the pandemic era.
Lucy is a cold fish. Her years as fire control in the dating trenches have made her cynical.
To follow up on her brilliant debut, Song has written, co-produced, and directed Materialists. It’s another lm about an unlikely love triangle, but this one turns out very di erently.
Materialists opens in the Paleolithic period, with a man deciding to cut some owers to woo his cave-bae. e presumed inventor of the orist industry made the right call — she loves the owers and is equally impressed by his bulging bag of wellcra ed stone tools. e two settle down to make their rock shelter a cave home. en, in the rom-com equivalent of Kubrick’s three-million-year cut from 2001: A Space Odyssey, we are in
present-day New York City with Lucy (Dakota Johnson), who is herself a bit of an anachronism — a professional matchmaker in the 21st century. Her company, Adore Inc., specializes in busy, well-heeled professionals who have little time to waste on the dating scene. But being a human dating app is no picnic. Lucy has a problem client named Sophie (Zoë Winters) who has gone on one bad rst date a er another. Her feelings of discouragement don’t last long, though. When she returns to the o ce, her colleagues throw her a party in honor of the ninth successful wedding resulting from her matchmaking skills.
But a client’s wedding means Lucy has to work weekends. A er all, where better to get new matchmaking business than an extravagant wedding full of insecure, single rich people? As she’s handing out cards to bridesmaids and talking the bride down from a lastminute bout of cold feet, she attracts the attention of Harry (Pedro Pascal). Harry is what the matchmaking industry calls a “unicorn.” First of all, he’s a super-rich private equity bro. Second, he’s over six feet tall. And third, since he’s played by Pedro Pascal, he’s devastatingly handsome. He would be a good get for Lucy’s portfolio, but he’s not interested in signing up for her professional services. He’s interested in her.
e problem is, Lucy is a cold sh. Her years as re control in the dating trenches have made her hard and cynical. She can’t see past a guy’s demographic pro le. “It’s like working at the morgue or an insurance company,” she tells Harry.
Lucy’s trying to keep her life simple until the perfect guy — meaning, a rich guy — comes along. But another complication arises, in the person of John (Chris Evans), a cater-waiter working the wedding. As it turns out, John is Lucy’s ex. ey met when they were both aspiring actors, and dated for ve years until Lucy decided to give up the artist’s life and get a rich husband. John, meanwhile, is still at it, still living with roommates and auditioning for plays at age 37. But one look from his smoldering eyes and her carefully constructed emotional defenses melt away. In true rom-com fashion, Lucy has to choose between the perfect man who “checks all of her boxes” and an imperfect man who she can’t help but love.
It’s probably not fair to judge Materialists as a rom-com. It’s been
low-key billed as one, but the truth is, it’s not very funny, and I’m not sure laughs were the director’s goal. It certainly has its moments, like the shock on John’s face when Lucy shows up to the premiere of his new play with Harry in tow, and a luminous outdoor wedding John and Lucy crash in upstate New York. Evans, freed from daily workouts necessary to play Captain America, shows once again that he’s got leading man acting chops to spare. Pascal’s role is to melt the ice queen but not drum up too much sympathy, and he’s got just enough control for the job.
e problem is Dakota Johnson. Sure, she can rock the post-coital dressshirt-and-panties look better than anyone working, but about halfway through Materialists, I had a revelation: She’s a terrible actor. In the early going, when Lucy’s got her working-withclients game face on, Johnson’s laconic monotone makes sense. But as the story goes on, and Lucy’s emotions are supposed to get the better of her,
Johnson’s at a ect never changes. It’s not just that there’s no chemistry between Johnson and either Pascal or Evans, it’s that she has no chemistry with any human beings. is is most evident as the lm moseys to what passes for a climax, with John and Lucy going on a road trip in his beat-up Volvo. Song’s dialogue can be stilted (“I do pot at parties!”), but the charismatic Evans can sell it. Johnson, on the other hand, looks deeply annoyed that she has to show up and act. With a better lead, Materialists might have had a chance to make a statement about late capitalist love. But with Johnson droning on for an excruciating 117 minutes, it’s a slowly sinking ship. At least Titanic was romantic.
Materialists
Now playing
Multiple locations
Dakota
Dakota Johnson must choose between Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal in Materialists.
Our critic picks the best films in theaters.
28 Years Later
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s zombies are back. Decades after the Rage Virus decimated the world, survivors are living in compounds while zombies roam the countryside. Jamie (Aaron TaylorJohnson) and Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) venture from their island to discover a cult led by Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) that threatens humanity’s remnants.
Elio
The latest Pixar original story sees Elio (Yonas Kibreab), a boy obsessed with space, accidentally transported into the “Communiverse,” an intergalactic federation of planets. When he is mistaken for the first ambassador from Earth, he must
learn to communicate with a cast of eccentric life forms. Can he save the planet and make friends with entities who are very different from him?
The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson’s new film stars Benicio del Toro as a hard-driving business mogul whose latest project keeps getting interrupted by assassination attempts. How many plane crashes can one man survive? More than you would expect.
How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
DreamWorks and director Dean DeBlois have updated their 2010 hit. Mason Thames stars as Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, son of Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler), proving that fictional Vikings know how to name things.
Qualifying Agencies are:
•Health Organizations
•Treatment Centers
•Churches
•Schools
•Local Businesses
•Non Profits
•Restaurants/Bars/Clubs
•Hotels etc...
Food Waste Is a Trash Problem
And it’s one we can fix.
If you’ve ever tossed out a takeout container of food that went uneaten, left your leftovers behind at a restaurant, or let food spoil in the fridge, you’re not alone. But collectively, these everyday habits are adding up to a major environmental crisis. An estimated 38 percent of what ends up in Memphis landfills is foodrelated waste, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). By weight, that’s more than cardboard, plastic, or textiles — and it’s a problem we can actually do something about.
Across Memphis, businesses, caterers, and everyday citizens are beginning to take a closer look at food waste and how to stop it at the source. From local food recovery efforts to public education initiatives, it’s clear that small changes in behavior can lead to measurable reductions in what ends up in the trash. But to move the needle citywide, we need even more people to understand the problem — and recognize their power to help solve it.
Why food waste matters: When food ends up in a landfill, it doesn’t just “go away.” Instead, it decomposes without oxygen and releases methane, a greenhouse gas over 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. This traps heat in our atmosphere, accelerates climate change, and contributes to air quality issues.
The average individual American wastes about $800 worth of food annually.
The impact also shows up in our wallets. The average individual American wastes about $800 worth of food annually — money lost to forgotten leftovers, uneaten produce, and overbuying. Tackling this issue is good for both the planet and your budget. Additionally, wasting food exhausts the energy, water, and labor that went into growing, processing, transporting, and preparing that food. In a country where many families face food insecurity, seeing perfectly edible meals go to waste is not just inefficient; it’s unjust.
And the scale of it is staggering. Nationally, we squander more than 30 percent of our food supply each year, amounting to over 130 billion pounds of food. In our city, that waste is highly visible in our landfills and invisible on the dinner plates that come up short. In fact, the NRDC estimated that 5,000 tons of food suitable for rescue are available in Memphis each year.
Restaurants and residents, you have a role: The good news? Reducing food waste is a problem we can all take part in solving, whether you’re a business owner, a student, or a home cook. For restaurants and caterers, food waste often shows up in the form of over-prepped ingredients, uneaten catering trays, or the ever-present overstock. Instead of trashing it, local businesses can partner with food rescue organizations to donate surplus food. Resources like Careit, a free donation-tracking app sponsored by Project Green Fork in Memphis and Shelby County, connect food donors to local nonprofit recipients in real time. Participating in efforts like this lessens landfill waste and helps feed Memphians who need it.
Food businesses can also minimize waste by rethinking portion sizes, improving inventory management, getting creative with surplus ingredients, and training staff on proper food storage and labeling practices. Through these steps, restaurants can make practical changes that lower waste without cutting corners.
For individuals, food waste reduction starts at home. That can look like meal planning to avoid overbuying, storing food properly to extend freshness, and making inventive dishes with leftovers. Learning how to interpret “best by,” “use by,” and “sell by” dates can also make a big difference, as many foods are safe and delicious well past their printed dates. When food scraps are truly unavoidable, consider composting them either at home or through a local program like The Compost Fairy to keep organic matter out of the landfill and return nutrients to the soil.
What Memphis is doing — and what’s next: Citywide, there are encouraging signs that cutting food waste is gaining momentum. Food recovery efforts at major venues have diverted thousands of pounds of high-quality, uneaten food from the landfill and into the hands of local organizations serving those in need.
In schools, waste audits are helping students and staff better understand the impact of food waste. These audits often involve measuring how much unopened or uneaten food is discarded each day, providing data that can improve menu planning, portioning, and student education.
But there’s still a long way to go. Memphis needs stronger public investment in food waste prevention, composting access, and infrastructure to support large-scale food rescue. We need more businesses to step up as regular food donors and more residents to recognize the costs of throwing out edible food.
A solvable problem: Food waste is something we can address right now, using tools that already exist and partnerships that are already working. Reducing waste doesn’t require reinventing the wheel; it just means thinking a little differently about the food we grow, buy, serve, and share.
In a city where nearly four in 10 landfill-bound materials are food-related, the opportunity is enormous — and so is the responsibility. By changing how we treat food waste, Memphis can lessen its environmental footprint, improve food security, and build a healthier, more equitable community for everyone. Together, we can take the steps to stop throwing away what could feed our city and start building a future where nothing good goes to waste.
Leann Edwards is program director for Project Green Fork.
