So this is as pointless a venture as last week's
lampooning of
New York Magazine's Snooki-hating fashion blogger--
Today's
New York Times travel section includes
a feature (and mostly painful
slideshow) on 'hip Memphis,' and I feel the need to address some probs-lems/the naff whole.
Times' staffer,
Melena Ryzik, author of a
Times' blog called--OH MY G-D--
The Carpetbagger (it's about red carpets and people but
still), flew down to Memphis to perform/report her awkward, condescending cultural carpetbagging. Yuck.
I am pleased that our friend Dwayne Butcher's blog is linked. And it's a damn trip to read about that warty troll who glares from behind her pitchers of PBR at The Lamplighter (which we call by its full name, btw) in any newspaper, let alone the "of-record" one (and, just to clarify my name-calling, she's only a troll to girls, actually smiles at boys, which might explain the pins at Goner, though really, who are we to guess at the motives of Goner employees [c'est impossible]).
The article begins with Elvis, or a stated attempt to avoid him (which is probably why she never mentions that Elvis lost his virginity at Ernestine & Hazel's). The title of the piece starts: "Roll Over Elvis." This is nuts. And telling. Ryzik leads with the assertion that she is "cool" (in the most cloying, deaf Gen-Xer-y way) and down-with-locals because she wants to look beyond Elvis, or ignore him altogether. It's true that Elvis is "the lead" for most tourists to the Bluffs, the reaction most folks have to my volunteered hometown--
"Where are you from?""Memphis, Tennessee."
"Oh....Elvis!"--For good reason. Elvis is the tops. She writes,
IT’S hard to shake Elvis in Memphis. His pompadoured, crooning visage peers out from all corners, from jukeboxes to diner counters. But the King was nowhere to be found at Electrocity, a semi-legal warehouse party that was recently held in an unheated garage in the city’s energetic Midtown neighborhood. Jesus. I grew up in Midtown, a large swathe of the city that contains multiple neighborhoods, some quite sleepy. (And I can't touch that rave party. Y'all know how ridiculous its inclusion is. And Nocturnal [joke/hell]?! And Mollie Fontaine [yuppie downtown lifestylze mess]?! And Odessa [iffy amoeba of an art space that throws parties...I can't].)
Anyway, in Memphis, I saw Elvis everywhere. When I
drove to and from the airport. When I, as stated, had a beer at Ernestine's second floor; I felt him most of all in one of their particularly creepy, cokey bathrooms (claw-footed tub rusting in the corner). When I went to school each morning in
Overton Park. When I headed downtown past
Baptist Memorial (now, regretfully, demolished). This list will get dull fast....the thing is, he permeates wonderfully, not through kitsch so much as ghostly imprint.
I've been to Graceland some 12 or 13 times, and cried too, in the Beautiful Meditation Garden or in front of Gladys' lavender poodle-motifed bedroom, cried for a folk hero whose story is so much about America (Egg
got it).
And a lot of what Ryzik talks about, dives and juke joints, existed before Elvis, alongside Elvis. He might beef with a contemporary ambivalence toward sharp-dressing, but that's about it. He knew all about Memphis' soul and strangeness, its scrappy accessibility. Other stuff, The Cove and the Hi-Tone and Deli, new or newish spots, contain very little to provoke. They serve fried food and booze and bands play. What's this article about again?
The Bucc (opened a decade+ before Elvis passed), I've mentioned here before. It's my most favorite bar in the world, mine and Pillow's Friday afternoon office. It is incredibly loose and warm, uniquely so. And gross and rough too. What Melena Ryzik and her paper did not comprehend, beyond the peeling paint and torn up vinyl booths, is what a visiting friend once summed up with a buzzed, thrilling declaration, "There's no rules here!" It's a thing I've felt in New York as well, though NY's version is about a chilled carelessness, the BIG and LOST of the place. In Memphis, unbounded sensations spring from a dangerous slowness, a haze, a shared state of drunkeness and decrepitude and empty lots, plenty violence happening "someplace else" (preoccupying our law enforcement), death impending (no joke).
Of course, this is all selective, there are manicured blocks and nice schools, churches and shops too.
It's just that Memphis is my home of homes, home of hearts, and it is very beautiful and very difficult. I take it seriously, and nothing sounds as grave or complicated as it ought to in a foolish
Times puff piece. I wish they wouldn't bother blundering all over stuff.
