Memphis has been surprising people for more than a century , and it happened again in the Wake Island of the Great ceding back . With Memphis score harder than almost any city in the country , many commentator prognosticate that it could not recover from the black eye .
These were tough times for Memphis , leading it to identify unreasoningly with its NBA team ’s mantra : grit and grind . The Great corner left this Mississippi river city on the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff to quarter inhalation from the Memphis Grizzlies , who gasconade its refusal to give up and to find a way to get ahead , even if was n’t always pretty .
One pocket-size example : Memphis , the image of a slow - moving , sedentary river urban center abruptly became have it off for it ’s outdoor diversion . We go from zero to almost 300 miles of bike lane and built more than 30 miles of greenlines in only five long time , bicycle lanes are being added to the nosepiece connecting business district ’s riverwalk to Arkansas , a bike - plowshare plan is beginning before long , and the urban center was named one of America ’s best paddling town .
It ’s been a noteworthy reversal in such a curt time , and in trueness , it surprise even many of us . When it began , downtown was seriously fight , key locality were languishing , new construction was nonexistent , ego - confidence was flagging , and youthful adults were incite away in droves .
But now , the Memphis U - turn is in full force , and although Memphis is n’t where it needs to be , the impulse is moving it in the right direction . New Mayor Jim Strickland says the task is for City Hall to get “ brilliant at the basics . ” As for the bedrock of Memphis as a whole , it ’s still about affordability , authenticity , and creativity .
These basics meet surprisingly and often in the metropolis ’s history , most famously pee it the place where musical custom fused to produce America ’s most musical genre - bending music – blues , rockabilly , tilt ‘ n ’ axial motion , alternative , and somebody . As Memphis music image Sam Phillips , midwife for the giving birth of rock ‘ n ’ roll at his Sun Studio , often reminded us : “ If you ’re not doing something dissimilar , you ’re not doing anything . ”
Jim Weber/AP Photo
Many people lament that Memphis did n’t become a center of the euphony industry , but it could never happen . The esthetic freedom and individualism that lay at the heart of the music here could never morph into the commoditized music that dominates the manufacture now . Even today , the city remain a magnet for free spirits front to exploit into the metropolis ’s mythic vibe , attesting to the reasonableness that Memphis is in the language of more than 1,000 song .
While the outside existence may think Memphis music ended with the destruction of Stax Records in 1975 and Elvis two years later , that notion was blown up when Boo Mitchell contract the stagecoach at last twelvemonth ’s Grammy Awards as producer of Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars ’ record of the year , “ Uptown Funk , ” which was register in Mitchell ’s Royal Studios , a Memphis landmark for 59 year .
Just thinking about Memphis ’ music inheritance bring Justin Timberlake to tears last October at his induction into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame . “ I ’m truly honored to merely stand on the shoulder joint of all these legend I grew up listen to and I grew up admiring to say that I support alongside them now , ” he said in a speech last almost 30 minute and that even include his leading the band in the University of Memphis conflict birdsong and his shout out to the Grizzlies , where he is a minority proprietor . “ Memphis is the global chapiter of someone , and that soul is not just in the music , it ’s in the citizenry . ”
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Timberlake ’s emotional speech struck a chord , and his lecture speedily give out viral here , and in the process , he ’s become the post-horse male child for how the metropolis can hang onto old Memphis – liquor , blues , and barbeque – while pushing toward a new hereafter . ( It did n’t injure that the first public photograph of his Modern son in April , 2015 , showed the baby fag a Memphis Grizzlies t - shirt . )
In other word , even today , if you need to understand Memphis , it helps to see the music . The mix of creativity , often rebellious individuality , and rich multifariousness that created not bad music can also be found in our food , our culture , and our entrepreneurial history . We are a surprising contradiction in terms – laidback and insouciant about the music legends who sit next to us at dinner or a sports event but willing to argue for hours about the best barbecue eating place and whether the best barbecue is chopped or pulled , wet or ironic , or with or without coleslaw . At the same prison term , there ’s no debate about corking Memphis barbecue : it ’s got to be pork .
We do n’t look for fancy , because it ’s about the solid food , which sometimes include spaghetti as a veg and barbeque take conformation as tacos and pizza . Although there are several dozen barbeque restaurants and joints in Memphis , we tend to be cultish in our support and dismissive of anyone who dissent . Most of all , we have no longanimity with people who do n’t be intimate the conflict between barbecuing and grilling . While Memphis these days is a hotbed of nationwide recognise young chefs and there are more heathenish options than the United Nations dining way , there are times when every one of us just has to go out and eat some barbeque .
Duffy-Marie Arnoult/Getty Images
Meanwhile , the South Main Arts District , where the Lorraine Motel , site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ’s slaying , now mainstay thriving occupier and commercial ontogeny .
It ’s part of $ 5 billion in new projects just finish or under way , and they include the 2013 reboot of the declining Overton Square entertainment district into a flourish theater district with Playhouse on the Square , nationally known Ballet Memphis , and Hattiloo Theatre , one of the only free - standing , independent pitch-black theaters in America , and in 2011 , Livable Memphis start to translate their Broad Street neighborhood with its “ A New Face for an Old Broad ” upshot , one of the early tactical urbanism projects in the US .
There ’s hardly anything more surprising in Memphis than the 535,000 square foot , Las Vegas - style Bass Pro Shops computer memory in the former arena housed in a 32 - story Great Pyramid on the city waterfront . It now attracts three million people a twelvemonth , and with the five million visiting historic Beale Street a year , downtown is now the big attractor in Tennessee .
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A few blocks east , the surprise are more like miracles at St. Jude Children ’s Research Hospital , because discussion invented there by its 4,000 researcher and faculty members have pushed the overall puerility genus Cancer survival rate from 20 percent to 80 percent . The infirmary is get down yet another expansion , and this fourth dimension , it ’s costing $ 2 billion and adding 2,000 employee .
Most Americans are surprised to learn that St. Jude Children ’s Research Hospital is turn up in business district Memphis . For that matter , many do n’t know that FedEx , which fabricate modern globular commerce , has its World Headquarters here and that it is city and state ’s largest employer .
Another surprisal for those commend Memphis as a coarse-grained urban center will be the opening of $ 70 million Shelby Farms Park in September . It was once a county penal farm , but it will be reimagined into a park design by James Corner of New York ’s High Line fame . It will feature the return of its native ecologies , an award - bring home the bacon resort area , grammatical construction of a 70 - Akka lake , and the improver of modern facilities , intricate trail system , an outback with meadow and lakes , and two young restaurants by Kimbal Musk and Hugo Matheson . To top it off , it ’s join by a greenline to the 10,000 year - onetime emergence forest in the center of the urban center in Overton Park and connect by river to downtown Memphis .
Mark Weber/AP Photo
Even with all the progress , the margin for error is small , and we need aid . That ’s why Memphis is reach out in so many ways to convince , keep , and draw young adult to be part of this surprising , newfangled city move .
Richard Florida of “ creative class ” renown once order that young adult can move to San Francisco , get require , and with luck , they can move the acerate leaf slightly , or they can ride out and come in to Memphis , where the chance is to plug and run and move the acerate leaf more at a younger eld .
It ’s what Geoff Calkins , local newspaper sports editorialist ” called “ Memphis ’ limited natural endowment ” . “ Every one of us can make a difference , ” he enounce . “ It ’s not that we have an obligation . It ’s a gift . It ’s an chance that does n’t exist in other places . you may easily get involved in what gives your living purpose and meaning . ”
Mark Weber/AP Photo
Perhaps , in today ’s surprising Memphis , the large surprise of all is that more and more people are taking us up on the fling .
Joey Miller/Memphis CVB/Flickr
