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Escape to Memphis for BBQ & flippin
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Performer Marqavious Jones performs on Beale St. - "flippin"
Memphis is a city with flavor, with style. Only a few hours from Nashville, this is a great escape you can make on a budget. Stop being a tourist and become an urban explorer. You will find this is a scrappy town with personality.
Go to Blues City Café at 138 Beale Street. All barbeque places like to brag they are the best. Everyone likes to boast they have found the superlative plate of ribs. Well, Blues City has a sauce you will want to strip naked and roll around in. This is a place where you are treated like family. Joe mans the entrance, with his wraparound shades and dreadlocks. “Well hello!” he says, as if he’d been expecting you. “Come on in.” The vegetables have that down-home, “ya’ll come on, we’ll fix ya a plate” feeling: plentiful, flavorful, and fresh. If you are not one for ribs, we’ll forgive you; the homemade tamales, steaks, chicken, and fish are just as good. The food comes out fast and hot and you will stuff yourself until you fall out of your seat and roll out the door.
Once outside, stay away from the postcard racks and T-shirts and look up at the architecture. Past the neon and glass is history, for much of original Memphis is still in front of you. In Victorian Village, you will find several three- and four- story houses built in the mid 1800s that were refurbished in the 1970s, and are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. All around this city, peeping through new buildings is still a bit of the old, with scalloped cornerstones and carved beams.
Beale Street, they say, gave birth to the Blues, but truly the Blues were born in the fields where black slaves toiled. The songs were taken into juke joints and back alleys, where they evolved into tunes of woe and loss. Blues eventually became “jazz” (possibly from an African origin, dinza, ‘life force,’ or jez - sperm), also called ‘the devil’s music’ during its heyday, because it would cause you to dance with strangers, drink and smoke and want to have sex, you naughty thing.
Out on Beale, pull up a chair to watch street performers Marqavious and Markese Jones. Marqavious, 10, and Markese, 5 (he likes to tell you he is 6) are working to be part of a team called the Beale Street Flippers. Marqavious professionally works up the crowd. Then he will stare hard at the pavement, working his jaw, take a deep breath, and run a short length of Beale, become airborne, and perform a series of flips, back flips, and cartwheels. Markese will follow suite, his eyes bright, the more concentrated he gets the bigger his smile. At one point he misjudged distance and the top of his head came into contact with the blacktop. A loud CRACK resounded (“I do it all the time,” he said, casually). The money they collect from the crowd is spent on school supplies, haircuts, and family needs. Their uncle, who is also their manager, explained. “These are at-risk kids, and some as young as 10 come in with guns. The Flippers are a way to teach them a way to make money legally, save money, and plan for a future. It teaches social skills (Marqavious ensures Markese properly thanks people who donate).” When asked what they plans to do with the money they make, both Marqavious and Markese become somber: “College.” It is difficult to leave; both boys are a joy to spend time with. Markese will tell you, “I love flippin!”
Great food, great sights, great stories, great people: all the reasons why Memphis is a great escape. And it can be easy on the budget.
All photos by J. Yates & cannot be copied without permission
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