Hi, G.G. readers! It’s been awhile, but oh baby, I’m back!
Summer 2017 is going to be a hoppin’ one here on GabrielleGlobally for several reasons. First, I’m not taking any summer classes, so I have extra time to write (and work). Second, I’ve planned some incredible excursions, the first of which, if you can take a wild guess, was Memphis, Tennessee.
Why Memphis? Well, I wanted to see these crazy people pictured below!
Meet Lucas, the cutest person ever. And Cary, the funniest person ever.
That’s my part-time lover and full-time friend Lucas and his lil sister. (Fun fact: Cary’s name spelling is incredibly fluid. I’ve seen Cary, Kari, Carrie, and Carry among others. As an English major, this wigged me out at first, but thinking of her name as being more of an oral tradition rather than a written one has helped. And I think of myself as open-minded? Joke’s on me.)
We had a pretty solid time, one that I think you’ll enjoy reading about here on da blawg. But first, here’s a quick rundown of why visiting one of America’s most historic cities was so interesting:
- Visiting one of America’s most historic cities is interesting — circular logic for the win.
- Named for its Egyptian sister on the Nile. Historic as heck, right?
- Is the “Home of the Blues & Birthplace of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
- Elvis’s fancy/weird mansion Graceland is here.
- Home to the world’s first grocery store. (This may or may not be terrifying. I’ll explain later.)
- The lion from the old MGM movies lived and died at the Memphis Zoo, which happens to be a pretty nice zoo.
- HUGE urban park system covers 7,000 acres.
!BONUS! For any botanist-bloggers out there, the city’s official city flower isn’t a flower. It’s a shrub. (Pictured below, the crepe myrtle.)
For the record, I have two of these fast-growing shrubs in my backyard.
There are tons of additional historic factoids about the city, but the list above is a decent debriefer. Also absolutely worth mentioning, at 450 Mulberry Street, you’ll find the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum not only commemorates the life and place of death of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel, but also pays homage to the plight of civil rights activists. It’s a heavy visit, and totally worth it.
Part One: What is Anti-Consumerism?
“I love Memphis, I guess you could say, in the way that you love a brother even if he does sometimes puzzle and sadden and frustrate you. Say what you want about it, it’s an authentic place. I was born and raised in Memphis, and no matter where I go, Memphis belongs to me, and I to it.”
— Hampton Sides, writer, historian
This quote summarizes so much of what I’ve come to feel regarding Memphis. Coming from Austin, a hipster mecca of sorts, I was totally freaked out to realize that no one was trying to sell me anything in Memphis.
I will always maintain that a city is a person. As Hampton Sides remarks, Memphis is puzzling, even saddening at times. The feeling of mutual belonging, however, is where it’s at.
Because it’s a city in at an economic standstill, there’s so little ideological marketing. In Memphis you are what you are. Either you like what a business has to sell you (for example, a greasy brisket taco) or you don’t. No one is going to try to sell to you the idea of who you should be or what you should eat for that matter.
Brother Juniper’s, a breakfast nook just outside the University of Memphis, doesn’t really care if you don’t like their eggs. They’re not going to convince you to be a person who likes their eggs. But if you want eggs the way they make them, you’re more than welcome to sit down and eat something scrambled. This realization was insane for me. It was like I’d been living in Disney World my whole life, a place that constantly caters to customers and sells and sells, and only now I’ve come home to this weird, interconnected city where people are nice but they also don’t give a damn. Memphis is that aunt who is going to welcome you to her home and cook for you, but if you don’t like how she makes beds or pancakes, she’s not going to call you out for it. At the end of the day, she’s not your mom, and she’s not going to pretend to care as much as your mom does.
One exception to this phenomenon is the “recently” renovated Midtown scene. In a word, gentrified. The college students hang out here (and a few creepy old men who play D&D and smoke blue raspberry vape.)
Still not half as screaming-and-shouting-and-jumping-up-and-down-consummerist, Midtown features a lot of cute coffee shops. Cute coffee shops with really, really interesting workers. Lemme explain here.
At the coffee shop pictured above, Lucas and I met up with his best friend for an afternoon caffeine kick. (My writing is bizzare-cheesy today. Sorry, guys. Maybe I’ll edit this out later.) While Lucas and his BFF were catching up, I got my order, a cup of plain coffee and went to do my usual. Some cream, no sugar.
After I grabbed a spoon — from what I thought was a totally O.K. basket to grab spoons from — I realized much too late that I was stirring the $2 drip coffee with a stranger’s used spoon from the used spoons basket. And if you know me, you know I spent a good amount of time debating whether or not I was going to drink the coffee/stranger’s saliva/cream solution. I decided against.
I go up to the counter and begin to explain to a barista there how I did-dun-goofed, and he just stares at me despite my big-as-the-lone-star-state smile and goofy-yet-vulnerable storytelling. This man, I realized, did not give a hoot. My smile dilated. This man did not think I was cute and he didn’t think my story was cute. The only thing this 27-year-old wanted was for me to receive the fresh mug of coffee, and spoon, a sassy touch, and GTFO.
It was spicy, guys. And because I was so happy being in a new city with my happy-go-lucky GabrielleGlobally self, all I could really think was, “I don’t think my haphazard faux pas or this guy’s bad attitude are an isolated incident.” And they weren’t.
Most places we went, the people who worked behind the counter were crotchety. Unlike Austin, where you ask someone where the bathroom is and they practically offer to stand outside of the stall in the name of customer service, you know, because they really, really want your money, retail and food service workers in Memphis acted like real people. Unlike baristas, waiters/waitresses, and store owners in Austin, those in Memphis will let you know if you’re being stupid. They’ll also let you know, through a series of obvious body language indicators, that they want to go home and they don’t really want to serve you at all.
I could see all of this annoying someone my parents’ age, but I liked it. It’s not who I am, because I’m a product of a pretty sunny environment, but I like honesty, even if it’s at my expense. If you’re asking me, you can’t take honesty for granted no matter where you travel.
Part Two: Gabrielle the Grocer
“Just, you know, you can’t put bread in a cold oven. You know, you’ve got to take your time. You’ve got to heat it up. So that’s what, that’s what I like to do with my music. I like to build it, and build it into a maddening, exciting crescendo.”
— Issac Hayes, musician (obviously.)
Also a maddening, exciting crescendo, Lucas took me on a few crazy adventures. In the car, he blasted some Isaac Hayes (10/10 would recommend finding a man with great music taste), but out of the car was when the real shake-down got shook.
Just as promised, it’s “grocery store-y time.”
Pictured below is the mansion of the inventor of the world’s first grocery store, the Piggly Wiggly, both of which are native to Memphis.
Creepy, right? Lucas and I almost died inside this mansion-turned-museum-of-the-Mid-South
Ahead of time, Lucas’ mom gave me some unofficial/official history. She said that Memphis teenage boys were known to take their out-of-town prom dates to the building under the premise that they “forgot their keys at home.” The guy would pull up to the big, pink brick place, pretend to run around to a backgate, wait a little, and then run back to their date, having surprised her with his means.
If it’s lore or fact, who’s to say? I thought that was a cool story though.
Anyway, so many years later, the house has turned into this insane museum, a museum that gets creepier and creepier with every level of the mid-South memorabilia. Think animatronic Civil War displays on amputation, hyper-realistic models of leeching practices in medicine, and most frightening of all, a complete lack of any history whatsoever of Memphis’ black population. There was, however, a corridors-long exhibit on precious gems found from around the world where Lucas and I felt acutely anxious for some reason. I think the place has ghosts.
Picture this, after viewing the creepy, animatronic figures and the disassembled miniature circus, Lucas and I moved to an empty room in the larger-than-life museum: a model grocery store.
You’d think nothing could be less frightening, right? Safety in numbers, family-friendly times, normalcy. None of that was the case.
“This is one of the creepiest parts of the museum,” Lucas forewarned me. We walked through a creepy swing gate, and then I felt it like a breath of warm, dusty wind. The ghost of Piggly Wiggly past. As I’m writing this, I’m tempted to look behind me again. That’s how frightening it was.
The A.C. cracked, and gripping Lucas’ arm, we walked through narrow, constrained aisles of fake canned goods and grocery items on thick, wooden shelves. Visibility was limited, and as we continued down the aisles, I got the feeling we were being followed.
At a point, Lucas said something like, “I can’t do this anymore.” He took my hand and led me out past the dusty, faux cash register. Quite briefly, I wanted to die. As we exited, I looked behind us and said, “Frick, let’s go. Let’s go.”
We raced past more animatronic displays to the top floor of the museum, which was well-lit with a row of windows — whew! Finally.
All in all, I had an incredible trip. Memphis is a historic city with an undeniable mom-and-pop feel and a culture rooted at the crux of southern gothic tradition and the civil rights era. Other blogs might tell you that Memphis is a dangerous city. While it’s not as safe as your typical white picket fence suburb, the reputation of the city as overwhelmingly unsafe is, I think, a misnomer.
The people I met were kind, warm and family-centered. The homeless population was welcoming. If you’re generally kind and open to new people and experiences and if you don’t interject your own personal biases, this anti-consumerist city will be happy to have you.
For those interested in a visit of their own, I feel especially grateful that I got to explore the city as a temporary resident, rather than as a commuter from one of the majority-white suburbs (— suburbs like Collierville, which Lucas informed me, is not “real Memphis” but a product of racist, white flight, dating back to the assassination of MLK.) If you’re able to go, I think falling in love with the city requires a human connection. Someone to stick with you during the scary museums and share greasy food with.
Then again, isn’t every place best travelled in good company?
Greetings & Goings,
[GabrielleGlobally]
Gabrielle Globally 