And to Beale Street

The second part of my day yesterday didn’t seem to fit with the Graceland post, so it gets its own mini-post.

After checking into my AirBnb—a room in a private house, an old Craftsman in the quiet residential Cooper-Young neighborhood of Memphis—the rain had let up and it was only 5:00.  I could still legally drive...so I headed downtown to see the famous Beale Street.

Beale Street was fantastic.  It’s a tiny neighborhood, really just three or four blocks, but it was blocked off from cars and so full of clubs and restaurants, neon lights, wandering musicians and music lovers, that it seemed a city in itself.  Every restaurant I strolled past smelled delicious; every blues band playing outdoors on a park stage or at the back of an alley of shops was so talented I had to stop, until the old negro manager came at me waving me closer and brandishing the CD for sale. 

It was too early for either dinner or the real street energy, so I wandered further afield in the downtown area—and came upon a minor-league ballpark just about to start its game.  I’d actually heard about this ballpark as a classic old stadium and a Memphis attraction worth seeing, so I bought a $9.00 ticket and went in to see the Memphis Redbirds play the Nashville Cubs. 

It was a lovely stadium, with a great view of the downtown buildings, and slopes of grass above the outfield where families spread picnic blankets and kids rolled or practiced sliding. 

From my position out in right field the voice of the announcer was perfectly overlapped with its echo, rendering all names unintelligible, but it was still fun to watch the hopeful young Triple-A players field grounders and rap out hits before the light applause of the sparse crowd.  One Nashville Cub hit a long arc across the twilight office buildings for a home run, but more entertaining was the foul ball that fell into a vast section of empty dark-green seats near me, with the sound of a fist hitting a pillow, whereupon the woman usher marched off to a populated section and returned with three or four young children to hunt about for it.

Alas, the baseball purist in me is no more, and at 7:30 when I was really hungry for dinner I up and left, with the score still 1-0 in the fourth inning.

Now Beale Street was really jumping, crowded with wanderers and street acrobats, and in addition to the rocking bands fillling the night from their outdoor stages I was confronted with great-sounding music from every restaurant club whose door swung open for a moment.  There was no way to choose, so I picked a place that advertised gumbo above the door, and went in to the King's Palace Café.  I had the bowl of excellent gumbo and a very large beer (the plastic cup read “BIG-ASS BEALE ST. BEER”), and listened to a lone blues guitarist rolling out soft standards like “What a Wonderful World” interspersed with gently mind-bending solos. 

Afterward the night was still warm and not raining, so I drove home through the soft Memphis air with the top down.  And that completed my first day in Memphis.