Last Sunday my niece had a wedding. Her first! She has lived in Memphis since she was about 6 or 7 years old. She’s now 26. I have to say it was probably the best wedding I’ve ever attended. The groom plays bass in a metal/punk/hardcore band so the wedding was held at a venue called Minglewood Hall in Memphis. This place is fucking huge. It’s a concert venue and a kind of shopping center that also contains a smoke shop/hookah lounge, a regular lounge, a tattoo parlor and all sorts of Bohemian type things to cater to the heathen in any fine family. Pretty much every band on the planet has been through here at one point or another so it was interesting that it was hosting the wedding. The groom is a friend of “the proprietor”.

Let’s set the travel scene a little better: traveling from LA were myself, an older brother, my youngest daughter who was also maid of honor for her cousin, my nephew and his wife. I have another brother who flew out the day before we left to head to Texas where he picked up his other son (a twin of the nephew that left with me) his two grandsons and my oldest godson and his wife. They then drove from Dallas/ Fort Worth to Memphis in a pounding rainstorm that was worthy enough to make the news. Also attending the wedding were my best friend and father of my oldest godson, his second son (another godson) who happens to be getting his PHD in chemistry and has attended academic gatherings in Geneva with former Nobel Prize winners, this boy! Finally the mother of the bride another one of my best friends who I hadn’t seen in about 20 years was also there. Also my ex wife showed up. It’s fine we’re friends now and she knows that when my family meets my best friend’s family well, shit is going to get down. Always fun stuff.

After an early ass flight from LAX we headed to…Atlanta? What the fuck? Yes we overshot our destination by an hour, had enough of a layover to grab a round of drinks and some appetizers and get back on the damn plane to Memphis. First night we ate at a dive bar called Huey’s that had a cool vibe and OK bar food but they did make a cream of potato soup with bacon and cheese that was fucking ridiculously good. My nephew’s wife went back on two additional occasions for this soup. We retreated to the bar hotel, had many happy greetings and toasts and dropped about 4 bills on the bar tab. The first of very, very many tabs.

First morning and the Peabody Hotel.

Apparently one of the things you have to do when you go to Memphis is trek to the Peabody Hotel and watch a group of 5 ducks get off of the lobby elevator at 11:00 AM every day, swim around in a fountain in the hotel lobby (“this fountain was carved from a single piece of travertine marble!”) until 5:00 PM when they get back on the elevator and ride up to their “Penthouse suite” for the evening. The old story is a group of friends back in the 20’s-30’s go duck hunting using live ducks as decoy ducks, drink a bunch of Jack Daniels, release the decoy ducks in the hotel fountain as a practical joke and pass out in their rooms. Next day expecting the worst, they are surprised to learn that the hotel and it’s guests loved the ducks in the fountains so it became tradition. Ringling Brother’s guy trains the ducks etc etc. The ducks are a big thing with this hotel.

Here the ducks have left the elevator and are being walked to the fountain with an escort from a guy in a red tux with a cane. Most of these photos can be clicked on to embiggen. The ducks are jumping into the fountain.

*quick disclaimer about the photos – some of these were taken with a Canon digital camera, some with my camera phone and most in either a state of drunkenness or a state of drunken recoveryness. Focus may vary.

The ducks are in the fountain! Huzzah!

They take this duck thing to a different level. There are duck images everywhere in the hotel. When we ordered coffee they gave us…

.

Sugar ducks!

We left the Peabody and went to brunch at a very cool bar/restaurant called Automatic Slim’s. They serve brunch until 3:00 and it was packed. Not to mention that everywhere we went we were dealing with a party of 12 minimum, sometimes up to 20 so seating was a bit of a challenge. At Slim’s I ordered…

Chicken and waffles.

SO damn delicious. This place also had a 100 oz “mimosa bong” in which they poured two full bottles of champagne before adding the orange juice. These things were being sucked down everywhere. They also made an excellent Bloody Mary with a spiced glass rim. I should mention that Texas A&M was playing Ole Miss in Oxford Mississippi that Saturday and the city was crawling with A&M fans. How did that work out for ya Aggies? Lots of drunkenness by Noon on a Saturday which always portends well.

After brunch we split into groups because the bride and her entourage had to do wedding things like, hair and nails yadda yadda, the rest of us? Let’s head down to Beale Street and get some dranks!

Beale Street is trying real real hard to become Bourbon Street in New Orleans or 6th Street in Austin and they are succeeding to a certain extent. There is definitely a “let’s get drunk and fall down” atmosphere at work and there are some really fun bars. Also along the way they have music notes embedded in the sidewalks similar to the stars on Hollywood Blvd. All of the Memphis music legends are represented here.

Here’s Jerry Lee Lewis. How did he play the killer rocking piano with such tiny hands?

We wandered around a bit and decided with it being after noon it was time to consume powerful, tourist-centric drinks. We stopped in a bar called Wet Willie’s that specialized in frozen drinks. If you’ve ever been to Vegas you’ve seen the wall-o-slushy machines. I had something called “Call a Cab” that contained Everclear and Bacardi 151. It’s a good thing that I’m a seasoned and highly skilled drinker because this shit was crippling tourists left and right. It also gave me about 6 brain freezees.

The Elvis mural at Wet Willies.

An interesting thing at this bar: they had a one way mirror looking out on the bar from the men’s room. You could stand at the urinal, take care of business and watch the crowd. It was disturbing. We did figure out how to work this to our advantage however. When someone would go in the men’s room the ladies in our group would turn and look at the mirror (in which they couldn’t see anything of course) and either give a “thumbs up” gesture or give the “Is that all?” look. It worked wonders on the drunken tourist crowd. I’ve never seen so many red faces leaving a men’s room. But fuck this frozen shit. We needed proper drink at this point. Since my buddy and his family is Irish we headed next to Silky O’Sullivan’s home of the famous Beale Street goats! What the shit is it with this town and letting the barnyard animals inside?

A goats head above the bar. Unsure what to make of this.

After many pints of Guinness and shots of Jameson and a few Mint Julips thrown in for health purposes, it was time to meander back to the hotel to prepare for the night before the wedding dinner at? Interstate Barbecue! Where the Neely family got their start. Oh shit! Oh kids! If you haven’t had Memphis barbecue then you need to consider your life choices to this point. I mean look at this!

This is the sampler with ribs, rib tips, links, brisket, beef ribs, pork shoulder and smoked turkey. I’ll wait a minute while you clean up. My order was…

Pork ribs and rib tips.

Do you know what happens when you bring 18 people to an amazing rib joint that also serves beers?

Wholesale slaughter. It’s not for the timid or the vegan. We met the owner, James Neely who has been doing this for 40 years and there was a great conversation that sprung from this. I have been a purveyor of the ‘cue for a long time and I’ve found two spots here in L.A. that do the barbecue justice. One is called JR’s Barbecue in Culver City and the other is called Jay-Bees House of Barbecue and it is located in (I shit you negative) a little shack in the middle of a five way intersection in Compton/Gardena. Do you know what these two places have in common? Well? They are both operated by members of the Neely family. When I talked to James at Interstate I told him that I was a kind of regular at both places and mentioned that I know Bobby, his nephew at JR’s, well enough that I shake his hand each time I visit. Very cool stuff.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel bar with a group of about 15. The bartender for almost every night was a local girl nicknamed “Skittles”. She has lived in Memphis a long time. She was a little, how-you-say? taken care of. I couldn’t last a year in this place with the food options and I forgot to mention that the entire city smokes. I think you get your first carton of smokes when you turn 12. Anyway Skittles took great care of us and we returned the favor. As the night wore on she told us that we were “a couple of pina collada’s away” from breaking the bar’s all time bar tab record. I was not going to let his challenge go unanswered. And here came another round of beers and another round of shots, a few Long Island ice teas and we blew right the fuck by the all-time record. I won’t divulge the total bill but I tipped Skittles a couple of bills of folding money and the first one was a Benjamin. The best part about hotel bars is once you can find the elevator you can (most times) get your ass safe to bed. Most times. But Vegas was a different trip. Off we went to sleep the sleep of the dead, the dead drunk or the innocent. We met one of these criteria.

Wedding Day!

You know what? I’m not going to post a bunch of wedding photos here. Besides that day belongs to my niece. I did have a glorious chorizo potato hash for breakfast but there are no pictures for proof. We celebrated, drank, smoked too much and retired to the hotel bar for another ridiculous bar tab. I got a room for the bride and groom in our hotel so we made merriment late into the night.

Monday and last official day.

Gathered the herd of, what 16 or so of us? and walked back across the street to the Peabody Hotel. Some who hadn’t seen “The March! Of the Peabody Ducks!!” finally had the chance to do so. We had breakfast at the Capriccio Grill inside the Peabody. For starters we had a plate of various deviled eggs. Dear sweet Jesus I can eat my weight in deviled eggs and these were perfect. We also grabbed some shrimp and grits. I don’t have photos of either but that was easily the best shrimp and grits I ever had. The grits were cooked perfectly, they were nice and cheesy and the shrimp were more like a Louisiana style barbecue shrimp. This may have been the best bite of the entire trip. After lunch we loaded up the rented Navigator and hit the tourist trail. My oldest brother had never been to Memphis so we did the whole damn tourist thing.

In order we did:

Sun Studios. If you can enlarge the photo the mural on the side is of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis and Johnny Cash. After this we crossed the river to West Memphis Arkansas were we were regaled of tales of the West Memphis three and the murder of small children. Uplifting! The horror tour continued back to Memphis where we did the inevitable.

and

I don’t have the proper words to say how powerful and haunting this was. The whole area felt haunted as well as stopped in time. It got really quiet when we headed back to the Navigator. My daughter looked at me and said “Nothing has changed.” I didn’t have a response to that.

On to happier times. Did we possibly? Did we actually? We did.

Oh for Christ’s sake. Look here’s the Lisa Marie!

And the house from a distance.

And the sign out front that my shaky ass hands barely captured.

Look! Memorabilia!

Important note: We didn’t actually pay for the tours, we just wandered around for a few minutes getting photos. If you wanted to do the full bus tour, tour of the plane and the guided audio tour it cost…$77.00 $77.00!!!! Man, fuck that shit. I liked the Beatles better anyway. Back to the city we went. On the way I snapped this shot just to piss off my fellow big city dwellers.

That’s gas for 1.99 a gallon. I saw it as low as 1.82 a gallon. Shit I think I paid 3.60 a couple of weeks ago. Final touristy stops involved.

The Gibson guitar factory which frightened me to enter. I have 4 guitars and a bass and anytime I enter a guitar store I spend way too much money on spontaneous purchases. Bookstores do the same thing to me. Many of the downtown attractions were within a very easy walk of the hotel. The Fed-Ex forum were the Grizzlies play is about a five minute walk away. Finally it was back to Beale street and the Irish bar, followed by another bar with 150 draft beers followed by a return trip to the hotel bar where my god son insisted on buying me a two piece dinner from Gus’ Fried Chicken. There are no photos because I destroyed that chicken in about 3 minutes flat. That was good goddamn fried chicken.

Finally it was off to bed and some goodbyes for our group. I can’t tell you how much love was generated by this group. My family originally wasn’t real big in showing our emotions but back in the eighties when I met my best friends that all changed. We are a force of nature when we get together. The two bartenders said we were the best customers they had ever had. The strength of the group hug we gave was awe inspiring and heartbreaking. I stayed in the bar with my best friend and my daughter after the rest of the group left, there were still many tears going and this complete stranger walked up and asked us if everything was OK. I told her that we had a wedding and she said “That’s great! I was afraid it was something else. There was just so much love with your group.”

That there was. That there was.

pictured; the Three Musketeers. This group was founded in 1982 and it carries unfiltered, unadulterated, unquestioned and unchampioned guaranteed 33 year produced love. It’s potent stuff.

Final summation. Go to Memphis. Get some barbecue. Get some fried chicken. Go to Beale Street. Have many drinks.

Hug your family.

https://youtu.be/rDXzLeFUkpc