Chapter XIV: Memphis

one summer night's the only time we've known

how many people can you honestly say you know that, if you asked, would drive 8 hours to meet you in a town in Tennessee that neither of you had ever been to before, simply for the sake of adventure? Probably even less than you think. I tend to keep the company of people who aren't afraid to leave their comfort zones, to say fuck no to rules and do whatever the fuck they feel like doing. modern nomads, those who hate or can't hold jobs, who get that itch every few weeks or months to do something new. I also can't handle the stagnancy of repetition; i yearn to meet new people, even if i end up hating everything about them. But it's about new experiences and excitement. Maybe its residual ADHD from my youth, maybe its why i've always had trouble holding down jobs or keeping people in my lives, or why i'm always leaving and always making promises i don't know how to keep. it bothers me sometimes, but i can't say that my life isn't incredibly exciting. I get into more ridiculous situations than most people I know without doing anything that goes against my ever-fun-crippling ethics, I have a lot of incredible friends all over the place who aren't afraid to tell me if I've done something wrong, and apparently I've made some enemies along the way too, which oddly enough, Im really okay with. I'm sure I'll talk more about this when I post about my final trip to new york. Aside from being generally broke all of the time and wishing i read as many books as I get excited about, I'm really stoked about everything. But I digress.......
Memphis is really fucking awful city. By day its a ghost town everywhere. At night it's a different story. Inside the lines of downtown the streets are bustling with disney world-style overweight white people, obviously having family reunions and chowing down on corndogs, or whatever it is fat white people eat. There are 4 star hotels, flagship chain restaurants, sports bars, and pigs everywhere. Its 'tourist heaven' (read: hell) and completely absurd. It also feels a bit like atlanta, with oldschool impalas sporting 26" rims and candy coated so thick that they'd probably glimmer in a pitch black room. People everywhere doing awful people things and getting rowdy. Yuck. Outside of downtown its pretty much ghost town all the time. The streets are run down and a lot of the businesses are closed and boarded up. I did a lot of research on vegan restaurants, and pretty much all of them were shut down when I went to find them. Oddly enough, when i researched memphis on wikipedia it said that "The city appeared in the top eight of the 50 best major metro areas in the U.S. for starting and growing a business in 2000, according to Inc. magazine." Maybe they are only referring to the downtown, which between the baseball stadium and the cargo airport, plus all of the 'blues' tourist attractions, probably does insanely well. But I can't imagine a small business doing well there. The progressive 'green' and local food supporting movements that I've been seeing in different cities (Portland, the East Coast) are completely non-existent in Memphis as far as I can tell.

Despite all of this I had a really amazing time, though I blame that on the company. Turns out that Texas has more to offer than genius-ly thick cut bread. There wasn't much to shoot, but heres a few I like.