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Vendor City Guide: Memphis, USA

Street secrets revealed by the people who know them best. This week we head to the streets of Memphis Tennessee with The Bridge seller Tony Dyson

Our guide this week: Tony Dyson was born in Memphis but has moved between there and Florida since he was a child. He worked for the city cutting grass but health problems led him to become homeless and he sells The Bridge to support his accommodation at a mission. “Right now I’m down but I’m trying to get back,” he says. Selling The Bridge is helping him save to buy a van so he can get back to work. “It’s going to get me where I’m going.”

When you’re walking in Memphis…

You can’t avoid the music in this city. It’s everywhere. You can hear music playing out of cars, you can hear music when you go to Beale Street, Elvis Presley Boulevard, everywhere you go. I like rhythm and blues, smooth jazz, a little country and western. I like a little bit of it all. I don’t differentiate between the music that came out of Stax Records and Sun Studio because as far as I’m concerned they all had a story to tell.

My favourite part of the city

The riverfront

They got a great old big park down there, Beale Street Landing, where the ships come in but we don’t get the great big old steamships. It’s not a fast river, it’s a steady little flow. And at Tom Lee Park we have what we call Memphis in May, a music festival down with a barbecue on the river.

Memphis on a budget

Over by the zoo they have a lot of concerts – and they’re free 

You can sit out on the grass with a picnic basket and enjoy yourself. And then downtown on Beale Street at a place called Handy Park, they have a lot of free concerts down there. There’s an outside arena they set up and different bands come down and put concerts on.

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My favourite time of year

Springtime; when it’s time to go cut the grass! 

It’s easy to get out of the city. You can go north, south, east, west, in any direction outside the city and enjoy God’s handiwork. But you have to go real far out to get hills and mountains, the landscape is quite flat.

Memphis1

The best places to eat

Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken 

Oh man, there’s all kinds of food in Tennessee. We have a place to get chicken called Gus’s Chicken – they got some of the greatest chicken down there on Front Street. For burgers you gotta go down on Main Street. The burgers are priced nice, the chicken is priced nice. And another place people like to go is called The Arcade, where Elvis Presley used to go.

Everybody should go to… 

Graceland: The Home of Elvis Presley

They just built a great big hotel down there called The Guest House, less than a block away down the street.

Interview: Steven MacKenzie

thememphisbridge.com

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