Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

I’ve sort of a bizarre follow-up to our last installment about blighted buildings. Last week I happened to be checking out Memphis’ newest music venue, walking in from the parking lot. I didn’t really notice the demolition site across the street until the sudden din caused by a 15 meter square chunk from the corner of an eight-story building tumbling to the ground! And then it dawned on me that this was one of the buildings I happened to be praying for, the one on Madison and Willett.

I’m not going so far as to say that the demolition was a direct answer to prayer — I’m sure it was scheduled for months — but I’m quite sure that God arranged that little coincidence of me being there at that time to remind me that those prayers matter. If you’ve never seen part of a large building destroyed across the street, I highly recommend it. I have no idea what they’re going to do with the site. For all I know, it could be part of the same project as the music venue. In any case, I now feel even more invested for praying that the owners/developers would consider whatever project will have the most positive effect on Midtown and on Memphis as a whole.

Lately as I’ve wandered around Memphis, I’ve been thinking a lot about certain visible signs of decay that are present in cities. Although broken windows theory has its limitations, it certainly seems hard to dispute that hulking unused buildings leave an impression of a city in disrepair.

I’ve decided to make a commitment to pray for the following rather large buildings that I’ve noticed around Memphis:

• The Hotel Chisca at 272 South Main (see here and scroll to the bottom; this pdf isn’t working for me)
• A blockish building on Madison and Pauline that may be part of what Baptist Hospital left in its wake when it left the area.
• Another blockish building farther down Madison, somewhere between McNeil and Belvedere, which is apparently for lease but still looks awfully underutilized.
• The immense Sears building at 495 N. Watkins – when I was in Methodist Hospital, my 7th floor room in University Tower had a great view of this building.

From day to day, week to week, I have a lot of thoughts spilling out of my brain that I think are interesting enough to write down here for future reference. But I rarely remember what they are by the time I have the volition to actually type up blog entries.

In any event, the transition to mostly living and working in Memphis is going really well. After some early drama around the question of whether my landlord’s previous roommate was really going to clear out or not (some months after he stopped paying rent!), everything finally worked out. I love Mud Island — very upper-middle class, true, but also great for walking with beautiful views of the DeSoto (I-40) Bridge. I live somewhat off the left side of this view, on the Memphis side

I have some other thoughts that I’d like to write about today, but in the interest of blog readability I think they’d best be displaced to their own posts. And for even more fun I can set them to auto-post
sometime in the future, oh my!

Last night I ventured out to the Hi-Tone for the first time to see Unwed Sailor, an impressive instrumental band that I was only vaguely familiar with. I’m glad I did, because being more active in the music scene locally is one of my priorities for this move to Memphis.

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I’m restarting this blog again. Here’s why. And the latest on my career/living status.

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