Columnist
Chris Herrington covers the Memphis Grizzlies and writes about Memphis culture, food, and civic life.
There are 1718 articles by Chris Herrington :
Shelby County's path through coronavirus is a faucet not a switch: We'll gradually loosen the local economy, but will be prepared to restrict the flow of activity again if and when the virus spikes.
The past month has meant navigating a matrix of official restrictions and individual decisions, and so will the many months — maybe years — to come.
The Lucky Cat takeout menu offers family meals for four or six. The ramen, with ingredients packaged separately, travels surprisingly well.
“Grizzlies Rewind: Playoff Edition” broadcasts remind us of the thrills of days and players gone by — especially the heroics of Z-Bo.
The city and county can loosen restrictions, but a tour of Midtown and Downtown neighborhoods shows businesses and potential customers still have decisions to make.
The diversity of masks and their origins would be charming if it wasn’t yet another sign of official dysfunction in our collective approach to controlling a pandemic.
In the 2013 playoffs against the Clippers, the Grizz dropped the first two games, but won the next four. The last game featured 7 technicals, 2 ejections, a floor brawl and the crowd chanting "Finish them."
Before the pandemic, the Memphis Zoo was a choose-your-own-adventure endeavor, but for the time being, visitors will be guided in one direction around the exhibits. “If you’re just here to see the giraffes it’s going to take you awhile, because you’re going to have to walk the walk,” says zoo CEO Jim Dean.
With hints of restarting the NBA season, questions still remain on how to get the league up and going after the hiatus from the coronavirus pandemic.
The Forrest statue made the park unusable space for most Memphians. The Sons of Confederate Veterans lost the battle for the hearts and minds of Memphis, thank goodness, long before they lost the legal battle over moving the monuments to Forrest and Jefferson Davis.
This weekend's Grizzlies "Rewind” broadcasts — featuring fresh commentary from broadcaster Chris Vernon and former Grizz great Tony Allen — hit two more notable entries in the franchise’s playoff back pages.
The operational difference between “Phase 1” and “Phase 2” was always fairly narrow and has grown more so via “phase creep.”
This week, the Memphis Grizzlies joined the growing list of NBA teams who have reopened their practice facility to voluntary, individual player workouts. League-wide, practice facilities were closed on March 19 because of coronavirus concerns.
It’s hard to imagine many places of Memphis’ size with history and culture so rich and a sense of place so profound.
The elevation of mask-usage into a kind of political symbol is a drag — it’s flat-out dumb — but it’s happened, and I’d worry that a government requirement, even a loosely enforced one, would increase the political strife around the issue without a commensurate increase in compliance.
The Grizzlies opened their practice facility as the NBA offices discusses a resumption of the 2019-2020 season. Meanwhile, three more weekends have been added to their recent “Grizzlies Rewind” broadcasts of franchise-favorite playoff games.
How do you measure 6 feet of social distance in Elvis speak? Where the Memphis Zoo stenciled 6-foot markings of snakes and alligators on the ground when they reopened, Graceland has gone with six gold records or six teddy bears.
The general footprint of the plan to renovate the park – three “stages” with separation and a smaller covered venue – mimics the footprint of Memphis in May's Beale Street Music Fest, but in a way that would make a good park even without it.
The Memphis Grizzlies will enter the offseason with a lot of options but plenty of unanswered questions on the wing.
The NBA has been in discussions with the Walt Disney World about hosting games in a controlled “campus” or “bubble” environment in Orlando. And it looks like the Grizzlies will be part of the picture.
When the Memphis/Shelby County Joint COVID Task Force moved from daily to twice-weekly briefings this week, I saw it as a sign that living with the virus, and accepting that you’re living with it, means not being gripped by a crisis report day after day after day.
As the NBA looks at a variety of plans to return to the court, the Memphis Grizzlies path to the playoffs has a lot of different scenarios -- some good; some not rewarding the team for its regular-season performance so far.
So, yes, I do not care about whether a college basketball player stands up for an anthem. To complain about such a thing in this moment seems to me pointless, trivial, a kind of profanity.
Jennifer Biggs is joined by Chris Herrington to talk about new and old restaurants opening, the all-important ampersand, what bbq they like and where they like it, at-home paella and more.
Protesters distributed a list of “suggested demands” at a weekend rally. Some are easier to achieve than others given the coronavirus-spiked budgeting chaos. All, perhaps, are debatable. But it would do the city great good for the current moment to become a more actionable one.