With another loss, The Pinch feels its name
Last September, the DMC sponsored Alley Dayz in The Pinch, a one-day festival that attracted 1,500 people. The lights over the street were installed by Comeback Coffee co-owner Hayes McPherson. (Courtesy DMC)
When North Main Street in The Pinch District was dark last year because the streetlights didn’t work — and Memphis Light, Gas and Water wasn’t responding — Comeback Coffee co-owner Hayes McPherson ultimately strung up lights himself.
He paid for them — strings of neat, white lights — crisscrossing over several hundred feet of public thoroughfare, two stories above traffic, and covered the utility bill by running the conduit through Comeback’s space at 358 N. Main St.
When the coffee shop closes April 11, along with sunny plant shop, Greenhaus, at 356 N. Main St., McPherson will continue to pay the bill, a symbol of how much merchants in The Pinch feel about their area of the world.
The news last week that Comeback Coffee and Greenhaus — a contiguous, 100-plus feet of remodeled, active storefront on a ghost town of a street — were closing was another gut punch to the neighborhood, the oldest in the city.
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Comeback Coffee The Pinch District B.J. Chester-Tamayo Alcenia's Alex Turley Subscriber Only Hayes McPhersonThank you for supporting local journalism.
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Jane Roberts
Jane Roberts has reported in Memphis for more than 20 years. As a senior member of The Daily Memphian staff, she was assigned to the medical beat during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also has done in-depth work on other medical issues facing our community, including shortages of specialists in local hospitals. She covered K-12 education here for years and later the region’s transportation sector, including Memphis International Airport and FedEx Corp.
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