Walk Down Any Street In St. Louis . . .

. . . any part of town, any day of the week, and you are likely to see a bear on a unicycle. stilt walkers, Wonder Woman or a bicycle riding camel. What a town!

Or at least Wonder Woman, right?                      

Comedy And Tragedy

I dunno, that's what the two faces make me think of. I couldn't get hair like that if I had a 50 gallon drum of Rogaine laced with LSD. If you prefer, though, you could go for the Picasso-ish look with similar hair.             

 

Cast Of Characters

These people aren't from central casting. Marginal casting, maybe. Just a small sample of the marchers in the People's Joy Parade. More sure to follow. 

A NOTE FOR LOCAL CANON SHOOTERS: Canon has a national road show in progress, providing training in the use of their DSLRs for still and video shooting.  It's in St. Louis this weekend, May 10 - 11. The organizers contacted me, offering a $10 discount to the Saturday program. Go to the link just above and enter code CIAMZED10 at checkout.                          

Return Of The People's Joy Parade

                       

Every spring for the last several years, a wacky parade about nothing but fun steps off in the eclectic Cherokee Street neighborhood. It was created by local artist Sarah Patterson, seen on the left in this picture with some parade crewmembers. Over time, It blended with the Cinco de Mayo festival that takes place just down Cherokee, more about which later. It's a hoot.           

Beale Street

You might say that Beale Street in Memphis is a tiny, slightly run down version of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It's lined with blues clubs and barbecue restaurants, plus a couple of bars that sell right out onto the sidewalk. The main part of it is about a block and a half long. It claims ties to the origin of the blues - it did move upstream from the Mississippi delta - and rock and roll, I guess because of Elvis. Rock had roots in many places, including St. Louis, in the person of Mr. Chuck Berry.

It's late Friday night as I write this. Back out on the streets of The Lou today.                              

Air Elvis

The Graceland complex contains Elvis' two airplanes, a big Convair 880 (Anyone remember that? I never flew in one.) and a smaller corporate plane, a Lockheed Jet Star. The larger one was named the Lisa Marie, after his daughter. It was used mainly on performance tours. The Lockheed is called the Hound Dog.

You can see some detail below. I doubt that lavatory on the Lisa Marie was genuine gold, but interpret the meaning if it is not. Even the sofas on the Lisa Marie have seat belts - federal regulation, of course. In the last picture, a security camera catches an intruder on the Hound Dog.

I want to do a bit about the city of Memphis itself before I return home. It was surprisingly pleasant. One on my favorite STL annual events is tomorrow and we'll get to that soon.                                        

Elvis' Cars

From top to bottom:

1956 Caddilac Eldorado

1966 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud

1970 Ferrari Dino

Lincoln Continental - didn't get the year

The pink Caddilac

Elvis came from a poor family in the poor town of Tupelo, Mississippi, not far south of Memphis (part of Tupelo was flattened by a tornado a few days ago). I can understand why someone from that background would crave the material marks of success, but then I think about what the money spent on those cars could have done for his home town. Elvis could have used more Buddha nature.