green

First thing in the morning, we embarked on our pilgrimage to Graceland. If you want to avoid the crowds, wintertime is a good choice. Ted had me take a photo of the parking lot, which was nearly empty (this for anyone who has been to Graceland at peak season). We waltzed in about half an hour after opening, purchased our tickets, and left on the tram about 10 minutes later. The only sour point was that apparently my camera is too advanced and was banned from the premises. The only photos I took were of a new Elvis bowling ball in the ticket pavilion lobby, and a photo of our little post-tour snack: a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich (yum).

Although the mansion itself is fascinating trip to the 70’s, they’ve unfortunately switched to an electronic audio guide instead of the traditional human tour guide format. The result is somewhat strange and isolating. Although the audio was informative and interesting, it was eerie to be part of these shuffling, silent groups wandering from room to room–the silence punctuated by occasional “what number do I press?” and “how do I pause this?” and “where are we now?” Ted had taken the tour a couple times before, and sorely missed the human guides, who were enthusiastic, informative, and funny–and their absence made Ted sad.

Afterwards, on the way down Elvis Presley Blvd, we were flagged down by the driver next to us, who wanted to take a picture of me taking a picture of him taking a picture of me. Must be a regional thing. We also snapped a few shots of the local scenery…

Our next stop on our day’s excursion was a visit to Sun Studios. Started by the talented Mr. Sam Phillips, this is arguably the studio which produced the first rock’n’roll record, and the place where such greats as Elvis Presley, Howlin’ Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, BB King, Johnny Cash, and many others got their start.

This was sort of the flip side of the Graceland experience. Basically, the tour consists of two rooms: an upstairs gallery of various displays covering the history of the studio, and the one-room studio itself. However, our tour guide stretched those two rooms out into a fascinating and entertaining 45-minute tour. Ted managed to make her blush by inquiring about propriety of flinging panties at our tour guide.

We later had a meal at Huey’s downtown, a place well known for their burgers and their customer-penned graffiti (which covers most surfaces in the place). They actually had a pretty exceptional vegetarian burger, for those on veg-watch through the south out there. The second photo doesn’t show it well, but in addition to the graffiti, the ceiling is skewered with thousands of toothpicks (also presumably fired by patrons after eating).

We ended the evening on Beale Street, a couple of blocks lined with blues clubs and cafes. Some of the neon signs here are really cool, especially the older ones. There were many notable ones I didn’t have a chance to shoot out of our moving car, but here are some interesting ones I did manage to capture.