Last night, I saw Elvis on Beale Street. Elvis was walking down the street. Elvis was in a club, singing on stage. Elvis was posing for pictures with motorcycles. Elvis was standing, chatting with Elvis. Elvis was sitting at a table, sharing a beer with Elvis. Elvis was on stage at W.C.Handy Park, in his vestments and cassock.
That last one was the weirdest Elvis of the evening, the night before the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. "Elvis Priestly, the Bishop of Beale Street" looked and sounded more like "Church of England Elvis". Turns out he's Canadian, and while he's not much of a singer, he is a real Anglican priest. And he does live in Graceland. The Right Reverend Dorian Arthur Baxter is the resident pastor for Christ the King, Graceland Church, in Newmarket, Ontario.
With Memphis still enduring a record-breaking heat wave (it was 105F yesterday; one fan died of heat stress while waiting in line several hours to be one of the 50,000 people to file past Elvis' grave at Graceland), it takes a higher calling to perform on an outdoor stage, dressed in a tight-fitting cassock and Roman collar, several layers of stoles, and a cape, all appearing to be made of wool.
The heat didn't keep the Elvis fans or the Bikes on Beale regulars away. The crowd was a little thin at 7PM, but once the sun went down, the temperature dropped into the mid-90s, and the street lit up and the Elvii came out. Middle-aged and thick-waisted Elvis fans had their pictures taken on a huge Boss Hoss trike being raffled off by Shiners in tall burgundy fezzes. Lean and hard-looking biker women admired each other's chrome. White boys on crotch rockets rode down the street, dragging their feet and trying to look serious. Not-so-shapely female tourists sang karaoke (badly) and danced (badly) on the bar at Coyote Ugly. Guys in black leather chaps and Harley-Davidson logo t-shirts drank from quart-sized plastic cups of beer (labeled "Big Ass Beer") and ogled women, or motorcycles. The only elements missing from the circus atmosphere were the strippers, who often hand out free admission cards on the street (there are no strip clubs on Beale, but it's a good place to advertise), and the famous Beale Street Flippers, young African-American men who perform block-long backflips down the street for tips.
Elvis had an appreciation for the gaudy. Somewhere, he must have looked down on the sweaty crowd of bizarrely-dressed people, and smiled at it all.
PS: On my way home, I had to stop in the heart of Germantown to let an armadillo slowly shuffle across the street. It was a strange coda to a strange evening.
http://www.elvispriestley.com/biography.htm
Topic: Bikes on Beale--Too Many Elvii (Read 2481 times)