Profiles
LGBT Ally: Allan Creasy
by Sarah Rushakoff | photos courtesy of Allan Creasy If you’ve lived in Memphis for a while, chances are you’ve had a conversation with Allan Creasy. It might have been at Celtic Crossing in Cooper-Young, where he tended bar and ran trivia nights for years. Maybe it...
Oothoon’s: Retail Magic
story by Robin Beaudoin Ownby | photos by Beverly Love “I never would have thought back then, this is what I’d end up doing. It’s hard to leave the store now. My husband has to drag me out,” Michelle McMillen swoons. “In a previous life, I was in graduate school to be...
Community
Today’s LGBT+ Lesson: Pronouns
Gender neutral pronouns have been around for centuries. At least as far back as 12th century Old English, the pronouns were almost indistinguishable, which prompted the use of ‘she’ to distinguish the male and female pronoun from each other. In 1789, William H....
Navigating Divorce with Dignity
by Sarah Rutledge Fischer In our culture, divorce is assumed to be a battlefield. Two people who can no longer live their lives as one turn to the courts as an arena for the destruction of their union and all the carnage that will entail. Litigation, which presumes...
Ask Allie: Finding Trans Youth Role Models
by Sarah Rutledge Fischer Dear Allie,Last November, watching Kamala Harris take the stage as the first someone-who-looks-like- me to be elected Vice President of the United States, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably. I have always known that representation is...
Art & Culture
Playhouse on the Square will Resume On-Stage Performances with Streamed Productions
In the wake of rising Coronavirus cases in the Mid-South and safety measures imposed by the Shelby County Health Department, Playhouse on the Square’s theaters will remain closed to patrons. However, art has its place during a national crisis. Throughout history,...
Sheroes of Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre Group
story by Sarah Rushakoff | photos by Angel Ortez The sky’s the limit. That’s what the sheroes of Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre Group want you to know. Cazateatro, founded in 2006, is unique in Memphis as a bilingual theater company, a vehicle for community education,...
Opinion: Is Time Up for TikTok?
by Robin Beaudoin Ownby They say that Facebook makes you hate the people you love and TikTok makes you love people you will never meet. Nothing could be truer. In the tidal wave of negativity that is American politics and the Coronavirus pandemic, millions have...
Travel
Original Memphis: Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park
story and photos by Tricia Dewey Located on the third Chickasaw Bluff, Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park is 13 miles north of Memphis and contains 12,529 acres of oak-hickory forest, two lakes, 20 miles of hiking trails, a biking trail, two disc golf courses, and miles...
Original Memphis: Gay River Cruises of the 80s
by Vincent Astor | images courtesy of Vincent Astor 1980 was a very busy year for activism in Memphis. The Tennessee Gay Coalition for Human Rights had a Memphis chapter (later the Memphis Gay Coalition). Memphis hosted the Southeastern Conference of Lesbians and Gay...
Happy 5th Birthday to Us!
by Joan Allison Focus | Mid-South Managing Editor and Creative Director Focus was born of a passion that our publisher, Ray Rico, wanted to bring to fruition. ‘Rico,’ as he is called by most people, is a Latinx man who is gay. When I first started at Ray Rico...