Jackson

Coming home to Jackson is always familiar...the same crowd is always there, at the same coffee shop. Fondren, the art district here, is really small, just a few blocks, and the rest of the city is fairly non-nondescript and business-y, and if you wander too far you will realize why Jackson has earned a spot as the fourteenth most-dangerous city in the US, in the ranks of Detroit, DC, Birmingham, Memphis, Atlanta, and New Orleans. Mayor Frank Melton has declared more than one state of emergency due to the crime rate, and took to carrying around a gun for a while. (Crime stats here.) If you are any sort of alternative-thinker and can safely make your way through all the crack heads and trailer-trash prostitutes telling horny Caddy-drivers to "run them over," (which, despite our criminal record, is not difficult to do), you will eventually make your way to Cups, a little coffee shop in the heart of Fondren. Here you will almost always run across the usual characters: a talkative gay sexagenarian with a snuff-stained moustache, a handful of obnoxious "free-thinking" 20-somethings who draw shitty Tool-inspired trip-art with pens and hi-liters, and half a dozen or so teenage musicians and their trendy pseudo-privileged female groupies, many of whom have gone off to state schools but spend their weekends at home. Then there is the occasional radical free-lance journalist who may write for the independent newspaper here, in which most articles are devoted to bashing the mayor, analyzing city council, or, of course, reviewing...



local music. Much of the Cups crowd can be found at almost every local show. The 16-22 music crowd only frequents three or four venues, the most popular of which has in recent years been WC Don's (We Couldn't Decide On a Name).


It is certainly the most hole-in-the-wall of the popular venues, and although it has gone through a few different hands (it went from being a smoky broken-down bar to a smoky broken-down vegan restaurant that no one trusted, then found itself a bar once again), it has stayed the same throughout. There are a few beaten-up couches that no one really wants to sit on but everyone does anyway, a dozen or so tables with wobbly chairs, Christmas lights lining the long hallway from the door to the stage, pool tables, and bathrooms inscribed with such poetry as "No need to wipe the seat, airborne crabs can jump ten feet." Apparently Don's is closing for good, now, though, and may be demolished to make room for a sad albeit necessary parking lot extension. But of course the heart of the music scene is the music: The Weeks, Lake Caroline, Colour Revolt, Questions in Dialect, the up-and-coming Da Vincis and The Romanovs are all major players, along with a handful of other southern bands who come and go. I am definitely not turning this into a music review post, so just check them out.

If your alterna-Jacksonian isn't out for music or coffee, he is probably living his life as the quintessential starving artist, painting at a drum circle in the park near the Old Capitol -- that or underage-drinking in a park near the magnet school. There are, of course, a few venues for real cultural and entertainment opportunities, such as the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Mississippi, the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, Davis Planetarium, and New Stage Theater, to name a few...none of which a true Jacksonian would ever find himself caught dead at...he only spends money on covers and cheap champagne.