By John Branston 

Like him or not, Elon Musk should be reconsidered by skeptics because having his AI supercomputer in Memphis is like having another major-league sports team – like it or not. 

This is NOT to say that the non-disclosure agreement he made with MLGW and Memphis is OK. Just the opposite. 

U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. — Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk speaks with Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, Superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy, during the Ira C. Eaker Distinguished Speaker Presentation in the Academy’s Arnold Hall on April 7, 2022 in Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Air Force photo by Trevor cokley)

The well-funded local media obsessed with food and sports and compliant local politicians and board members should join Smart City Memphis blogger Tom Jones in demanding to know the sensitive details of the deal with the power-hogging water-hogging Musk venture. 

You can’t look at the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post or New York Times without seeing a few stories about Musk every day. Musk and AI, Musk and Trump, Musk and outer space, Musk and self-driving cars, Musk and the future of the world. Musk and his massive conspiracy theories and lies. 

Memphis is sometimes, as they say, in the conversation, which is better than being in the conversation about murder-city rankings and declining populations like, say, Oakland, which has lost all three of its major-league sports teams and is to San Francisco as Memphis is to Nashville. 

I spent last weekend in the Bay Area to take tours by boat, car, train and ankle express of the downtown Oakland port and the scruffy and sexy sides of the Bay Area. It was as essential to understanding Oakland as a FedEx hub tour is to understanding Memphis. 

It was creepy seeing driverless cars in Musk’s Waymo fleet of white Jaguars weaving in and out of traffic. San Francisco banned them a year ago and now allows them. Fred Smith told me FedEx already has over-the-road trucks that are essentially driverless although a “safety” human sits behind the wheel. 

Musk is young enough and ambitious enough to be a force for decades. He could shape Memphis as much as FedEx and the new Ford E-truck and battery plant. We should get to know him better, assuming he stays around, even if it is a bumpy ride. 

In related news, The Washington Post recently jumped on the Detroit bandwagon. But there is so much more to the “health” of struggling cities than slogans (“Detroit Against Er’body” – sound familiar?), boosterism, pockets of prosperity, and pro sports. Detroit is a legacy city with four teams, and the Pistons, Tigers, and Red Wings have all won championships while the Detroit population has declined from well over a million to 650,000. David Marinass tells the story in his book “Once in a Great City” without being a basher or a booster. 

Finally, here is something old to go with something new. The Fogelman YMCA downtown will mark the 115th anniversary of its dedication on October 27th. It is right next to AutoZone Park and older than neighbors The Peabody and Sterick Building. Hefty President William Howard Taft and the governors of 27 states attended the dedication in 1909. 

The place shows its age, and the “wet area” Murderers Row of showers-sauna-steam-and-spa is often in need of repair. But the pool is a treasure and its lifeguards and staff give swimming lessons to people sixth-grade to seventy. The Y is an exemplary nonprofit in a day when the term is abused to the point of being meaningless.  

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John Branston covered Memphis as a reporter and columnist for 35 years.