Recreations & Leisure
The city’s top entertainment area is Beale Street in the heart of downtown, and the area is as synonymous with Memphis as the French Quarter dominates New Orleans.
While Beale is generally known for its dining, music, dancing and entertainment, the area is hugely important in black history and the history of the blues. According to the city’s own his-torical authorities, in the early 1900s, the then-Beale Avenue was filled with clubs, restaurants and shops, many of them owned by African-Americans.
NAACP cofounder Ida B. Wells was a co-owner and editor of a newspaper published on Beale. From the 1920s to the 1940s, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas and other blues and jazz legends played on Beale and helped develop the style known as Memphis Blues. While the city became run-down over the years, city officials started renovating the area in the 1980s. The area now is a safe, bustling and exciting environment.
When in season, the Memphis Redbirds (a farm team of the St. Louis Cardinals) plays in a beau-tiful new ballpark downtown, just across the street from the Peabody Hotel. The aptly named Pyramid Arena hosts college basketball games with the Memphis Tigers of Conference USA. The Fedex Arena is home to the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies (a transplant from Vancouver).