Weird & unusual things to do in Memphis
The genuinely offbeat side of Memphis: 53 hand-vetted hidden spots — oddity shops, hidden bars, haunted history, sound baths, weird outdoor finds — built for an unusual date night, a weird afternoon, or showing a visitor a side of the city they'd never find alone. Like Elmwood Cemetery, Earnestine & Hazel's, National Ornamental Metal Museum (the Metal Museum). Local secrets even locals miss — you didn't hear it from us.
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Elmwood Cemetery
Memphis's oldest continuously operating cemetery holds roughly 2,500 unmarked victims of the catastrophic 187…
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Earnestine & Hazel's
Behind the jukebox and the Soul Burger, the upstairs rooms of this South Main dive bar ran as a working broth…
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National Ornamental Metal Museum (the Metal Museum)
A dragon sculpture is bolted to the ceiling inside a museum that sits on the grounds of a former U.S. Marine…
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Rooftop Stargazing at Beale Street Landing
You walk up a grassy ramp onto the roof of the Beale Street Landing pavilion — normally a river-cruise dock —…
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Memphis Gong Chamber (at Memphis Drum Shop)
A retail drum shop that doubles as a chamber holding roughly 250 gongs from 20 to 80 inches, including a $28,…
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AutoZone Sharpe Planetarium — Laser Rock
Inside the domed Pink Palace Museum campus (MoSH), a 130-seat theater-in-the-round throws star fields and las…
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Amani Bath Spa
Owner Emma Crystal, a former IT worker turned licensed massage therapist, opened this two-private-bathroom sp…
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Sultana Disaster Museum
A small storefront museum ten minutes across the river holds furnace bricks, shaker plates, and other relics…
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Crystal Shrine Grotto
Inside a working cemetery, Mexican folk artist Dionicio Rodriguez spent the late 1930s hand-carving a 60-foot…
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Withers Collection Museum & Gallery
Photojournalist Ernest C. Withers shot an estimated 1.8 million frames over six decades — Emmett Till's murde…
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Tops Gallery
You get to the actual gallery by descending wooden steps through a dark, underground art-storage-and-studio s…
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Jasper Float Spa & Wellness Center
A downtown Memphis wellness spa near Main and Union with sensory-deprivation float tanks alongside sauna and…
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Better Bodies Yoga — The Salt Caves
A yoga studio since 2004 that also operates what it calls the Mid-South's largest salt cave — a halotherapy r…
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A. Schwab / Beale Street Hoodoo History and Folklife Museum
Memphis's oldest continuously operating store (since 1876, at this address since 1911) still sells cast-iron…
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Woodruff-Fontaine House
In this 1871 Victorian Village mansion, Mollie Woodruff endured a stillbirth and later watched her husband di…
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Memphis Listening Lab
Built entirely around the personal record collection Ardent Records co-founder John King donated before his d…
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The Broom Closet
A metaphysical shop tucked into the South Main gallery district run by ordained Pagan clergy Rev. Emily Guent…
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Barons Bar + Barbershop (speakeasy)
A fully working barbershop by day — fades, straight-razor shaves, the works — until a customer swings open a…
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The Cotton Museum at the Memphis Cotton Exchange
Housed on the actual trading floor of the Memphis Cotton Exchange — once the largest cotton market on earth f…
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Asian Night Market — Memphis Agricenter
Now in its fourth year, this Vietnamese American Community-run market takes over the Agricenter fairgrounds a…
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Lucyja Hygge
A Midtown metaphysical shop that splices Eastern European folk-magic with Southern hoodoo sensibility — cryst…
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National Bird Dog Museum
A 30,000-square-foot shrine to hunting dogs about an hour east of Memphis, centered on a Wildlife Heritage Ce…
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Mary's Bar of Tropical Escapism (Mary's B.O.T.E.)
Billed simply as 'Memphis' only tiki bar' — a small, 21-and-up tropical hideaway on Cooper Street with fish t…
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Tom Lee Park — river-creature playground & Tom Lee memorial
Giant sculptural playground pieces by Danish design studio Monstrum — a sturgeon, a caterpillar, a salamander…
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Fire Museum of Memphis
A single obsession — fire and life safety — filling a still-active-looking historic firehouse, Engine House N…
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Telescope Mentoring Nights at Hinton Park
The Memphis Astronomical Society runs informal, free "telescope mentoring" evenings at this Collierville park…
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Tiger & Peacock Rooftop — The Memphian
The rooftop bar atop The Memphian hotel serves "astronomically inspired" cocktails and has hosted recurring a…
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Marlowe's Ribs & Restaurant
Marlowe's has been feeding people a mile south of Graceland for decades, and it has solved the tourist-transp…
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Shelby Forest General Store
The store sits on a two-lane road between the front and back entrances of Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park, ab…
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Goner Records
Goner started as a label in 1993 to put out records nobody else would — Tokyo's Guitar Wolf, the Oblivians, t…
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Hernando's Hide-A-Way
Hernando's sits at the end of a residential dead-end road in Whitehaven, holds about 200 people, and carries…
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Belz Museum of Asian & Judaic Art
Jack and Marilyn Belz wandered into an Asian art gallery in Los Angeles in 1968 and never really stopped; the…
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East End Skating Center
East End sits on Mt Moriah under new ownership, with a newly resurfaced floor and more upgrades promised. The…
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Flashback
Millett Vance has been selling Memphis its own past since 1985, first through two Midtown shops called Lou's…
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Blue Suede Vintage
Casey, a Memphis native who went to Tennessee, took an MBA in Austin and came home, moved Blue Suede into a b…
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Comics & Collectibles
In business since 1986 and still calling itself the Mid-South's largest, this is the shop other Memphis shops…
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Bad Timing
Nate Packard and Nick "Ish" Blanco ran pop-ups inside Urban Outfitters and downtown before opening to the pub…
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Growlers
Growlers sits in a low brick building at 1911 Poplar, a few blocks east of Overton Park, and books like a roo…
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Hi-Tone (the downstairs Small Room)
Hi-Tone runs two rooms out of one address on N Cleveland: the Big Room upstairs, all ages unless flagged othe…
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The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
The Green Room is a purpose-built listening space on the second floor of Crosstown Concourse — the 1927 Sears…
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B-Side
B-Side is a 200-capacity bar tucked into the Minglewood Plaza strip at 1553 Madison, and its entire pitch is…
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Wild Bill's
Wild Bill's is a low cinderblock building on Vollintine with long communal tables, meaning you don't get a ta…
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Murphy's
Murphy's sits at 1589 Madison in Midtown and has been quietly absorbing Memphis's loud end of the spectrum fo…
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Shangri-La Records
Shangri-La opened at 1916 Madison in 1988 as a wellness operation run by Sherman Willmott, offering sensory-d…
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Burke's Book Store
Burke's has been selling books in Memphis since 1875, which makes it one of the oldest independent bookstores…
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The Beauty Shop Restaurant
Karen Carrier took a shuttered 1950s Cooper-Young salon — the one where Priscilla Presley sat for her hair —…
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Cozy Corner BBQ
Cozy Corner's calling card is the whole smoked Cornish game hen, $12.25 as a dinner plate, which is not a thi…
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Jerry's Sno Cones
The order is the Supreme — ice cream sunk inside the sno cone rather than perched on top, so you dig down thr…
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Coletta's Italian Restaurant
Coletta's opened in 1923 and is now run by the fifth generation of the same family, which is roughly four gen…
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Gibson's Donuts
Gibson's opened on Mt. Moriah in 1967; Don DeWeese was a regular customer who bought it in 1996 as an investm…
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Alcenia's
Betty Joyce Chester-Tamayo — Ms. B.J. to everyone — opened Alcenia's on North Main in 1997 after her son's de…
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RP Tracks
Rick Johns and Peter Moon opened it in December 1987 beside the rail line a block off the University of Memph…
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Kwik Chek
On paper it's a Midtown corner store: beer coolers, lottery tickets, a wall of chips, people in and out for a…
Unusual things to do in Memphis — FAQ
What are some unusual things to do in Memphis?
53 hand-vetted weird spots — like Elmwood Cemetery, Earnestine & Hazel's, National Ornamental Metal Museum (the Metal Museum) — plus oddity shops, hidden bars, haunted history, sound baths, and offbeat outdoor finds. Every one is real and sourced, not a top-ten landmark.
Where can you go for a weird date night in Memphis?
Try Elmwood Cemetery, Earnestine & Hazel's, National Ornamental Metal Museum (the Metal Museum) — strange-but-real spots that make a memorable date. Filter by neighborhood, vibe, or how far you'll drive: in town, nearby, or a day trip.
What's a weird thing to do in Memphis tonight or this weekend?
For tonight, filter to "in town" and low-key picks; for the weekend, the day-trip ring opens up genuinely strange spots a short drive out. Start with Elmwood Cemetery, Earnestine & Hazel's, National Ornamental Metal Museum (the Metal Museum) — and sort by how far you're willing to go.
Are there free or cheap weird things to do in Memphis?
Yes — 36 Memphis spots are free or low-cost, like Rooftop Stargazing at Beale Street Landing, AutoZone Sharpe Planetarium — Laser Rock, Withers Collection Museum & Gallery. Roadside oddities, public art, and outdoor curiosities usually cost nothing.
How is this different from the usual Memphis tourist lists?
We skip the landmarks everyone knows. An agentic research system digs up the genuinely hidden, offbeat spots — the local secrets even locals miss — and verifies each against real sources before it makes the list.