Friday, April 1st
On Friday morning we said goodbye to Ada and the Barksdale house and moved our base of operations to Amy’s friend’s condo downtown for our activity-packed last day. I did some emergency shopping (I somehow UNDERpacked for this trip) we met up with Amy and had lunch at Earnestine & Hazel’s, a dilapidated bar/former brothel. And by lunch I mean Soul Burgers, because that is the only thing they serve.
After lunch we visited the National Civil Rights Museum, which is only a block away from Amy and Zach’s apartment. It was amazing and heartbreaking, and I strongly recommend checking it out if you are ever in the Memphis area.
Our next activity was a real treat: a tour of the abandoned Sears Crosstown building! It’s an enormous (like, 1.3 million square feet) former retail space/distribution center that Crosstown Arts is hoping to redevelop into like, residential/commercial/everything, but right now it’s just dilapidated and creepy as hell. Like, I’m so glad we were there during the day!
I took this from the roof, looking towards downtown- you can see the pyramid in the center.
Once the tour was over we headed back downtown and had brandy alexanders at the Peabody Hotel, and then went to the roof to visit the Peabody ducks in their duck palace.
This restaurant is just down from the Peabody, I wanted to go in there and demand free shots.
We stayed their for long enough that Zach could meet us for dinner (he’s in law school and has class all day and studies all night) at the Majestic Grille, followed by dessert at Local, because Amy wanted Zach to try the Ice Cream Sandwich à la Mode (aka bacon blondie with ice cream). It was a fantastic end to an amazing day, and with an early morning flight the next day, a perfect goodbye to Memphis!
Coming up: The Long Way Home
omg I want one of those Sears letters! I can’t believe no one stole them yet!
We had the building caretaker with us and I think he’s the one who showed the guy from the arts group where they were- they’re stashed in a totally random office on like, the seventh or eighth floor. The building is so enormous it’s conceivable that no one exploring illicitly ever found them.
what kind of animal was that dead animal?! it seemed like a cat but its tail is soooooooooo long
It was a rat!