I recently came back from a business trip to Little Rock, Arkansas.  In some weird way I was looking forward to this trip because I never made it to this part of the country before.  I had seen many photos of Little Rock’s skyline and was always surprised how built out it was for a metro population of only 640,000.  Little Rock is also within a two-hour drive from Memphis, which was another city I had always wanted to visit.  When I lived in St. Louis, I was a 4-5 hour drive away from Memphis but I never made it down there so I thought this was the best chance I was going to get for a while.  I ended up flying into Memphis a day early and would drive to Little Rock in the evening.  

The two things I wanted to experience while in Memphis were the Beale Street entertainment district and Memphis BBQ and I was not disappointed by either.  Every now and then you hear someone compare Beale Street to Over-the-Rhine’s Main Street in Cincinnati.  While both streets are historic in their own rights, they are distinctly different.  The Beale Street entertainment district is a single street about three blocks long in the heart of downtown Memphis.  Over-the-Rhine on the other hand is an entire neighborhood separated from Downtown by a six lane boulevard.  Memphis deserves a lot of credit for integrating the Minor League baseball stadium and the FedEx forum on opposite sides of entertainment district.  Memphis truly is one of the more walkable southern cities of America.

As for BBQ, I attempted to visit Charlie Vergo’s Rendezvous but it was unfortunately closed so I eventually made my way to Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ.  Luckily they were open and when I arrived someone was taking a photo of the building and sign (something I would eventually do) so I knew I was at the right place for Memphis BBQ.  I ordered the ribs and pulled pork platter and was quite impressed.  I loved the sauce so much I bought a bottle of it to take home.  The BBQ was good and the sauce was fantastic but in all honestly the ribs didn’t come close to the Montgomery Inn in Cincinnati.  They were good and I enjoyed them but not on the level of Montgomery Inn ribs. I eventually had Corky’s while I was there and preferred Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ over it by a wide margin.  

While in Little Rock, I had the pleasure of visiting the William J. Clinton Presidential Library.  I thought the museum was well done with a full-scale replica of how the Oval Office looked while President Clinton was in office.  I thought downtown Little Rock looked better on postcards than it did in person.  The River Market was decent but outside this little entertainment district, the downtown was filled with endless surface lots and little retail.  I tried to replicate my favorite skyline shot I have seen in postcards but there is now a river barge in the way and the weather didn’t cooperate much.  I might be back there again so I will try to improve upon the current set on my next visit.  You can visit the Memphis photo gallery here and the Little Rock photo gallery here.