Thirty-two stories of stainless steel rise beside you on the bank of the Mississippi River: the Memphis Pyramid, without question one of the strangest buildings in America. It was built in 1991 as a sports and entertainment arena, and it worked reasonably well for a decade — hosting NBA games for the Memphis Grizzlies, big concerts, and college basketball. Then the Grizzlies moved to a new arena in 2004, and the Pyramid sat empty for years, becoming a strange landmark of civic ambition and municipal regret.
The story of what came next is even stranger. In 2015, Bass Pro Shops — the outdoors retail chain — opened the world's largest Bass Pro store inside the pyramid. There is a hotel inside.
There are alligators in an indoor swamp. There is a bowling alley, an archery range, a shooting range, a cypress tree swamp, and a 100-foot-tall waterfall. An elevator inside the apex takes you to an observation deck at the top.
The Memphis Pyramid was supposed to honor the city's ancient Egyptian namesake. It ended up as something even more Memphis: improbable, excessive, and somehow working perfectly.