Best One-Off Film Screening
When Suzannah Herbert brought her latest documentary, Natchez, to the Crosstown Theater on February 19th, it felt like the whole town showed up. While not many Memphians knew the details at the time, we pulled up to support a Memphian who’s been making waves as a director for some time, and we were not disappointed! Indeed, we were drawn into the narrative, wherein what seems at first to be a quaint love of history among owners of the town’s antebellum mansions is revealed to be tainted with ongoing racial rifts and antiquated prejudices amongst all the splendor. Bravo to Memphis for showing up, and for getting it! — Alex Greene
Best Place That Always Smells Like Weed
Game X Change on Union, next to the Smoothie King that may or may not be open, is reliably fragrant whether you need Pokémon cards or an old Bluetooth speaker. — Toby Sells
Best New Ice Cream
Stella’s Ice Cream (Photo: Stella’s | Facebook)
Stella’s Ice Cream is already a tradition in our family. It’s only been open one year! The amazing ice cream (What up Caramel Biscoff flavor?), cookies, and brownies get you in the door. The always-friendly staff gets you coming back. — TS
Best Community to Help
The Memphis Hispanic community is under extreme duress from the Trump administration’s indiscriminate and often unconstitutional ICE deportation activities. Thousands of your fellow Memphians are being harassed and detained daily on nonexistent or trumped-up charges or on the basis of racial profiling.
You can help. Support Hispanic businesses. Some of them, like most Mexican restaurants, are obvious, but for a more complete list of LatinX-owned businesses, get in touch with Latino Memphis. And while you’re on the website or the phone, see how you can get involved. The organization advocates for health, education, and justice for the currently beleaguered Hispanic community. Reach out. Send them some money. Volunteer. Be part of the resistance. — Bruce VanWyngarden
Visit latinomemphis.org for details.
Best Place to Sit in Your Car with the Motor Running for Some Reason
This category used to belong to the parking lot at Overton Park’s Rainbow Lake. No contest. After months of constant surveillance, testing, and internal review, the king has been conquered.
This year’s winner of the “Best Place to Sit in Your Car with the Motor Running for Some Reason” is the FedEx Office Print & Ship Center on Union, next to Firehouse Subs. Long may you reign, and long may you run (your engine, for some reason). — TS
Best Beer and Burger Dive
Coming up on its third birthday at that new-ish-looking spot on Central near Cooper-Young, Jack Brown’s Beer & Burger Joint looks like that dive you used to love. (Mine was the P&H Cafe. RIP.)
It’s dark with a chaotic/local/funny/sometimes-profane aesthetic. Jack Brown’s is the place you tell your kid not to talk about at school. But the great selection of beers and menu of amazing and inventive burgers makes you not really care if they do or don’t. — TS
Best New Addition
Baron Von Opperbean and the River of Time. Artist Christopher Reyes fought for years to bring his vision of interactive art experiences to Memphis. This year, the dream was finally realized in spectacular fashion. Baron Von Opperbean and the River of Time took over the shuttered Mississippi River Museum on Mud Island, transforming it into a high-tech, sci-fi wonderland that has already attracted tens of thousands of visitors in its first four months. — Chris McCoy
Best Book Release Event Involving Old Labor Songs
When Emily Yellin, John Lawson, and Carol Jenkins spoke about Rev. James Lawson Jr.’s posthumous book, Nonviolent: A Memoir of Resistance, Agitation, and Love, at the National Civil Rights Museum on February 20th, it was good to have a tissue handy to dry your eyes. You would have been shedding tears of joy more than tears of tragedy, though, despite the dark history being discussed: The deeply progressive spirit of Memphis was shining through on many levels, not least in terms of families coming together. Yellin, who co-wrote the book with the late Rev. Lawson, had been childhood friends with his son John, also attending that night. Yet the ultimate Memphis magic kicked in when Deborah Manning stepped up to sing “Which Side Are You On?” a cappella, taking everyone to church with an activist’s determination, and inspiring the packed room to sing along. — AG
Best Neighborhood
Cooper-Young. Fight me. Why? Let me count the ways: Young Avenue Deli, Cooper’s, Celtic Crossing, Cooper House Project, Java Cabana, Grivet Outdoors, Goner Records, 901 Toys, Fawn, Burke’s Book Store (for crying out loud!), Maciel’s Tortas and Tacos, whatever is happening at the old Alchemy space and the old Tsunami space, Cooper-Young Festival, Porchfest, and the Cooper-Young Community Farmers Market. Then there’s the sheer walkability of the neighborhood, and all the other stuff I missed. — TS
Best Gift Shop
Metal Museum’s silver skull sugar spoon (Photo: Courtesy Metal Museum)
The Metal Museum’s shiny new and expanded gift shop in Overton Park has a delightful array of goodies, and you can outfit your home, particularly your kitchen, with some of their goods. I’m partial to the silver skull sugar spoon, which is lovely, fascinating, and has holes in it so you can gently decrease your intake of sweetener. I recently acquired a more traditional spoon on which was stamped “Shit Stirrer” and I use it for, well, everything. — Jon Sparks
Most Welcome Comeback
Indie Memphis Film Festival. 2025 was the first year since 1998 that Indie Memphis did not hold a film festival. But the nonprofit got new leadership and battled economic headwinds to reboot the storied film festival Downtown — which is great, because it was a travesty that a city this size could not have a film festival. The newly refreshed fest will bring dozens of films of all kinds to the Halloran Centre and Malco’s Powerhouse Cinema this November 5-8. — CM
