Sharkheads

Sharkheads, a pink souvenir shop on US Highway 90 in Biloxi, invites visitors in through the open mouth of a shark that the shop gives as 32 feet tall. The shop says its story began in 1977 in a closed-down gas station, opened as T-Shirt City. It grew by buying neighbouring businesses and in 2000 bought an adjacent office building and joined the two, creating what it calls the largest gift shop on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It then added the giant shark mouth entrance and took the name Sharkheads. According to Seaside Retailer magazine, the idea came from a souvenir store in Gulf Shores, Alabama, which the owner said they "brought to a new level". The shark is nicknamed Bruce, after the great white in Finding Nemo; the shop gives its height as 32 feet, and Seaside Retailer gives both 32 and 30. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 destroyed the store and the original shark. The shop says it reopened in July 2012 with the same pink design and a new 32-foot shark. Seaside Retailer reports that it was rebuilt at a higher elevation under new city codes: the shark's mouth, which once led to the front doors, now abuts an exterior staircase and opens onto an elevator. The owner told WLOX in 2024 that after Katrina "the FEMA people made us build in the air". The magazine says the shark is repainted every few years, and that neon signage in its mouth and red LED eyes need upkeep. A travel article in September 2026 still calls the shark-mouth entrance a landmark of the Biloxi boardwalk area.