what do you know about KNOXVILLE?

Basic (admittedly indie-centric) info:
Free alt weekly: Metro Pulse (here's the Events Calendar)
Probably the best music store is the Disc Exchange (two locations!)
Probably the best used book store is Ed McKay's
Two indie-friendly venues are the Pilot Light and Blue Cats
The Knoxville Museum of Art is actually pretty decent (and sometimes shows good films)
The Regal Downtown West is the (mostly) art house theatre

The Great Smoky Mountains are nearby, Asheville and Chattanooga are each about 100 miles away, and there's a much-lauded aquarium in Gatlinburg (which is a mostly tacky touristy town, you know, airbrushed shirts and ol' timey photos). I think Pigeon Forge's economy is mostly based on inexpensive t-shirts and miniature golf.

Knoxville in the summertime, well, OK. I haven't actually been to the city in about 2 years, so I'm sure there's some new stuff I don't know about, but Old City Java and Pilot Light are both good bets. (I'm not sure about Pilot Light's all-ages policy, but I think you can get in under 21.) Most Thursday nights during the summer, there's free music on Market Square downtown. I can't remember who's on the schedule this year, but I know it includes Steve Winwood and Rilo Kiley. Tomato Head restaurant on Market Square has my favorite sandwiches in the world. The Cumberland Ave. strip near the university had declined pretty badly by the time I left, and my friends say it hasn't gotten any better. Fast-food and frat bars, mostly. Oh, the Falafel Hut in Fort Sanders, the neighborhood near UT, is a good hummus-and-baba-ganouj joint. Try to go to at least one show at each of the Tennessee, Bijou and Laurel theaters, for the theaters themselves. (The Laurel is a tiny converted church, holds about 150 people; great for bluegrass shows and the like.)

Great hiking/camping -- Smokies, obviously (go up out of Cosby, not through Gatlinburg), but also Big South Fork up on the Kentucky border (much less crowded). Asheville's a good weekend trip. Nashville too, for that matter. Or Atlanta (stop in Chattanooga on the way, it's got a nice downtown district).

I dunno, I love Knoxville, but I mostly loved it as a place to live. Telling people what to do there is hard, because most of what I did was hang around with friends in assorted drinking establishments, backyards, on front porches and rooftops...

The Sunsphere is as the Simpsons attest completely and totally skippable, you see it from far away, you've seen it.

The Sunsphere

That's handy as a starting point though I guess. If you scroll southwest you can see the campus and stadium of UTK, and the Hodges (Q-BERT) library. I used to live right next door from there and up the street from The Golden Roast which as ken sez is nice enough. Next door to the Golden Roast is Gus's deli which used to have great fries and is where I bought my first 40 oz. of Schlitz legally the night I turned 21.

If you follow the river northeast past the stadium you'll see a couple of bridges, one is for trains and the other is for cars and people. We used to walk all the way from campus to the bridge and cross it on foot to get to the
Disc Exchange on Chapman Highway which is the better of the two DE locations as I recall, and then you go get some Arby's next door and walk home with a bag of new records and a milkshake.

The campus, from QBERT as a starting point: The building shaped like a spam can is The Spam Can, it's part of the business school. The University Center (student union by any other name) is just northeast of that, and continuing in that direction are the buildings on The Hill incl. Ayres Hall which is I expect where your "math stuff" is going to be taking place since that's the science and engineering ghetto up there.

Southwest of the stadium, the circle-shaped park is Circle Park, and that's where communications majors go, and also they have the Guy With The Torch statue there, which we had to go rip a makeshift t-shirt off of once in the middle of the night because we got a phone call from some overzealous supporters who had unwarily endangered our place on the ballot and our entire campaign by defacing school property (chalk ok, clothing on statues bad)

Behind that is the basketball arena, and the administrative building , Andy Holt Tower, is between the park and the arena. I hate that building. On the very bottom level, adjacent to the loading dock in the parking garage, is the student radio station, WUTK 90.3 FM, which used to be an actual "college radio" station with a noise show and live bands in the studio and interviews with really indie motherfuckers but now it's just training wheels for people who want to actually work in broadcasting, scary and sad. I designed the last "new rock 90.3 fm" bumper stickers before they changed the name.

The rest is mostly dormitories and frat houses and other crap of little or no note, according to my parents the entire strip has changed except for a couple of restaurants here and there. If you're going to be housed near campus the best bets for food, assuming they are still around, are Charlie Pepper's and Stefano's Pizza right beneath it.

Downtown I never liked.

Downtown is what I loved, but I admit it takes some discovering. I think there's more stuff now than there was a few years ago, but even at that it can seem pretty desolate to the naked eye. What it really is is a small urban neighborhood that doubles (to some degree) as a business center during the day. So from 9 to 5, you have office drones in the handful of office towers and people in the banks and the restaurants are pretty crowded at lunch. After work, all those people leave and go home to the suburbs, and you're left with a handful of bars and restaurants and shops. But for downtown denizens, it has a nice homey feeling -- you don't see a lot of people on the sidewalks, but you'll probably know half the ones you do see. There's a pretty tight-knit community, including assorted artists and musicians and random interesting people (Cormac McCarthy's brother, for one), but unless you spend some time hanging out at the brewpub on Gay Street, it's easy to miss. Architecturally, I think downtown's pretty nice, there are a lot of cool little buildings. But it's true that UT students seem alienated from downtown, despite its proximity -- I think Henley is such a physical and psychological barrier, for one thing. But if you include the Old City in "downtown," which I do, then you've got a pretty good mix of interesting things within a pretty small area. Nothing to compare to Asheville, or even Chattanooga, but downtown Knoxville has a kind of scruffy quality that I like. (I realize that scruffiness is not an automatic selling point.)

[/raining on parades]

Pah. I'm glad we don't have to have that argument again for 995 years.

I don't have the new Dixie Dirt, but I'm fixin' to burn a copy from a friend when I'm down there in May. The first one was great, I wore it out.

You can check the PL website for shows. Click "calendar" (OBV) http://www.thepilotlight.com. Shipping News is playing soon, I will go to that. Nicka! I didn't know you had been to the Pilot Light!

Java is a great thing, but they mostly have shows that appeal to the young punkins of modern hardcore.

Another Search: Harold's Deli on Gay St. A good place to read the newspaper, not a good place to read a book (the waiters and cooks want to talk to you, which is a good, not annoying, thing -- they are funny and kind.) Excellent kosher food (esp. the bacon -- made of pastrami), best eggs in Knoxville, "world famous Burned Baloney Breakfast", Schlitz proudly on tap for years. Just a great, cozy, one-of-a-kind place. The kind of place where everybody knows your name, and they're always unsurprised you came.

Caitlin, I'd be happy to show you around or take you to a show or dinner or something.

I think my biggest burning question is - will you have a car?

All the recommendations here are, as far as I can tell, right on.. especially Stefano's pizza, which has always reigned, in my mind at least, as the tastiest and best pizza in town, and it was the first pizza I'd ever had with a whole-wheat crust.

Most of my recommendations involve night-time and girls and railroad trestles. There's a pretty choice trestle off Neyland Drive if I recall correctly.

I was only in Knoxville for one day so I have no other useful comments to make. What I remember most clearly was that A) the day spent in Knoxville was easily the best day of my entire vacation that week so it cannot be bad B) the people sat next to us at the table in the restaurant we all went to were dressed in a strange fashion (though I forget why it was strange--only that we remarked it was odd) and every last one of them ended up spilling their drink on the floor, one of them did it twice. It made me wonder if perhaps we, too, should throw our drinks on the floor, if it was a Knoxville thing. I decided against it but next time I'm there, I'm throwing a drink on the floor and you should do so as well.

Regarding the forementioned Sundown in the City concert series, the scheduled lineup is here: http://www.sundowninthecity.com/

SLEATER-KINNEY?! Holy crap! (in other words: hooray!) I'll be there!!

THE NEVILLE BROTHERS!!!

And seriously, Sequoyah Hills park on a sunny summer afternoon or morning: it doesn't really get better than that. Blossoms, green grass, lake, every breed of dog happily running around, nice-looking people everywhere. Fantastic for book reading, trip planning, sunbathing, and general wandering, and fucking perfect for exercising class jealousy. I've done all these and more there.

You'll also be a hop skip and jump from my other (totally subjective) favorite American park: Springbrook, which is Alcoa. Really good for walking and/or jogging, running, etc. Not as pretty as it used to be. :(

Oh! And there's a 24 HOUR PANCAKE PLACE THAT DELIVERS on Cumberland now! That will be close to you, Caitlin.

Also good: Tomo on Kingston Pike. Go to Disc Exchange SOUTH (Chapman Highway -- I think someone already mentioned this, actually) for records. Go to McKay's books on Kingston Pike (I never realized I liked so much on Kingston Pike) for used cds, el cheapo books and nice staff (including my sister!).

What kind of music do you like? I will recommend bands for you to see.

Our likely next D.A. has a name that demands its own cable drama series.

http://www.charmeknight.com/images/f3e8580511610e665c626c4d334504be_kw19.jpg

omg

i've gotten really interested in pre-urban renewal/removal knoxville. some friends and i have been organizing monthly events/discussion groups/workshops called Understanding Place, exploring race, place, home, and the intersection of those ideas; gentrification, urban renewal, tenants rights, etc. the local history of grievances w/r/t those issues. councilman daniel brown (totally my bff) spoke at our last one, and i think the next one is going to be a "home training" workshop w/ 4mir4 in4s (do you know her?) and a first friday event at the birdhouse in march showing pictures of knoxville pre-UR. free + open to the public.

woah. that sounds cool! Is there a web presence for this thing, to which I could link people?

hey, roxy, that's awesome. continue to post updates on events, etc. if you please!

btw if knoxville folks haven't checked out the local TV history exhibit at the east tennessee history center/museum, you should. it's fun. if you haven't been at all, the permanent exhibit is kind of model of its kind.

i definitely will. we're working on a web presence! it's a really new thing, we've just had 2 events so far. i'll post up fb events (and whatever we get going in the coming month) here.

I'm in town for the next week & and a half; anything fun going on?

in my NO-to-NY move i'm staying a night at the eastern knoxville motel 6 i stayed at after katrina, because they were nice to me and gave me a huge discount.

then i will eat at the mcdonalds in bulls gap tennessee, where i remember eating the best mcgriddle i have ever had, served to me by the most pleasant fast food employees i have ever encountered. can the experience possibly live up to my perhaps-traumatized memories? keep an eye on this thread for updaets

Totally taking my kids to this next weekend: https://www.facebook.com/events/785600241485238/.

awesome! see you there

Does this start at 330 or 4pm? Website says 4

oops it started at 4

That's okay. We wound up getting downtown late and hungry. Made it to Market Square which was a hilarious contrast in terms of development and economic stratus.

http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/knoxville_mercury_metro_pulse.php?

innaresting, esp the profit/nonprofit mix

If all goes as planned, the Knoxville Mercury will launch in February, and it will be in many ways a resurrection of Metro Pulse—a mix of news, opinion, features, and entertainment, aimed at a civic-minded, well-educated, mostly 30-something audience. Like a typical alt-weekly, the Mercury will publish a free printed paper, plus a website with daily stories and an arts calendar. But its structure would be distinctive: The new publication would operate as a for-profit subsidiary of a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization devoted to the city’s history and culture.

Hey, I’m a very (very!) infrequent poster but obsessive reader of ILX. (I met a few of you during the last Big Ears at brunch with tipsy mothra.) I’m one of three former Metro Pulse editors involved in the above project to launch a new alt-weekly in Knoxville. We have what we think is a solid plan to make it financially viable and editorially independent—you can read more here: http://www.knoxmercury.com

MP was a good paper. We won a lot of awards—for news reporting, criticism, and music and arts coverage. A handful of ILXors wrote for us or were written about by us over the years. Knoxville’s had a good run over the last 10 or 15 years, but the city needs a publication that supports local music and arts, keeps an eye on local government, and connects people who make good things happen. (We also did A LOT of Big Ears coverage—we were the only major outlet in town that understood the festival from the start.)

Part of our plan is a Kickstarter campaign, which you can find out more about here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/789676771/knoxville-mercury-launch

If you can donate, please do! It’s a good cause, and it doesn’t take much to help. If you can’t donate, help us spread the word.

And now back to your regular ILX programming …

Flying back to Tellico Village for a week tomorrow. Does anyone have any contacts with the KnoxMakers group?

hey, that's great news re. knoxville mercury!

This band from Knoxville is pretty fun.

http://massdriverrockpower.bandcamp.com/album/mass-driver

hey mte!! i am in knoxville now. have just forwarded that link to every knoxvillian i know.

Thanks, Tracer Hand! Every time you share, an angel gets its wings, or something like that.

hey kingfish - i know some knoxmakers ppl

I have met some of the Knox Makers guys -- last I heard they were looking to start a maker space in Knoxville proper (current one is in Oak Ridge). They're nice fellas.

Tracer, when did you move back to the US?

If I get the chance, I'm going to try to stop by their meeting this week. I've gotten hooked on wiring up Arduino shit.

So, monday we went to dollywood, and I posted some photos which will hopefully amuse.

For example, these are not the unlicensed cartoon characters I'd first expect to see at an airbrush kiosk in Dollywood in 2014, but there you go:

https://scontent-a-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/v/t1.0-9/10464060_10152511779226596_9063586482227108219_n.jpg?oh=31dd362df32a2936700792e94eae2d88&oe=55457F1A

i've spent years avoiding dollywood or indeed the whole Pigeon Forge scene. sounds horrible.

Dollywood is great and amusingly strange. Bits of Branson mashed in with Colonial Williamsburg mashed with a Six Flags/Cedar Point.

Uh, any suggestions for the least annoying moviegoing experience for my extended clan to see a certain space movie on Xmas day? I wanna avoid Turkey Creek multiplexes like the fuggin' plague.

HELLO

there is a new community radio station in knoxville! WAZO

http://wozoradio.com/

YASSIN FALAFEL! Hometown hero!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz4Q_SlbZgQ

The lede from a short item I wrote for our daily email. What a world.

The talk of local social media yesterday was the announcement that Tom Boyd, the inventor of DNA testing for dog poop and the father of our state university president, plans a $40 million resort behind a South Knoxville Walmart that seems clearly derivative of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth. He even wrote his own accompanying book -- which you can download for free -- called The Bobbins -- Outcast to the Inner Earth.

guys this looks incredible! (the “Jazzbilly” thing)

https://knoxvillehistoryproject.org/events/

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAscOyurzIuH9zGM8ITIr-T1RAixF037MNg

i wish it was in person but still

Thanks I’ve been getting antsy missing two years’ wort of Big Ears festivals.

Was just thinking about the shrimp and grits at Tupelo Honey :(