what do you know about KNOXVILLE?

there have been periodic proposals to rename it over the years, none of which have gotten very far.

sooo stupid.

knoxville's downtown revitalization has apparently bypassed the whole "convince young people to live there" phase and has gone straight for the "convince millionaires to buy overpriced lofts" phase. one new condo going up on gay street actually advertises itself on the hoardings as "upscale condo apartments"!!!!

i have been inside the world grotto thingie now, roxy. it is kinda weird. but the huge dancefloor/event space downstairs looks mega! what is that?? the art gallery upstairs was hit and miss, mainly miss, but there's that one artist that has her cherry-lipped klimt thing down pat, and it's pretty nice. it seems like the kind of place that would be in ft. greene, brooklyn, actually.

that one artist that has her cherry-lipped klimt thing down pat, and it's pretty nice.

cynthia markert? i like her.

Noon to 7 p.m on Saturday, September 30 at Market Square.

The day-long event will be a celebration of East Tennessee Latino culture
filled with live music, food, arts and crafts displays and children's
activities.

Willie Crespo and Salsarengue will be arriving from Nashville to kick off the
festivities. Representatives from around 15 countries will line up at Krutch
Park and will make their way to Market Square carrying flags, wearing their
native folk costumes and dancing to their country's best-known music.

Dance Dimensions Studio and Knoxville Argentine Tango Society will demonstrate
Latin dance steps and Knoxville Opera will present highlights of their
upcoming production of "Carmen." The evening will end to the rhythms of Nuevo
Montuno, a tropical salsa band from Asheville, North Carolina.

The festival is held in Knoxville each year in conjunction with National
Hispanic Heritage Month, ( established by Congress to run from mid September
to mid October) and is organized by HOLA, Hora Latina, an East Tennessee
Hispanic social and cultural organization. For more information, call (865)
588-1923, ext. 251 or e-mail horalatina@att.net .

We went to take an evening walk
About a mile from town.
I picked a stick up off the ground
And knocked that fair girl down.

the Pilot Light is showing all Hank's known tv footage tonight at 7! Should be neat. Also: Jambalaya outide the Urban.

so this new movie theatre

never been to knoxville, but i grew up in nashville, and the proximity/similarity in names always endeared it to me.

congrats on the new theater?!

Wait, wait. You grew up in Nashville? Have you talked about that on ILX yet? I'd be curious to know what that was like.

it's on gay street, right? seven screens or something?? there's been so much talk, for DECADES, about getting gay street on its feet again and this is the first thing that i feel like could make it a hub for a real cross-section of people to hang and congregate. like, thompson-boling arena style cross-sections. am i fooling myself again, the way i have promised myself not to in regards to all the promises made about the old city, year after year?

i went to sundown in the city this summer, and it was FANTASTIC. tons of teenagers, loads of oldies... very, very few black people or hispanics, however.

one sight that pleasantly shocked me - a sight i would have never seen growing up - was driving by the vestal baseball diamond and seeing a group of about 15 mexican looking guys plying soccer in the outfield.

(ya i love nashville! my uncle lives there it's so great)

Should update some of the info on this thread:

My buzzable bands in town right now are as follows:
The Royal Bangs Best band in town by miles, just signed to Audio Eagle records and are gonna blow up like Antonioni and deserve it.
Sadville V. good, constantly evolving metal band.
Diacon-Panthers Love these kids! Country-ish indie, sometimes? Difficult to describe, typically very good live. just made new album that everyone in my little group is v. excited about.
Distant Relatives Adorable shoegaze babies, I see them every time they play.

The Bitter Pills are back in action! They are great.

Also great: Black Sarah, Crabs are Scavengers, Imp, Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight (though they are on hiatus for a bit...), the Double Muslims are very good, just got a tiny write-up in Wire, which is exciting, New Brutalism seem to be back together for the now...

Very important news in Knoxville is that LOST AND FOUND RECORDS has finally reopened, on Broadway across from Vic and Bill's and next door to the equally incredible gutbusting Harby's Pizza. Pay Mike, Maria and Nathan a visit and you won't regret it. Sweetest people EVER.

Knoxville has the biggest Ska festival in the nation (weird) which is currently going on in the Old City. There is a founding member of the Specials at Barley's right now!

The BLUE PLATE SPECIAL at WDVX on Gay St. is the best thing to happen in my life, @ high noon every single day, a free show hosted by the wonderful and talented Matt Morelock, who is just great, and hosts a great show on WDVX, as well. I go every time I can.

Can't believe J's Mega Mart has never been mentioned on this thread! Weird "general store" on Gay St, you can buy a blue wig and underwear and Big Peach and a Jesus necklace ALL IN ONE PLACE!!

Shout-out to Brownie's in Vestal, although don't tell them I sent you.

Host in the Old City have been having cool events and workshops lately, always very, very helpful to artists and artisans. Very cool about letting you use equipment, very co-operative joint. They, along with Lox Salon (also in OC) are major players in the First Friday thing that's been going on forever, but has seen a HUGE surge in popularity over the last year. Basically everyone goes out under the pretext of looking at art and gets completely blasted for free and makes out with strangers, etc.

The Sunsphere is now open and you can go inside it, cool view, on a clear day you can see 4th and Gill, Vestal, etc.

The Knoxville Voice is now the weekly of choice, as Metro Pulse is dinosaurish and corporate now.

New venue/collective called The Birdhouse open in 4th and Gill, some good shows and workshops, sometimes bored indie crowds are there, but it is for the most part a cool (and very, very CLEAN) venue.

The Lost Savant on Broadway has a reportedly fabulous reuben sandwich, free Wi-Fi and a good tea selection. Really palatial place.

Sapphire (much-bally-hooed upthread) is a fucking godawful mess, and you will likely be roofied there.

xpost to tracer: Sundown has gone downhill now that they no longer let 17 year old boys drink!!

Knew I'd leave something out: the Fluid Engineers (and everything this little group of guys touches) are golden. HR Department is the name of their collective umbrella unit, Black Atticus is one of the best emcees ever, etc.

Good DJs in town are CULTURE VULTURE (this kid is AMAZING), DJs RIGG and LADYTIGERBASKETBALL always go together and are always good,

didn't really finish that thought, sorry! Also DJ KINGTRON, which is me.

whoa roxy that is a motherlode of good stuff!!

FANTASTIC news about lost and found

the new movie theater was the only thing talked about in the Grand Plans for Downtown circa 1999-2000 that made any sense, so i'm glad it's the one thing from those plans that survived. (among other things talked about: enclosing market square in glass; a planetarium on gay st. called Universe Knoxville...)

i was there in june before and after bonnaroo and as usual for the last few years happily impressed with all the different stuff going on downtown. a lot of my friends don't go to sundown anymore because it's too crowded, which is a good sign. especially with the new development (supposedly) happening on the south bank of the river, i think downtown might be establishing itself as a viable little community. it has all the downsides of revitalized downtowns of course -- racial and economic stratification, for a start -- and as neighborhoods go, north and south knoxville both still seem more interesting, in terms of character, diversity, etc. but compared to the total ghost town that was gay street and market square 10 years ago, what's there now is a gigantic improvement.

also roxy's right about metro pulse -- now bizarrely owned by the news sentinel -- but my friend coury who more or less built the paper from scratch in the first place just took back over the reins, so that's probably a plus. knoxville voice i wrote for a little bit when another friend was working there, but i never understood wtf that paper was trying to be (noam chomsky columns?). and then they fired my friend, so i stopped writing for them.

DJ KINGTRON

:-D

Tracer: I know! Knoxville is fun right now!

Also: Science O'Mega is a very brilliant guy. He is a DJ and emcees/produces with various HR Dept. guys.

In short, I totally love Knoxville right now more than ever.

Another big scene in Knox right now is the Whisk-Hutzel records conglomerate, basically a guy called Will Fist and a hundred, zillion bands that essentially do nothing but drink all day and smoke drugs and play (mostly) sludgey rock. Will is a great guy, a real character, always a pleasure to see him working the door at the Pilot Light.

A lot of peeps in town have been saying that this will be THE year for Knoxville music. I'm jaded, but it certainly FEELS that way right now...

Search also: Three Rivers Rambler, Wok n Roll in East Knoxville, CHANDLER'S DELI (also East Knox), Kaya (great West Knox korean)...I could go on for days, I'll leave it at this for now.

The BLUE PLATE SPECIAL at WDVX on Gay St. is the best thing to happen in my life, @ high noon every single day, a free show hosted by the wonderful and talented Matt Morelock, who is just great, and hosts a great show on WDVX, as well. I go every time I can.

yeah i finally went to one of these in june. saw a very strange double-header with christabel & the jons and a tuvan throat-singing group. it was great.

the river developments scare the f*ck out of me - did you know there is already a luxury condo tower with gated entry on SCOTTISH PIKE???

for those who don't know knoxville it's difficult to describe the cognitive dissonance here, but basically imagine a bunch of old wooden houses with porches and yards, scruffy but neatly tended, with all kinds of corny mailboxes and american flags out front, possibly a few rusted washing machines tucked by the side of the house, a dog on a chain... and you drive down to the end of this road and there's a fucking gate with an intercom and a tower of luxury condos and a parking lot full of SUVs

Also, I am strongly opposed to the development South of the river. Haven't people learned you don't mess with Vestal?

xpost!

I am very happy to be moving back across the bridge (TO sokno).

and er it's difficult to even discuss the housing development going on up behind UT hospital. have you guys driven up there to see that yet? i have never seen any engineering work that large with my own eyes. it looks like an open pit mine.

supposedly the people in charge of doing specifically the riverbank stuff have gotten a consulting group in who have made them be reasonable about the plans, including limiting the heights of the buildings and ensuring a mix of affordable housing. if it could be done right i'd be all for it. given the history of sokno development there is absolutely zero cause for optimism though.

It's embarassing. Makes me very angry even visualizing it.

(Upthread I gave Nama the thumbs, but it's actually way too small and expensive, although it is open really late, which I like. Their ice cream sucks, but the staff is mostly people who give me free octopus, so what can you do?)

hey roxy i don't want to be a damper on your encyclopedia of awesome knoxville newness!

what is brownies? (and why do they hate you?)

my best source on the sokno development is a community-activist type who lives in island home and is sort of perpetually at odds with knoxville development plans, but she thinks the planning process and whatever has been about as good as it could be under the circumstances (circumstances being the normal influence of/deference to monied developers). and, you know, most of the south bank of the river has been mostly industrial for years anyway. i doubt the impact on the surroundings will be all that dramatic. it'll be like the condos over by the big aztec-temple hotel, a little self-contained world. the effect on the beer line at the sevier avenue pilot will be minimal. (although i also heard that someone's turning that J&J beer joint farther east into some kind of upscaley place, which made me sad. i never went in there, but i always liked driving by it. seemed like something out of suttree.)

i mean, i also still when i'm in knoxville miss the downtown of 10 years ago, because it was this sort of deserted place that we could make whatever we wanted to, and the things that were there seemed kind of significant just for being there. (plus they tended to be weird, like j's mega mart.) but having been part of the downtown activist brigade i can't really complain about downtown having actually taken off a little. it's always the conundrum of trying to rescue abandoned places and then the consequences when other people start to notice them. you can't control it past a certain point.

i just wonder where all these new people will GO, when they need to get some diapers or gasoline - and i think i know the answer: alcoa highway, NOT vestal

probably. although you can get to the kroger on chapman highway pretty easily through vestal.

also speaking of knoxville and going corporate, my wife spotted a girl today on the upper east side today porting a bed, bath and beyond bag with a cynthia markert print jutting out of it.

(there's not really much to shop at in vestal anyway. there's that sav-a-lot on maryville pike i guess, if that still counts as vestal.)

That's the main intersection in Vestal!

Brownie's is just a local in the heart of Vestal. They don't hate me, they just HATE having attention drawn to them...very paranoid about the interweb, as well.

i thought the main intersection in vestal was where king tut's is. but maybe that's too close to the river? i've always been hazy on the boundaries. vestal is one of those elusive places.

That's right next to the Savway!

oh no i mean the other store -- farther out, toward montgomery village. is there a grocery store next to king tut's? i guess i'm just forgetting.

and do they still have vestival?

right, chapman highway is the obvious go-to for the riverfront developments, yeah

i guess my point is, yes, there's not a whole lot of small businesses there and it's too bad that a gazillion new residents right next door will probably do nothing to change that situation. it ought to be a vestal bonanza!

What? All of these things you are mentioning are extremely close to one another.

Vestival still happens, yes, but it has been invaded by boring hippies.

xpost

good old pease furniture

aw i like knoxville hippies.

yeah i guess that stuff's all close together. it's just a mile in south knoxville can seem like a long way. nothing goes in a straight line.

i'm sort of freaked out that the big auto junkyard next to the railway bridge seems to have closed its doors, it's been there for at least 30 years