Our awards for Knoxvilleness above and beyond the call of duty
Ah, it's that time of year again when we the people are bedazzled by all the glitter and glamour of award shows—The Blockbuster Awards! The TV Guide Awards! And oh so many others, every week, perhaps every day.
Why, who can forget last year's big People's Choice winner for Best Cameo by a Former Melrose Place Cast Member in a WB Sitcom? Not us!
But all this rewarding of richly deserving talent left us wondering:
Why doesn't Knoxville have its own overwrought awards program? Don't we deserve a presentation of frivolous accolades we'll forget about the next day?
Sure we do!
Here, then, are The First Semi-Annual KnoxcarsTM, the award for extreme Knoxvilleness. We assembled a blue ribbon panel of expert judges (recruited directly from the nearest available bar) to ascertain who or what achieved the most impressive feats of Knoxville-like behavior in the past year. Join us in congratulating the winners of these soon-to-be-auspicious awards!
Best Demolition of a Historic Building
Victorian Houses by the University of Tennessee
Always a crowded category. You can almost hear our architectural history screaming in anguish as all over town historic buildings that would seem to have decades left turn to rubble. For the elusive gall factor, the Academy couldn't pass over UT's excellent, lightning-fast demolition of a 19th-century
house which happened to be one of the first built on White Avenue. It also gets points for each of the following:
1. The demolition was unannounced, effectively preventing annoying discussion.
2. The house was in excellent repair and rated special mention in a historic tour the neighborhood association had been giving.
3. The demolition couldn't have been timed more perfectly, just as UT representatives had begun participating in the mayor's Fort Sanders Forum, which was formed specifically to discuss and find alternatives for demolishing houses in Fort Sanders.
4. Finally, there's its ultimate use: a parking lot without peer on the whole block.
Runner-Up: A special award goes to the demolition of College Homes, arguably the most attractive-looking housing project in Knoxville (a dubious honor, we know). The demolition got extra points for being an entire neighborhood.
Best Grip on the Vols' Coattails
Channel 8's "I'm All Vol" Campaign
All of us who don't play football at all but still feel entitled to say "We won" are contenders in this category. However, few were quite as brazen as Channel 8's "I'm All Vol," which featured whole gangs of dangerous-looking unshaven men making threatening gestures at the camera in Neyland Stadium. Are there any UT alumni on Channel 8's team? We don't know, but we're not sure anybody who has seen the commercial would want to admit it. (Incidentally, this is the second award this campaign won; last week, its honky-tonk theme song—emphasis on honky—got a Mid-South Regional Emmy. We can only offer our congratulations and the sincere hope that they don't feel compelled to show it twice as often now.)
Runner-Up:Gov. Don Sundquist managed to not only suddenly appear on camera for the awards presentation at the end of the national championship game, but also to delay Knoxville's own celebration by his absence weeks later.
Best Meaningless Slogan
The Knoxville News-Sentinel's "Every morning. Every day."
Perennially redundant, nearly meaningless, and not exactly appealing, the News-Sentinel's "Every morning. Every day." sounds more like a virility boast than a reassuring promise.
Runner-Up: The Chamber Partnership's brutally ineffective "Knoxville, Naturally!" came close to victory, but managed to lose a few points because it's at least marginally less cryptic than "Where Nature and Technology Meet."
Best Asphalt Prairie
Tie: West Town Mall/Centre at Deane Hill
This was a close call, but the parking lots of the ever-expanding West Town and the new Deane Hill have combined to form the most horrific traffic snarl in all of West Knoxville. As far as the eye can see are acres and acres of cars parked in great expanses of pavement—and only a few teeny, tiny entrances. Want to make a quick trip to the book store? Forget it! Try waiting in line with the hundred or so other cars vainly attempting to do the same thing for the past 15 minutes.
Runner Up: The new Bi-Lo might have had a chance, but it only paved over an old drive-in movie theater, so it was low in the destruction of natural and/or architectural value.
Best Irrational Road Project
Parkside Drive
The Parkside Drive extension in West Knox County wins mainly because Knoxville taxpayers paid for it. The main reason stated for its construction was that it should ease the daily commute for people who live in Farragut— i.e., people who prefer not to be Knoxville taxpayers because if they were they might have to pay for huge road projects. Of course, its real purpose—to allow the development of the environmentally suspect Turkey Creek shopping plaza/business park—is completely in keeping with our local government's long-standing responsiveness to people with a lot of money.
Runner Up: The Summit Hill off-ramp from the business loop seemed to be in a never-ending circle of reconstruction, with late-night jack-hammers most assuredly breaking the city's noise ordinance on a regular basis and almost completely shutting off access to the Old City in the process. Are they finished with it yet?
Second Runner Up: UT's proposed Roman-army-style bridge to the Ag Campus. One of our judges wanted to give this the first place award even though it hasn't been built yet. The rest of the panel, however, found the proposal too bizarre to believe it would ever happen. We'll see.
Best Attempt to Pretend We're Anywhere Else Than in Knoxville
"Rocky Top"
It's a 100,000-way tie, split between everyone who sang "Rocky Top" at least once in the last year. Here in Knoxville, for those who haven't noticed, we do indeed have smoggy smoke—telephone bills, too. When we pledge allegiance to Rocky Top, our Home Sweet Home, it's clear that once again we're dreaming of living somewhere else.
Runners-Up: Colonial Whittlesburg, Mardi Gras parades, chili cookoffs, British-themed subdivisions, and several of our 47 restaurants that are named for other cities.
Best Pathetic Claim to National Fame
"Quentin Tarantino Was Born Here."
Give it up already. So what? He's already a has-been.
Runner Up: "We gave the Indigo Girls the boot."
Best Boneheaded Parking Arrangement
The Riverfront
So you spend millions of dollars on a walkway and some fountains, all to encourage people to come to the river. Then you make them park across the street and up the hill in a dark garage under the jail that's not even staffed evenings or weekends. This is downtown revitalization?
Runners Up:All those vacant lots in Fort Sanders that lie in wait, Venus Flytrap-style, for someone to actually park there so alert parking lot gnomes can call a West Knox towing company and split the tow fee with them.
Best Fizzled "Vision"
Market Square's Digital Crossing
Yeah, we know the Digital Crossing plan was launched over a year ago, but it was supposed to have happened by now—wasn't it? After all, Mayor Ashe and City Council made that big front-page announcement about how Market Square would soon be revitalized into a cutting edge techno wonderland, and they couldn't stop congratulating each other on how smart they all were. But wait a sec—all the empty buildings are still empty! And the only two businesses on the Square that were cyber-related are either closed or nearly so.
Runner Up: We couldn't think of any other attempts at executing a genuine "vision" for Knoxville's future. Which says a lot, actually.
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