Metro Pulse/Cover/Best of Knoxville 2002

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Best of the Best

Knoxvillian of the Year
BUZZ PETERSON
Buzz Peterson, UT's first-year men's basketball coach—Knoxville's Person-of-the-Year as viewed by readers of Metro Pulse?
Well, he took a 22-game winner that went to the NCAAs and produced a 16-game loser that went nowhere. Maybe that was his appeal. It's just possible that those readers who want to de-emphasize sports at the university have taken him as their hero.
Or maybe it's his boyish good looks. Or his friendship with His Airness. Or maybe it wasn't much of a year for Knoxvillians all-around. Look, Buzz barely finished ahead of a woman who ate worms to gain glory! But anyway, congratulate him for this singular honor when you see him, and wish him many more...for better reasons.
Runners-up: Tina Wesson, Victor (up from outta nowhere) Ashe

Best Restaurant
TOMATO HEAD
Traditionally, we praise the Best of the Best Restaurant's restauranty-type things, like their food. But other than being a downtown tradition itself, Tomato Head isn't big on tradition. Besides, everybody knows Tomato Head makes the best and most unique pizzas around, offers an ever-changing variety of lunch specials and serves innovative and delish vegetarian dishes. So let's applaud its other attractions that help make T-Head the best restaurant of 2002
a kindly serving staff who, even during their busiest lunch rushes, remember who you are when you forget to leave your name with your lunch order; a location on Market Square in a great old rehabilitated building with a beautiful stamped-tin ceiling that crowns a light, airy, spacious environment (which serves as art gallery and sound stage even while the food is dished out); hard-working, devoted owners in Mahasti and Scott, who poured themselves into their business even through the long, lean years of uncertainty regarding Market Square's final fate. Our only question is, how'd this always-busy couple find time to start a family? (Mahasti gave birth to their first child earlier this year.) So stop by, offer your congrats, and support one of Knoxville's bestest institutions.
Runners Up: By the Tracks Bistro, Stir Fry Cafe

Best Local Band:
ROBINELLA AND THE C.C. STRING BAND
(Also winners of Best Bluegrass Band, Best Female Vocalist)
Some people hear a bass-mandolin-guitar band and call it bluegrass. Well, Robinella and the C.C. boys can do bluegrass. They won our bluegrass category this year, as they have before. But look again; they were also a runner up as best jazz band. They can do ragtime, old pop songs, even bossa nova. They've got a sound of their own, which owes more to Reinhardt and Grappelli than Flatt and Scruggs. Never copping the high-lonesome nasal wail of bluegrass, Robinella's ethereal soprano belongs to a torchier tradition, and backed by her husband Cruz Contreras on mandolin, it's more winsome than lonesome. Robinella and the boys aren't quite as easy to nail down these days as they were during the weekly shows that packed Barley's every Sunday evening for a couple of years, but seeking them out is worth the trouble. They're one of the inaugural bands playing at the new 4620 Club in the subterranean regions of Kingston Center (home of Long's drugstore) on Tuesdays, and Robinella herself sings down the street at Regas Bros. on Wednesdays. If you can't find them live, get the CD, on which they play with Cruz's jazz-fiddle virtuoso little brother.
Runners Up: Scott Miller, Dave Landeo

Best Local Store
DISC EXCHANGE
(Also winner of Best CD/Record Store.)
Indie record stores can be frightening. They attract a hip staff and clientele, making it intimidating for the rest of us to shop there. This is of course exacerbated if you happen to have a crush on one of the hip boys or girls who work at the record store. While all the cute boys and girls (and let's face it, they're all pretty darn cute) who work at the Disc Exchange are quite hip, they don't scare or intimidate the patrons the way many hip record-store clerks do. Perhaps it's that both stores are quite wide open (you know you can find a place to hide, if need be). Or maybe they make those hip clerks watch a 12-hour training video on dealing with the culturally inept before they let them work a register. Or, perhaps the Disc Exchange is just a more evolved indie record store—one that accepts and embraces all tastes without judgment or scorn. Whatever you're looking for—Skeeter Davis, Queen, the Beatnuts, the Need, Hank Williams (Sr., Jr., or III), Debussy, Mingus—you can find it here (new or maybe used) and if you can't it's easily ordered. And the clerks won't snicker. We've been in great record stores all over America, and take it from us—there aren't many better than Disc Exchange.
Runners Up: Donnamite, Westwood Antiques