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Chicken City?

I hate to mention this (O.K. I don't) but in case no one else has noticed, the new convention center is BUTT UGLY!

As a local, periodically I get drafted as a tour guide for visitors. Lately I've been alternating between telling people the new center is a chicken slaughterhouse, or a food processing plant, 'cause I grew tired of folks not believing it is supposed to be a convention center. Once or twice I've been called on the slaughterhouse concept: "So if it's a slaughterhouse, where's the stench?" Caught periodically in the crushing grip of logic like that I retreat to, "Oh, I mean it's a chicken-processing center." Generally though I try to avoid the issue all together by driving by the old Lay's slaughterhouse by the Old City instead. I tell folks the city is converting it to a convention center. Usually this gets applause as a thrifty and ingenious measure on our city's part. Sure it's a lie, but it makes Knoxville look good, makes the tourist feel like they are seeing something unique happening, and saves me embarrassing explanations about how a city can hand over tens of thousands of dollars to architects whose best design is a brick block with 1/2 an ice cream scoop on top of it. Yes, some might argue I should explain it takes a kind of courage to build something so ugly, so expensive and so lacking in any aesthetic presence, but I already use the museum for that, and the museum is too small to be believable as a chicken-processing plant.

I suppose I should feel cheated as a Knox city taxpayer, but the World's Fair pretty much burnt that emotion out of my family. Instead I sort of admire the balance—the center is uncompromisingly box-like from every angle. For fun, last week I went down to the edge of the park by 11th and Cumberland Avenue to look at the giant board put up when construction began. If you look carefully, by context you can determine that the built structure occupies the site of what the board shows—the Sunsphere helps. But other than that it's pretty tough. The picture on the board gleams—lots of windows, no bricks, stretched and sort of pretty. Then I walk up the hill, and it's a brick box with 1/2 an ice cream scoop on top. Perhaps a terrible mistake has happened.

One explanation would be if the architects also design ugly 1950s brick schools and industrial buildings—did the designs get swapped somewhere? I like to imagine a slaughterhouse worker covered in blood and feathers taking a rest from breaking chicken necks and gazing contentedly at the magnificent, futuristic convention-center-like slaughterhouse that chance built for his industry. Oh well, lucky guy. I suppose it's too late to tear down the ugly damned atrocity we got stuck with. So I will keep lying to the tourists and keep paying for the World's Fair convention box for the next few decades.

I do have one hope though.

Perhaps someday, something instinctual will trip in all the old dying chickens in East Tennessee and they will began a great migration to the World's Fair Park to die, like a chicken version of the elephant graveyard. Then I'll at least have some props to point at (dying chickens) in front of the World's Fair box as proof of my assertions. It will be easier to explain than the truth. And less embarrassing.

Chris Irwin
Knoxville

He's Ours

O.K., so Jack Neely is no historian, not even our historian, as he told us in his column written to mark his 10th anniversary of writing for Metro Pulse. I acknowledge that I have even used that term in describing him to friends. Accepting his declaration hopefully means that many of us won't continue to saddle him with that burden.

Though no historian, he is still one hell of a writer. Our writer! Knoxville's unofficial best journalist, in my book. And that's enough to give many of us gratitude aplenty for the fact that he often helps us as a community to see—many times in insightful or interesting ways—things about ourselves that we might otherwise never notice.

Thanks Jack for 10 years of fine writing, and thanks Metro Pulse for giving Jack the space in which to do that.

Jim Harb
Knoxville