Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Talking Trash

Mayor Victor Ashe has been on a boasting, bad-mouthing tear lately. A few weeks ago in a meeting with reporters, Ashe called downtown hotel owner Franklin Haney a "con artist." He has taken to openly disparaging the employment status, veracity, and general "likeability" of Council member Joe Hultquist. When the city opened its Phil Keith Training Center Tuesday, Ashe provided local radio with sound bites proclaiming the city facility vastly superior to the firing range built by Ashe nemesis Sheriff Tim Hutchison. He was also active on the k2k email list that day, urging readers to peruse the city of Knoxville's web site, which he also says is vastly superior to that of the county.

Unfortunately for Ashe, the site contains rafts of misleading and out-of-date misinformation touting long-defunct projects like Worsham-Watkins "Renaissance Knoxville" and the 1998 Market Square Redevelopment plan, which was rescinded last fall. When these errors were pointed out to Ashe, he said he'd have the "appropriate persons update the city web site in this area...however, i [sic] will repeat my view that the city web site is outstanding and especially so when compared to the other local government units in this area..."

Talking Contaminated Trash

But the real chutzpah award has to go to Scott Thomas, an environmental lawyer the city has hired to wade through the morass of the Coster Shop dumping debacle. After a "show-cause" meeting at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation in Nashville where the press and the attorney representing property owners who are suing the city were barred, Thomas not only joined the chorus of lawyers claiming their clients were not responsible for dumping contaminated Coster Shop waste on unsuspecting Knox County citizens, but went the others one better, claiming that those who accepted the fill from the old railroad yard should be prosecuted for operating illegal dump sites. Oh, it's their fault...

Arms Race

Nobody confirms it publicly, but lots more folks are lining up to take over Mike Arms' 5th District County Commission seat when Arms resigns to become County Executive-elect Mike Ragsdale's chief-of-staff. School bus contractor lobbyist Ann Milsaps, Realtor Jim Ford (who made an unsuccessful run against Craig Leuthold in a contest to see who would fill the seat being vacated by Leuthold's father, Frank Leuthold). and another former anti-Leuthold candidate, Pat Beasley. Word is that Arms will resign in September, although there is some speculation that he may still be looking for an appointment in a Van Hilleary administration, should Hilleary be elected governor.

Parallel Universe Knoxville

The revelation this week that local civic activist and prankster Brent Minchey had secured the corporate name "Universe Knoxville" after the backers of that proposed planetarium project let the naming rights lapse sent titters and twitters through many quarters. For longtime skeptics of the planetarium (including Minchey's significant other Wendy Smith, who presented four or five pages of detailed questions about the project to County Commission last year), it was a confirmation of the U.K. developers' general sloppiness and lack of direction. And for longtime skeptics of Chamber Partnership head Tom Ingram (including Mayor Victor Ashe and a growing list of grumpy white men), it was more fuel for the pyre. Minchey himself mostly seems amused. He says he paid the $20 state fee for the corporate name "to annoy Ron [Watkins] and Earl [Worsham]." Developers Worsham and Watkins, the driving force behind Universe Knoxville, have been personae non grata among many downtown activists ever since their ill-fated Renaissance Knoxville proposal. Minchey is thinking about taking the next step and spending $100 to actually incorporate a company with the Universe Knoxville name, letterhead, and a board of officers. What if Mssrs. W&W want to buy the name back? "I don't think it's for sale," Minchey says.

Development Developments

A new name is being floated as a candidate as head of Knox County Development Corporation. Allen Borden, a former city director of economic development who has since held positions with several area businesses, is being mentioned in connection with the vacancy left by the resignation of Melissa Zeigler. Borden's support, sources say, comes primarily from former Development Corp. Chairman Pat Wood. Borden is the son of Wilson Borden, a longtime Wood employee.

From Here to the History Channel

In bawdy farces staged at downtown's Theatre Central during the '90s, a nubile actress named Peyton Wilson kept them rolling in the aisles (or she would have if they'd had aisles). She was one of that renegade troupe's more memorable regulars, appearing in countless productions, almost all of them zany comedies. After some years earning critical plaudits doing Second City improv in Chicago, she'll make her national TV debut on Tuesday, Aug. 20 at 8 p.m. on, of all things, the History Channel—in, of all things, a show called "True Crime Authors: Helter Skelter." Wilson plays key Manson-family witness Linda Kasabian. She insists that she tried to put on her rarely seen serious face for the role. She'll be back in her hometown at the end of the month, briefly, just long enough to get married to her beau, Chicago musician Brian Daley.

Eat on the Run

There's been a rash of openings, closings, renamings, and reorganizations in the restaurant biz around town lately, with the most recent happening being the Jockey Club's closing to regular customers after last Friday. David Duncan, the owner, says he's staying on the premises in the L&N Station for a continued catering and party operation, but "got tired of losing money" on regular diners.

Another upscale eatery, the Chef Bistro in Bearden, closed last month when owners Serge and Veronique Coant lost their lease and decided to return to France to open a restaurant in Provence.

The Little Kalamata Kitchen's owners Jim and Lori Klonaris have set Aug. 17 as their last day of Greek cooking at 4405 Kingston Pike. Having determined that they've been competing mostly with their own original Kalamata Kitchen in Farragut, they are converting the location to the Hot Tamale, serving a lighter menu of what Lori calls "true Mexican fare," plus later closings and "aggressive" happy hours, starting Aug. 26.

A Temporary Eclipse

For an often-crowded lunch spot, a move to larger quarters on Gay Street might seem purely cause for celebration—except, maybe, when you're forced out of the most unusual restaurant space in greater Knoxville. For more than eight years, Crescent Moon got by without a real street address, located in a couple of homey rooms off an old apartment-building courtyard, a floor below street level and accessible only by sloping concrete alleys from Market and Church Streets. The atmosphere caught the attention of travel writers who have included descriptions of the unique space in guide books. But their upstairs neighbors at 707 Market Street, the J. Brent Nolan law firm, needed the space for storage, and bought it.

(We had a little fun with the Nolan firm a few years ago in a feature about mysterious ads in the Yellow Pages. Nolan's full-page ad features an image that gets stranger the closer you look at it. At first, it's lawyer's cliche, a still life of pocketwatch and spectacles resting on an open book. On closer investigation, you notice this is no legal text, but an odd poem that includes the lines "blazes in the mazes" and "paramours and priests." The lawyer's reference book turns out to be a satirical bit of doggerel by Rudyard Kipling called "The Files." The poem's officious persona seems obsessed with "The Files—Office Files!" as the answer to "every question man can raise." The firm apparently didn't mind our making fun of their choice of images; they're still using the photo in their ad (p. 60 of our copy). Anyway, we figure "Office Files!" is what Nolan needs the Crescent Moon space for.)

After a promising space on Market Square fell through due to codes concerns, Crescent Moon owner/chef Terri Korom settled on a Gay Street address, former site of Bullfeathers. Korom says she's not happy about leaving her old space, but her new digs at 718 Gay Street do offer 30 percent more seating and a bigger kitchen. There, she plans to open for dinner as well. She'll serve her last roll-up and soup special at the original location on Friday, Aug. 23, with an additional closing ceremony for friends on the 31st; they'll reopen on Gay just after Labor Day.