Keep Your Trucks
For many years, I've wondered whether politicians or others involved in promoting Knoxville ever visit any place in our fair city outside of the downtown area and points west of Bearden Hill.
With all the talk about diverting truck traffic to I-640, I've reached the conclusion that they don't—at least not during the morning and, increasingly long, afternoon rush hours.
Originally built as a bypass, but never quite used for that, 640 has become basically the only corridor to serve the Fountain City, Gibbs and ever-mushrooming Halls areas. Add to that the constant construction and the delays, and accidents continue to increase. The Broadway exit off I-640 is still a logistical nightmare, despite improvements to the ramps, and remains the bailiwick of North Knox County congestion; and, the back-ups at merging interstates 75, 275 and, subsequently 40, are reaching levels worthy of the worst cases of road rage.
Diverting truck traffic won't do anything but enrage the people living and working from Knoxville Center Mall to Western Avenue; thereby, appeasing downtown residents to the ire of other Knoxvillians who also live in established and historic neighborhoods.
I, for one, am tired of being on the side of town that seems to get little to no political support for development and traffic solutions. In fact, the only major road construction in north Knoxville/Knox County in recent memory has been the upgrading of the ramps at Broadway and 640, despite the proven fact that the Halls and Powell areas are the fastest-growing areas in Knox County.
Downtown residents, with whom I sympathize regarding traffic pollution, frustration and noise, should listen to Jeff Welch of the Transportation Planning Organization when he says that moving traffic to 640 won't solve the problem. Downtown needs its truck deliveries as much as Broadway, but not at the expense of the residents who also want to preserve historic Fountain City.
The best arbitrator for this solution seems to come from the members of the Fourth and Gill Neighborhood Association, who, literally and figuratively, can see both sides of the issue. While run-off may be a problem in building a depressed I-40 through downtown Knoxville, at least the residents of that area are starting the debate by offering SOME solution. They seem to know that officials cannot: A) Prevent all traffic, including delivery trucks, from using the straight-route through downtown Knoxville via I-40; and B) Continue to heap traffic problems onto Broadway, which, from 6 to 9 a.m. and from 4 to 7 p.m., rivals and, at least on Black Oak Ridge, surpasses Kingston Pike in intensity.
Surely there can be some solution that could please both sides of town, or the residents of the "quiet" side of Knoxville may soon become fed up enough to add to the increase of traffic noise in the downtown area, particularly at City Hall.
Lara Turner
Knoxville
Cater On!
In regard to the Ear to the Ground item entitled "Home-Grown Shaft" [July 10], the City decided on July 9 to have the Public Building Authority manage the booking of events in World's Fair Park.
Our policies permit groups to use whomever they wish for catering and all other event amenities. We also have set the rental rates on the park at very reasonable levels.
Anyone who is interested in receiving a copy of the event booking guidelines should call Lisa Williams (251-6806) or Kristin Cowan (251-6805) at the Public Building Authority and request a copy.
Dale E. Smith
Chief Executive Officer
Public Building Authority
Knoxville
Memaw's is A-OK
There have been a few things that have bothered me since reading Barry Henderson's article "Those Buckets of Blood Have Emptied Out" in the "Drink Up" issue of June 5th.
The article was a good comparison of rowdy gone good, but it was unfair to pick out only one pub for the negative stance. Barry should have talked with Doris Henderson, the owner of the [Memaw's] Tennessee Tavern before he wrote the article.
Doris does her best to keep out the prostitutes, drug addicts and drug dealers that proliferate in the Magnolia Avenue area of the Tennessee Tavern. In doing so, she has made a few people not like her. They called the police and reported things happening inside the place that was not going on. A couple of times the police entered looking for a disturbance but only found people dancing and singing karaoke. No disturbances had happened. This must be the calls Barry wrote about. The establishment has called for police to come to the place three times since Doris took over the Tennessee Tavern five years ago.
I had to laugh at Barry's absurd cloaked-interior comparison to the Baptist way of hiding their alcohol consumption. I compare that to reporters having beady eyes. And because the sign outside says the place is open until 3 a.m. doesn't mean it is guilty of anything, Barry, like you insinuated. But I do think karaoke there, as other places, would be much better if they had a gong.
I have been going to the Tennessee Tavern for many years, and your article did nothing to change that. So in conclusion, if the Tennessee Tavern is the worst bar in good old Knoxville that you could find, good old Knoxville has some great bars and no bad ones.
Doug Dotson
Knoxville
Fundamental Flaw
Many thanks for running Massimo Pigliucci's "It's the Fundamentalism, Stupid" [June 26].
You'll probably take some heat from some of the extreme right Christian readers, a bunch noted for their intolerance of any criticism of their view of God's will for us. For the remainder of your readers, though, it's good to be reminded that the most dangerous group in any society is always the religious right. They are the only people who will kill in God's name or who will preach hatred of those who disagree with what they see as the will of their god—whatever they call him. They can be a problem at any time; they are much more of a threat to world order right now, when so many of them seem to have found ways to get control of the machinery of government.
Like Massimo, I keep hoping that the majority of rational people in the world will wake up, speak up, throw out the "nut cases," but I certainly don't sense a groundswell of reform on the way yet. I just hope that Massimo and others like him will continue to speak out and that eventually the message will be heard.
Richard Fraser
Knoxville
Market Battleground
Yesterday as I was walking past the pit formerly known as Market Square, I stopped to survey the devastation—craters and trenches torn in the earth, the cool old fountain ripped apart, inviting chain link fences with "no trespassing" everywhere—and tried to understand why our perfectly good Market Square, which had been built to replace the previous incarnation of Market Square, had to die.
Then it hit me. It's so obvious when you look at it closely—Civil War reenactments! Look closely and you can't miss it. The developers and their supporters in our city government are having battle reenactments at night using the pit formerly known as Market Square! The battles probably spill over into the World's Fair Park when the reenactments become particularly heated.
I can just see brave Gen. Victor Ashe in a Viking helmet shouting "Charge!" and waving his bloody sword as his troops of developers throw themselves into the trenches. The site certainly looks as if it has been carpet-bombed. I'm sure both sides are having great fun during their war reenactments at night—but I have some suggestions.
First, it seems unfair for our tax dollars to be funding this when we don't get to watch. Bring it out into the open boys—we will all have a good time. Southerners love battle reenactments. Let's laugh and cry together as we witness the brave city fathers jumping into trenches to defend advance positions so that screaming hoards of tax-fattened developers can come from behind to conquer (sorry, I mean "develop") everything into Pigeon Forge.
Second, let's divide up sides! The public wants to play too! We can have the developers and city fathers, who keep coming up with excuses to tear down our city and build expensive useless convention centers, destroy our World's Fair Park, and unneeded developments on Market Square on one side, and a volunteer army of Knoxville residents on the other—real public participation. Hell, yes! In fact I'm sure in such a "mock" battle I could find no end of volunteers for the public side. I volunteer to enlist as a private or in any other role I can get in our "mock" battle against the developers and city fathers who seem to find themselves conveniently in bed together so often.
Last—paintguns smaintguns, lets do it for real! Here in East Tennessee we have a long brave history of exercising our Second Amendment rights. We can call some television networks and get our fair city some coverage and have an honest exchange of opinion about folks' feelings about the never-ending cycle of destruction and reconstruction in our city under siege. Maybe TDOT would like to get involved too. If public spaces are to be converted into recreations of past battles I think it's only fair that the public gets to participate.
Chris Irwin, Private
Army of Knoxville
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