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Seven Days

Wednesday, August 13
The chairman of Tennessee's lottery board says Canadian lottery officials have made some helpful suggestions on how to run a joint state lottery with Georgia. Maybe so, but we've always thought we'd be better off to limit suggestions from Canadians to how to blend whiskey, how to price pharmaceuticals, and how to make bacon.

Thursday, August 14
A Knox County domestic relations court judge says new forms for court orders of protection may be flawed and unenforceable on their face. Don't believe we'd have told that, judge!

Friday, August 15
On the heels of the enormous blackout that darkened the Northeast and the eastern Midwest, Maryville and Alcoa conduct their own mini-blackout. Damn Yankees can't claim it all to themselves.

Saturday, August 16
The UT football Vols scrimmage in full regalia at Neyland Stadium, and the offense scores 13 touchdowns, yet the defense gets lots of credit for stopping the run. Uh-oh.

Sunday, August 17
The News Sentinel inaugurates its latest series on TVA by asserting in headlines that the agency has gone into the bomb business and is making weapons. Read on. That's not exactly what's happening. But it sure made grabby headlines.

Monday, August 18
The Associated Press reports that Tennessee has used a teacher pay increase to lure at least one teacher from Georgia, reversing a decade-long trend. Must have gotten the tip on how to do that from those helpful Canadians.

Tuesday, August 19
The Knox County superintendent of schools responds to a call for him to justify his county credit card expenses, averaging about $15,000 a year. As long as he doesn't have to explain his use of the school system's airplane, he'll probably be OK.

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:

Sitting outside the Howard H. Baker, Jr. U.S Courthouse, Beloved Woman of Justice, by Audrey Flack, "invites the viewer to contemplate and reflect on the meaning of the law and our judicial system."
You would have had to have get up really early to beat Ann Horner in identifying the statue. Her correct response arrived shortly before dawn last Thursday. The early bird gets the...haggis. That's right, Ann. For your speedy response you'll be receiving a delicious sampling of Vegetarian Haggis from Stahly Quality Foods. Enjoy!
Honorable Mentions to those who pointed out that we ran Beloved Woman a few months ago in Knoxville Found. Oops.

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
Monday, Aug. 25
2 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Large Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

A Place of Their Own
Skaters (and detractors) say it's time for a skatepark

A few months ago, Bryan Baker and a friend were walking from Fort Sanders to an art opening at Yee-Haw Industries on Gay Street, where Baker works. As they were about to cross into the World's Fair Park, park police stopped them for possessing what's considered contraband in those parts—skateboards.

Although Baker and his friend were carrying the boards, not riding them, the park police didn't want them walking across the Clinch Avenue viaduct. They told them they had to walk around. "They were really convinced they were going to keep us from going across the footbridge," says Baker, who was carrying a vintage board from the early '60s, hardly the kind that would be used to slide down handrails and across benches. "The way it ended is they made us promise not to put our skateboards down."

The battle over skateboards is heating up once again, as police try to protect the new World's Fair Park and the skaters try to find a place to enjoy their sport. Many people are saying the only answer is for a skateboard park.

Skateboarders can cause some damage. Dale Smith, executive director of the Public Building Authority, which manages the World's Fair Park, says skateboards have marred some of the marble-lined benches and walls around the park. "Predominantly they grind down the side of the marble benches and different areas of the park and have just torn the hell out of it," Smith says. "We're trying to see if we can repair it. But to replace the marble they've damaged is like $84,000."

Smith says it's mostly skateboards but also BMX bikes that are doing the damage.

Because of the problem, the park police have been on a mission to ward off and warn any skaters. They've gone into Fort Sanders—where skating is legal—and questioned them, several skaters say. The Knoxville Police Department has also stepped up enforcement of the ban on skateboarding in the Central Business Improvement District.

Some skaters are feeling harassed.

Trey McReynolds has been skateboarding for 30 years. Although he still does some trick riding, he mainly uses a long board for transportation. Measuring 44 to 48 inches long and having bigger wheels, those boards are more than foot longer than your standard skateboard. They're faster and smoother and require less foot action, but it's hard to do tricks with them—they're made for cruising around.

"I just ride to work and other places. I get stopped and told not to skateboard. I try to explain to them I'm just riding to work, I'm not out to tear up handrails," says McReynolds. To get to work in the Old City from his home in Fort Sanders he takes a circuitous route in order to avoid the illegal area. Even still, a 45-minute walk is reduced to 20 on a board, he says.

Brian Beauchene, who owns Pluto Sports skate shops in Knoxville and Gatlinburg, is familiar with the 1993 ban on downtown skating, which he spoke against before it was passed. He says many skaters are being stopped by police outside the CBID zone, where skating is legal. At his store off Cumberland Avenue, he gives customers small laminated cards with the city's ordinance and a map of the CBID so they know the law and can show it to police if they're stopped for skating on a legal sidewalk (it's illegal on any city street).

"If you're a person arguing with a police officer, I don't know that you're going to win that argument," says Beauchene, who has been skating for about 25 years. "It's illegal in the downtown area. But we're being stopped in areas where it's legal."

Beauchene won't reveal his own skating spots because he's afraid it'll attract a lot of other skaters and then attention from the police.

"The harassment is out of hand. For an adult to be talked down to like you're an illegal piece of crap...that's got to be addressed," he adds.

Capt. Jack Jinks of the KPD denied that skaters are being stopped outside CBID. "No one has called my office about any citations outside the CBID. There may be some question of where the CBID is for the skateboarders. My officers know the boundaries."

Jinks adds that if someone is cited outside the CBID, it wouldn't hold up in court. The citations can vary depending on various court costs, but Beauchene says it averages around $80.

For Beauchene the solution to the skateboard conflict is simple—build a public skatepark. Asheville, Lexington, Johnson City all have nice parks, he says, which were each built for about $200,000 to $400,000. Louisville has an even bigger park—built for about $2 million.

He argues that a skatepark will be a safer place for teenagers, who otherwise will be skating in out-of-the-way areas. Some people worry about liability, but statistically, it's less dangerous than soccer, he says.

Right now there's no funding for a skatepark, but Joe Walsh, deputy director of Knoxville's Department of Parks and Recreation, has looked into the possibility, visiting the Lexington and Louisville parks. Walsh estimates it would cost about $250,000 to build a park along the lines of Lexington's,

"We're looking for some place that would not be close to a residential setting, but would be centrally located, open and visible, easily seen, easily found," he says.

Beauchene doesn't have any illusions that Knoxville will embrace skateboard culture any time soon. He'd like to start with a small park for about $4,000. Eventually, he'd like small parks in the suburbs of north, south, west and east Knoxville; and a larger one for intermediate and advanced skaters in the center city. Some who are exasperated by the skaters think a park is a good idea.

"It probably would help, partly so the kids couldn't argue they didn't have any other place to go," Smith says.

—Joe Tarr

Park Theater:The End?
Building is condemned and set to come down

Condemned as a "public danger," the 1930s-era Park Theater, an East Knoxville landmark, is likely to be torn down within the next two weeks. Bob Whetsel, director of the city's Public Services office, confirms that the Park is likely to be demolished as soon as the first week of September.

Even with brush growing up in front of it, the building's stucco front and sleek art-moderne lines are still striking from Magnolia Ave., where it stands at the corner of Olive. But Whetsel says, "It's structurally in very poor condition. The roof is going in on it. There are severe cracks in the foundation." He adds that the wiring, plumbing, and electrical systems aren't up to code, and that the owner, Harry Gray Smith, after discussing the building's fate before the Better Building Board over a year ago, has made none of the promised improvements. "There's no movement to do any work on it," Whetsel says.

Built around 1938, the once-stylish Park was an attraction not only for old Park City, the neighborhood around it, but for the city at large. The Park often showed major movies before other theaters did. Many from all parts of town have memories of seeing the latest sensation at the Park, often waiting in lines outside for a chance to get in the theater. One of the last sensations the Park hosted was when Jaws premiered there in the summer of 1975.

The Park closed not long after that, but reopened for a time as another movie theater called "Studio One," then closed again. In years since, it has served as headquarters for various candidates, and as a carpet warehouse. Its striking facade made a brief cameo appearance in the 1997 movie Box of Moonlight.

In recent years, several performing-arts groups have expressed interest in using it as a performing-arts space of a sort sorely lacking in East Knoxville. Most recently, Chris Woodhull of the inner-city youth group Tribe One attempted to purchase the building as a headquarters. He reportedly couldn't come to terms with owner Smith, whom several city officials call "a very frustrating man."

Smith, who describes himself as a "100-percent disabled war veteran," has what he calls "a very complicated story" about the background of the theater's condition, much of it somehow connected to his attempts to grant large amounts of South Knoxville property near Fort Dickerson, and what sounds like a deep and abiding personal resentment of Mayor Victor Ashe. "Victor doesn't like me," he says. "And if you fall out of favor with Victor, you're in trouble."

Smith says he has tried to interest the city in supporting the Park as a learning center for the disabled by day, and as a youth center by night. He says he devoutly wants to save the building, and that now he has some money to do so. He also says that, after offering a "cut-rate deal" to Tribe One last year, he's now is offering the building to Tribe One as a gift because he's now "desperate" to save the building he grew up with.

Though some government agencies like the Metropolitan Planning Commission have expressed little interest in the building's historic significance, a few, like illustrator John Mayer, wish it could be saved. Mayer says that of the few old neighborhood movie theaters still standing in Knoxville, the Park is the only one that still looks like a movie theater. He believes it will cost more to tear down than it would to fix up.

City codes enforcer Ken Flynn confirms that it may take as much as $100,000 to tear the Park down, but he believes the building's cinderblock shell is deteriorating so badly that it may not be reparable at any cost. "The roof's all to pieces," he says. "The whole inside's all to pieces."

Another building owned by Smith, a small, wooden prewar residential house next door to the Park, was slated to be demolished on Wednesday.

—Jack Neely
 

August 21, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 34
© 2003 Metro Pulse