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Seven Days

Wednesday, October 29
An ailing 648-pound man and his wife are stranded from 5 until 7 p.m. when their pickup breaks down near the Merchants Drive exit on I-75. Tennessee Department of Transportation officials bristle at the notion that someone sat on the interstate for two hours without TDOT's participation.

Thursday, October 30
Downtown hoteliers file 30,000 petition signatures in order to force a referendum on whether to publicly fund a new Knoxville Convention Center hotel. Good. If the hotel fails in a referendum, the money can be used for more important things... like converting the empty convention center into a parking garage.

Friday, October 31
Memphis Zoo officials bring together a pair of giant pandas, Ya Ya and Le Le, in hopes that the animals will eventually breed in captivity. May we suggest a heart-shaped pen and a stack of Barry White records?

Saturday, November 1
The Vols defeat Duke in football, but there's still hope that UT will someday become an academic institution.

Sunday, November 2
Police break up several fights in an Old City nightclub. Does anyone notice that there were no fights until after police arrive?

Monday, November 3
Reports surface that some sections of the Newport Plain Talk, Cocke County's daily newspaper, have been clandestinely wrapped with fliers touting the Ku Klux Klan. Or is that Klan-destinely?

Tuesday, November 4
Council elections draw 13,000 Knoxvillians to the polls. You'd think Knoxville was a city of maybe 30,000 tops, wouldn't you?

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:
"Life is an art, not a science," says the inscription in ceramic tile above the entrance to Bennett Gallery on Kingston Pike. And one step inside the store certainly confirms this conviction. The former movie theatre was transformed in the mid-nineties into one of the area's largest art galleries featuring works from dozens of regional and international artists.

Maria Haley of Maryville says that she has read these words "hundreds" of times upon visiting the gallery. Maybe the folks at Bennett can provide Ms. Haley with a more suitable "frequent shopper" prize, but for now she will have to settle for a copy of Rebecca Ore's latest sci-fi thriller Outlaw School.

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

CITY TREE BOARD
Thursday, Nov. 6
8:30 a.m.
Ijams Nature Center
2915 Island Home Ave.
Regular meeting.

CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday, Nov. 11
7 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Large Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

What Limits?
An outgoing Council member's election take

Two-term City Council member Nick Pavlis let me tag along on an election night mission. Although he will be term-limited out of office in December, he threw the full weight of his influence behind candidate Chris Woodhull, who ran for at-large Seat B against former Councilwoman Jean Teague, a 28-year incumbent who was term-limited out of office two years ago, and with whom Pavlis seldom saw eye-to-eye.

"We're going to end up at Chris's headquarters," Pavlis said as we headed down Gay Street toward our first election watch party. "I really want that one."

Pavlis feels a deep connection with Woodhull, in part because of Woodhull's relationship to the late Council member Danny Mayfield, who died of cancer in 2001. Woodhull and Mayfield were the co-founders of Tribe One, an urban ministry that reaches out to troubled youth.

Pavlis and former Councilwoman Carlene Malone fought a losing battle to appoint Mayfield's widow, Melissa, to serve her husband's unexpired term. The experience ripped Pavlis' heart and shocked the conscience of a community. "What happened with Danny and Melissa moved my life," Pavlis said. "It changed me." In a way, Woodhull's election closes the circle. He remembers something that happened at the Council meeting after his colleagues rejected Melissa. "I was very upset, and kind of lost my composure. After the vote, I looked up, and there was Chris' little girl, Tess. She put her hand out to me and said, 'It's going to be all right.'"

Our first stop was Marilyn Roddy headquarters, AKA the Bistro at the Bijou on Gay Street with a Coca-Cola can-red vinyl campaign banner draped over the front window. Roddy, a neophyte candidate, was the heavily favored winner of the at-large Seat C over her youthful, underfunded opponent, Mostafa Alsharif.

Next stop was the Bob Becker HQ at the Holiday Inn Select, an appropriate setting, since the Holiday Inn owner is the prime mover of the petition drive to force a referendum on the question of using public money to help build a new downtown hotel. Becker, a candidate for the 5th District Council seat, opposed spending tax money for a new hotel from the outset. Becker built a hefty lead over his opponent, Tim Wheeler (who recently had to explain why he'd listed a funeral parlor and a community club building as his legal voting addresses). The room was full of Madeline Rogero supporters (including, as the evening wore on, Rogero herself).

"I don't know about being at a victory party," said perpetual underdog Rikki Hall. "I'm gonna get back to the Preservation Pub."

We headed out to Tyson Place, where supporters of Joe Bailey had already gotten the party started, and Pavlis talked about his eight years on Council and his future plans. He learned a lot as an elected official, and he isn't done with politics—maybe he'll make another City Council run in 2005, or perhaps look at a County Commission seat.

When we found Bailey, he hadn't gotten the memo that he'd won the at-large Seat A, and he was pacing nervously. Was he having flashbacks from 2001, when he lost the 2nd District seat by a scant handful of votes? He missed the funniest exchange of the evening, when County Commissioner Mary Lou Horner, who was first elected in 1976, interrupted assistant fire chief Red Lowe as he expounded on the meaning of this election night: "Term limits are exactly what the people want," Lowe said. "Term limits," echoed Horner. She walked out of the room.

Finally, it was on to the New City Cafe where the Woodhull victory party was in full swing. "I just want to hug that guy," Pavlis said as he opened the door to the celebration.

—Betty Bean

Patriotic Stand
A local refugee group takes on the Patriot Act

Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services has been helping war refugees and political outcasts find asylum in East Tennessee for the past 22 years.

Bridge helps them acclimate, finding them housing, clothes, health care, jobs and English training. Many of its clients come to the United States from a culture of fear, not knowing whom to trust. Bridge workers try to win that trust.

So when the FBI came poking around last year, wanting all the information the organization had on Iraqi immigrants—including medical and mental health files, legal or financial problems, family information, details about persecution they might have faced in their homeland, custody disputes, marital problems— Bridge workers became alarmed.

"It seemed very far-reaching to me," says Mary Lieberman, Bridge's executive director. "This was last year, when we hadn't even gone to war. They didn't ask us for our Afghani client files. Why?"

Bridge said no. After an appearance in court, the FBI and Bridge reached a compromise, wherein Bridge removed personal information from the files, which the feds then looked at.

But Bridge became part of an ACLU lawsuit challenging the federal law that made the FBI's intrusion possible—Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The section gives the government the right to subpoena personal information from anyone, whether they're suspected of a crime or not.

"The law allows innocent people to be investigated by the government. And it allows the government to do so when there's no reason to believe a crime has been committed," says Emily Whitfield, spokeswoman for the ACLU's national office. "That just turns on its head the whole notion of innocent until proven guilty. The FBI can seize your personal records, your medical records, just because of who you are."

The FBI can obtain the subpoena from a secret court, making appeal impossible. And the government can seize those records without people knowing about it.

Six non-profit agencies have joined Bridge in the lawsuit, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Islamic Center of Portland, Masjed As-Saber.

The case—against Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller—was filed in Detroit this summer and is in the preliminary stage, with both sides filing briefs.

Bridge recently won the Bill of Rights Award from the Tennessee ACLU for its involvement, an award that will be given on Saturday.

The Patriot Act has effected Bridge's ability to help people, the agency claims. It's changed the way it keeps records, not including any sensitive personal information in its files. This will make it difficult if a case is passed on to different social workers.

Bridge's board of directors debated whether to get involved in the suit, Lieberman says. They decided it was the right thing to do.

"This is the only way to repeal the most odious parts of the Patriot Act," Lieberman says. "I'm not arguing that every part of the Patriot Act is bad. All we're saying is this is a threat to the civil liberties of everyone."

—Joe Tarr

No Skating
Police shut Knoxville's largest underground skateboard lot

For skaters, it was the perfect spot—a warehouse-size slab of concrete hidden under a maze of interstates and surrounded by abandoned property, briars and railroad tracks.

They cleaned out the garbage and built intricate ramps and skated as tractor-trailers sped by on the interstate above. About the only other people they saw were homeless and the police who would sometimes park nearby.

But after some complaints, the Knoxville Police Department cleared out the spot last week—the second time in a year—and is trying to figure out a way to keep the skaters out permanently.

"This is just abandoned. I can't imagine why the city won't let us use it," said John Bohnenstiel. He and about 30 other skaters were enjoying a last evening of skating at their squatters' park last week, after being warned by police the area would be cleared. After talking with the skaters, the police gave them a few days to clear their ramps from the area.

KPD spokesman Darrell DeBusk said there had been some complaints from nearby businesses, although he wouldn't name them. "They're breaking the law. They're trespassing," DeBusk said of the skaters. "They're on private property. There's other illegal activity going on in that area involving illegal substances. The bottom line is they're breaking the law."

There's confusion about who actually owns the property. Norfolk Southern, the city or the state might own some or all of it. A spokeswoman at Norfolk Southern said she didn't believe the company owned the property and had never complained about the skaters.

It's the second unofficial park to be destroyed this year. The "Wallos" concrete draining ditch at Pellissippi and Northshore Drive—which has been a skating hotspot since the '70s—was partially destroyed by TDOT a month ago in order to make improvements to the I-40 interchange. "We've had a long history of these renegade skate parks in Knoxville," says Brian Beauchene, who owns Pluto Sports, a skateshop off of Cumberland.

In the late-'80s, skaters built a park just north of World's Fair Park. It garnered national attention in a skater magazine but was destroyed when TDOT built the tunnel exit into downtown. Another illegal park was created on old tennis courts where Safety City is now located; the city eventually destroyed it. The Blackstock park has been around for three or four years, although it was cleared out once last year.

Beauchene skated at Blackstock, but says his store didn't do anything to promote or sponsor it. But all of Knoxville's serious skaters knew about it. The skaters said they feel like they've been turned into criminals by the city. Skateboard is illegal in the downtown business improvement district, and skaters say they're harassed elsewhere by police.

"It's incredibly frustrating to walk across this sea of concrete [in Knoxville] and know you can ride on it responsibly, but it's not allowed," Bohnenstiel says. "They act as if it's illegal to possess a skateboard."

The makeshift park off of Blackstock was one place they felt free to just skate. "There's talk about giving us a skate park when we have one right here. Just let us keep it. We'll build it up and develop it," says Dan Carter.

—Joe Tarr