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Our Eye on the Square
Market Square is arguably Knoxville’s most beloved block, so the real estate movements are of particular interest to us at Metro Pulse. So an ad in the Sunday News Sentinel—“Market Square, historic bldg, 2,200 sq. ft. per floor, 3.5 floors, full bsmt, $350,000. Call 865-804-9622 aft. 5 p.m.”—caught our eye. Word on the street is it’s owned by Susan Key, whose Susan Key Galleries has been located in the square for years. When contacted, Key didn’t deny the rumors, but she didn’t wish to talk about it either. “Why would Metro Pulse care about whether I want to sell my building?” she asked. Since our offices overlook the square, and we’ve long championed its revival, “Why wouldn’t we care?” might be a better question.
Sit There Long Enough...
You never know who’s going to drop in at the brewpub. Friday evening about 7, several regulars were enjoying happy-hour brews and free burritos on the Downtown Grill & Brewery’s patio when the grayish middle-age guy on the Lemond 21-speed rode up Gay Street alone and chained his bike to the patio fence as if he dropped by every day after work. He shared a joke with a table full of regulars about a ferocious urban poodle named Carl, and turned no heads as he walked inside.
Business was light for a Friday happy hour, and the bicyclist took a place at an empty stretch of the bar and sat by himself to watch part of a hockey game on TV. But some couldn’t help noticing that the guy bore a striking resemblance to one Tom Wopat. And so he was. The former Dukes of Hazzard TV star, better known in recent years for his prominent Broadway roles, sat alone at the bar watching a hockey game for about 20 minutes before his fellow patrons finally recognized him and started asking for autographs, which he obligingly signed. Less than an hour later, Wopat was onstage around the corner at the Civic Auditorium, starring as the charming, smarmy Billy Flynn in a touring production of Chicago.
World’s Fair Beer Blast
Metro Pulse’s annual Best of Knoxville party at the Foundry (better known in 1982 as the Strohaus), drew a wide range of Knoxvillians you’re not likely to see in the same room anywhere else, from WIVK cowboy/DJ Gunner to jazz-grass recording artists Robinella and Cruz Contreras, to Mayor Bill Haslam, who seemed gracious about his place as runner-up in a close race for Knoxvillian of the Year, a few votes shy of his former mayoral-race opponent Madeline Rogero (sojourning in Costa Rica, she was represented by her daughter and a bigger-than-life cardboard cutout of herself). MP Editor-in-Chief and former publisher Joe Sullivan was honored with the first-ever Metro Pulse Hall of Fame Award. The free event was graciously catered by more than a dozen Best of winners. But for some, the whole gala event was overshadowed by the eerie return of World’s Fair Beer to the World’s Fair site.
Approximately 90 of the six-packs, stacked in the foyer, set the tone for the evening as a sort of postmodern floral arrangement, accompanied by fresh-baked cookies decorated with the World’s Fair logo. The beer’d been stored prudently in a Gibbs teetotaler’s springhouse since the Reagan administration. At 22 years old, the beer is now technically beer legal, but, unfortunately, a little past its prime—as, some recall, it was even in 1982. Each six-pack, labeled with a warning to not actually drink the stuff, was intended to be an added premium for winners of the Best awards. But quite a few attendees of more felonious persuasions, perhaps spoiled by the free food and drink, helped themselves to these priceless (at least they don’t have any price that we’re aware of) relics of the fair.
A Trailer, by Any Other Name...
Last week, CityPaper of Washington, D.C., ran an essay offering an unusual opinion about trailer parks. The writer was Aaron Tallent, a Jimmy Duncan staffer from Tellico Plains, who makes the provocative point that the cheap, crowded efficiency apartments of Washington, where many college-educated yuppies and aspiring politicos live, are no better than the trailer parks of East Tennessee, and in some ways inferior. “You want to talk about trailer trash? Put down your Stella, turn off your Blackberry, and listen: You are trailer trash.... Urban America is full of trailer parks. You just have fancier names for them.” He points out that trailers in Tennessee do tend to come equipped with better views than efficiency apartments in D.C. We assume Duncan’s office didn’t vet the piece, though it wouldn’t hurt for his staffers to promote the trailer life. The trailer, er...mobile home, er...manufactured housing business is one of his district’s biggest industries.
May 6, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 19
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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