Seven Days Wednesday, Sept. 1 • At the Tennessee Valley Authority—where executives have routinely charged pricey hooch and other luxuries to their expense accounts—officials issue reprimands and other punishments in response to “sexually charged” emails exchanged among lower-level employees. As TVA ratepayers, we’re willing to spot ‘em all the smutty remarks they want if they’ll stop blowing so much cash on call girls and Courvoisier. Thursday, Sept. 2 • A former employee at TVA’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant files a lawsuit alleging that he was fired for reporting safety violations. We think the whole “whistle-blower” story is a smokescreen, and that the real reason he was fired was for emailing T&A limericks. Friday, Sept. 3 • The News Sentinel reports that the city has requested proposals to redevelop the downtown World’s Fair Park. Our suggestion: Build a giant model of a man lying on a gurney and create a museum of human anatomy. We haven’t decided what part the Sunsphere would play, but there is an idea that sticks out. Saturday, Sept. 4 • The annual Boomsday Labor Day celebration moves to the weekend in 2004. That’s fine with us; here at MP, that’s about the only way most of us will see fireworks and feel the earth move on a Saturday night. Sunday, Sept. 5 • Despite relatively modest credentials, two freshman quarterbacks play nearly flawless football in leading the University of Tennessee to victory in its opening game. How is it that Coach Phillip Fulmer can come up with two great team leaders in one season, while the UT board of trustees takes four years to come up with a single decent presidential candidate? Monday, Sept. 6 • Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale says that he wouldn’t oppose a property tax increase in lieu of his endangered wheel tax hike, but that he won’t suggest it himself. That crinkling, folding noise you hear is the sound of our county’s mayor passing the buck. Knoxville Found 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: The marker pictured on the left can be spotted above Mag-Pies on Central Street near Jackson Avenue. The bakery’s unique wedding cakes and quality desserts have been a local favorite long since before moving to the Old City in 2003. Congratulations to downtown denizen Michael Haynes for recognizing the oddity. We’re exceptionally pleased to offer you a copy of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use by Jacob Sullum. Well done, or whatever, whenever.

Tennessee Valley Fair v85.0
Annual event gets a good-time upgrade

The 85th incarnation of the Tennessee Valley Fair could be its most successful year yet thanks to much-needed improvements to the Jacob Building at Chilhowee Park and the new carnival vendor Wade Shows.

Last December, a complete renovation gave the Jacob Building its most important feature in its 70-plus-year history: air conditioning. Tom Cinnamon, general manager of Chilhowee Park, says the project cost the city $2.6 million dollars. “We took out the gas space heaters and put in a computerized central heat and air system. There were old windows that had been painted over year after year. Most of our promoters don’t require outside light and prefer not to have it,” Cinnamon says. In addition, the roof was insulated, railings were improved and brick was applied to the outside of the building for aesthetics.

Larry Suchomski, the fair’s Executive Director, is most enthused about changes that will boost the entertainment value of the midway. Wade Shows, the No. 3 carnival vendor in the country, will provide 65 rides, compared to the 41 supplied by last year’s vendor. Wade Show’s ranking, based on the number of people served at the top 50 fairs in America, might not impress fair-goers as much as the rides themselves, which include a log flume and the Seattle Wheel, an unconventional kind of Ferris wheel that debuted at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, and a ride called the Fireball. In carnival terms, these rides rank as “spectacular” as compared to basic rides like the Tilt-A-Whirl and the carousel, Suchomski explains. Wade Shows is bringing 14 spectacular rides, which is almost twice the number fair-goers enjoyed in 2003.

“The carnival is important to us because it’s our second biggest income item, with the gate admission being first,” Suchomski says.

Fair organizers decided to change carnival companies because the previous vendor, Cumberland Valley, was servicing another fair in Tennessee concurrent with the TVF. “When I really got to looking at, we only had 20 percent of the rides coming from Cumberland Valley; 80 percent of the rides were coming from an outside vendor [contracted by Cumberland Valley]. They were taking their rides to another fair in Tennessee�” That Cumberland Valley was unable to tell the TVF what rides were coming and how they were going to set up the midway further exacerbated the situation. Suchomski talked to four different companies before choosing Wade Shows, which he considers “the cream of the crop.”

“Everything just kind of fell in place, and I think it’ll be a win-win situation for the community,” Suchomski says.

To supplement the already successful demolition derby, tractor pull and rodeo, this year’s fair will include a dodgeball tournament in its Action Sports Entertainment Arena. The genesis of the tournament was directly related to the success of the recent movie starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, but Suchomski says they had been looking for an event to round out its Action Sports offering and dodgeball fit the bill.

The TVF is designed to make a profit, but Suchomski says the last three years have been particularly tough. The terrorist attacks of 2001 occurred in the middle of the fair’s 10-day run, and extremely hot weather kept people away in 2002. That terror alert levels jumped to code orange that year didn’t help either. “Plus, we had the West Nile Virus scare that year,” Suchomski adds. “A couple of crows died at the zoo, and people were afraid they were going to get bit by mosquitoes. But last year, we were just about break-even.”

Suchomski hopes this year’s fair will improve the appearance as well as the reputation of the carnival. He mentions Dollywood as both a model and competitor. “There are only so many entertainment dollars, and I’d like to get as many of them in here as we can. All of the other things that we do for the community are decided by the carnival and how many people come in. Dollywood is tough competition, so hopefully we can edge in on her a bit.”

—Clint Casey

Arts Center Comes to Gay Street
Grand opening ceremonies toast the arts community

The Emporium is living up to its name once again.

Upon its grand opening Sept. 10, various goods will be bought and sold, but they won’t be the hardware and furniture traded in the building’s early days. Now the Emporium’s got a new game.

The Emporium Center for the Arts takes up about two-and-a-half floors of the lovely giant that anchors the 100 block of Gay Street at Jackson Avenue. The building’s glorious arched windows look out onto a block that has seen some changes in the past several years, namely a housing boom that has put residents in many of the upper floors in buildings on the block.

As executive director of the Arts and Cultural Alliance, Liza Zenni was one of the first people to support the city’s proposal to move the Alliance to the Emporium to serve as the core of an arts center with studio space, showcasing the community’s vast offering of creative people.

After many prospective finish dates came and passed, the Emporium is now mostly complete. Scaffolds, dumpsters and construction vehicles have exited, leaving only artists and arts organizations to settle into their spaces and unpack.

“I never doubted for an instant that we’d be in here, and I never doubted that it would be a place where people would want to come, and it would be unlike any other place in all of Knoxville,” Zenni says.

A week before the grand opening, Zenni says she’s scared of the impending onslaught of attention, but her pride and excitement may eventually overwhelm her apprehension.

“It’s almost surreal,” she says. “There were a few people—and I guess I was really lucky to be among them—who had it in their heads all along, from the very first whisper of the word, the image of this place. I just didn’t imagine it would be so beautiful.”

Architect Buzz Goss designed the multiple levels of open space within the building’s husk. Suspended staircases of glossy wooden boards connect the floors. The center gallery space has a vaulted ceiling that Zenni is eager to use to hang sculptures. The rooms-within-a-room feeling allows for intimacy and vastness.

The project to make the Emporium a viable space for multiple groups and individuals to create and exhibit art, do business, and interact with the public has been conceptual and tangible. How to meet artists’ diverse needs while meeting a budget? Goss met with the artist organizations to ask questions like: Do you need a complete wall or a partial wall between your space and others? Should the glass be clear or opaque? Although sketches and blueprints for the Emporium’s innards lay on a boardroom table at the Alliance office for months, what became more established over time was the concept of an arts center—a place where a community would welcome artists as they welcomed visitors, shoppers, clients and the like.

Zenni wants artists “who don’t fit in anywhere else in Knoxville” to feel like they belong at the Emporium, she says. “So I’m hoping as time goes on that will grow.”

The Emporium visually matches the description. Its next challenge is to operate in kind. The ribbon-cutting ceremonies on Sept. 10, along with the premiere of the adjacent UT Downtown Gallery (see below), will be the public’s first chance to use the Emporium Center for the Arts as it is intended: as a meeting place between artists and the public, as well as a jumping-off point for other arts-oriented destinations and events in the city.

• Emporium Center for the Arts Grand Opening Gala, 5-8 p.m. Music by Southerly Winds, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber Orchestra, a bluegrass band and a four-piece Knoxville Jazz Orchestra combo. The galleries of member organizations such as A1 Lab Arts, Foothills Craft Guild, plus individual artists, will be open for browsing. Guests treated to hors d’oeuvres and a champagne toast.

• The S.W.A.T. (Sculptural Wonders & Artistic Technologies) Team Gallery, a creative design firm, presents screenings of Art & Healing Movement, a short film by Mignon and Wolf Naegli shot in January 2004 during a dance workshop led by former Circle Modern Dance artistic director Mark Lamb. The gallery also features photographs by Mignon Naegeli from her series The Male Human.

• In the Emporium’s right-hand space, the UT Downtown Gallery will hold its grand opening from 5-8 p.m. with the inaugural exhibit of Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney. Delaney was a student of Thomas Hart Benton and a friend of Jackson Pollock. He lived in New York for more than 50 years before returning to Knoxville in 1986 to serve as UT’s permanent artist-in-residence until he died in 1991.

• The Knox Word Literary Whangdoodle and Poetry Slam, 8:30 p.m. This first event hosted by the Alliance features a poetry slam between Julia Nance and Rhea Sunshine, followed by a discussion of poetry-reading history from Jack Neely, topped off by the inaugural Knoxville Invitational Poetry Slam with Marilyn Kallet, John Kilpatrick, Seed Lynn, Kari Hoffman, Black Atticus, Shonna Cole, and special guests. $3.

—Paige M. Travis

September 9, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 37 © 2004 Metro Pulse