Knoxify

David Keith got into act­ing to meet girls. Or so he claims.

Keith explains that he never got involved in the emo­tional side of his career, mean­ing he didn’t buy into the Hol­ly­wood hype that derails so many young actors. Nor does act­ing define his iden­tity. “I got paid to have fun,” he says with his trade­mark crooked grin. So when Brian Salesky, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Knoxville Opera, made Keith “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” he agreed to tackle a very dif­fer­ent kind of role – that of the Pirate King in Gilbert & Sullivan’s beloved operetta, The Pirates of Pen­zance, com­ing to the Ten­nessee The­atre March 12 – 14.

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Photo by: Velo Steve

When Suzy asked our new-business-themed Fri­day ques­tion on Feb­ru­ary 5th we didn’t know what would hit our com­ment sec­tion. By the end of the day we had heard Knoxville loud and clear: bring Trader Joe’s to Knoxvegas!

Of the 39 responses to our ques­tion, 19 com­menters asked for a Trader Joe’s — a whop­ping 49% of you! Accord­ing to their web­site, the clos­est TJ’s to Knoxville is located in Roswell, GA.

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When the Hen­ley Bridge is ren­o­vated it will be gar­nished with shiny new bike lanes. A good move by the city and TDOT. Hat tip: Patrick Bee­son

Watch­ing bub­bly teenagers morph into dis­ci­plined war­riors is an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence. One minute they’re gig­gling and gos­sip­ing. The next minute they’re per­form­ing water bal­let on dry land – or on a cold hard floor, to be pre­cise. Instruc­tor Laura Raines beats a drum and guides the girls through a series of lat­er­als, lunges, pliés and relevés that are part of the Hor­ton Tech­nique of mod­ern dance designed to develop core strength. It’s just one hour out of the 15 – 20 hours a week the GO! Con­tem­po­rary Dance Works troupe spends in prepa­ra­tion for its upcom­ing per­for­mances at the Bijou The­atre on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 20 and Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 21.

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For peo­ple who don’t bleed orange, the fierce, irra­tional loy­alty of Ten­nessee foot­ball fans is per­plex­ing. You might think we’re unbal­anced and over-the-top in our alle­giance to the Vols. You might think we’re blithely unaware of big­ger issues and that we ought to get our pri­or­i­ties in order. What we need is a real­ity check, right?

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“Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma. I believe every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son.” –Dr. Peter Venkman, Ghostbuster

Let me pref­ace this lit­tle arti­cle, with a short story. Last week right here on the illus­tri­ous Knox­ify com­ments sec­tion, I wrote a quick blurb about a new mar­ket in Maryville and their beer selec­tion. Moments later a mes­sage popped into my inbox from Knoxify’s own CP. He has been try­ing to help me to find a gen­eral direc­tion, for top­ics to write about. Here’s a an excerpt from his email, “Hey buddy, I saw your com­ment and thought, I need to see if Chad wants to write about beer in Down­town, Maryville… what about a series on bars, stores, etc. and their beer selec­tions?”. Now I refer you to the famous quote at the begin­ning of this arti­cle. Why yes, yes I would like to have an excuse to drink beer at a vari­ety of estab­lish­ment, and talk about what all hap­pened the next day. Usu­ally I would call that Mon­day morn­ing, but now I can say, it’s for an arti­cle! Now I under­stand we don’t exactly have dead­lines as far as arti­cles go around here, but don’t think for one sec­ond I won’t even­tu­ally say to my wife, “but dar­ling, I just have to go to that bar with my friends tonight. I have a dead­line, and the loyal Knox­ify read­ers are depend­ing on me!” So with that I say, yes, yes CP, I would like to write about beer selec­tion in Maryville. Now on with the show…

On Sat­ur­day night, 12/12/09, the wife and I ven­tured into down­town Maryville, TN. One of the great things about Knoxville is that not only is Knoxville itself such a great place, but its smack dab in the mid­dle of other great places to be. It’s the epi­cen­ter so to speak. You can reach down­town Maryville in 20 – 30 min­utes from down­town Knoxville. It’s a small lit­tle city but with plenty of char­ac­ter, and it’s slowly start­ing to take a note from our own down­town and revi­tal­iz­ing with new stores, restau­rants, and apart­ments pop­ping up at a reg­u­lar pace. It’s also home, to the huge “Foothills Fall Fes­ti­val” every Octo­ber, that brings vis­i­tors from all over the coun­try, with big names in coun­try music and clas­sic rock fill­ing out the con­cert lineup each year.

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We have added a quiet North Knoxville neigh­bor­hood to our ‘hood guide port­fo­lio. Har­rill Hills, located in the heart of Foun­tain City, is a his­toric neigh­bor­hood that was estab­lished as the result of a part­ner­ship between a builder and Foun­tain City’s biggest gro­cer in the 1920s, A. Hale Franklin. To learn more about this neigh­bor­hood check out the com­plete guide here.

© 2009 Robert Stock­dale Pho­tog­ra­phy, All Rights Reserved.

On the spur of the moment, I decided to attend the Vet­er­ans Day pro­gram at the Ten­nessee Vet­er­ans Ceme­tery this year. Although I drive by the solemn rows of tomb­stones every day, I’d never ven­tured up the hill to the octag­o­nal struc­ture at the top. This year, in the wake of the Fort Hood mas­sacre, I felt moved to do so. I wanted to honor our vet­er­ans in a per­sonal way. My dad, a Korean War vet­eran, went with me to the ser­vice hosted by the Ten­nessee Chap­ter of the State Guard Asso­ci­a­tion of the United States. Nei­ther of us knew what to expect.

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As good a place to start as any, Kingston Pike is prob­a­bly the best known of Knoxville’s five spoke roads and, in many ways rep­re­sents a micro-view of Knoxville his­tory, from the mid-1800s thru the mid-1900s. The Pike is one of Knoxville’s ear­li­est roads dat­ing back as far as 1788, apparently.

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Photo by: ZenOp­tic

This is a guest post by Chad Huskey.

I’ve lived in Knoxville all my life. I grew up in South Knoxville close to Sey­mour. So as a kid that’s all I knew of our lit­tle town. I went to a small ele­men­tary school, and an even smaller Pen­te­costal church. Need­less to say, my view of Knoxville, and the world in gen­eral, were not exactly “diverse”. I assumed every­one, played with their Papaw’s hunt­ing dogs, and had a creek run­ning through their front yard. My brother and I romped up and down the side of the moun­tain behind our house, rode bikes down the road for miles, and roamed all over our neighbor’s yards with out any­one giv­ing it a sec­ond thought. All my friends all lived pretty much the same way. To me, Knoxville was no big­ger than a few county roads with no lines painted on them, and going to town meant going to the Kmart and Kroger on Chap­man Highway.

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