Knoxify

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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Fred­erico Fellini was an idio­syn­cratic Ital­ian film direc­tor renowned for blend­ing fan­tasy and baroque images into his work. A cin­e­matic pio­neer, Fellini cre­ated what critic Robert Richard­son referred to as an “aes­thetic of dis­par­ity” in his films, aban­don­ing tra­di­tional plot and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment in favor of a “dis­parate suc­ces­sion of sequences” to cre­ate a “cumu­la­tive impres­sion.” Fellini left a fas­ci­nat­ing legacy, includ­ing the term “paparazzi” derived from Paparazzo, the pho­tog­ra­pher friend of jour­nal­ist Mar­cello Rubini, played by Mar­cello Mas­troianni in La Dolce Vita, Fellini’s iconic flick. Fellini, who once worked as a clown, died on Hal­loween in 1993.

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There are plenty of things to do in Knoxville. Among those, some­thing for entre­pre­neurs and bar­gain hunters.

• Entre­pre­neur­ship — Tough times like we face today call for do-or-die atti­tudes. If that entre­pre­neur inside of you just stood up and took a bow then Knoxville Over­ground (KO) may be your call­ing. Today at 7pm, KO will host a social mixer at 35 Mar­ket Square as well as pro­vide tours of the 5,000 sq. ft. facil­ity it hopes to con­vert into a micro-enterprise devel­op­ment cen­ter within the next few months. Knoxville has needed a startup busi­ness incu­ba­tor for a long time so we’re hope­ful this will take off.
• Yard Sale — Recent rev­enue spikes at Dol­lar Gen­eral are proof that every­one is look­ing for a deal these days. Neigh­bor­hood yard sale’s are often a fru­gal Knoxvil­lians mecca for good finds. On April 3rd and 4th, var­i­ous houses off of Ginn Rd will be hold­ing a yard sale. Head on out and if you see David Ethier, tell him Knox­ify sent you.

Photo by nateOne

One of my biggest con­cerns in mov­ing to Foun­tain City was that I would be with­out a local bike shop. That fear was quickly snuffed after vis­it­ing Foun­tain City Ped­aler, located at 4620 Old Broad­way, just off the 640 exit.

Foun­tain City Ped­aler is small, but well laid out with plenty of park­ing for group-ride meet ups. They carry Marin, Dia­mond Back in addi­tion to a cou­ple bou­tique brands. (I saw a deli­cious BMC frame hang­ing on one wall.) They also carry Shi­mano wheels and com­po­nents as well as cloth­ing from Sugoi among many other accessories.

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Update (12/18/08): After receiv­ing a num­ber of valid com­ments that I’m look­ing unfa­vor­ably on cer­tain parts of Knoxville, I’ve decided to write a follow-up entry to this one with my cur­rent view of liv­ing in Knoxville. The cur­rent entry was orig­i­nally pub­lished on my per­sonal site in June 2008 before I had a chance to really explore, and eval­u­ate the city. As a results my opin­ions of the city have changed. Thanks for all of your feed­back — it’s great to hear how pas­sion­ate folks are about their city!

Update: Look­ing for a house in Knoxville? I wrote an entry on that too.

Liv­ing in Knoxville, Tenn., like most mid-size South­ern cities, is pretty easy. Cost of liv­ing is cheap, and folks here go out of their way to accom­mo­date most anyone.

But with the good qual­i­ties of Knoxville come some bad ones too. Ter­ri­ble air-quality, overly fran­chised shop­ping and restau­rants, and poor road engi­neer­ing can make life in the “scruffy city” difficult.

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While surf­ing my RSS reader entries today, I learned that Me & Mommy-to-be, a Knoxville-based mater­nity bou­tique, had their new Web site fea­tured on Best Web Gallery. Via their footer it appears they had help from another Knoxville busi­ness, Designsen­sory (who we’ve blogged about before). From the looks of their site they’re ready to take on the World Wide Web of future mommies.

Alli­son and Matt Sprouse seem to be pop­ping up every­where. I see them Down­town, North Knox, even as far out as Far­ragut. That’s when it hit me, they are a large part of the community.

As the ice skat­ing rink at Mar­ket Square is around the cor­ner, we wanted to remind all Knox­ify read­ers to stop in and do some hol­i­day shop­ping at Abode in Mar­ket Square.

Knoxville has a brand new snow / skate / wake shop that is car­ry­ing the coolest board sports gear and apparel around.  The Board Room is open now, but their “offi­cial” Grand Open­ing is going to be next Fri­day, Octo­ber 17th.  Sup­port this local busi­ness by stop­ping by this week or for their spe­cial Grand Open­ing and get a fresh high five from the crew.

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Doug McCaughan reported yes­ter­day on Twit­ter that Costco will build off of Lovell Road at the old Out­lets Mall. Sweet!