Culture
Sitting with Hedda: Inside Knoxville Theatre Club’s Enthralling ‘Hedda Gabler’
Last week was a deep dive into theater for me. Five separate productions were all staged in the past seven days, a telling number about the growth of theater in Knoxville. I pushed myself and attended...
Rare Jan Lynch Photographs Come Home to Tomato Head
A note from the editor: The late Jan Lynch was a priest, photographer and activist who documented Knoxville’s gay community of the ’80s and ’90s among much else. His photographs are now back on the walls...
River & Rail Opens Season with Powerful ‘The Last Five Years,’ Announces Major Gift
If you reflect back on the last five years of your life, which moments would you capture as the most pivotal in getting you from there to here? That’s one of the questions posed by The...
Inside the 2027 Big Ears Festival Lineup with Ashley Capps
The 2027 Big Ears Festival lineup dropped this morning and, as usual, it’s a lot to take in. Returning to downtown Knoxville April 1-4, 2027, for its 14th iteration, the festival brings together a dizzying mix...
Business
GARMO Will Bring Cheese, Charcuterie & More to Gay Street
Finally, my longtime downtown dream is coming true: Gay Street is getting a cheese and charcuterie shop. GARMO, opening in October in the former Status Dough space in the Phoenix Building, will be part neighborhood market,...
Boo Jack’s Chick-N-Sack Nears Opening on Jackson Avenue
James “Boo” Jackson has spent a good chunk of his life being known as the basketball guy. “People used to say ‘Oh, I know you from college or this team or that team,” says the 6’9”...
Berry Social Joins a Full House at Covenant Health Park
Berry Social officially opened Friday at 122 Stadium Way, at the base of The Delaney just outside the west entrance of Covenant Health Park. There are açaí bowls with fresh toppings, smoothies and a mural of...
Exhale Yoga & Meditation Finds a Fitting Home in Althea Building
The name “Althea” is carved into the marble outside 501 Clinch Ave., and it’s a fitting one for the building’s newest tenant. Althea translates from its original Greek root (althainein) to mean “healer” or “to heal.”...
Development
What’s Next for the Former Public Safety Building Site?
Community input meetings are not generally where I go looking for a good time with a second-grader. And yet! There we were last Saturday at 800 Howard Baker Jr. Ave., having a genuinely excellent time imagining...
From Cal Johnson’s Lone Tree Saloon to Today’s Lone Tree Pass
I recently had an opportunity to tour Lone Tree Pass with Megan Hatcher Rhodes, just as the fences came down and opened the sidewalk at the 200 block of Gay St. that have impeded pedestrian traffic...
Embassy Suites Plans 2nd Floor Public Balcony Extension + $2.5M Rooftop Event Space
Pardon me for spamming you with multiple stories today, but our editorial calendar is overbooked and I’ve got a fun bit of news to share. The Embassy Suites by Hilton Knoxville Downtown is planning not only...
Kerbela Site Development Might Not Be a Done Deal Yet
After four trips before the Knoxville-Knox County Planning Commission, Birmingham-based developer CR Endeavors finally won approval — by the skin of its teeth — on Thursday for its proposed 217-unit redevelopment of the Kerbela Temple site. ...
Events
10-Day Downtown-ish Planner: Sept. 27-Oct. 6
Welcome to the 10-Day Planner! If you want your event included, please create a Facebook event, invite editor Leslie Wylie Bateman via the “invite” button on the event page, and it will be included. We need...
10-Day Downtown-ish Planner: September 20-29
Welcome to the 10-Day Planner! If you want your event included, please create a Facebook event, invite editor Leslie Wylie Bateman via the “invite” button on the event page, and it will be included. We need...
10-Day Downtown-ish Planner: Sept. 13-22
Welcome to the 10-Day Planner! If you want your event included, please create a Facebook event, invite editor Leslie Wylie Bateman via the “invite” button on the event page, and it will be included. We need...
10-Day Downtown-ish Planner: September 6-15
Welcome to the 10-Day Planner! If you want your event included, please create a Facebook event, invite editor Leslie Wylie Bateman via the “invite” button on the event page, and it will be included. We need...
Life
The Day We Marched For Dolly
When Rachel Milford called just hours after Dolly Parton’s passing, I knew why. I was downtown, in my feelings at the Strong Alley mural that was quickly becoming a memorial. Rachel leads the community-based arts nonprofit...
United Way of Greater Knoxville Gives 105 Local Nonprofits a Boost
There are always many more stories to write in a week than I have the hours in the day (or, more often than not, the night) to write them. Here’s some belated good news: United Way...
Park(ing) Day Returns to Reimagine Public Space
Cars are useful. They take us where we want to go, whenever we want to go there. Wow. But their utilitarianism diminishes substantially when they’re just sitting there: large, immobile hunks of metal, plastic, rubber and...
Safety City at 25: Big News for Knoxville’s Little City
The first time I encountered Safety City I thought I was hallucinating. I was jogging Third Creek Greenway sometime in the early 2000s and thought I saw something through the trees, so I went to investigate....