
I can tell you fancy, I can tell you plain
You give something up for everything you gain
Since every pleasure’s got an edge of pain
Pay for your ticket and don’t complain
-Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter, “Silvio”
As Inside of Knoxville approaches its fifteenth birthday, my thoughts have turned to the larger view of downtown and our city. So much has changed in those fifteen years that summing it up in an article would be impossible. It also simply defies logic to claim that the center city isn’t massively better today than it was fifteen years ago. There is no question.
But . . . all change is a two-edged sword, just as the lyrics above assert. We necessarily lose some things as we gain others. What we add and what we takeaway will go a long way toward determining the kind of city we’ll have fifteen years from now.
What has been gained is easy to spot. Fifteen years ago, for example, there were so few good restaurants that counting them on one hand was easy—and maybe a stretch to name the fifth. I struggled with where to take an out-of-town guest who stayed more than a day or so. Now? I’d be happy to take those guests to lots of restaurants and often wish they could stay another day to hit one more.

Still, I can think of some restaurants and other food-related spots we’ve lost that might make a good run now. La Costa (early incarnation), Harry’s (or Harold’s if you want to go further back), and Just Ripe might be a better fit for 2025 Knoxville than they were in their time. We also lost Regas Restaurant during that span, and while it may have been a bit tired, it was Knoxville’s best for a generation or more.
We have lots of great music in the city, of course, maybe more than ever. In that fifteen-year period we gained a new performance venue with the Mill and Mine and many, many more restaurants host live music, particularly jazz. We have Big Ears, for goodness’ sake. The Knoxville Jazz Orchestra is bigger than ever. We have the Symphony Orchestra, Broadway Musicals, and Knoxville Opera. We have music on Market Square.

But what have we lost? I miss Ella Gurus (Old City, 80’s and 90’s for you kids) and would adore seeing something like that resurrected here. We lost Hot Summer Nights on the World’s Fair Performance Lawn (90’s, it was just a hill then) and Sundown in the City (2000’s through 2011) which was one of the drivers of my desire to move downtown in 2009. I saw the early years as a commuter and only caught a season or so as a downtown resident. I miss Rhythm n’ Blooms, which hit my musical sweet spot. I also miss the Dylan Bash being on Market Square, though Ijams is lovely and I hope to see you there this Saturday night.

Also on the musical front, we’ve gained a phenomenal, award-winning violin store in Knoxville Fine Violins, but what if your needs lean toward other instruments? At one point about ten or twelve years ago, you could pick up great used guitars at two downtown locations, Hot Horse Records and Morelock Music, along with strings and straps, amps and other gear. Morelock’s also had banjos, mandolins, and more. Now? Nothing. I drive to Cedar Bluff to get guitar strings. Those two stores, and later Magnolia Records, as well as Raven Records, also sold vinyl albums. Now Magnolia Records is well out Central, Raven and the others are closed. No vinyl remains in the heart of downtown, though the excellent Lost and Found is a short drive up Broadway.
I’m very thankful for Caleb at Phoenix Pharmacy, Valley Medical, and Ethan Long for providing pharmacy, primary care, and dentistry services downtown. Those are the kinds of things that make a city livable and walkable, none of that was available fifteen years ago, and we use them all. But many years ago, the Medical Arts Building was filled with medical providers of all sorts. We could use more. An eye doctor or a physical therapist, for example, would be great. Almost all downtown residents must drive to another part of the city for medical appointments.

And there’s more. When I moved downtown, I could make a copy at the corner of Union and Walnut. Now? Nowhere that I know of (the library?). I also must leave downtown to send the rare FAX, though I’m not sure we ever had that. What about buying a variety of light bulbs? A hammer and nails? A screwdriver? A plunger (believe me, I recently and desperately searched)? Those were available at Jay’s Megamart (along with hundreds of wigs, but I digress) when I first moved downtown. We also had antique furniture (Willow Antiques is now off Hall of Fame), general antiques (at Don’s), but now, not so much. We had as many as four furniture stores downtown and now we have two.
Where once we could get items framed downtown (Hey, Paula!), we can no longer get that done. Several downtown residential buildings have dry cleaning pickup (which I love), but what if you work or stay downtown and need a dry cleaner? Not so much. We had two when I moved downtown. Shoes? Tori Mason (inside Bliss) and Mast General Store have lots of shoes, but in my early years of living downtown, we had a vintage athletic shoe store on Market Square, as well as a high fashion shoe store (Style of Civilization), and a boot store (Bootleg Betty) on the 100 block.

There are lots of kinds of stores we could name that are needed in modern life that maybe never existed downtown. Need a cell phone? A charger? Drive out of downtown. Considering a computer or any other electronics? Leave downtown or get online.
And what about a hat store? Many cities have great hat stores. You can pick up some hats in Mast, though not a wide range of dressier hats. I’d bet we had a hat store downtown a generation or two ago. I often check out the hat store when I visit other cities. What about games? We once had a store, Organized Play, in the old city that had a massive collection of board games and gaming systems. You could buy a deck of cards or hang out and play.
So, what am I saying? Just that our very small downtown is changing and evolving rapidly. We’re gaining some things, while we lose others. Is anyone watching to see how it plays out or are we content to let it happen as it will? Is downtown evolving into simply an entertainment and tourist district for the region? Are we trying to make it a place for people to live? A place where people live full time or a place where people drop in for good food and a ball game to stay in a short-term rental on Gay Street or their otherwise empty condo? Do we have enough space to do it all? What do we want downtown to be fifteen years from now?
Taken to a larger level, who is acting as the guardian of Knoxville’s soul? We proudly claimed the Scruffy title, despite its intended insult. Are we still that? Do we want to be that? What is our heart and who will protect it so that we don’t become a copy of other regional cities or national cities of a similar size?
I hope someone with power is thinking about that and is considering policies that will guide us in the direction we’d like to go. We’ve seen the rapid growth in Nashville, and I completely believe that the changes we’ve seen in our downtown area over the last fifteen years will be dwarfed by the next fifteen. What do we want Knoxville to look like in 2040? If we don’t shape our narrative, it will be shaped for us.
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