Welcome to Inside of Knoxville. I hope you’ll return many times and enjoy what you find here. Let me answer a few questions which might occur to you as you get to know the site a little better.
Here’s a brief introductory video to give you the scoop on me and the blog:
Why this blog?
I moved to Knoxville in 1982. I should probably clarify that I moved all around Knoxville, not always in the city limits. I lived in south Knoxville and in west Knoxville, but I always felt a pull into the central city, spending large portions of my time and money over the years listening to music, eating and having fun downtown. In 2009 my wife and I decided to move into the downtown area and leave our suburban home behind. We were nervous. Was it dangerous in the city in ways we didn’t know by only visiting? Would our cars be safe? Would our new home retain its value? What was it really like to live in the city every day? I turned to the internet and came up empty: no one was writing about day-to-day life in Knoxville. We took the plunge anyway, and in June 2010 I decided I should be the one to provide the online document which I felt was missing. As time has moved on, it has become even more important to me.
Initially this blog was named “Stuck Inside of Knoxville.” It may seem like an odd name for a site which is all about downtown Knoxville – in a good way. Here’s the deal: I love Bob Dylan and I grew up in Mobile, Alabama. From about the time I was twelve years old I loved Bob’s song “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.” With its swirling organ, dizzying imagery and expansive length, it could be relished over and over. And the “Stuck” part? Somehow I never took it as the slam on Mobile as you might expect. I celebrated the song as an exploration of the place I was born and grew up, of the larger world and of myself and my place in it.
I’ve seen Bob somewhere around 30 times in the years since and I’ve heard him play the song live many times. I never grow tired of it. So, when it came time to name the site, it was a given that it would include “Knoxville” and incorporate Bob in some way. Just as I take “Stuck Inside of Mobile” to be a love song to my original city which explores its beauty and its degradation, its joys and its heartbreaks, its triumphs and its myriad failures, “Stuck Inside of Knoxville” was my love song to the city where have lived since 1982 and to the downtown into which I moved in 2009.
But some things happened I didn’t expect. For starters, I got far more readers than I anticipated. As of the spring of 2013 I crossed 20,000 page views a month. The blog won the Metro Pulse Best Blog in Knoxville Award in 2013. A number of people questioned the name of the blog, feeling a negative connotation. So, July 22, 2013, I changed it to its current name, “Inside of Knoxville.” Subsequently I’ve quit my other job, added advertisers, won the 2014 Metro Pulse Award, the 2015 Knoxville’s Finest award from Blank Newspaper, the 2015 Top Knox award from the Mercury. I’ve gone from 20,000 page views a month in 2013 to as many as 80,000 in a month in late 2015. It’s been a great journey.
Who am I?
I decided early on not to use my name on the blog, but to go with “Knoxville Urban Guy.” There were a number of reasons for this decision, one of which is that I was employed in a profession in which scrutiny of outside-the-job behavior is not uncommon. In order to publish and write exactly as I pleased and with complete freedom I felt the need to separate the web page from my professional life. I’m not reluctant to know and be known in person, so feel free to introduce yourself if you see me on the street and I’ll use my real name. Plenty of people have and I’ve made some great friends through my association with this site.
Want to advertise your business here?
Inside of Knoxville is viewed 70,000 to 80,000 times in a typical month. It is followed and discovered by people who have a specific interest in downtown Knoxville. This makes it an excellent place to advertise your business to people who are already interested in the city.
If you’d like to advertise on Inside of Knoxville, please email me at knoxvilleurbanguy@gmail.com. Current monthly prices are $600 for a 300X250 ad or $900 for a 300X500 ad. Ads appear each time a person goes to a new page and may be linked to your business.