Tennessee

The Smoky Mountains. Gorgeous. One of the best stretches of the Appalachians. If you like that kinda thing.

Knoxville is rather dull and industrial.

The Smokies are a must. It's the most visited national park in the country (true), but most people visit by car, and the back country is still amazing and relatively uncrowded. It's hard to go wrong with the Alum Cave trail to the top of Mt. LeConte, even though it's fairly popular, not to mention steep in spots. There are a lot of nice, relatively low-impact hikes on the less-patronized backside of the park near Cosby--not so many sweeping vistas, but lots of swell walks in the woods. And when you're done, you can go eat homestyle Mexican food and listen to bluegrass (weekends only) at the Back Porch in Cosby. Cosby is in Cocke County, one of the last places where moonshine is still a fairly common commodity.

Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are gaudy, overcrowded tourist traps crammed with hillbilly novelties, chain restaurants, and the same outlet stores you'll find anywhere else. Avoid unless you like that sort of thing.

I spent too much time in Knoxville to be objective. True, it's not the excitement capital, but it's a nice enough little city. Daytrippers should definitely eat at the Tomato Head downtown, and maybe visit Yee Haw letter press a few blocks away. Other than a few bookstores and records stores to scrounge and the occasional rock show, that's about it.

If you make it to Knoxville and are into old records, especially country records, DO NOT MISS Roy's Records in nearby Maryville (my birthplace, about 15-20 miles away). I will be happy to accept your thanks later.

I haven't spent much time in Chattanooga, really. There seem to be some people doing interesting stuff there (the veteran Shakin' Ray Levis improvising collective, for example), but otherwise it seems to me to be an even smaller and sleepier version of Knoxville.

there's a great part of the museum that's like being in the middle of a deep canyon (like 50' or something) except the walls are glass and you can see fish and stuff on the other sides. there are ramps that take you back and forth and you can gradually ascend or descend the depth of the tenessee river...

I will say that Allyzay and I are spending the Christmas holiday in the mountains near Monteagle and Sewanee University, where I should have gone to school but went to UT Knoxville instead. We should both have some nice things to say about the fine (yet criminally-neglected governmentwise) state in the near future.

Tennessee's Appalachian forestry is even more beautiful than Virginia's if you ask me. I can't wait, even if all the trees are dead for the winter it's still gorgeous. Also my parents' house is fucking awesome.

CHATTANOOGA: Civil War stuff, tourist-y stuff, great place to walk around and spend at least half a day.

Too bad Chester's downtown has closed -- it was a surviving jook joint from pre-prohibition that was the best soul food restaurant I've ever been to!

Anyway, Barking Legs Theater has cool music/ theater/ dance stuff. Right in the lot inbetween the Barking Legs and the African-American Elks Lodge, there is a fabulous BBQ shack that serves on I think Wed. - Sat. Great pork and chicken sandwiches there.

There's a Chinese restaurant nearby I can't remember the name but it's really big and in a house and the front area is sort of an outsider art environment-slash concrete pond. Great food -- ohhh yeah it's called Yum Yum's. Best egg rolls on earth.

NASHVILLE: I consider Hatch Show Print a pretty vital place, and there's a nifty coffee place inside of a large house shit Ic an't remember the name of that either.

BELL BUCKLE: Near Nashville, go to the Louvin Brothers Museum, proprietor none other than one Charlie Louvin, sitting mere feet from grizzly photos of the crash that killed his brother. Awesome. Ask him ho wmuch money he makes off each Louvin Bros. Bear Family box that gets sold! (I think it's a quarter...)

KNOXVILLE: Go to McKay's Books. Ask the people who work there where to go adn what to do, they will not steer you wrong. Asl for Scott and tell him you're a friend of Mike McGonigal.

OAK RISGE: NEar Knoxville -- Visit the birthplace of atomic energy -- the world first nuclear reactor is here! The Science Museum is scary, very pro-dropping-the-bomb...

If you really have some time, by all means head to SCOTTSBORO, AL, where Unclaimed Baggage is the best thrift store on Earth times ten -- they buy up luggage that's never been claimed, sift through it and sell it cheap. I've gotten a box of amazing Bollywood soundtrack cassettes for like $5, $120 cowboy boots for $15, tons of stuff. Most people bring their best stuff witht hem when they travel. I brought Fred Frith and John Zorn there once and they both flipped out over it, if you're the kind of person who needs, you know, celebrity endorsements...

Dean: Oak Ridge = lousy with former nuclear weapons plants, lotsa post-docs in residence, good public schools, and Big Ed's Pizza (at least last I checked).

TOMBOT: I'm from further East, but I always liked South Central TN; an old buddy of mine from Elizabethton moved out there years ago and now works at Sewanee. Beautiful country out that way--rolling green hills with the occasional dramatic outcrop of the plateau. Kind of puts me in the mind of Tolkien's Shire, but with more fighting-cock breeders. Sewanee at Christmas--that'd be nice. Give my regards to the Volunteer State.

DO NOT MISS Roy's Records in nearby Maryville

R.I.P. :(

this state just gets better and better

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/207370.php

TN! home of pizza hut buffet and dillard's. and christians.

I think most Tennesseeans' reaction would be "What's a Jew?"

it's pretty sad 'cause Cohen's one of those guys that actually Gets Shit Done. He represents the state's only African-American majority district, and has done so excellently, imho. fun facts: has been featured on the Colbert Report's better know a district segment and was total bros with Warren Zevon.

cohen was also the point man in standing up to the state legislature's most recent attempts to erode the teaching of evolution, in the mid-'90s. and there was a bit of a journalistic ethics kerfuffle some years back when the nashville scene felt compelled to report that steve cohen had been seen taking a hit off a joint ... at a nashville scene party.

anyway yeah that ad is o_0.

tennessee was the first place i heard someone use jew as a verb.

new jersey for me. dude, who wasn't all that bright, apparently missed the fact that the two dudes he was talking to were jewish.

Woman who had dogs cloned wanted in Tennessee

...McKinney was arrested in November 2004 in Tennessee in a van with the 15-year-old, according to a Carter County Sheriff's Department arrest report.

McKinney, then living across the state line in Avery County, N.C., needed money to help her three-legged horse, Crockett said.

"She loved it dearly," Crockett said. "She was a rather bizarre character, and seems to have a strange circumstance now."

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080809/capt.87130c419d0147319cc1aff395b06556.cloned_dogs_mormon_hostage_ny123.jpg?x=400&y=311&sig=243_OqfwjJu8Ej9CWMLWbA--

lol that photo's brilliant.

i wish there was a photo of the three-legged horse.

her face is SCARY

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/09/tennessee-politician-arrested-for-habit-of-masturbating-out-car-window-at-90-mph/

uh.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/tennessee-chemical-castration/