Gate

The wrought iron gate to the Crown & Goose beer garden casts a long shadow.

Placid

I saw the moon through a grime-caked window in the Old City. It seemed content to hang there.

Justification

This really is how I spend my time at the Crown & Goose beer garden in the Old City.

That's Entertainment

There's a huge mural painted on the side of Barley's Taproom in the Old City that is supposed to depict East Tennessee luminaries in the music and entertainment fields. This shows just one third of the mural. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I can't seem to recognize many of these people. Except, I think that's Dolly Parton on the front left, the one who looks like she's trimmed her swimsuit with whipped cream. Uh, yeah.

I just noticed the bottom right of the photo holds an anomaly that I wish was a ghost light, but is actually the morning sun on the lens.

Fearful Symmetry

This building in theOld City still has all of its transoms and custom-made doors. I cropped the sides a bit to frame the symmetry. I can assure you that I have no immortal hand or eye. Heh. Can you see the short staircase just inside leading to yet another door? Mysterious, no?

Skinny Sullivan's

Here's another angle to the landmark Patrick Sullivan's building that I've showed you a few months ago in the Old City. The parapet wall is so high and narrow here, it looks like the building's been smooshed by a trash compacter.

Layer Cake

First, you make a nice, solid rectangle for the base layer. Then you put another rectangle on top of it to give some symmetry and heft. Some cylinders across the top would look interesting, even if they're really part of the White Lily flour mill. Decorate the outside with some frippery like palladian windows, a loggia, and some wrought iron. Fill it with the usual concoction: a series of nightclubs or restaurants. There now. You've just made an architectural Old City layer cake.

Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler!

Today is Mardi Gras - Fat Tuesday - and to continue to let the good times roll, I'm sharing some more shots of Knoxville's Mardi Growl parade from Saturday. Remember to wear your feather boas, darlings.

If you're gonna strut, don't forget your beads.

King Louie is the shih tzu that ruled the world - his costume won first place, but I only caught a fleeting glimpse of his royal canine majesty.

And we get one last wave from the end of the parade. Now it's time for some beignets.

Marley and Me

Actually, it's really Rudy, one of the twenty-two canine stars who played Marley in the film Marley and Me - he's the one who destroyed the snowman in the movie. Oh, Rudy.

Rudy was the Grand Marshal of the annual Mardi Growl parade in downtown Knoxville.

Five hundred people and their dogs paraded through the Old City, then down Gay Street to Market Square to help raise money for a local animal shelter.

These photos were shot as the parade began in the Old City. I found that when you sit curb-side at doggie eye-level, you get a lot of dogs coming over to say "hi."

Watching five hundred costumed people walking their costumed dogs down the street is quite an impressive sight. I really wasn't at a place where I could get a good shot of that, but I have a few more individual shots that I'll post tomorrow. Because I like dogs, that's why.

Spike

Walking down the railroad tracks in the Old City reveals the usual detritus of civilization: plastic bags, broken bottles, and cigarette butts. But once in awhile, something else turns up. Something maybe a bit more interesting and historic. Like this: an old railroad spike. These tracks have been here since the late 1800s; the Old City grew up to take advantage of that prime location, wanting to move all kinds of goods along the railways to be sold in other cities. And you know, those trains rumble down the tracks, and the tracks quake, a call and response that repeats day after day, century after century. Once in awhile, all those vibrations cause one of the old iron spikes to pop out and lay in the gravel, useless as a beached fish. But quite interesting to wandering photobloggers.

Raison d'Etre

The Old City section of downtown came to be because of the railroad. The Southern Railway transformed Knoxville into a hub for transporting goods throughout the South. By the turn of the 20th century, Knoxville was one of the largest wholesale cities in the South. The recently closed White Lily flour plant is there on the left.

In this century, the Old City is primarily an entertainment district, but these tracks are still used by the Southern Railway. Which means that I was standing in the way of commerce to take this photo. Good thing commerce runs on a schedule so I will live to take more photos.

Lucille's

Enough with the nature, let's get citified again for a moment.

Lucille's in the Old City was a classy little hole-in-the-wall jazz joint for many years. The best of the Knoxville jazz scene would play there. And before you go making rude noises about the words "best", "jazz", and "Knoxville" residing cozily in the same sentence, let me remind you that the Jazz Studies program at UT attracts some very talented students and faculty to our area.

Anyway, Lucille's. It had a reputation not only as one of the best jazz venues in town, but also as the go-to place for visiting performers to unwind after their shows. It's true. I was there the night Joan Baez danced on top of the bar to the sounds of Donald Brown and his jazz quartet.

Too bad Lucille's is no more, only the sign remains. The place is now a beer-and-BBQ spot, and while I do enjoy my occasional beer and BBQ, it doesn't have the same flair. And believe me, in this crummy economy, we need some flair. You picked a fine time to leave us, Lucille's.

1/2 Morgan

I don't explain 'em, I just show 'em: cryptic message on the railroad tracks in the Old City.

Wheee!

Here's my parting shot of holiday lights, post-Christmas, dashing through the Old City as a passenger in a moving vehicle.

And To All a Good Night

It's a silent night in the Old City on Christmas Eve. But for the first time since the downtown has become popular and prosperous again, the city has decorated this part of town by cleverly transforming the lamp posts into candy canes. I showed you some in monochrome on Monday, which were atmospheric, but lost their context. Business owners and residents in the Old City have felt like the neglected step-children of downtown for the last few years, so I'm glad the sparkly lights have come here at last.

Christmas Goose 2

The life-sized porcelain goose that resides in the window of the Crown and Goose pub is decorated for the season. A Christmas goose indeed.
I'll be away from the Internet for the next couple of days, but I'll have some timed posts to share with you.

Christmas Goose

I'm easing back into a few more holiday shots because, you know, the holidays won't last forever. But I'm still on the monochrome train. The Crown and Goose pub in the Old City is looking mighty festive these days, although the black and white gives it a bit of an Alfred Hitchcock twist.

Coffeehouse

Still in the Old City section of downtown, still in black and white, it's time to look up toward the skies. Not to spot Santa's flying reindeer, or to take note of the winter solstice, but to see the biggest cup of coffee in Knoxville.

This huge painting still graces the side of the Atelier Building on Jackson Avenue which used to host the JFG Coffeehouse. The coffee house has closed, replaced by a design studio, but the artwork lives on.

White Lily

We interrupt our holiday schedule for some gritty realism. Because, honestly, as much as I love sparkly lights, I need a refreshing dose of black and white to cleanse my photographer's palate.

So here's a closeup of the industrial end of the Old City. The White Lily Food Company's flour mill and plant has been in Knoxville since 1883. This was its most recent incarnation.

Did you notice that I used the past tense? Sigh.

The J.M. Smucker company bought out the White Lily brand and closed the venerable Knoxville plant in June of 2008, laying off all the plant employees.

What's a Southern baker to do? White Lily Flour was the secret to those lighter-than-air Southern biscuits. Sold almost exclusively in the South, White Lily's secret was in the wheat: a lighter, low-protein, low-gluten red winter wheat grown in the South. The softness of the flour was perfect for biscuits, cakes, and pie crusts, but less effective for yeast breads which need higher protein content to succeed. Low protein flours absorb less liquid, resulting in lighter biscuits. Biscuits made with higher protein flours, which absorb lots of liquid, will have the density of hockey pucks. Hockey is popular in the North, but hockey puck biscuits less so.

Smucker swears that the process to make White Lily at its Midwestern plants will be the same, but some local bakers contend that the wheat was milled to a finer consistency at the Knoxville plant. We still have Martha White Flour made from Southern wheat, but many long time bakers still think White Lily was the top of the line and lament its passing.

Sullivan's

Patrick Sullivan's Saloon is a landmark building in the Old City at the corner of Jackson and Central Avenues. It's been there since 1888. The original saloon was closed down in 1907 by a local anti-saloon movement; I guess the upright citizens of Knoxville were pretty well fed up with all the trouble these saloons had been causing.
After the saloon was shut down, rumor has it that some enterprising entrepreneur established a brothel on the second floor, but no one has been able to prove this yet. Still, it makes a good story.
The building was bought in the 1970s by Kristopher Kendrick, a local businessman who saw the potential for historic preservation at a time when the status quo was "tear it down."
Today it's a restaurant with a music venue upstairs.