Fashionista

Would you be caught dead in this outfit? I would, but only if it included the lamppost reflection above the skull.

This is Reruns consignment boutique downtown, and it always has the best window displays.

Still Life With Cork

This is how you open a bottle of wine, at least when you belong to one of the book clubs I'm in:
1. Put corkscrew into cork.
2. Pull gently.
3. Watch nothing move.
4. Curse creatively at whoever invented plastic corks.
5. Pull harder.
6. Repeat steps 3 and 4.
7. Get a pipe wrench and pull top of cork.
8. Hooray! Movement!
9. Rats. It stopped.
10. Repeat step 4.
11. Get a pair of pliers and a hack saw just in case.
12. Pull cork with pliers.
13. Hooray! The cork came out!
14. Repeat step 4 for good measure.
15. Take a photo - it makes such a charming still life tableau.

Half and Half

I do love geometric designs. Funny, I wasn't very good at geometry in school. But I like to say "hypotenuse." And "dodecahedron."

Towers and Clouds

The towers of downtown are stretching up to touch the clouds. Perhaps they need to be a wee bit taller.

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.

I Saw the Light

Yes I did see the light: the reflection of the sun on the windows of the John H. Daniel Co. clothing manufacturing factory and warehouse. This is one of the few working warehouses left in the Old City. Most of the other buildings have been rehabbed into condos or turned into shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues. And that's OK by me, because I've lived here long enough to remember when it was a pretty desolate and kind of dangerous place. Historically, the Old City was yet another area full of saloons and brothels and used to be known as the Bowery. Tomorrow I'll post a survivor from that era.
Oh, and the moon is just a little lagniappe for y'all.

Lower the Curtain

Here's a recent archive shot of the clouds moving in over the city for Sky Watch. You might recognize the Sunsphere, the pedestrian bridge, and the shiny red bricks of the UT Convention Center from some recent entries this week. I took this while waiting for the elevator in the Locust Street parking garage. I especially like the faint reflection of the overhead light in the window - a stealth flourescent spaceship hovering over the Sunsphere.