In the city I grew up in, the motto was “That’ll do.” Anybody who tried to achieve something that stood out for its quality or individuality, whether it was a building or a plate of food, was just putting on ...

But do we serve anything worth waiting in line for? Something that we’d say, “When you’re in Knoxville, you just have to try a ___”?

I’ve been talking around that conclusion for a long time, without ever daring to suggest that particular superlative.

If you’re a student of folk music, over 50, or both, you can sing along with an unusual song called “Big Rock Candy Mountain."

Knoxvillians of a certain age have been struggling avoid a certain comparison, but maybe it’s time to go ahead and get it out. Consider two brothers, successful businessmen, the more outgoing of whom has gubernatorial aspirations.

State rankings are kind of like ethnic slurs. We can use them as punchlines of jokes about being grateful for Mississippi, and as motivating tools to talk about ourselves. But when someone else uses them, it can rankle.

I had things to do on Saturday afternoon, but it was such a lovely day I took a walk through Market Square.

I’d never looked twice at the building on Depot Street at Ogden. It was just a big, blank, one-story building, looking from the front like any utilitarian warehouse from the 1970s. I remember the ’70s, but can’t account for what ...

If you’ve been feeling a little more metropolitan lately, you’ve got some numbers to back it up.

After a couple of recent accidents involving death and injury, in West Knoxville and then North Knoxville, it’s not clear that cars are safe in parking lots.

Years ago I discovered the easiest way to dull the pain of paying bills is by paying them in person.

After a few months in charge of the best bookstore in Guatemala, Bill McGowan’s back in town, and wanted to catch up. A skinny guy in a tweed Irish cap and a stubbly white beard, McGowan is originally from Chicago, ...

In my column about filmmaking, to emphasize the unusualness of the fact that James Agee is still regarded as relevant to current cinema, 58 years after his death, I stretched one point. I stated that James Agee died before he ...

Is Knoxville the fourth biggest video-production city in America? We’ve been saying that, and I don’t hear rivals for that title complaining.

Most folks, even people who live and work nearby, don’t know he’s here. He stands alone in a contemplative spot in a copse of trees where curious walkers find him.