Knoxville Fashion Week is launching its second edition next week, which raises the question: Can Knoxville be fashionable? We’re supposed to be scruffy, after all. Nevertheless, there are local fashion designers plying their trades and hoping for their big breaks. ...

Knoxville’s never been considered a great town for live comedy—until now. In addition to Side Splitters, several nightclubs have set aside comedy open-mic nights that have sparked a burgeoning scene of local stand-ups. Mike Gibson tells their stories.

On Saturday at noon, as hundreds of people in shorts swarm the stalls of Market Square and defy the glaring sun at the café tables on Gay Street, another, slightly more formal group finds chairs at a long table at ...

Finding everything that lives in a river is a big challenge, especially in a jewel of biodiversity like the Little River, so the experts team up. Biologists from TWRA, TDEC, TVA, Knox County and the University of Tennessee worked together. ...

In Tennessee, the two major political parties are the custodians of the voting process, and whichever party happens to be in power gets to dictate where, when, and how that process is organized. Theoretically, Republicans and Democrats create checks and ...

Tim “Swanky” Glazner is obsessed with tiki—not just as a pop-culture phenomenon that peaked in the early ’60s, but as a way of life right now. Through his tiki projects both big and small, he’s been helping keep the tiki ...

Knoxville's tiki followers express their tiki love with full-on bars in their own homes.

Last month in a basement studio in West Knoxville, Lance Owens, the city’s oldest living jazz player—heck, maybe the city’s oldest performing musician, period—laid down tracks for his first album. After 70 years of playing. Jack Neely sits in on ...

Barbecue comes in all sorts of regional styles—and Memphis has a lock as Tennessee’s most famous BBQ. Here’s how some local practitioners make it Memphis-style.

While there’s currently a barbecue binge going on in the Knoxville dining scene, decades ago there were but a handful of BBQ destinations in town. While the legendary Brother Jack’s is no more, there are veteran barbecue joints that are ...

BBQ is suddenly all the rage in Knoxville, and Dead End is all the rage with BBQ fans, winning its third consecutive Metro Pulse Best of Knoxville “Best Barbeque” honor in 2012. Co-owner (with Robert Nutt) George Ewart took a ...

No one’s denying that barbecue is a meat lover’s world. But you don’t have to stay home or politely peck at a sweaty baked potato with “spread” just because you’re vegetarian and the gang is gung-ho for BBQ. There are ...

It isn’t just trucks that are selling their wares in parking lots around town—food carts are making an appearance too. Meet Pop Culture, a new paleteria that’s been selling its wares at Ijams Nature Center and the Market Square Farmers’ ...

Okay, so Knoxville may sometimes be behind the national trends, but we catch up with a vengeance. We’re finally getting our own gourmet food trucks, and they’re humdingers. Cari Wade Gervin gives us a taste of Savory and Sweet, Cruze ...

So, is Knoxville really the eighth “gayest” city in America? That rating by The Advocate magazine has alternately mystified and encouraged many LGBT residents. As the city celebrates its largest PrideFest yet—and the first one attended by a Knoxville mayor—it’s ...