Introducing: Lookin' Around with Lauren (Part I)

As the first order of business, I will need to introduce myself. My name is Lauren and I am an editorial intern (or, "Calendar Elf", as I like to call myself) with this fine publication. I came from Alabama with an...internship on my knee...er, I mean to say I just moved here. I will be blogging not because I am especially in touch with local news, nor because I want to share recipes, home decor ideas, or my opinions about music with you, but because you live in a city that needs to be blogged about by someone for whom it provides an entirely new set of visuals. You have seen it; I am willing to re-see it for you. And what I have seen so far bewilders and delights me.

Y'all probably know this town ain't altogether normal. For one thing, there's a lot of tattooed youngsters around here, and a lot of locally-owned restaurants, and way too many good thrift stores, and more live music than you can shake a stick at. Oh yeah, and there's a college and it's real old as American towns go and it's pretty close to Dollywood. The sum of these parts, especially when wedged together in a lovely little nook of Appalachia, can only spell one thing, E-C-C-E-N-T-R-I-C. 

But I feel that the culture and the dining and the really happenin' stuff should be put on the back burner until we address some of the minutia, the little splashes of color (PLEASE NO MORE ORANGE), that make Knoxville the town it is, the town that carries the tag-line "Austin without the hype" (Tangentially: Allison Glock, the New York Times writer who referenced that description in her article "36 Hours in Knoxville" also reports that Litton's cake slices are "large enough to choke a goat"...how does she know that??). 

Onto my most recent observation. A pattern I have witnessed regarding personal transportation devices leads me to believe that behind every highly-cultured city of moderate size lies a fleet of outstanding people...who ride mobility scooters.

I don't know if you know this, but back in Alabama you're lucky if you see one person a week using a mobility scooter. It's usually someone with a broken limb or other injury on one of the complimentary scooters available at big discount stores. In Knoxville though, there is a near-constant parade of scooter-users. People zoom up the sidewalk, sally around Krutch Park, high-tail it out Chapman Highway. In Knoxville, mobility scooters are used as off-road recreational vehicles (sometimes actually used ON THE FREAKING ROAD as CARS) instead of a mere wheelchair-upgrade to help the infirm lead normal lives. Amazing, and inspirational. 

Here I swear that I have seen at the very least two people per day on these scooters and they are usually a different pair of scooterfolk than I saw the day before. That is no joke. And these people on scooters often appear to be racing me along the highway as I drive downtown, sometimes peeling off dangerously into a convenience store parking lot like Steve McQueen would have if he had lived long enough to need a mobility scooter. Knoxville leads me to believe that the mobility scooter commercial (you know the one) in which the two elderly folks are sitting at the edge of the Grand Canyon, with no vans or buses around to explain how they got there, might just be for real.

...One time, right before a storm, there were these two very zaftig ladies in nightgowns sitting motionless in their mobility scooters out on Chapman Highway near Basement Records. Put Thomas Kinkade to shame. They haven't appeared since. It was like Avalon...

I would like to close by commending mobility scooter promoters for making bold personal statements with their chosen transportation devices. Last week I was heading back to Metro Pulse from Market Square and I passed this elderly gentleman with a scooter that was outfitted with so much patriotic memorabilia it looked like he was a float in an Independence Day parade. Fluffy red, white, and blue bows, about 15 flags, all kinds of Americana affixed to his ride. I salute him and all others who dare to be different with their mobility scooters. 

Knoxville, to you I say, KEEP ON SCOOTIN'!