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- Mar 27, 2014
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Visited Knoxville for the solar eclipse, I REALLY loved that town. Everyone was super nice, tons of new microbreweries, traffic was non-existant compared to the DC area. From what the locals told me, COL was 1/3 of what it is here in Bethesda.
If I moved anywhere, I'd seriously consider Tennessee.
The eclipse was fun. The 'totality' line was about a mile from our house, but we went to a friend's house outside the Smokies for the day. I'll post a photo if I can - got a good one of the "diamond" effect.
What can I say - it's a nice place to live! We complain about traffic but that's because sometimes to get from the far east side of town to the far west takes.....30 minutes! The worst possible day ever it's an hour...
And you've seen Knoxville at its best in decades. Just 15 years ago, there were no micro breweries, no coffee shops or local roasters, downtown was dead after 5 pm, and all the excitement was on The Strip near UT. Now downtown is hopping every night, and all the old, previously abandoned buildings are getting converted to condos or office space. We have cranes downtown for the first time in decades. It's been fun to watch. I spent years without going downtown except to the courthouse to get a drivers license or something, and now we go there for shows or eating or events twice a month or more, especially in summer when they have a big farmer's market every Saturday. And if you like boating, water skiing, kayaking or canoeing, the mountains, trout fishing, bass fishing, mountain biking, road biking, good public golf courses, it's all close by.
A funny thing about downtown is the renewal kind of started with a local guy who bought up a bunch of property on "Market Square" and put in some shops and eating places. Before that it was all but abandoned, except for occasional flea market stuff. Anyway, that started the ball rolling, and he was locally pretty famous. Turns out he was using the properties and businesses in part to launder drug money, and was busted and arrested for a pretty big drug scheme, pot mostly, and some cocaine as I recall. Anyway, by that time there wasn't any turning back and it's been improving every year since.
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