Possible move to Knoxville...convince me it's cool (Maryville, Gatlinburg: apartment complexes, rental)

[npdman]

I've been accepted into a Masters program at UT and may have financial incentive to make the move. I'll be visiting at the end of next week and hope someone might be able to point me to some cool places and things to check out.

To make this easy, I'll just go ahead and classify myself as a hipster. Most of the things hipsters like, I like, and the places they want to live, I want to live.

I'm hoping my short trip will convince me that my perception of Knoxville is wrong (I am trying to be open-minded, though).

I want to have a good time. Help!

[airen123]

Knoxville is a southern town and does have its share of hipsters, but it isn't as common as in larger cities. But I believe there is an eclectic mix and anyone can find things they enjoy here.
Live downtown, or nearby. Places you may like to frequent are the Grotto, Sassy Ann's, Preservation Pub. I would definitely start out touring Market Square and the Old City, there are some neat tucked-away shops, some vintage clothing. If you want to venture out from downtown, Union Jack's is a cool little British bar, and Rouxbarb is a trendy restaurant next to it. Coffeehouses that have cool live music are Remedy and Old City Java. There used to be a great place in Bearden/Homberg area-can't find it-perhaps is gone. There is the Gourmet Market in that area... You can Google all these, I'm sure.
Hope you enjoy your visit!

[npdman]

I'll check these places out! Thanks!

[NiQi]

You might like some places in Maryville too, its a small historic little town. "Downtown" Maryville is great a few smaller bars that have live music. Most of the 'Hipsters' I know hang out at a place called Brackins. Its a tiny little blues bar full of great people. Two doors down from there is another good place rightly named Two Doors Down. There are some great little shops, coffee shops, And organic restaurant called Tomato Heads.
In the summer on the last friday of every month Maryville has an "Art Walk". All up and down Broadway(the main road in downtown Maryville) Its awesome! I think you can google it for the website too. If you like any kind of country music, Maryville hosts the Foothills Fall Festival. Even If you dont like country music its an awesome little festival just to walk around.

Good luck!

[PN from TN]

You need to visit our downtown area. There a great resturants and great haunts. Always bustling. Great place to eat in the ols City call Crown and Goose. Also, Market Street has really hip places too.
Bearden area is very walkable and the housing is good . It is a historical area and there is always something going on. The best paper to use to find what is happening in the area is Metro Pulse.
www.metropulse.com.

One note. Our major bridge to South Knoxville is under reconstruction and will be for 2 years. There are ways around that if you want to visit the Smokey Mountains and Gatlinburg.

[mahavisnu]

4th and Gill is probably your bag. Lots of arty kids with Buddy Holly glasses and skinny jeans who drink PBR tallboys and listen to bands you've never heard of make up a sizeable minority (?) of residents. Definitely not far from UT, and there are some shortcuts that help out. The Old North sector of what was once downtown before the interstate came through is in the process of being revitalized, and you can find a fair amount of hipsterish places tucked into the area, some of which you may have to discover by word of mouth (doesn't get more hipsterish than that). I was talked into going to one of them last new years and was introduced to one individual who called everything "bougie" (short for bourgeoisie), if that's an indication. A lot of Market Square and (to a lesser extent) the Old City (the Pilot Light is where you're going to want to visit) cater to that crowd as well.

Lol, I like to think that I can't stand hipsters, but the reality is I'm probably more of one myself than I want to realize. Of course, once you realize it you're not cool anymore...

[hiknapster]

Fourth and Gill is mostly traditional and gay families that dedicated a lot of effort to restoring these homes or just enjoy living in them. A lot of the people are white and blue-collar folks that enjoy living in a gentrified neighborhood.

I can definitely see Old City, the corridor up to Broadway and even Happy Holler and Old North Knox being very "right now." Parkridge, the area around the co-op and the downtown lofts, Gay Street and Market Square have a lot of the same vibe, too. Some of Bearden and even Sutherland Ave have a bit of that new pioneer fringe spirit.

I think hipster really runs the risk of being pretentious, though, and can carry an Asheville, Chelsea tragically hip vibe that Knoxville lacks. And that's a good thing. I tend to look at Knoxville as being cool for all the right reasons like caring for the community, frequently the local businesses, bonding together for the greater good supporting the local farms, policing and cleaning up the neighborhoods. That's Knoxville. If you're trying too hard you missed the point.

[mahavisnu]

Originally Posted by hiknapster

Fourth and Gill is mostly traditional and gay families that dedicated a lot of effort to restoring these homes or just enjoy living in them. A lot of the people are white and blue-collar folks that enjoy living in a gentrified neighborhood.

Yeah, as I said, "hipsters" are a "sizeable minority"; the only reason there was a question mark is because they constitute most of the people I know who live there (many of whom I consider friends, hah), but I'm in my mid 20's like they are, and having not lived there myself I don't personally know the majority of the folks who do. Most of the younger people there live in rental houses (which still tend to be quite nice in that neighborhood) and apartments (there are definitely some cool and well-kept up apartment complexes from the same time period as the houses that can be quite a bargain). There is undeniably a noticeable presence, but it's certainly not even close to the same young-folks dominance one might see in Fort Sanders, for instance; however, hipsters are also a different set than your typical college kids and tend to have a disdain for them (and pretty much everyone else, but I digress...). I don't know if the preponderance might be greater in Old North, but it might as (I think) prices are typically a little lower, especially as you head towards Lincoln Park/Oakwood, which is a more homogenous blue collar family-oriented neighborhood. The aforementioned Mr. "Bougie" lives in Parkridge off East Fifth (in an exceptionally beautiful house, I might add), which probably carries a higher hipster street cred but with a notably smaller presence.

I think you may have to define what you mean by "hipster." Not many hipsters would admit to being hipsters, and it's really a subculture of its own, one that carries a lot of negative connotations but has a pretty interesting etymology. Asheville is more dominated by "hippies" and would-be hippies, less so the illegitimate offspring of Sonic Youth meets ironically commercialized indie culture. If that was harsh...well...I don't know how else to say it, but I'm not implying this reflects on you, and as long as you're being true to yourself it's all good with me.

[javry]

so I guess I have to ask.....what exactly is a Hipster?

[airen123]

Wiki:
Hipster is a slang term that first appeared in the 1940s, and was revived in the 2000s and 2010s to describe types of young, recently settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with interests in indie rock, independent film, magazines such as Vice and Clash, and websites like Pitchfork Media.[1] In some contexts, hipsters are also referred to as scenesters.[2]
"Hipster" has been used in sometimes contradictory ways, making it difficult to precisely define "hipster culture" because it is a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior[s]."[1] One commentator argues that "hipsterism fetishizes the authentic" elements of all of the "fringe movements of the postwar era—beat, hippie, punk, even grunge," and draws on the "cultural stores of every unmelted ethnicity", and "regurgitates it with a winking inauthenticity."[3] Others, like Arsel and Thompson, argue that hipster is a cultural mythology, crystallization of a mass mediated stereotype generated to understand, categorize and marketize the indie consumer culture rather than an objectified group of people.[4]