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An open letter to an anonymous Knoxville suburbanite
Posted By katie allison granju
The Sunsphere is Not a Wigshop has this to say:
We at the Wig Shop bear nothing but goodwill to our suburban brethren. It’s not that we dislike you, we just dislike your unsustainable lifestyle. We don’t hold it against you- most people over 40 were raised to believe that natural resources were unlimited, that Americans deserve to live however they want despite the consequences, and that personal happiness (read: convenience) is the best measure of a life well lived. We have our shopping malls and big box retail and cheap flat screen TVs. Everyone can be “middle class” with enough credit cards! That kind of Cold War era mentality gave us Knoxville’s urban sprawl and our bad pollution. Again, we don’t blame you. And we’re not asking you to change if you don’t want to…
So indulge us our few pretensions of elitism, and don’t misinterpret it as hatred. It’s not that Downtown is “sad.” It’s just that we want our city to be a great place, unique and weird, not “the place where America stops for gas.” Which, when you get down to it, is what most sensible Knoxvillians want. “I just feel sorry for [downtown], because honestly it’s kind of a sad place.” We’re here to say it’s NOT. We feel that way about a place where you have to commute half an hour to see an pseudo-IMAX. So let’s agree to mutually feel sorry for each other.
(There’s more and it’s entertaining. Go read it.)
Jan 22nd, 2008
Why don’t you rename your blog “Grainger Avenue Talks?
You are not talking for Knoxville if you ‘dis” sections of town that you don’t deem to be cool enuff.
Ditto Different Anon. That “elitism” garbage IS hateful, it IS insulting and it is petty and childish. These are folks that think that it is a good thing to expose their children to the culture of the homeless, yet whine about panhandlers at the door, that brag about their “Sustainable lifestyle” amongst the druggies and whores of the inner-city, yet insist that the school system break the rules just for them so they can send their kids to school where they would prefer.
It’s not elitism, it is hypocrisy!