Sunday, May 31, 2009

farmer's market and baseball

Nothing perks up a day at the office by spontaneous baseball that I don't have to play. Before the office and baseball, though, there was a trip to the Farmer's Market downtown, where I didn't intend to buy anything. I just wanted to go walk around somewhere for a little while before I spent my whole day at the office.

I parked down on State Street, where weekend parking is free and where the parking garages besides the one behind the movie theater have all seen better days:

park

Granted, the abandoned building with smashed out windows isn't the actual garage, but see how the sign is all rusty? If Knoxville is ever going to get serious about revitalizing downtown, then they need to revitalize the places that you have to park at to be downtown. If it looks like the place where Batman's parents got killed, then probably no one wants to park there.

Walking up to the Farmer's Market, I passed the Wall Avenue wall and saw that someone else agrees that Knoxville could use a little improvement:

knawksville

If you click on that and look at the bigger size, our river is apparently nasty and our zoo ghetto. I didn't think the zoo was really that bad (a little poorly laid out, maybe) but I might have just gone in with low expectations.

Bob Dobbs had no commentary to offer on the zoo or on the state of the city:

bob, in fire or motion

Moving on, I walked through the Farmer's Market:

beets

honey bears

vegetable baskets

Even though I didn't buy anything, I noticed a surprising lack of actual food at the Farmer's Market. This is the first time I've gone to it in at least a year, but last time I went almost every stand was vegetables and cheese and baked goods, the kind of thing I expect from the Farmer's Market at home. Those stands are all still there, but now there are at least the same amount selling wind chimes and candles and crafty stuff. I guess it's good that the Farmer's Market has gotten a lot bigger since the last time I went, but at the same time I think of food when I think of farmers, not jar candles that smell like cookies.

After an hour or so of walking around I headed in to work, where I am trying to get ahead on things before my vacation in a week. This year my goal is to try to get some pictures up while I'm still on vacation, so that I'm not spending five hours doing it when I get back.

Anyway, I was at the office for a couple of hours when I got an email inviting me to meet up with Jess and whoever else showed up for Tennessee Smokies minor league baseball. Since I've never been and baseball is way more fun than being at the office, I immediately said yes.

Smokies Park, deep in the Smokies, was just small enough to be cozy while still feeling like a baseball stadium.

Smokies Park

If it holds more than five hundred people I'd be terribly surprised, but you never know. It does hold two mascots:

Slugger and Diamond

The green one has a ponytail, and we couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a girl or if it was just sporting a genuine Tennessee rat-tail. Either way, we managed to find nachos and hot dogs, Jess and George got themselves on the Dance Cam:

dance cam

and we stayed all the way through the end, when it got dark out and we lost:

night lights

Losing was still better than spending four extra hours at the office, except that now I have to go in today again instead.

4 comments:

leonor said...

oh joel, I love the way your pictures tell a story, a very odd story, but a story nonetheless.

Justin Bower said...

rea; farmer's market, yeah I have noticed the same phenomenon here...back home, did we even have a "market" per se? Every farm had their own little stall out front with a "we trust you" money box.

Our "farmer's market" was the road. Any road. All of the roads.

That being said, I just went to one here...I remember the FM in Madison, WI, which was pretty fantastic.

Houston....not so much. They had a nice selection of foodstuffs, but a LOT of the useless junk too (candles, etc). Also, no less than 6 or 7 booths carrying goat-based products. I found this odd.

Justin Bower said...

that should be "re:"

Joel said...

We had a Farmer's Market at home. They used to do one in Watertown by the state office building, I think on Wednesday mornings. The Amish/Mennonite people brought delicious baked goods.