The Endurance of the Smoky Mountains
🐻 Gatlinburg Nation · Taxes for trip · Diversity our strength · Film Rundown · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
Best Pho in town is and always has been found at VN Pho & Deli on Charlotte. Simple and straightforward. I’ve eaten there twice this week already. May do it again tomorrow.
Onward.
How the Smoky Mountain tourist mecca embodies America’s political realignment.
From Jerod Hollyfield
I was standing outside Gatlinburg’s Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum the weekend before Election Day when I first got wind of the Selzer poll. Tucked away in Winery Square at the mouth of the mountain tourist town, the attraction boasts 20,000 sets of shakers from all over the world. And I was willing to wager those reposting said news with such messianic fervor had no interest in visiting here.
Of course, nothing felt right about lauded Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer’s prediction that Kamala Harris had overtaken Donald Trump by three points in a heartland state that had remained decisively red for the better part of the last decade. But such off-base projections felt even more bizarre in this environment. Cars with Trump bumper stickers filled the parking lot. An employee with a clear Eastern European accent sold tickets at the counter next to a sign that offered discounts for purchases made with Bitcoin.
Like the rest of the country, I’ll find out how Selzer came to her conclusions as she defends herself against the lawsuit Trump filed after his decisive election victory. But my winnowing away the hours in the Smoky Mountain city revealed a version of America entirely absent from the Oprahfied elitism of the Kamala voting class and the white rural rage studies that have attempted to manage depictions of the deplorables among us since J.D Vance first broke onto the New York Times bestseller in the calmer days of summer 2016.
Those of us who grew up in East Tennessee live everyday in the literal shadow of the Smokies. But even the denizens of the surrounding urban enclaves—Knoxville or the Tri Cities—are unable to escape the outsize impact Sevier County has on our cultural imagination and economic reality. An area with less than 100,000 residents, the often indistinguishable trifecta of Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg draws 13 million visitors per year while generating $2.2 billion for the local economy.
Yet, nestled between the state’s flagship university to the east and the artsy utopia of Asheville, North Carolina, to the west, it serves as little more than a lucrative pockmark on the way to progress for East Tennessee’s self-professed creative class of academics, media professionals, and local urban politicos. Casual talk in the days before semesters’ end at the University of Tennessee would invariably circle back to the area as a form of redneckified Antipodean camp that hinged on the exploitation of the working class. Why would anyone in the rarefied Appalachian atmosphere ever deign to visit the area when Ashehville was right around the bend with its indie booksellers, and record stores, and vegan restaurants with names like The Laughing Seed unless it was an anthropological jaunt steeped in irony?
But the truth for us hillbillies who somehow passed our way into that cosmopolitan company is that Gatlinburg and the surrounding areas are much more grounded in America’s realities than the worlds of research institution Assistant Professorships or Bitter Southerner t-shirts with astronomical profit margins. In fact, its entire existence rests on its ability to push back on forces with far greater resources that threaten to undermine its identity.
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💸 Tax Dollars For Trips This morning, Mayor O’Connell announced that he will submit a supplemental budget proposal to Metro Council to kickstart a few Choose How You Move initiatives. “In all, there are 11 projects to begin implementing the progress we all agree we need,” said O’Connell during this morning’s media roundtable. “The supplemental request allows us to start using program revenues immediately without waiting until the start of the next fiscal year operating budget.”
The Metro Department of Finance projects that the new sales tax surcharge will generate $59.3 million between now and the end of June. The projects O’Connell hopes to get underway include a new low-income fare subsidy program, an additional bus operations and maintenance facility, and a new Transit Center in South Broadway.
“This is just a beginning of work we'll do over the next 15 years, and we're very excited to get these foundational projects started,” said O’Connell. “And just a quick note, as it starts to feel like spring, our NDOT crews have already patched 6,700 potholes this year.”
🗂️ Diversity is Definitely, For Sure, Our Strength The Nashville Banner published a survey of sorts on the state of DEI initiatives in the city this morning. The paper spoke to dozens of professionals working in “diversity” or “DEI” to get a sense of how Trump’s Executive Order ending government support for such programs is affecting the industry. Only one person was willing to speak on record: the co-founder of Culture Shift Team, a multicultural marketing, public relations, and diversity and inclusion consulting firm. The other respondents spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The companies that are committed, that’s going to continue,” one such person said. “You don’t have to call it DE&I.”
As is typical with such articles coming from purportedly “unbiased” media outlets, the core premise of DEI is not brought into question. The author, at one point, asserted that the “connection between an inclusive workplace and success has been well documented,” citing a Forbes article and an MIT article to support the assertion. “Why would companies reverse course on programs that have a positive impact on their business,” he wonders aloud, passing the mic to Wilson who offers some bland response about “balancing stakeholder needs.”
DEVELOPMENT
- Denver-based RadiusDC plans 12-acre data center project in Nashville (NBJ)
- Historic Second Avenue building sells for $5.1M (Post)
- Construction on affordable housing project set to start in April (Post)
✹ WEEKLY FILM RUNDOWN: March 7-13
The latest releases and special screenings hitting Music City this week. For a complete list of upcoming title, check out of 2025 Film Guide.
Mickey 17 (Dir. Bong Joon Ho; Starring Robert Pattinson) The South Korean director’s long-awaited follow-up to Oscar darling, Parasite, finds Pattinson as an expendable clone who goes rogue when colonizing an ice planet. Expect some visionary imagery, grandiose absurdity, and populist social commentary. Now playing in theaters.
David Lynch: A Retropective The Belcourt celebrates the life of the surreal indie icon with a career-spanning deep dive into his work that includes Eraserhead and Blue Velvet and a 35mm screening of The Straight Story plus a showing of Lynch’s favorite film, The Wizard of Oz. Sunday at noon finds frequent Lynch collaborator and Nashville resident Alicia Witt talking about her on-set experience with the American master.
Batter Up! Ring in spring with the Belcourt’s showcase of the best baseball movies of all time from Field of Dreams and Bull Durham to The Natural and Eight Men Out (in 35mm!)
Seven Veils (Dir. Atom Egoyan; Starring Amanda Seyfried) The eccentric Canadian filmmaker reteams with Seyfried for the first time since 2010’s Chloe for a chamber drama about an opera director haunted by her past while staging her late mentor’s final show. Now playing at The Belcourt.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🎸 The Legendary Life Of Tom Petty @ Schermerhorn Symphony Center, 7p, $29+, Info
🪕 The Special Consensus @ Station Inn, 9p, $25, Info
🎸 Jobi Riccio @ The Blue Room, 7p $23.30, Info
🎸 Gary Clark Jr. @ Ryman Auditorium, 7p, $44+, Info
🎸 First Fridays and a Midnight Jam @ The Underdog, 6p, $10, Info
🪕 The Cowpokes @ Acme Feed & Seed, 12p, Free, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🎸 Kelley’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
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