I’d like to tell you all about this summer’s big road trip with Linette and Clementine, but right now I just need to sleep. Check back tomorrow for details on Pittsburgh, Savannah and Knoxville… In the meantime, leave a comment and let me know if I missed anything interesting. (I seem to recall having heard on the radio something about Obama hating cops.)
OK, here’s one thing…. In Knoxville, where we stayed last night, we spent some time with the folks at the incredibly cool letterpress shop Yee-Haw Industries. If you haven’t heard about Yee-Haw, they’re being given a lot of credit for putting Knoxville back on the map, doing really interesting design and printing work for tons of bands, political candidates and the like. (When we were there, they were running a huge job for Real Simple magazine.) And it’s not just the local hipster Yelpers that are ecstatic about their work – they just received some coverage recently in the New York Times, where they were called out as one of the best places to spend time in Knoxville. (I think it may have been the same article that called Knoxville ‘Austin without the hype.’) I could go on and on about how awesome their collection of vintage letterpress gear is, or how incredibly awe-inspiring their work is, but I’ll just encourage you to follow the links and see for yourself.
On a local note, it was hard for me to stand in the Yee Haw store, flipping though examples of their work, and not imagine that Ypsi’s custom screen printing shop VG Kids could one day be such a cultural destination. I know that their vision right now doesn’t include retail, but, when I see what the folks at Yee Haw have accomplished, it makes me wonder if perhaps VG could inspire the same kind of interest on the screen printing side of things. Linette and I actually stopped in Knoxville because of Yee Haw. And, not only did we spend quite a bit of money there, buying their work for wedding presents, but we also got a room around the corner at the excessively quirky St Oliver, and ate at a great little restaurant called Tomato Head. We pumped hundreds of bucks into the Knoxville economy, and it was mostly due to Yee Haw. And, the weird thing is, I don’t think we’re the only ones. My sense is that a lot of folks get off the highway and make their way into Knoxville for the very same reason. And, I’d like to think that perhaps the same thing could be possible here in Ypsi. When you think about it, it doesn’t take a lot to reach critical mass… A company breathing new life into a relatively well established creative industry, a vegan-friendly restaurant approaching food differently, a quirky, inexpensive hotel, a few cool bars – that’s about it. That’s all you really need to convince someone to stop and spend a night on their way from Toronto to Chicago…. Anyway, I think it’s worth considering.
OK, and on that note, I really do need to go to bed… Oh, and here’s a photo of Yee Haw.
