Bright, blinking lights. Blaring speakers. Greasy fair food. The Confederate flag. It takes a vacation in the most horridly tacky town east of the Mississippi to keep yourself grounded. A healthy dose of Redneck spring breakers and a deep breath is enough to remind anyone that their insanity is relatively sane compared to the hellish nightmare that is Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
When I was a child, every day was a game of make-believe, so when I visited this holiday mecca it was easy to overlook the small town’s superficiality in favor of the magic of hand-pulled taffy and funny museums. Returning to this “gem” of the Smokies as a more mature adult, however, proved disappointing and baffling. The whole place seemed stuck in the bad part of yesteryear, and the uniquely conservative neon accessories, such as the ever-classy “NoBama” t-shirt, that sit in every store front came off as unfortunately antiquated in such a modern world.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like there isn’t something fun about the eternal state fair atmosphere surrounding Gatlinburg. But their tasteless attempt to honor bygone Southern culture through faux log-cabin siding on every other building and Davy Crockett mini golf courses just demoralizes every self-respecting Southerner who visits. It’s never a good sign when there are four specialty pancake restaurants within a square mile of each other. They crossed the line from “quirky” to “tacky” with the addition of their third knife and hunting supply store and offering wedding packages on the ski lift.
Gatlinburg is a popular spring break destination for local teens and adults that still want to be teens who can’t afford to visit more common vacation hotspots such as Panama City Beach, but it is a depressing destination indeed. Combined with the advent of Ripley’s and their command of every available source of entertainment makes a day in town repetitive and lacking spice. Lining Main Street are clumps of sad, dilapidated, and overcrowded motels and everything undeniably smells like old grease from funnel cakes. Every girl wears oversized, off-brand sunglasses from “Nucci,” ungodly fake blonde highlights, and probably has a tramp stamp, while the men bear mullets, beer bellies, and sleeveless shirts crossed with the Dixie stripes. The whole experience makes you taste bile in your mouth.
And the plague of uncouth, insulting entertainment spreads west like a toxic flu into the strips of highway known as Sevierville and Pigeon Forge. Hotels advertise discounts to the innumerable dinner shows and Dollywood inspired Opry plays that honestly amount to nothing more than banjos and bad country accents by scrolling clips across their closed-circuit televisions. Bowling alleys, roadside amusement parks, and of course the affront to nature that is indoor skydiving all litter the strips of asphalt stretching outward from Gatlinburg’s center like trashy streetwalkers, begging you to give them your money and guaranteeing a night of fun with their needy “come hither” look.
All of this fake, commercialized crap that the city contains is ironically surrounded by some of the most beautiful natural scenery on the east coast. With 10 million visitors every year, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is by far the most popular nature park in the country, and for good reason. Rolling hills, green forests, clear, bright streams, and the beautifully eerie blue hue of the mountain vista during sunset gives the Smokies a magical feel that is simply tainted by the existence of tourist towns like the ‘Burg, a stained relic of man’s shallow desires juxtaposed beside the forgotten majesty of nature.
But despite all its numerous flaws, there is something oddly refreshing about Gatlinburg. By visiting this shrine to all things cheap and easy, you can revel in the thought that you don’t live there. You realize that after visiting the at least semi-informative, yet wildly overpriced aquarium you can leave forever, if you so choose, whereas the cuttlefish trapped there never can. A brief respite in the very town that uses “the weirdest mini-golf course in the world” as a positive slogan reveals more about American culture than the Constitution ever could; the seed of capitalism, buried in the foothills of the Tennessee mountains sometime in the 1970s, fed with the gullibility and money of entranced passers-by, slowly mutated into a blood-sucking parasite whose gluttonous appetite cannot be stopped, even by the ravages of time and the dwindling interest of a nation ever advancing towards a more enlightened future. This country rests its shoulders on these parasites, all feeding on middle-class money spent on low-class entertainment. Like an ugly scar that never healed right, Gatlinburg will always be there, because we are like misguided moths, always attracted to its flashing lights, and our money talks in the town that promises the fun will never end.
