Scott and Bernadette West own a large portion of Market Square, including Scruffy City Hall and Preservation Pub. • Photo courtsey of Scott West
Market Square businessman to detail jail time in new book Courtney Whited Copy Editor Visit Market Square in Downtown Knoxville on any given night and find yourself surrounded by activities, restaurants, bars and more. The popularity of the area today is evident from film viewings in the summer, Shakespeare on the Square and the skating rink in the winter.
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However, this was not always the case. “A sizable chunk of the seed-money which revitalized Historic Market Square came from an illegal weed, which makes for a pretty good historical anecdote if you’re ever giving a walking tour in Downtown Knoxville,” Scott West, who with his wife, Bernadette West, bought up a majority of the property and began invigorating the area, said. West’s book, “The Crook Books: Scott West’s Recipes for Disaster,” chronicles his time in both
Blount County Jail in Maryville, Tennessee, and Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, and was published in 2016. “I was ready to publish as soon as I got out of prison in 2010, but my family encouraged me to wait a few years until the world caught up with my pretty strong opinions,” West said. “So, on the 10-year anniversary of the very memorable date when hundreds of DEA, IRS and armored police officers kicked in the doors of our homes, seized our assets and sent us off to
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the Big House, I published the first in the series of Crook Books.” The book’s website states that the story is “one of the largest cases of the IRS” and “is told through humor, poetry and original art in a book that encourages you to think about our world in fresh ways,” and readers are encouraged to “read it on the toilet.” See CROOK BOOKS on Page 4
Thursday, January 26, 2017