Welcome back. Glad you're here.

It's not every week your hometown gets to settle a 100-year-old beef with New York. But here we are. This one has a little bit of everything: Prohibition-era bootleggers, a brand new trail through downtown, a 30-year-old local golf shop, live music all weekend, and a House Hunch you'll want to guess on before you scroll to the comments. Pour yourself something cold and let's get into it.

In today's post:

Quick history lesson, because this one belongs to us.

It's the 1920s. Prohibition is in full effect, which in Northeast Tennessee mostly meant people got creative. On Long Island, the four-mile stretch of land sitting in the Holston River right here in Kingsport, a man named Charlie "Old Man" Bishop was doing exactly that. Bishop was a bootlegger, and at some point he mixed five liquors together: whiskey, rum, gin, vodka, and tequila, sweetened with a little maple syrup. The result packed a serious punch, and the name practically wrote itself. It came from Long Island. It looked like tea. Long Island Iced Tea.

In the 1940s, his son Ransom, who reportedly ran a still on the island himself, tweaked the family recipe by adding lemon, lime, and cola. That version is essentially the drink the whole world knows today.

Now, if you ask New York, they'll tell you a bartender named Robert "Rosebud" Butt invented it at the Oak Beach Inn on their Long Island in 1972. Which is a fine story. It's just about 50 years late. When Kingsport publicly reclaimed the drink back in 2018, the story blew up everywhere. CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post. A New York bar owner challenged Kingsport to a taste-off and declared that Long Island's honor hadn't been this challenged since the Revolutionary War. Visit Kingsport's response at the time was perfect: bless y'alls hearts.

The history is real, too. Long Island of the Holston was a sacred Cherokee site long before it was a bootlegger's workshop, and the Bishop family's connection to the drink is still living history. Charlie's granddaughter, Connie Bishop Archer, has shared the family story publicly through Visit Kingsport.

Which brings us to the fun part.

The Long Island Iced Tea Trail is officially here. Visit Kingsport launched the trail this month in celebration of Long Island Iced Tea Day on June 6, and it's a genuinely clever way to experience the story. It works as a free digital passport. You sign up, visit participating businesses around Kingsport, check in at each stop, and earn points you can redeem for rewards along the way.

And it's not just cocktails. Some stops are serving their own take on the classic drink, but others are getting creative with Long Island-inspired menu items, sweet treats, and specialty pairings. Plenty of stops work whether you drink or not. It's really a tour of local restaurants, bakeries, shops, and gathering places with a great story stitched through it. You can also swing by the Long Island Iced Tea mural on the back of The Reserve downtown, painted by local artist Helen Shivell, for the photo op.

You can grab your free digital passport and see the full list of stops at visitkingsport.com/longisland.

A century-old story, a family legacy, and a reason to spend a summer afternoon exploring local businesses. That's about as Kingsport as it gets. Don't mess with the original.

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Golf season is in full swing, and if your clubs have been collecting dust since October, Kingsport has you covered.

Golf Unlimited has been family-owned and operated for over 30 years, founded by Carl Cox back in 1995 and still going strong off Exit 59 on I-81 at 4260 Fort Henry Drive. They're an authorized retailer for Titleist, Ping, Callaway, Mizuno, Adidas, and Bridgestone, and they've been taking trade-ins on new and used clubs since 1996, which means the used selection is one of the best you'll find anywhere in the region.

Whether you need a full new bag, a single replacement wedge, or just gloves and balls before a weekend round, this is the kind of local shop where the people behind the counter actually play and actually know what they're talking about. Open Monday through Friday 10am to 7pm and Saturday 10am to 5pm. golfunlimitedkingsport.com

A few things worth getting off your couch for:

Twilight Alive with The Trey Hensley Band | Friday, June 12, 7pm to 10pm | Broad Street, Downtown Kingsport
Twilight Alive keeps rolling with a big one this week. Trey Hensley is a GRAMMY winner, two-time IBMA Guitar Player of the Year, and a Johnson City native who has played with everyone from Dolly Parton to Steve Martin, and Friday night he's on Broad Street for free. Details

Saturdays with the Chef | Saturday, June 13 | Kingsport Farmers Market
Kingsport's long-running cooking series is back at the Farmers Market for the season. Watch a local chef turn peak-season produce into something worth recreating at home, then shop the market and grab the ingredients yourself. Details

Amanda Robinette @ Inspire Wine Bar | Saturday, June 13 | Inspire Wine Bar, Downtown Kingsport
Uncorked Acoustics brings Amanda Robinette, a Tennessee Songwriters Week finalist, to the Tri-Cities' first wine bar for a cozy night of live acoustic music inside the historic Telephone Building. Grab a glass and settle in. Details

120 Peppertree Drive

This week we're headed to the Peppertree Subdivision for one that checks a lot of boxes.

Three bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and just about every kind of living space you could ask for: a living room with a gas log fireplace, formal dining room, a bright all-season sunroom, and a fully remodeled kitchen with an island and eat-in area. A screened porch and open deck tie the indoor and outdoor spaces together, and upstairs you'll find three generously sized bedrooms, two updated bathrooms, a bonus room, and a laundry room with a utility sink.

The unfinished basement already has a fireplace, heating and cooling, and plumbing roughed in for another bathroom, so there's room to grow. And then there's the backyard. A patio leads straight to an 18 by 36 foot in-ground saltwater pool, which is exactly what you want to be reading about in mid-June.

Full listing at sellstateline.com.

What do you think they're asking for 120 Peppertree Drive

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This newsletter works best when it's a conversation. If you know a story that needs to be told, a person doing something interesting, or a place in Kingsport that matters to you, send it my way. Every documentary, every feature, every post starts with someone saying "you should look into this."

That's it for this week. Thanks for trusting me with your inbox. Let's tell some stories.

Talk soon,

Ryan