{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.032377428307123035, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0018501387604070306, 'mean_word_length': 5.254335260115607, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Making Sense of the Strip: The Postmodern Pastiche of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is the lynchpin of a heavily-traveled corridor connecting Interstate 40 with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Over the past several decades, it has developed into a major regional tourist destination, and most of this development consists of shopping, motels, and large-scale attractions such as mini-golf, arcades, go-karts, and musical revue theatres. Through a comparison to Las Vegas, I present Pigeon Forge in the context of a postmodern tourist place, and the city's historical development as such is described. Through a content analysis of Pigeon Forge business names and promotional materials, I develop categories to organize the various themes presented in area attractions. The themes of Appalachia, the South, Country, Fifties, and Mountains are identified through the content analysis, and all are found to play, broadly, to tourists' nostalgic desires. Even so, the Pigeon Forge strip is a hyperreal composition designed to appeal to today's post-tourist.