Seven issues in, it's time we gave the woods themselves the front page. The Urban Wilderness — roughly sixty miles of trail strung through South Knoxville's back yard — is having a good week, and we checked the conditions board the morning this published so you don't ride into a mudhole.

★The trail report

The report, per the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club: Baker Creek Bike Park is riding well, and Marie Myers Park's Year Round Get Down trails are open — with one caveat, a temporary partial closure of the Campground Connector, though every trail on that side is still reachable. Baker Creek Preserve is the one to skip until it dries; riding muddy trail is how good berms die, and somebody hand-built every one of them.

★The people who build it

About that somebody: the club just hired its first full-time trail crew member, which means the singletrack you ride free of charge now has a professional looking after it — and registration is open for the fall Trail Blazers program, which puts third-through-fifth graders on bikes in these same woods.

★After the ride

And when you do roll out of the trees, dusty and pleased with yourself, the neighborhood has thought of that too. Trailhead Beer Market sits at 1317 Island Home Ave — self-described as the beer market in the back yard of the Urban Wilderness — and there are worse ways to end a ride than a cold one on that porch while the legs stop humming. They generally open at three on weekdays and one on weekends; their Facebook is the source of truth, or ring 865-409-4058. And this Friday the porch comes with a soundtrack — Andrew Broschart plays Trailhead on the 31st, per the market's own feed. If you'd rather be in the water than on the dirt, the open-water swimmers meet Thursday at six at Suttree Landing Park for their weekly river swim. Sixty miles of trail, a river, and a front porch at the end of it. That's the whole pitch for living here.

Closure for anyone who's been following the little "VARIANCE" sign in the grass on Jonathan Avenue: the Board of Zoning Appeals took it up on July 21 and approved it four to nothing. The homeowner asked to build three feet closer to the corner than the setback allows — twelve feet instead of fifteen — nobody showed up to object, and the board's motion pointed to the lot's irregular topography, which is a polite way of saying corner lots on a South Knoxville hillside are shaped like nothing in the zoning manual. The board meets next on August 18, if you've got a sign of your own to wonder about.

★Meanwhile, on the bluff

The bigger file finally moved too. The roughly 220-unit apartment plan for the old Kerbela Shriners Temple site — remanded to the Administrative Review Committee back on July 9 and left hanging since — now has its date: August 13. That's the hearing where the project's seven requests to bend the South Waterfront code get another look. The bluff has waited a month; it can wait two more weeks.

School starts back soon, and Kern's is marking the occasion the right way: a Back to School Bash on Friday from eleven to three, with inflatables, an activity table, face painting — and a school-supply drive with Feed the Children, so toss a pack of pencils or a box of crayons in the car and send a kid into August properly armed.

★Then, the jazz

Then the weekend turns to jazz. Brian Clay's high-energy Gruuv Series takes the stage Friday from seven to ten, the Sky Hatcher Jazz Trio — out of UT's jazz program — plays Saturday at six, and Jason Ellis winds it down easy Sunday afternoon, one to four. Bounce house by day, jazz by night: the food hall contains multitudes.

Saturday at Ijams Park is a full curriculum. The beginner Tree ID workshop at 9:30 teaches you to tell an oak from a hickory before lunch; free storytelling runs at the Nature Playscape from ten; and the EcoArt Adventure puts the six-to-twelve crowd to work making art out of the ecosystem from three to five. Evening paddles go out both Friday and Saturday at 7:30 — register ahead, boats provided.

★Sunday morning

Sunday belongs to the early birds: the banding table is back at 7:30 AM, researchers netting and releasing songbirds close enough to count the feathers, followed by Self Care Sunday yoga in the trees at 11:30. Coffee first; the birds set the schedule.

Thursday is the cheap-drink capital of the week: ten-dollar Patrón mango margaritas at Earl's from four to six, four-dollar drafts at Hi-Wire from open to close, and Singo — bingo, but the numbers are songs — at SoKno Taco Cantina at seven. Friday brings Earl's nine-dollar spicy pineapple ritas back to the waterfront, plus SoKno Taco's Frozen Fridays for the after-trail crowd.

★The weekend proper

The weekend proper: Earl's pours eight-dollar house margaritas all day Saturday and seven-dollar mimosas and Bloody Marys all day Sunday, Mimosas runs its bottomless brunch both mornings from nine to three, and SoKno Taco's Sunday happy hour lasts all day. Nobody in this neighborhood should ever pay full price for a drink on a weekend. Consider this your clip-and-save.