The US is the most angry country in the world, but in one small town in Florida, anger has been turned into a theme park.
How anger in politics led a millionaire to build this theme park is the title of an article that discusses how anger in politics has led one man, Donald Trump, to build his own theme park.
In the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee, there’s a location where gremlins and elves coexist together, where faeries play with leprechauns, and where earthen homes make you wonder whether Bilbo Baggins lives there.
Except this isn’t Middle Earth as imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien. Hobbits and orcs are allies here.
I understand. Wacky.
I needed to pay a visit.
“The entire point is to get people talking to one other and discover that there are no nasty people,” explains Tom Boyd, the 83-year-old entrepreneur who created this institution. It was given the moniker Ancient Lore Village by him.
It cost him $13 million, he claims. So far, so good.
I tossed an axe at Ancient Lore Village. I tried archery for the first time. In the “Leprechaun’s Lair,” I slept. I drank and ate a lot.
This isn’t simply a tale about realizing an uncommon concept. It’s also the tale of a guy who has spent his whole life building companies in order to earn a lot of money, until one day he discovered that America can be a very angry place, and he felt compelled to do something about it.
Here’s a sneak peek:
Ancient Lore Village is the source of this image.
Ancient Lore Village, located 40 miles west of Knoxville, is touted as a first-class destination for families, marriages, and business gatherings, offering a Middle Earth-meets-Renaissance Faire experience.
Bokee’s Bungalow, Fairy Cottage, and Orc Home are among the seven rooms, each with its own theme and distinctive features. “We don’t allow televisions,” Boyd explains. “You have to communicate with each other.”
Ancient Lore Village is the source of this image.
This isn’t Tom Boyd’s first ‘out-of-the-box’ endeavor.
If you think Tom Boyd is crazy for constructing this facility in what seems to be the middle of nowhere — and I did, despite the fact that Dollywood is just 40 minutes east — your doubt will only make this octogenarian more confident in his ability to succeed. Because there is less competition, Boyd explores concepts that no one else will touch. Ancient Lore Village isn’t Tom Boyd’s first strange endeavor.
Here’s a link to Boyd’s interview.
Jane Wells / YouTube is the source of this image.
The CSI of canine feces
Boyd and I initially met in 2018, when he was starting a business called BioPet.
PooPrints, BioPet’s top product, is a DNA testing kit for dog feces that catches individuals who don’t clean up after their dogs in condo complexes and flats.
Ancient Lore Village begins to sound more natural.
Again, the more people label him insane, the more potential Tom Boyd sees.
Despite the fact that dog feces attract rodents and illness, according to a 2014 study by the Stormwater Manager’s Resource Center, approximately 40% of dog owners just leave the excrement on the ground! In my article for CNBC at the time, Boyd said, “If you live in a high rise in New York, you have 200 dogs.” “Forty percent of the dogs don’t pick up, which is 80 dogs.” “They go twice a day,” says the narrator. There’s a lot of feces there.
PooPrints’ yearly sales were $7 million when we talked three years ago. Sales have more than quadrupled, according to BioPet CEO J Retinger, and will reach $15 million this year – not quite the $120 million Boyd projected in five years in 2018, but there’s still time! “We’ll handle close to 150,000 swabs of feces this year,” adds Retinger, whose business already has 6,000 clients.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Returning to the Ancient Lore Village. According to Tom Boyd, this concept sprang from a traumatic event.
Thitisate Thitirojanawat / istockphoto contributed to this image.
“Hatred, wrath, and misunderstanding” are the only words that come to mind.
Randy Boyd, Tom’s son, is the University of Tennessee’s President. He’s a wealthy businessman in his own right who ran for governor in the Republican primary in 2018.
Tom accompanied his son on his campaigning throughout the state, and he was taken aback by the political gap. “I went and witnessed nothing but hate, rage, and misunderstanding, and after the campaign was done, I told myself, ‘This is not how the world should live.’” He felt compelled to take action. “The idea was, how could I make a little difference in the world, or start a discussion to make the world a better place?”
Boyd began by creating a children’s book called “Bokee’s Trek: Outcasts to the Inner Earth,” in which magical animals from childhood bedtime tales – gremlins, Yetis, orcs, faeries, elves, and leprechauns — get together and discover they’re not enemies, but friends. “I created a novel about people from ancient mythology who lived in a world that was better than ours,” he adds.
Bokee, the protagonist of Boyd’s novel, is a “Willow,” a race described as “almost six feet tall and extremely beautiful.” Willows have lobes that “droop to their shoulders” and have pointy ears. They also have lengthy arms that extend all the way to their knees.
Bokee resembles a young Tom Boyd in appearance (except for the long earlobes and arms).
Tom Boyd / Ancient Lore Village / Tom Boyd / Tom Boyd / Tom Boyd / Tom Boyd / Tom Boy
All of the protagonists in the novel end up living together in “Inner Earth,” a celestial town. “I introduced that town to the World of Man,” Boyd adds, referring to the resort he built in Knoxville. His aim, he adds, is to create a space where people may speak to one another while still getting some peace and quiet.
“I believe you become an entrepreneur just because you want to earn money,” Tom Boyd told me three years ago. Without a doubt, he wants to profit from Ancient Lore Village, but he’s already invested a lot of money.
He enlisted the assistance of a local architect, Daniel Levy (not the actor…), to help him build the town. The construction of some cottages may cost up to $1 million. Bokee’s Bungalow is particularly notable. “You had to calculate how rain would add [weight] to that soil and what plants were going to be placed on it,” Levy says, adding that he had to bury the structure 20 feet into the earth and cover the roof with 200,000 pounds of dirt.
Sandi Burdick, Boyd’s wife, assisted with the design of the gardens. Despite a worldwide supply chain problem, she was able to locate and purchase hundreds of unique light fixtures.
According to Levy, not all of the ideas were successful. “We intended to attempt a 200-foot tree with five or six tree homes in it,” says the group. It would have cost a couple of million dollars just for the trunk. “On that one, we went back to the drawing board.”
Ancient Lore Village’s quirky doors opened to the public in April. Weddings have accounted for the majority of business so far, but corporate events are on the rise.
Ancient Lore Village is the source of this image.
The Lair of the Leprechaun
The evening Ancient Lore Village held a fundraiser for PJ Parkinson’s Support Group, I remained there. Guests were entertained by a local dancing group as they moved from room to room. One of the attendees was dressed as a wizard. There was enough of finger food and alcohol to go around.
I was the only one that stayed in the Leprechaun’s Lair, and I paid $340 for one night. There was a big fireplace inside. Like clouds swirling around a hurricane’s eye, the masonry above the mantel spun out in spirals. The gold flecks on the walls were genuine, according to Boyd. In a closet, there was a tiny leprechaun figurine. Large rocking chairs (Tennessee! ), food, internet, and music were available. The bed was comfortable, the shower was hot, and the following morning’s meal was excellent.
The leprechaun in Ancient Lore Village has a sense of humor, according to Tom Boyd, but he doesn’t cause any bad trouble.
If only Boyd’s neighbors agreed that nothing was wrong…
Ancient Lore Village is the source of this image.
Neighbors that aren’t very friendly
After a 2019 news article from WJHL stated that Boyd intended to construct “more than 150 period homes and treehouses, a restaurant, a 500-person event center, and a 1,000-seat outdoor amphitheater,” he received opposition from neighbors.
“In retrospect, it was the incorrect concept,” Boyd explains. There is a tiny amphitheater with seating for around 100 people. The Facebook website for Ancient Lore Village describes it as a performance venue, but Boyd says it’s more about hosting string quartets than rock concerts. He claims that there are just seven homes and treehouses because he wants people to get to know one another and be neighborly. “The one we [currently] have is ideal for the area,” Boyd says of the Knoxville resort, which also serves as a miniature model for him to test the idea’s commercial viability.
On the night of the Parkinson’s fundraiser, at least one neighbor wasn’t buying it. There were approximately 100 individuals in attendance, and the atmosphere was vibrant but not overbearing. Even yet, when the sun began to drop, I heard the sound of someone firing a weapon into the air from afar. “Welcome to Tennessee,” one of the visitors joked. Boyd apologized to the audience for the startling “welcome,” explaining that it was a nasty neighbor who didn’t comprehend what he was trying to do. “I believe he hails from Ohio.”
The evening went off without a hitch the rest of the way.
Ancient Lore Village / Instagram is the source of this image.
‘We’re going to put them up all across the globe,’ says the narrator.
Ancient Lore Village is celebrating the formal grand opening of its axe-throwing and archery ranges with an event including social media celebrities, including “Medieval Ashley,” whose midsummer TikTok video garnered over 60,000 views as I write this.
Tom Boyd informs me, “We’re going to construct them all over the globe.” I’ve never seen him as enthusiastic about anything as he is about Ancient Lore Village. He’s always talked a big game about every business venture and promised tremendous success, but I’ve never seen him as enthusiastic about anything as he is about Ancient Lore Village.
To license out the idea, he founded Boyd Hollow Resorts. “Our aim is to have 70 communities under development in the next three years, with a potential of over 500 villages globally,” he says. The cost of a license starts at $20 million. In countries like China, characters may be changed to suit local mythology. “All administration and ideas will be handled by us to ensure that the village mission is followed.”
After spending 17 years building up Great Wolf Resorts, a network of indoor water parks headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, Boyd recruited Melissa Blettner as CEO. According to Blettner, sales in Knoxville may reach $5 million by 2022.
Tom’s goal is “hospitality with a purpose,” she says, since he wants people to feel happy after their stay. She claims that he isn’t doing it for the money since he could have kept the money and not created the town.
Tom Boyd, who is 83 years old, would never sit around counting his money. I saw him happily give a golf cart tour of his property, hop into a Bobcat to move big boulders, and (nearly) shoot a bullseye in the archery range while holding an unlit cigarette in his mouth.
“Learn to live differently, slow down,” he advises, despite his inability to do so. He speaks about the town with the enthusiasm of a bright-eyed 20-year-old rather than the jaded entrepreneur focused on the bottom line. He refers to the hamlet as his inheritance.
“We have a realm where there is no harm,” he adds earnestly. “It would be a wonderful thing if I could influence the minds of one person, ten people, 1,000 people, and we should strive to do good things with our lives.”
I’m constantly on the lookout for unique entrepreneurs who have created unusual businesses. Please send your ideas to [email protected].
Related:
MediaFeed.org syndicated this story, which first published on Wells Street.
Ancient Lore Village is the source of this image.
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The good and mad: the revolutionary power of women’s anger pdf is a book written by bell hooks. The book discusses how anger in politics lead to the creation of the theme park, Good and Mad.
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