Stacked Actors

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been running an online expose entitled:  I’m a Southerner, a Tennessean and a Nashvillian.  So far we’ve examined the cultural fabric in which I was raised in the South and in Tennessee in particular.

This week we examine my favorite city in the world to which I am most proud to be a resident…Nashville, Music City, USA.

I’ll start by saying that I am a rare breed.  Very few of us that live in Nashville are from Nashville.  Actually, I should say that lots of folks that I went to high school came back [Come see the Vandelays tonight at the Rutledge] but only came back to the city having grown 3 times it’s size in 10 years and it’s all from out-of-towners.

If you were to classify cities in the small / medium / large / gargantuan categories, Nashville would fit in the middle of the large category.  So it’s not TOO big, but not small either.  In fact, the Nashville metropolitan area is enormous (the metro area is ALL of Davidson County).

Nashville is obviously called Music City USA.  We all know it stems from the country music industry and the Grand Old Opry.  But most folks don’t know that Nashville produces ALL KINDS of music.  It’s quite amazing the talent that one city collectively has.  The music industry is one reason why Nashville was dubbed the Athens of the South…(a place which was culturally relevant).  Thus we had a replica of the Parthenon built.

The important thing here is that Nashville has so much to offer.  It’s IMPOSSIBLE for me to discuss all of it in one blog post.  Therefore, I’m going to throw out some of my favorite things about Nashville:

Urban renovation, Sylvan Park, Historic East Nashville, Rotier’s, Opal’s Knife and Fork Resaurant, The Ryman, The Exit Inn, The Corner Pub, Star Bagel, Broadway Brewhouse, The Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Wendell Smith’s, The newly renovated old courthouse, Fork’s Drum Closet, McKay’s Used Books, West Meade, Loveless Cafe, Newsome’s Mill (worthy of a blog post in and of itself), Crazy Lakewood City Commisioners, Germantown, 3rd and Lindsley, Nashville Children’s Theatre….so on and so forth.

This list is incomplete….help me complete the list by telling me YOUR favorite things about the great city of Nashville.