More Accolades for Nashville

[Guest]

Another validation of Nashville's transformation into one of the great cities in the USA.

NY TIMES

We went recruiting at Universities recently and this article holds true. They are crawling over each other to live here.

We need to find a way to make it affordable enough for them to do so.

[nashvillwill]

Five-finger discount at the local construction site?

Not a chance. By "reclaimed", I was simply joking about how that word has gotten so hip, that it's out of control. Maybe it translates to stolen to some people, but certainly not me. I'm in management at a construction business and one of the many hats I wear is purchasing. I buy tens of thousands of dollars of materials every week, and you wouldn't believe how often things are stolen ($2500 so far this month). It seems that the average joe thinks its morally "ok" to steal from a construction site as I hear this type of thing all the time. I don't take that lightly. Us construction guys work our tails off, and our tools and materials are extremely valuable to our livelihood. You can rest assured, that when people steal from me, that a criminal record will be the least of their worries. We handle those types of thieves the old school way, and they probably wish we had called the police.

I know you were just joking about the "reclaimed" pallet thing, so obviously this is not directed at anyone here. But let it be know that if a person steals from construction crews, they should be prepared to deal directly with them when they are caught.

Edited March 16, 2015 by nashvillwill

[Bezoar]

Here's a new one:  Nashville is referred to as "Little Dubai", in reference to the the building boom.  Men's Journal: 10 Best Places to Live Now

[volsfanwill]

while I was in chicago over the weekend i had a great conversation with an uber driver. 

he had been down here in january and commented on how much construction was going on.  he said it interested him so much that he googled our population growth and couldnt believe it. 

oh and of course now he wants to move here.

[Vrtigo]

Here's a new one:  Nashville is referred to as "Little Dubai", in reference to the the building boom.  Men's Journal: 10 Best Places to Live Now

 

I love how articles use terms like this like it's commonplace when actual residents have never heard such a thing before.

 

Also, it's unfortunate that the trolley barns are still referred to as such. A recent article linked here showed plainly that those buildings never had any association with a "trolley" in Nashville, and historically the streetcars here were never even referred to with such a term.

[AgentNorth]

Solid article, besides the part about diversity. This city has a long ways to go, before it can be considered diverse. The moment this city becomes diverse, we will truly see a rush of new comers moving here. Atlanta would actually become intimidated, if/when Nashville becomes diverse.

[Nashville Cliff]

I love how articles use terms like this like it's commonplace when actual residents have never heard such a thing before.

 

Also, it's unfortunate that the trolley barns are still referred to as such. A recent article linked here showed plainly that those buildings never had any association with a "trolley" in Nashville, and historically the streetcars here were never even referred to with such a term.

 

Yeah, I never heard the Little Dubai quip before.  Ever.  As far as the Trolley Barns go, that's just the way names evolve sometimes.  Doesn't matter at this point whether streetcars were ever called trolleys, or really, even if the buildings ever were used for anything at all related to even streetcars.  The name has stuck and thus it is.

[CenterHill]

Yeah, I never heard the Little Dubai quip before.  Ever.  As far as the Trolley Barns go, that's just the way names evolve sometimes.  Doesn't matter at this point whether streetcars were ever called trolleys, or really, even if the buildings ever were used for anything at all related to even streetcars.  The name has stuck and thus it is.

 

Actually, you're right that the "barns" never housed trolleys or streetcars (or barn animals).    Built in the early's '40's, they housed various public works departments and were used to service city buses, police, fire and other municipal vehicles.     Someone, somewhere, started calling them "trolley barns" and the name stuck.    

 

There was a photo posted on the board recently of the old public square that showed the actual "trolley barns" (streetcar servicing facilities) located just north of the old courthouse.   Those went the way of the streetcars.   

[satalac]

Solid article, besides the part about diversity. This city has a long ways to go, before it can be considered diverse. The moment this city becomes diverse, we will truly see a rush of new comers moving here. Atlanta would actually become intimidated, if/when Nashville becomes diverse.

For a city it's size, it is very diverse, especially to be a city in the South.

[rookzie]

Solid article, besides the part about diversity. This city has a long ways to go, before it can be considered diverse. The moment this city becomes diverse, we will truly see a rush of new comers moving here. Atlanta would actually become intimidated, if/when Nashville becomes diverse.

 

For a city it's size, it is very diverse, especially to be a city in the South.

 

 

This is not to counter any opinion, but diversity is another one of those somewhat “barometric” areas, often subjectively construed as being one and the same with “inclusion”, and based on the immediately apparent.  I’m not questioning how Nashville is rated in terms of diversity per se, but it’s important to bear in mind that physical diversity often has the appearance of “inclusion”, but it’s "intellective" or cognitive diversity, along with physical inclusion, which translate to a functionally interrelated and constructive catalyst for meaningful impact.

 

I say this only because this question to casual observers of how “diverse” Nashville appears to them is likely to poll some rather narrow if not superficial interpretations of diversity and the metrics by which it is gauged.

-==-

Edited March 19, 2015 by rookzie

[rookzie]

I love how articles use terms like this like it's commonplace when actual residents have never heard such a thing before.

 

Also, it's unfortunate that the trolley barns are still referred to as such. A recent article linked here showed plainly that those buildings never had any association with a "trolley" in Nashville, and historically the streetcars here were never even referred to with such a term.

 

Actually, you're right that the "barns" never housed trolleys or streetcars (or barn animals).    Built in the early's '40's, they housed various public works departments and were used to service city buses, police, fire and other municipal vehicles.     Someone, somewhere, started calling them "trolley barns" and the name stuck.    

 

There was a photo posted on the board recently of the old public square that showed the actual "trolley barns" (streetcar servicing facilities) located just north of the old courthouse.   Those went the way of the streetcars.   

 

Actual trolley barns often came in all sizes and shapes for big and small towns alike.  Some had rows of parallel "garage"-type doors on opposite sides of an elongated structure, while some had no more than 3 or 4 entry ways, but would fully enclose an expansive array of parallel stalls under one roof.  These then would have "ladder" tracks to feed into the array of interior bays, much like the layout of a small open RR yard, and cars would enter one door of the barn and exit another.at the opposite end of the barn.

 

It would be not surprising, as well as it could be very likely, the moniker "trolley barns" was appointed those structures only because of their appearance.  It probably just took one person to start it off, and then it stuck forever,.  As that “barn campus” was constructed around the time of the actual demise of the streetcar system, once that one person (or two) lamented and sobbed on the bad “news”, which would have been a big deal for any period in time (especially during when streetcars had been a national staple), a rumor could have been sparked that the "barns" were for trolleys, even before they got fully built.  So, instead of being filled with trolleys, they forever became filled with lore.

In a sense, then, I would rather “them” things have been called public privies or "out-houses", than trolley barns.  At least then, the stink would have held water, so to speak (“brick sh!!t houses”, Ha-Ha), as the saying still goes.  As far as streetcars being called “trolleys” is concerned, the context of “trolley” in this sense was and remains a commonly used case of synecdoche (a part for the whole), whereas literally a trolley specifically refers to the electrical current pick-up shoe or roller affixed to a spring-loaded and retractable pole mounted atop the vehicle and used to distribute power from an overhead wire or cable.  The term trolley generically is applied to any vehicle which uses one or more of such devices, and therefore streetcars (which implies the use of a trolley pole) and trolley buses or coaches (which use twin poles for twin cables) are collectively called simply trolleys, with trolley buses also being referred to as “trackless trolleys”.

Trolley shoes on top ends of poles – Trackless Trolley (Trolley Coach)

(note the ropes and the retaining bar on the back of the bus)

Re-Tracking a “De-Wired” Trolley Bus

(note the two retractable reels on the rear for the built-in ropes; they do pop off sometimes, as it has happened to me as a rider [p!sses off drivers, you think?]; those hanging "hoods" are permanent devices used to help re-mount and center the trolleys against the cables)

-==-

 

Edited March 20, 2015 by rookzie

[nashmoney]

Nashville home-flipping pilot airs on HGTV on Thursday

 

http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/people/2015/03/18/nashville-home-flipping-pilot-airs-hgtv-thursday/24959487/

[nashmoney]

Wild West Comedy fest finds a home in Nashville

 

http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/2015/04/14/wild-west-comedy-fest-finds-home-nashville/25785799/

 

Vince Vaughn Loves Nashville

[UTgrad09]

Wild West Comedy fest finds a home in Nashville

 

http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/2015/04/14/wild-west-comedy-fest-finds-home-nashville/25785799/

 

Vince Vaughn Loves Nashville

 

Vince Vaughn is a Blackhawks fan, so he can stick it.

 

 

 

 

At least for the next couple of weeks.

[bigeasy]

Vince Vaughn is a Blackhawks fan, so he can stick it.

 

 

 

 

At least for the next couple of weeks.

Vince Vaughn sucks, well his movies do. I will be very upset if he ruins True Detective for me. 

[Neigeville2]

Vince Vaughn sucks, well his movies do. I will be very upset if he ruins True Detective for me. 

Apparently he is a villain in it so it may come a bit more naturally than the "likeable" characters he usually plays.   Did you ever see him on the Jon Favreau show Dinner for Five?  It was an interesting show, they would just have a group of famous actors/directors eat a meal in an LA restaurant and they'd edit their spontaneous conversation down to a half hour show; you got to see them off their guard, not like a typical interview/publicity setting.  Vaughn was a totally insensitive jerk.  (Frankly I'm amazed their publicists let them do it--check out the show with Billy Bob Thornton--wow.)  

[Vrtigo]

Apparently he is a villain in it so it may come a bit more naturally than the "likeable" characters he usually plays.   Did you ever see him on the Jon Favreau show Dinner for Five?  It was an interesting show, they would just have a group of famous actors/directors eat a meal in an LA restaurant and they'd edit their spontaneous conversation down to a half hour show; you got to see them off their guard, not like a typical interview/publicity setting.  Vaughn was a totally insensitive jerk.  (Frankly I'm amazed their publicists let them do it--check out the show with Billy Bob Thornton--wow.)  

 

Sounds like a bad imitation of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (which is definitely worth checking out, btw.).

[japan]

Sounds like a bad imitation of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (which is definitely worth checking out, btw.).

It was on back in 2001.

[Vrtigo]

It was on back in 2001.

 

Sounds like a bad imitation of  concept much improved upon by Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (which is definitely worth checking out, btw.).

[Guest]

No. 1 Nashville

 

1 of 16

With a song in their hearts—and probably one on their lips, too—these Tennesseans won the survey for making visitors feel welcome. Not surprisingly, they also won the survey for their music scene: you can mingle with the locals at the singer-songwriter-loving Listening Room Café; the rehabbed, music-plus-eats Acme Feed & Seed; or at lovable dives like Santa’s Pub, the double-wide-trailer-housed bar managed by a suspiciously jovial bearded fellow. Nashville also ranked at No. 11 for its cheery food trucks, like Biscuit Love and Smokin Thighs.  All that smiling is apparently good for the skin: Nashvillians also made the top 10 for their good looks.

http://www.travelandleisure.com/slideshows/americas-friendliest-cities

[Guest]

http://www.foodandwine.com/blogs/2015/05/13/nashvilles-restaurant-scene-goes-boom?xid=twsharebar

 

 

To borrow a line from country singer George Jones, Nashville’s hotter than a two-dollar pistol. Here’s why restaurateurs keep coming.


Philip Krajeck ticks off a list of restaurants that are opening in Nashville. “I hear the folks from Au Cheval are coming from Chicago,” he says. “Every week it’s a new chef, a new place. Donald Link is bringing Cochon Butcher from New Orleans. Flip Burger, Farm Burger, Yeah! Burger: They’re all opening places. Tim Love is supposed to be coming from Texas. Jonathan Waxman is already here from New York City.”


“It’s like they found the golden ticket,” Krajeck tells me on my most recent trip to the Tennessee capital. He is a relative newcomer, the chef-owner of the two-year-old Rolf and Daughters. Even he is astonished by the pace 
of change. “I don’t know what to compare this to. Maybe the boom years in Vegas?”


Nashville is, to borrow a line from George Jones, hotter than a two-dollar pistol. Developer teardowns are so rampant that the Tennessee Preservation Trust recently named the city the most endangered place in the state. And competition for leases on the industrial Germantown buildings favored by chefs like Krajeck is so fierce that when superstar Sean Brock opened Husk Nashville, he ended up in Rutledge Hill, a newly gentrifying neighborhood across town. Olive & Sinclair Chocolate Co., the local candy company behind the prettily packaged salt-and-pepper bars that are now ubiquitous across the country, chose East Nashville for its open-to-the-public factory.

The city has been hot before. In 1969, Bob Dylan arrived to record Nashville Skyline. By 1975, filmmaker Robert Altman was calling Nashville the “new Hollywood.” Locals didn’t slander arrivistes then. And they don’t disparage the restaurateurs arriving now. That us-versus-them divide is an Old South trope. This is a New South city, welcoming all who respect this place and its institutions, all who do more than plaster walls with reclaimed wood and set tables with Mason jars. Nashville famously welcomes newcomers: Kurdish refugees (the city is home to the largest population in the US), rock and country pickers who still make pilgrimages here to cut a record, young chefs and expansion-minded entrepreneurs.

When I lived in Nashville in the 1980s, the restaurants that best showcased the city’s talent were lunch spots. Meat-and-three cafés like Hap Townes and Sylvan Park were justly famous for smothered pork chops, collards and hoecakes. Back then, André Prince Jeffries of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, the doyenne of the hot-chicken phenomenon, had yet to welcome chefs like Thomas Keller to her strip mall joint for skillet-fried, cayenne-swabbed birds piled on white bread.

Working-class excellence still defines the Nashville lunch hour. What’s new is a genuine connection between lunch cooks and dinner chefs. Today, steam table champions like Kahlil Arnold of Arnold’s Country Kitchen source ingredients from the same farmers and cattlemen as ambitious chefs like Tandy Wilson of City House and Tyler Brown of Capitol Grille. And hot-chicken riffs are de rigueur at high-end restaurants like The Catbird Seat,where the multicourse tasting menu has included sorghum-lacquered hot-chicken skins.

Outsiders tend to think that Nashville’s latest upswing began when contrarian rock and roller Jack White moved to town. Or when The Black Keys’ front man, Dan Auerbach, began claiming Barista Parlor, the East Nashville bunkhouse of high design and caffeine, as a sort of office salon for the creative class. It would be a mistake, however, to think musicians powered Nashville’s latest boom, says architect Nick Dryden.


During dinner at Prima, a big-night-out, soaring glass-and-chrome restaurant that Dryden designed for chef Salvador Avila, he argues that Nashville’s enduring mythology is the true magnet for new arrivals. “No matter how cool Jack White and Dan Auerbach seem—and they are cool—they’re part of this town’s historical arc,” Dryden tells me over a stack of fig-jam-topped sweet potatoes. “The history of this place and its music drew them here. That’s the vibe we all tap.”


Wandering the city, I never see Auerbach at his Barista Parlor hangout in East Nashville. Or at the new Gulch location, designed by Dryden. But I do spy the scruffy rocker at the place everyone in Nashville eventually ends up: City House, where he’s hunkered down with a bowl of pasta.


If there’s a foundational restaurant in this Nashville moment, it’s eight-year-old City House, Tandy Wilson’s neo-Italian clubhouse, famous for corn bread gnocchi and pork belly pizza. The Nashville food scene grew up at his communal tables. He taught the city to love places that weren’t crusty steakhouses or Continental food time capsules. Instead, at City House, a young and inclusive crowd orders clams tossed with white beans and trout stuffed with peanuts and raisins.

When Wilson, a Nashville native, opened City House in 2007, he led the charge to Germantown. Five years later, Philip Krajeck launched Rolf and Daughters a few blocks away. People come for the raucous table-hopping scene as well as for the bread course of sourdough and seaweed butter, a cult favorite, and pastas like a decidedly Southern sweet potato agnolotti with mustard greens. Krajeck’s showstopper ricotta cavatelli with nut ragoutstraddles Mediterranean and middle Tennessee sensibilities. If the Nashville restaurant scene went to college at City House, it went to grad school at Rolf and Daughters.

Toward the end of my stay, I meet Miranda Whitcomb Pontes for a drink at Josephine. The elegant new neighborhood restaurant has high-back banquettes, high-concept cocktails and a flair for dishes like rabbit with mustard dumplings. But the reason I’m talking to Pontes is that she’s just taken possession of Dino’s, a beloved dive bar that’s famous for canned beers, flat-top–fried eggs and lovably surly service.


The new Dino’s menu includes slices of pie from Lisa Donovan—whose exceptional desserts earned her national attention when she baked at Husk Nashville—but also a good basic burger and fries for $6. Pontes wants her version of Dino’s to be so true to the original that you’re not exactly sure what’s different. “It’s like when you get a really good haircut,” says the restaurateur, who arrived here from Boulder, Colorado, in 2002. “It’s such a good haircut that people tell you that you look great—but they don’t realize that what’s different is you got a haircut.”


“That’s a lot to promise,” she tells me, as I flash back to my last night at Dino’s, an urban roadhouse with a Bukowski-on-a-bender vibe. “But I have to. Right now, in Nashville, the contest goes to the survival of the soulfulest.”


John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, is writing a new book, The Potlikker Papers, a history of Southern food.

[markhollin]

This Top Ten list about Nashville's hidden gems has shown up several times on Buzzfeed lately:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/h2/fbdt/cmtmusicawards/secret-nashville?utm_term=4ldqywv#.xoGY9zbQzd

[MidTenn1]

For what its worth..(from the Tennessean)

 

 

Eventbrite co-founders Julia and Kevin Hartz told the 36{sodEmoji.|}86 conference Wednesday that Nashville feels "like Silicon Valley 10 years ago."

They picked Nashville for the company's second domestic office last year, and the technology power couple sees Music City as a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship.

 

 

[Vrtigo]

For what its worth..(from the Tennessean)

 

I sure hope we have that kind of innovation come through here in the next ten years... I would love to get connected to some startup action here soon.

[MidTenn1]

From the Tennessean, Nashville considered the nations second most vibrant creative City in the Nation.

 

From the SMU National Center for Arts Research report;

 

Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN has long been known for its expansive music scene, but the emergence of world-class visual arts and performing arts options has put Nashville – Music City – on the map as an artistic and culturally rich destination.