Well Nashville – Easter is on the horizon, and the summer is quickly approaching. You’re probably going to have a visitor or two in the coming months, whether it’s your parents helping you move out of your dorm or it’s the time of the year where your in-laws come in town and subtly undermine your cooking/cleaning abilities for a solid week (they mean well). You’re going to need to entertain them (Wannado has you covered), and you’ll need to effectively communicate the Nashville vibe upon their arrival. Here’s 13 things Nashvillians know to be true:
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It’s not like the show.
Don’t get us wrong – we LOVE us some Nashville. However; besides the fact that everyone in Nashville has a raging girl crush on Connie Britton/Rayna James, that’s kind of where the similarities end. It is humanly possible for people to co-write a song without falling into a torrid affair that has to end with a dramatic, pause-filled conversation on the Pedestrian Bridge. Even if that sounds more fun than the typical Nashville cowrite, which, while pleasant, usually ends in cold coffee and a parking ticket or something.
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Good luck finding anything that isn’t “artisan”.
Go to any restaurant, coffee shop, wine store, woodworking shop, shoe cobbler, jewelry pop-up…it will all somehow be “artisan”. Artisan ketchup. Artisan friendship bracelets. Artisan dog collars. ARTISAN ARTISAN ARTISAN. (But it’s awesome, because it just means everyone here has an A++ in crafting)
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There’s a church on every corner.
To keep track of where everyone is on a Sunday morning, you would need a detailed, color-coded map. Johnny Guitarist plays at Midtown, but he hangs out at Crosspoint, and he’s been known to hit up an evening worship service at Ethos. WOAH. So many churches. Also, you look at any building – even if it serves hot chicken and exclusively shows Macklemore music videos or something weird during the day – and we’ll bet you that at some point in the week, it turns into a church.
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We’re chill about celebrity sightings (on the inside).
Yeah, we saw Taylor Swift at Frothy Monkey, and NO of course we didn’t ask for her picture. We have mutual friends (which is Nashville code for “I heard my barista went to middle school with her for a year”). Yeah, Nashville is a celebrity hideaway for a reason; we tend to leave them alone. Will we tweet about it? Absolutely. Also, if it is Reba ALL BETS ARE OFF.
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We don’t hang out. We “do life”.
We don’t grab coffee with our friend and talk about what’s happening in our lives. We “DO LIFE TOGETHER”. We don’t just love each other. We “LOVE WELL”. You’ll pick up the language, and it just means that Nashville is crazy good at having awesome community.
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The only thing that changes more than the weather is the names of our roads.
A road by any other name would smell as sweet be kind of confusing. Hillsboro turns into 21st, 8th turns into Rosa Parks and Koreans Veteran and Franklin Pike…it’s hard to keep up. You’re going to want to follow the satellite view on Google Maps, because the list view will make you want to pull your hair out.
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We all live at coffee shops.
^ The face of every barista when you’re on your third iced Americano and have been sitting in the same place for about 6 hours. Yeah, we have homes – cozy, beautifully decorated homes, complete with a perfectly functional coffeemaker. It’s just not the same, y’all.
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We’d stand in line for a homemade biscuit longer than we would for a free Keith Urban show.
Almost every true Nashvillian has stood in a line for 2+ hours to get into Loveless Cafe and go to TOWN on some biscuits and jam. And even though Keith Urban is the coolest dude in the 615, there were locals who begrudgingly skipped his free downtown show just because of the line to get into Tootsie’s. So yeah…we love food. A lot.
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No one thinks they’re a hipster.
If you’ve ever even considered buying raw denim, buying repurposed boots, or spending the day listening to Bon Iver’s “old stuff”, then you’re kind of a hipster. Steer into the skid, y’all: pretty much everyone here is a hipster, and they’re still awesome. Embrace it.
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Santa is the real celebrity.
Santa of Santa’s Pub: the man, the myth, the legend. Everyone’s favorite bar owner with a snow white beard and a cash-only policy, Santa’s there for all your weird Nashville moments. Nothin’ like singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” in that double wide trailer.
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We don’t dance, we step-touch.
When a lot of your city’s nightlife revolves around concerts, it isn’t often that you get to really cut a rug. That’s where concert dancing comes in. Whether your move is the head bob, the randomly-point-your-fingers-at-the-ceiling, or the play-air-guitar-then-pat-an-imaginary-child-on-the-head (which Taylor Swift is so expertly demonstrating above), you’ve probably got your signature move. The key? It’s all in the upper body.
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You have no fewer than 50 Facebook events/page invites at a time.
That pesky Facebook notification. Sure, the event invitation may be to someone’s really awesome birthday party at The 5 Spot. But it might not be. In Nashville, everyone’s always creating something – whether it’s a new business or a new record. It can be hard to keep up with all the pages we’re supposed to like!
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It’s really, really gorgeous.
It’s so beautiful we could cry, y’all. From The Parthenon to the Pedestrian Bridge, Nashville is a stunner. And we are SO proud to live here.
