fishsticks176

The Brian Paul Hotel/Resort is still happening. I just spoke with some of those guys a couple weeks ago. Fender just signed on as a sponsor to supply guitars to all of their writing rooms and recording studios.

Here and now, with absolutely no data or real reasoning, I’m going to say Savannah. Give it ten to fifteen years.

and eventually the Sun will grow into a red giant and consume the Earth.

I’ve been driving Lyft part-time for about a year now and it’s really given me such an insight into the people from all walks of life that make up this city. Nashville provides unprecedented opportunity for those in the lower class. Just last week, I was driving around a previously unemployed middle-aged man who had moved here from Little Rock six months ago and was ecstatic that he was able to find a construction job for $17/hour. He was renting a single bedroom in a house in the TSU area and was trying to convince his son, who has also been struggling financially, to move to Nashville too, and then the two of them would rent an apartment together. That might not sound like a lot to some people, but for those who have struggled with finding employment—and employment above minimum wage—and being able to afford any comfort, Nashville is Mecca. A few days before that, I gave a ride to a young guy who said he had been homeless and unemployed in Flint for *three years*! He saved up enough money for a bus ticket and came to Nashville with a backpack and no money whatsoever. Within three days he had a decent-paying serving job and a room to rent. Nashville has a large amount of halfway houses and rehabilitation programs. All the time I pick up people from East Tennessee or Mississippi or rural Georgia that were spiraling in their hometowns and found good lives for themselves in Nashville. I rent out bedrooms in my house to young musicians first moving to town, and all of them have gone on to prosper in their careers and gotten apartments of their own a year or so after arriving here. I understand the frustration with rising rents, but I think too often people lose sight of just how much incredible opportunity exists in this city. I’ve seen it uplift far more people than not. We live in a beautiful place.

This is all I wished for. I feel like a kid on Christmas.

I just got an inside scoop that Barry Walker, owner of Marathon Village, is planning to start a small-scale production plant on the premises building replicas of antique Marathon autos. The plans also include an auto-themed bar/restaurant with plexiglass walls looking into the plant. I don’t know how official any of it is yet but it sounds like an amazing concept and I’d love to see it come to fruition. Edit: I just did a little bit of research and the auto-themed restaurant/bar seems to be his “Gearheads” concept that he has been sitting on for a while in partnership with Mike Wolfe of American Pickers. I can’t find anything about the production plant though—that seems to be new.

Everybody’s goin’ to Nashville

Washington Post: "The New Boomtowns" https://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/the-new-boomtowns-why-more-people-are-relocating-to-secondary-cities/2018/11/07/f55f96f4-d618-11e8-aeb7-ddcad4a0a54e_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cfde7e930b1b

This one makes me sad. I have friends that live in those apartments and I always used to wish I could nab one for myself. Elliston was my hangout back in college and I sort of wish it were preserved as a more organic, local college neighborhood. I know this isn’t the first hotel in that area but this one will be smack in the middle of it—The End, Samurai, Exit/In, Cafe Coco, the hookah lounge... I worry for that area a little bit.

Daniel’s a buddy of mine. Excellent photographer. Do you know him?

So a little more information from the Reddit thread I found this on--apparently just the patio decking collapsed and there was no structural damage to the building itself. Also from u/BankokPadang: "I work at an area restaurant that just had our roof evaluated by the City (actually contractors working on behalf of the city, but anyway:) in the hopes of adding our own similar rooftop patio. The actual roof has to Essentially hold 4x the weight of the maximum occupancy, after accounting for everything already on the roof.. The actual calculation isn’t that simple, but that’s what it boils down to. We’re in the same zip as Acme, so I assume it’s all the same rules/regs."

I remember a few months ago someone posting on this board that they were nervous about the structural integrity of the rooftop patios added onto some of the historical buildings on broadway, especially given the amount of people up there any given weekend. Well, it looks like the Acme rooftop patio collapsed this weekend. No injuries, though.

So we should throw those idiots in the ocean and leave the scooters out of it

Opry City Stage in Times Square has closed its doors: http://tasteofcountry.com/new-york-opry-city-stage-closing/

It’s on the side of The Cleo, facing Gallatin Ave. I’ve seen them working on it over the past week.

He has a pretty large facility on Davidson St in East Nashville, too, halfway between PSC and Shelby Bottoms.

Their first day back, I saw two wipeouts on scooters from people trying to hop curbs, I saw several driving down the middle of the road, and I almost hit one while making a turn—they shot out from a crowd of people without even pausing before flying through the crosswalk in front of me. In general I love the idea of these scooters but the problem is people in general, whether they are on scooters, on foot, or behind the wheel. I was stuck in traffic downtown a couple weeks ago, moving about five mph, and a drunk tourist was weaving his way through the traffic on foot, stumbled, and ran head-first into the side of my car. I see groups of dozens of people just congregating in the street, five feet off of an empty sidewalk. Last night I watched a rogue bachelorette run into the middle of their intersection at 5th and Demonbreun and begin “directing” traffic like a police officer while her pals stood on the sidewalk laughing at her antics. The amount of jaywalking downtown is starting to drive me nuts—a couple weeks ago I was held up for twenty minutes at a light because of a steady stream of tourists who refused to heed the traffic signals and continued to walk across under a green light, backing traffic up for blocks. When I finally got to the light, I rolled down my window and explained, “You guys HAVE to obey the pedestrian crossing signals! You’re backing traffic up for blocks!” and was met with the entire crowd of literally about fifty people shouting “F*ck you!”, and one clueless rube saying “it’s a crosswalk!” I’ve been a downtown pedestrian myself, and I’m from NYC originally—I understand timed, responsible jaywalking, and this is not that. I know I don’t even have to go into how bad the drivers can be downtown. I watched two pedestrians get hit at low speed on Saturday because the driver was turning left while texting. Gangs of teenagers speeding through red lights on quads and dirt bikes. I took a video (which was kind of funny, actually, while still being ridiculously annoying) of two cars who stopped in the middle of 2nd ave, got out and danced for a few minutes while flipping off the countless cars that they had trapped behind them. There was a wide open road in front of them and they intentionally trapped everyone else at a stand-still for five minutes. Im torn on this issue. While I love that Nashville is a place that people want to visit, and while I love the growth that our tourism has caused in our city, the relatively recent availability of low-budget tourism has really enabled an element of people who, as that HuffPo article put it, “Come to this city, throw up on it, and leave”. As an occasional Uber driver, I’ve had a handful of tourist groups literally say to me, “We’re gonna f*ck this place up! No one knows me here, I don’t give a f*ck!” Many prominent tourist destinations around the world are following Bhutan’s example of controlling the destruction of tourism by capping the number of tourists or imposing fees simply for entry and/or on a per-day basis. We have similar systems for many parts of our national parks, but no such systems for urban environments. I’m not advocating for putting a cap on the amount of tourists let in or for imposing fees in an attempt to secure a higher class of tourists—I just think that it’s interesting (and concerning) that this is a problem felt the world over, and that we’re witnessing a very very small slice of it here at home. I mean, we don’t have people scratching their names into Stonehenge or doing Yoga on a holocaust memorial or toppling ancient rock formations, but we do have tourists breaking into the houses neigjboring their AirBnBs and climbing La Musica and disrespecting our neighborhoods, streets, and businesses. I don’t know, rant over, I guess. My point is that the scooters themselves are not the issue, just another expression of the issue, which is a complete lack of respect and responsibility for one’s environment and which I’m sure is magnified by the anonymity enjoyed while on vacation away from home.

Skyline hotel is making good progress

Briley needs to start giving weekly Fireside Chats or something. Give citizens a chance to get correct information right from the horse’s mouth.

Corner Music is setting up shop in the strip mall at 3048 Dickerson Road, at the intersection with Ewing, near Prince's Hot Chicken and just south of Briley Parkway. I'm not sure if this area is considered East Nashville, Inglewood, or Madison. It seems that they're taking on a lot more space than the old location.

I don't think I've seen this mentioned here yet: BarkBox will open their new concept BarkPark--a membership-only dog park with amenities--at 800 Meridian Street in East Nashville on September 8th. It'll run through November with the goal of a permanent outpost. https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2018/08/16/barkbox-barkpark-membership-based-dog-park-east-nashville/987978002/ http://fortune.com/2018/08/16/barkbox-barkpark-dog-parks/

Your daughter and I were friends at Belmont, actually. We had a handful of classes together.

House of Cards is his too, isn’t it?

I agree regarding retail. I think the still-developing nature of SoBro gives us the opportunity to recreate some of the great boutique shopping experiences of 12th South or The Shoppes on Fatherland in a more urban environment. Those types of stores are loved by locals and tourists alike and would create a unique and artful urban environment. I’d love to pull inspiration from some of our smaller niche neighborhoods and composite the best of each into SoBro. A theather—or even an arthouse theater—would be great. We could support another comedy club. Urban Target is a fantastic idea. Let’s use this area to develop something different and more livable than Lower Broad.