{"id":716,"date":"2016-12-31T16:37:37","date_gmt":"2016-12-31T22:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/?p=716"},"modified":"2019-06-07T15:43:02","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T15:43:02","slug":"neon-hot-chicken-and-it-a-new-years-salute-to-nashville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/neon-hot-chicken-and-it-a-new-years-salute-to-nashville\/","title":{"rendered":"Neon, Hot Chicken and \u201cIt\u201d:  A New Year\u2019s Salute to Nashville"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1695 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drew-hays-1073326-unsplash-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drew-hays-1073326-unsplash-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drew-hays-1073326-unsplash-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drew-hays-1073326-unsplash-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drew-hays-1073326-unsplash-1000x1500.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drew-hays-1073326-unsplash-470x705.jpg 470w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drew-hays-1073326-unsplash-450x675.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t have to be staring down the neon pantheon of Lower Broadway in Nashville to know one incontrovertible fact.\u00a0 America\u2019s Music City (as country\u2019s most powerful radio station calls it) is a funky, bizarre place.<\/p>\n<p>And whether you love country or Anything Else, whether you know where to get original hot chicken or couldn\u2019t care less, whether you think we\u2019re \u201cIt\u201d or all the hype is just nonsense&#8211;if you\u2019ve spent any time here, you\u2019ve encountered the eccentricities that make our city a place like no other.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-725 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/gmachroniclesdotcom.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/12\/new-years-14-on-broadway.jpg\" alt=\"new-years-14-on-broadway\" width=\"484\" height=\"646\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Those of us who live here get lots of questions these days from distant friends and family about all things Nashville.\u00a0 In homage to the weird bits I love best, and a few ongoing headaches, I started a series of Facebook mentions about the everyday experiences of Music City life.\u00a0\u00a0 As a New Year\u2019s salute to my adopted metropolis, one of the best places to live on the planet (all kidding aside), I\u2019m sharing a few here that generated the most comments and questions.\u00a0 Enjoy\u2014and come visit!<\/p>\n<p><strong>You\u2019re so Nashville++ if:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can immediately think of a country song featuring the first name of your friend\u2019s newborn daughter.\u00a0 \u00a0Not that they chose it for that reason\u2026but welcome to the world, Baby Ruby, from Kenny Rogers and me.<\/p>\n<p>Your new bank offers the option of a debit card featuring a photo of the Ryman Auditorium. \u00a0And you take it, and proceed to show it off.<\/p>\n<p>You wait your turn at the Whole Foods salad bar along with Steven Tyler from Aerosmith.\u00a0 And no one around seems to notice or care.\u00a0 (He\u2019s a little dude, by the way.)<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re in the TSA line at BNA behind a guy with a guitar strapped to his back.\u00a0 Swear I don\u2019t know how they keep their livelihoods from getting smashed on planes.\u00a0 The guitars, I mean.<\/p>\n<p>An informal chat about Thanksgiving plans with neighbors reveals they are traveling to New York for the holiday, to watch their son the country star sing in the Macy\u2019s Parade.<\/p>\n<p>Your favorite radio station for the inbound commute offers an ad for a funeral home that will stage services in the garage where the Harley is.<\/p>\n<p>You can hear the bass thumping 19 floors up in your downtown office from the open stage across the street during the annual Country Music Association festival.\u00a0 You tap your feet during your conference call and don\u2019t bother to turn off the speakerphone.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve eaten a great dinner with a friend while watching a long line of people excitedly waiting to take selfies with not Taylor Swift\u2014but her mother.\u00a0 (I, of course, had to ask someone who the woman was.)<\/p>\n<p>You have recently lost a tire to a roofing nail or some other object from a construction site that is not anywhere near your house. \u00a0It\u2019s EVERYWHERE.<\/p>\n<p>You know the genuine honky-tonks on Broadway from the fake ones.<\/p>\n<p>You have gone through the first three names on your list of reliable plumbers, only to discover they are all working in new residential development and unavailable for weeks.<\/p>\n<p>The fill-in assistant teacher in your yoga class is a movie star.\u00a0 In this case, Ashley Judd.<\/p>\n<p>You have fielded requests for restaurant recommendations in Nashville by inbound co-workers or visiting parents of college students six times in the last 30 days.<\/p>\n<p>You know the location of and story behind this reference to the top of region\u2019s most famous radio tower: \u201cThat\u2019s a funny place to build a city.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>++Complete credit for the concept \u201cYou\u2019re So Nashville if\u2026.\u201d goes to our excellent alternative weekly, the <strong><em>Nashville Scene<\/em><\/strong>, which holds a submission contest annually for similar observations.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never entered, but obviously love the idea and am a regular reader. if you really want to know what Nashvillians think about Nashville, it\u2019s great fun, and you can see the most recent one <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nashvillescene.com\/news\/cover-story\/article\/20829064\/28th-annual-you-are-so-nashville-if\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-724\" src=\"https:\/\/gmachroniclesdotcom.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/12\/broadway-from-pinnacle.jpg\" alt=\"broadway-from-pinnacle\" width=\"1632\" height=\"1216\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You don\u2019t have to be staring down the neon pantheon of Lower Broadway in Nashville to know one incontrovertible fact.\u00a0 America\u2019s Music City (as country\u2019s most powerful radio station calls it) is a funky, bizarre place. And whether you love country or Anything Else, whether you know where to get original hot chicken or couldn\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mid-life-adventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}