Music City USA. The young professionals city. The hipster town. Having traveled over the years, and my making the acquaintance of incredible people from all 50 states and Washington D.C., it has become very apparent over time that for better or for worse, there’s truly no place like home. Nashville, Tennessee will always be my home, and without further ado, here are a few trademarks of a Nashvillian born and raised.
1. You have pictures with family or a significant other at the Opryland Hotel during Christmas time.
The good ole Opryland Hotel. Owned by the Gaylord family, the hotel itself is an attraction all year around, but with over 2 million Christmas lights, a five-story Christmas tree, colored lit fountain shows, a Christmas village, riverboat rides and waterfalls on the inside alone. The Opryland Hotel Christmas trip annually attracts around a million lovers and families alike.
2. Everyone is musical—including people without musical talent.
If you are a completely musically talent-less person from Nashville, such as myself, you are still somehow more musically talented than non-musically talented people from the rest of the world. That probably has something to do with musical immersion, but you just need to trust me on this one.
3. You call it a Round-A-Butt.
Many have seen this roundabout, and if you spend a lot of time in Nashville, you will likely hear it being referred to as the “roundabutt”. You can probably guess why.
4. Nashville hot chicken from KFC is not the place to go for hot chicken.
Excuse me, KFC, but your “Nashville hot chicken” is disgraceful. I didn’t realize we were known for fantastic hot chicken, but KFC is not the place to get it. Places around town like Prince’s, Hattie B.’s, and Bolton’s are just a few of the restaurants to go to if you want some real Nashville hot chicken.
5. Radio stations in other places are months behind.
I don’t know what’s up with this one, but it seems that when I leave Nashville and drive to other places, even big cities like Phoenix, Arizona for example, the radio stations play music that our stations were playing 3 months to a year and a half ago. I’m all for hearing throwback songs all the time, but if I come home after an extended period of time, I have no clue who’s playing on the radio.
6. You like and hate the Pedal Tavern.
*Sigh*. The Pedal Tavern is just a bad idea. It’s awesome if you’re a tourist or throwing a bachelorette party, but for the most part, Nashvillians tend to agree that people paying money to binge drink and exercise by pedaling a cart around our city and “woo”-ing at passersby is dumb. We low-key like it because it’s amusing, but for the most part we are annoyed by it. Take a chill pill, Pedal Tavern.
7. You have no southern accent, but you’re “supposed to”.
This, of course, differs person to person, but I have found that people who live in the city of Nashville tend to not have southern accents at all. Accents become more prevalent in the suburbs of Nashville and beyond, but not in the downtown area itself. This comes as a surprise to a lot of people who aren’t from the south and think that “Tennessee” means “country hick”.
8. You’ve taken at least one picture on the pedestrian bridge.
Ahh, the pedestrian bridge. A place lit up at night, suspended above the Cumberland River, that leads many into the city everyday is also a common place for taking pictures with the Nashville skyline. Prom photos, wedding pictures, shots of Nashville at sunset for fun, it seems like everyone in the city has a pedestrian bridge picture.
9. You go to house shows instead of house parties.
Of course where there are people, there are people throwing parties, particularly in a city full of so many young people. It has become a trend in Nashville, particularly with the high school and college aged kids from the downtown area, to go to house shows as an alternative. With so many local bands looking for an audience to perform for, often times bands will play underground shows in houses and charge people a couple dollars to come in and party for a couple of hours.
10. You’ve grappled with attending CMA Fest or Bonnaroo.
Every year the Country Music Awards Festival in Nashville and the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester take place in early June and overlap with each other. If you live in Nashville, there’s a very good chance that you’ve attended one, the other, or both. For a solid week and a half, pictures from these festivals are bound to clog your social media feeds, if you happen to be from Nashville.
