Laced with good intentions...
👃 Naloxone vending machine goes live · Public safety concerns · Great Grant Thawing · Trans IDs ACLU suit · David Mamet's new movie · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
DHS has taken notice of local state Rep. Aftyn Behn referring to her as a "sanctuary politician" fighting for "criminal illegal aliens" in a tweet.
US Rep. Andy Ogles has called for a probe into the mayor's obstruction of ICE's operation in the city, but has also placed Behn in the crosshairs, prompting Behn to author a newsletter titled 'Why You So Obsessed With Me, Rep. Andy Ogles?' on the matter.
Onward, Davis.
In an initiative led by Nashville-based non-profit Fund Recovery, a free Naloxone vending machine sits at the Twice Daily on West End right next to the Amazon towers. If you’re taking West End downtown, it’s the gas station that has one of those MNPD security trailer apparatuses with a blue light atop it. Naloxone is nasally administered to reverse an opioid overdose.
According to reporting by the Nashville Scene, “During the machine’s first weeks, the Metro Public Health Department has refilled it three times per week — that’s 1,500 doses of the overdose-reversal drug, often known by the name brand Narcan, distributed per week.” So, the machine is being utilized.
Now the obvious response to this setup is wondering whether the machine will attract drug addicts and the criminal element that undergirds such milieus—in short, the wrong crowd. Addressing these concerns, Fund Recovery board chair Ryan Cain tells the Scene to define the “wrong crowd” and then goes on to compare Naloxone to an EpiPen.
“I have EpiPens at my house because I have kids that are allergic to nuts,” tells Cain, “but I’m not allergic to nuts. No one is going, ‘Hey, why do you have an EpiPen?’”
Well, it’s obviously a little different than that. Concerns for the lives of those who are affected by opioid use aside, the erection of an illuminated vending machine that dispenses free overdose prevention drugs is hard to interpret as anything but the Mark of Cain. Were Grand Theft Auto to come out today, they might parody this kind of thing like they did gun stores in the early games.
If you peer back behind the Twice Daily on Church Street, you will quickly understand why putting a shiny illuminated free drug overdose cure machine here makes sense. Last I drove past the now-shuttered Clyde’s, there was a homeless man taking refuge in the entrance right there in broad daylight. Down towards the highway is the strip club Deja Vu, right next to the local Hustler store. Up the street from that are the gay bars Play and Tribe. Further up the street, there used to be Clyde’s (now closed) and another gay bar, Canvas (relocated to East Nashville).
In short, the area has struggled and continues to struggle even as the rest of the city blossoms or gentrifies. In light of this, a Naloxone machine is a territorial marker that the area is safe for all kinds of vagrancy and the dysfunction that follows from it. Were I a business owner or developer in the area, I’d be sweating bullets.
Now, to reset here for a second, the opioid crisis is among the biggest challenges facing America. I have been touched by it as I imagine many of you have. It’s a terrible blight on our country.
Axios released data this morning on the financial impact of the crisis on a state-by-state level, revealing Tennessee to be among the most impacted states. An analysis last year revealed that fentanyl was present in 75 percent of overdose deaths in Nashville. In 2022, our city had the second-highest rate of overdose deaths in the country, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
I am not attempting to downplay the severity of the crisis, I guess I am just lamenting that it’s gotten to the point that putting up vending machines like this is understood as a viable solution to the problem. DAVIS HUNT
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🚔 Drake Addresses Feelings Of Safety During yesterday’s Metro Council Operating Budget Hearing for the police department, Chief Drake addressed the growing gap between the perception of safety in Nashville and the statistics. To start, he shared that Nashville has experienced a reduction in crime across the board this year:
Overall, major crime is down 8.3 percent, violent crime is down 8.5 percent, property crime is down 8.2 percent. We have seen significant reductions in offenses of rape, robbery, aggravated assault, residential burglary, larceny, and auto theft. Homicide, at this point in the year, is down 28 percent, non-lethal gunshot injuries are down 37 percent, and carjackings are showing a reduction of 29 percent.
While the numbers look good, the chief reflected on the fact that Nashvillians don’t feel safe. During the Q&A, Councilmember Jacob Kupin offered a succinct explanation of the phenomenon. While commending MNPD’s holistic success, Kupin shared information about a recent home invasion and hit-and-run in his district before explaining that those types of incidents “contribute to that feeling of unsafeness.”
Besides pointing out the influence crime coverage in the media has on perception, Chief Drake said that continuing to introduce policing strategies to target incidents that stoke the feeling of unsafeness is key to helping perception line up with reality. “When you have people speeding down the Interstate at 100 miles an hour, those kind of things hurt that perception,” he explained. “It's not really the violent crime that drives people to the perception of feeling unsafe. When you have nuisance activities of street racers, people driving 100 miles an hour, and other things going on, people feel unsafe.”
Routine traffic stops, which have increased by 65 percent, are one thing MNPD has done to address this. Councilmember Zulfat Suara didn’t seem convinced, calling it an “increase in stops for non-serious stuff.” During her line of questioning, Suara wanted to make sure that pulling people over was not resulting in more arrests, that MNPD was not working with ICE, and that there hadn’t been an increase in traffic stops in the Nolensville corridor.
“I mean, if you go…down Nolensville Road doing 80 miles an hour, you're going to get pulled over. You should, regardless of who you are,” Drake replied. “As far as what THP and ICE did, that's what they did. They never notified us. They don't have to, but they never notified us.”
🧊 The Great Grant Thawing On Tuesday, a judge in South Carolina ordered the federal government to fulfill grants frozen by the Trump administration. Back in March, Nashville joined six other cities and eleven nonprofits in the lawsuit hoping to claw back $14 million in transit and electric vehicle grants. According to the Scene, this includes $4.7 million for an “Electrify Music City” grant and $9.3 million for a “East Nashville Spokes” grant.
At the time, Metro Legal Director Wally Dietz argued that "no president, much less a non-federal employee at a fictional agency, has the authority to freeze funds appropriated by Congress." With this recent victory under his belt, the director thanked the Court for upholding “the Constitution’s separation of powers,” according to the Banner.
🪪 Fighting For Trans IDs Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee filed a petition against the TN Department of Safety and Homeland Security for refusing to issue IDs that reflect gender identity. “For transgender people, having identification that reflects their lived sex is essential for safety as well as the practical necessities of life,” argued the ACLU.
In 2023, a state law went into effect that requires Tennesseans to reflect their biological sex on identification. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld Tennessee law regarding a similar case about gender bending on birth certificates. According to the Associated Press, the panel of three judges ruled that the state “does not unconstitutionally discriminate against transgender people by not allowing them to change the sex designation on their birth certificates.”
DEVELOPMENT
- Franklin restaurant, The Honeysuckle, closes after 10 years (NBJ)
- Downtown's Fifth Third Center is under contract (NBJ)
- Work underway on Wedgewood-Houston project (Post)
✹ REVIEW: HENRY JOHNSON (2025)
The last time David Mamet directed a movie, Barack Obama was still wrapping up the primary season for his first stint in the White House. Mergers, known blockbuster IP, and the shift to streaming have made Mamet–inarguably the most influential playwright of the late 20th Century–a man out of time in Hollywood and Broadway over the intervening half decade. But it’s more than a coincidence that his public debut as a conservative-leaning intellectual a few months after the release of 2008’s jiu-jitsu morality tale, Redbelt, marked an abrupt, yet masterful, end to an illustrious career.
Yet, even in such exile, Mamet has remained Mamet. He’s not refashioned himself as a red meat faith-based flick auteur. Likewise, his reams of nonfiction since the announcement of his Great Awakening are three cuts above the typical pundit class conservative screeds. Such may explain why his long-awaited latest film, Henry Johnson, bypassed traditional distribution entirely, available only through rental from its website and potential theatrical screenings for those who request them through the website and garner the critical mass.
Whether thanks to budget restraints or self-enforced minimalism, Henry Johnson is deceptively simple: an amorphous businessman (Evan Jonigkeit) experiences a fall from grace, which Mamet sets in three distinct rooms. To say much else would do a disservice to Mamet’s unrivaled mastery of language and plot. Amid the verbose chaos, Shia LaBeouf materializes to give a performance rooted in such menace and regret that it immediately cements him as a generational talent.
Mamet has spent his career dissecting the drama of institutional group think whether on the middling college campus of Oleanna or the cruddy real estate offices of Glengarry Glen Ross (currently revived on Broadway with Bill Burr, Bob Odenkirk and Kieran Culkin for the Trump 2.0 Era by some miracle). But in the wake of COVID, Floyd, and the type of mob rule that claimed the careers of both LaBeouf and himself, Mamet has directly leaned into the psychology of the weak-willed peons who’ve made it all happen. For Mamet, all the world’s a mob, and, as Henry Johnson proves, he’s still the one best equipped to dramatize the fruits of our dwindling moral fiber.
Henry Johnson is available to rent via the film’s website.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🎸 Gillian Welch and David Rawlings @ Ryman Auditorium, 7:30p, $59+, Info
🪕 Missy Raines & Allegheny @ Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
🎸 Open Mic @ Fox & Locke, 6:30p, Free, Info
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Today's newsletter is brought to you by Megan Podsiedlik (Nashville), Camelia Brennan (Local Noise), and Davis Hunt (everything else).