That Big Blue Dot in the Roaring Red Sea
🥏 Nashville against the world · Adaptive Budgeting · TSU Life Support · Cheekwood Orchids · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
Snow's about melted. The roads have been fine. Suns out. No excuses. Get after it.
Onward.
Last week, the American Conservative published an article by Scott Greer on Nashville as a city showing the way forward beyond wokeness. "What might replace woke as the dominant cultural form isn’t some return to tradition. It’s the culture and lifestyle embodied by Nashville," Greer writes. "Normal Americans just want to focus on the mundane and have a good time. Country serves as the soundtrack and Nashville as the vacation spot."
Scott makes the all too common mistake of confusing the Nashville MSA with Nashville proper, but superficially, what he identifies as making Nashville palatable to people who want to live here is accurate. On top of the relative stabliity and lack of political drama, country music gives it a shine absent other places like Dallas, Atlanta, or Charlotte.
But what I want to point out is that this arrangement is much more fragile than Greer or others might think. When I first started this publication, I would commonly talk about how people don't move to Nashville to be activists. It’s possible that Trump's “vibe” obviates all these concerns, but I doubt it. I think you’ll see the activist class burrow deeper into cities as their power declines in Washington.
A couple of trends in Nashville proper that you should be aware of that make it vulnerable to disruption:
1. Low Voter Turnout Only 20-25 percent of Nashville’s registered voters turn out for the city’s off-cycle Metro elections, making it a ripe target for the well-organized.
2. The Growth of Progressive NGOs Over the past five years, groups like Stand Up Nashville, The Equity Alliance, and Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition have seen their funding explode. In 2019, Stand Ups raised just $128k. By 2023, they’d raised nearly $1M. Similarly, the Equity Alliance (below) received $275k in 2019. In 2023, they raised over $3M.
3. The Council Makeup The political makeup of Nashville’s “nonpartisan” Metro Council reflects the growing influence of well-organized progressive groups. 14 of the 40 council members would be accurately described as progressives or activist democrats.
4. International Migration to the City Since 2016, Nashville proper’s growth has only been sustained by international migration, as domestic residents flee for the ring counties. Crudely, the pattern appears to be: People move to Nashville from California to escape blue state politics. After a few years, they move to a ring county to escape blue city politics. To account for this, the city gives money to various NGOs to resettle international migrants in Davidson County to make up for the loss.
5. Fertility Sink Like most American cities, Nashville is a fertility sink, but the Nashville MSA is not. In fact, it is one of the few areas in the entire country that seems to have figured out how to attract families. Between 2020 and 2022, Tennessee was one of only five states where the population of children aged 0-4 increased. Most of that growth occurred in Middle Tennessee. This creates an interesting situation where city policies are increasingly at odds with the surrounding counties that differ politically from Nashville, and yet, without them, Nashville would be Birmingham. The Nashville region continues to grow despite the city's politics, not because of them.
All this is to say is that while Scott is correct about why Nashville is superficially attractive and how it presents a compelling vision of life in America to the median person, that could all be undone, as it has been in other cities across the country. DAVIS HUNT
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🖋️ Edited by Megan Podsiedlik.
💸 Adaptive Budgeting On Tuesday, Councilmember Sean Parker explained how new spending cuts could affect this year’s budget season. “The new Federal administration has implemented a wide array of executive actions, impoundments, and orders impacting funding and programs at all levels of government,” he wrote in his District 6 newsletter. “The legality of many of these actions is questionable at best.”
Parker explained that inevitable lawsuits could make things unpredictable for state and local governments going forward. “As Mayor O’Connell prepares his second budget proposal for Council consideration, there is a lot of discussion about how we manage that uncertainty without experiencing cuts to critical services like education, safety, health, and waste management,” he wrote.
🎓 TSU Life Support Yesterday, interim president of Tennessee State University Dwayne Tucker delivered on his promise to devise a plan to stabilize the historically black college. According to Axios, it includes $37 million in cost cuts achieved in part by layoffs. Tucker’s team also proposed a five-year plan to cap scholarships, restructure faculty workloads, and repurpose $154 million in capital funds for operating costs.
The State Building Commission supported Tucker’s approach, with members like House Speaker Cameron Sexton open to legislative changes if TSU meets benchmarks. "I have great appreciation for the work you've done in the short time you've been there," Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower told Tucker after his presentation. "It's remarkable what can happen when competent leadership is finally in place."
🎤 Metro’s New Working Group Ruffles Feathers During Tuesday’s council meeting, the body decided to postpone their second vote on a bill to revamp the Nashville Music, Entertainment, and Film Commission. Not only would the legislation rename the board the Nashville Entertainment Commission, it would also shrink it to eleven members and put the mayor's office in charge of hiring its executive director. “It's no secret that we have had issues with specific boards and commissions that have been responsible for hiring their own executive director,” said sponsor Sandra Sepulveda during an Arts, Parks, Libraries, and Entertainment Committee meeting a few weeks ago.
The Nashville Music, Entertainment, and Film Commission is the first entity to be examined by Metro’s new working group that’s been formed to assess the efficiency of Metro boards and commissions. Councilmember Joy Styles—who championed the effort to reestablish an entertainment board in Nashville—has continued to scrutinize their proposed changes. “The reality is, this legislation was submitted without anyone's participation,” she said during this week’s council meeting. “The commissions submit suggestions, and then the working group takes it and says, ‘Thank you so much,’ and then changes it, submits it to us, and tries to tell us that the commission made these suggestions.” The council deferred the bill on second reading until the first meeting in March.
DEVELOPMENT
- Nashville home price increases 'astronomically outpace' the country, growing by 23% in the last decade. (NBJ)
- Downtown Walgreens to close pharmacy (Post)
- Metro OKs building materials for planned downtown project (Post)
✹ ORCHID FEVER AT CHEEKWOOD
From Jerod Hollyfield
A little over a month ago, Cheekwood was alight with a million bulbs, Christmas trees made of poinsettias, and a tribute to the White House’s Christmas pasts. But, in less time than it takes most people to box up their tinsel, the staff of Nashville’s signature botanical gardens and art gallery were ready to launch what’s become a must-see anecdote to the doldrums of winter: one of the South’s largest orchid displays.
Through March 2nd, The Cheekwood Historical Mansion is positively awash in orchid arrangements. Every banister, staircase, and enclave brims with the tropical flower that has unfairly earned a reputation as difficult to maintain. Much of the grounds are experiencing a dormant period in the leadup to the garden’s inevitable 250,000 tulips. But one hardly misses peak Cheekwood as the impeccable design that has become its hallmark remains impressive even when adapted indoors–especially in the floor-to-ceiling display that serves as the show’s centerpiece.
For this year’s celebration of all things orchid, Cheekwood has opted for an enfilade concept, allowing visitors to experience an unbroken view through the mansion’s rooms as multicolored flowers flow into each other. While the gardens never fall short of fragrant flowers, a decisive upside to the programming’s move inside is the ability for distinct scents not to fall victim to Cheekwood’s sprawling acreage. It may be uncouth to stop and smell the roses so to speak, but the subtle hint of the warmer months does much more for the psyche than a SAD lamp.
For those biding their time until winter ‘s clock runs out, Cheekwood offers an abundance of special programming, including a daily February tea that begins at 3 p.m. and a concert series that rings in Mardi Gras a bit early on March 1st when the Crescent City Hoodoo All-Stars provide a sampling of New Orleans’s musical traditions. The museum gallery also features a series of paintings from artist Becky Suss that adapt Ann Patchett’s 2019 novel, The Dutch House. Even those wishing Nashville’s literati came in more varieties can appreciate this utterly unique intertextual situation. There’s not a more pleasant weekend afternoon to be had in the city right now.
Tickets and info for Cheekwood’s winter calendar are available on its 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
🎸 Toro y Moi & Panda Bear @ Marathon Music Works, 8p, $47.05+, Info
🪕 Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland @ Station Inn, 9p, $25, Info
🎸 Nashville Shoegaze Night @ The Basement, 9p, $12.85, Info
🎸 Nether Hour @ Dee's Lounge, 10p, $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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