Weird Metro Money
👍 Blackburn lands another endorsement · Housing supply misses the mark · Repeat offender of the day · Americana interview · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone. Blackburn nets another endorsement... Housing supply misses the mark... A particular gruesome repeat offender all-star... And an interview with the filmmakers behind the new Sydney Sweeney movie.
Big Goal 2,000 new newsletter subscribers by September 30. Could you help us get there by forwarding this email to a friend (or five) who cares about independent journalism? Tell them to sign up here.
Like what we do? Forward us to a friend.
🗳️ Blackburn Lands Another Endorsement Senator Tim Burchett has thrown his weight behind Senator Marsha Blackburn in her run for governor. “The best man for this job is a woman, and her name is Marsha Blackburn,” posted Burchett on X.
In the endorsement video released yesterday, Burchett highlighted his time working with Blackburn in the Tennessee state legislature and how she helped prevented state income tax. It’s also worth noting that Burchett previously expressed interest in Blackburn’s vacated Senate seat should she win the gubernatorial election.
It’s been speculated that Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, who is serving as Blackburn’s campaign treasurer, may also be interested in the Senate position. There’s also a possibility that all three politicians could be playing musical chairs. If Burchett ends up stepping into Blackburn’s congressional position, that would free up his district’s seat, and Jacobs could position himself to step into the House while Burchett steps into the Senate and Blackburn steps into Tennessee’s executive office.
🏘️ Housing Supply Missing The Mark For Demand In a recent interview, a representative of Reventure, a data analytics platform that forecasts home prices globally, explained that, despite an alleged housing crisis, demand for downtown apartments in Nashville continues to wane. “In the short term, they may have overbuilt a little bit for the demand, so now there’s a lot of vacant units in central Nashville, and they’re having to get pretty competitive to fill those units,” Nick Gerli told WSMV.
Gerli also mentioned something that has frustrated Nashvillians in opposition to the blanket upzoning proposal in the Nations have been hammering home: there is already enough housing inventory, it’s just not the correct price point. Irene Kelley, a 23-year resident of the Nations who’s spent 18 years as a real estate agent in Middle Tennessee, said it best during the Planning Commission meeting three weeks ago.
“Davidson County inventory is up 22 percent,” Kelley said, referring to the most recent statistics. “Last year, June of 2024, we had 3,387 houses. Right now we have 4,138. Days on the market is up 39 percent. Last year it was 28 and we have almost a five-month supply of inventory. There's not a housing shortage.”
⧖⧗⧖ WHAT'S NEXT FOR BUSINESS? ⧗⧖⧗
Ask nine experts and you’ll get ten answers. Bull market, bear market, rates up, rates down—everyone’s guessing. No one’s got a crystal ball.
Meanwhile, over 42,000 businesses have done the obvious—future-proofed with NetSuite by Oracle, the #1 AI Cloud ERP, rolling accounting, inventory, HR, and financial management into one platform.
One suite, one source of truth. Real-time data and forecasting turn guesswork into strategy. Close the books in days, not weeks, and spend less time looking back, more time moving forward.
Whether you’re pulling in millions or hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you handle what’s now and seize what’s next.
Speaking of what’s next—grab the free CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/pamphleteer
SUPPORTED BY
💸 Local Substacker Exposes Metro’s Weird Money “The money is weird over at OHS, Metro’s Office of Homeless Services,” says Mike Lacy, a local Substacker. According to Lacy, DePaul USA has been operating a facility in connection with the OHS for 10 months, “paying employees and everything, with no contract.” During last night’s Metro Budget and Finance Committee meeting, the body unanimously voted to renew the long-expired contract.
After doing some digging and flexing some legal muscle, Lacy got his hands on documents that he believes prove that not only has there not been a valid contract with DePaul since September 2024, but that the company may have backdated invoices to give the impression that the transactions fell within the dates of the initial contract. Read the full breakdown of his investigation here.
DEVELOPMENT
- Giarratana closes on $340M loan for Paramount skyscraper project (Post)
⧖⧗⧖ GETTING BITCOIN FOMO? ⧗⧖⧗
|
The Bitcoin Adviser offers the safest and easiest way to securely buy bitcoin. Experts like Scott Porter talk you through the process from purchase to storage. Curious what owning bitcoin looks like? Sign up for a free consultation below. |
✹ REPEAT OFFENDER ALL-STAR OF THE DAY
On the night of August 14, 2025, police say Mohamed Mohamed, 39, repeatedly raped a 34-year-old impaired or unconscious woman outside a church on Nolensville Pike. Surveillance video showed the woman stumbling and collapsing on the church steps before Mohamed approached and assaulted her.
Around 9:30 p.m., a Nashville Fire Department crew spotted the attack in progress, turned their truck around, and used their siren to intervene—detaining Mohamed until police arrived.
The victim was rushed to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she later died, though her official cause of death is still pending an autopsy. She has since been identified by fingerprints as a homeless Nashville woman, and authorities are working to notify her family.
Mohamed has a prior record that includes public indecency convictions and a retired sexual battery charge in 2023. He also benefited from a string of dismissals for charges like criminal trespassing, driving without a license, and public intoxication that go back to 2015. He was booked into jail, refused to speak with detectives, and is being held on a $300,000 bond. (More Info)
✹ SYDNEY SWEENEY AND THE KING OF THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON
Actor Paul Walter Hauser and writer/director Tony Tost pay homage to the rest of the country in their neo-western Americana
From Jerod Hollyfield
In the last month, Paul Walter Hauser only took a week off from the summer box office. His stint as Mole Man in The Fantastic Four: First Steps was still front and center in the #1 movie in the world when he appeared in the universally loved reboot of The Naked Gun as the straight man to a go-for-broke Liam Neeson. Now, the actor who broke out as wrongfully accused security guard Richard Jewell in Clint Eastwood’s 2019 biopic has made his return to drama playing opposite Sydney Sweeney and the pop singer Halsey in Americana.
The directorial debut of Longmire and Poker Face writer Tony Tost, Americana centers on a small South Dakota town shaken by a scramble for a Native American ceremonial shirt when a corrupt antiquities dealer (Simon Rex)’s plans to acquire it go awry. In the mix to take the prize are a single mom (Halsey) to a kid who thinks he’s the reincarnation of sitting bull (Gavin Maddox Bergman), her smalltime gangster boyfriend (Eric Dane), and the leader of the local Rez (Zahn McClarnon) who wants to reclaim it for his tribe.
But the film’s core is Hauser’s Lefty Ledbetter, a lonely, unlucky cowboy who just wants to share his life–hopefully with Sweeney’s stuttering waitress as they aim to use the proceeds from the shirt to fund her Nashville stardom.
Americana is so good that one is able to fully shake off Sweeney’s recent unintentional and unwarranted conscription into the culture war. Yet, as remarkable as her performance in the film is, her chemistry with Hauser and Tost’s deft writing are strong enough to endure far longer than what’s up in the Twittersphere.
Hauser and Tost set down with The Pamphleteer to talk about the rise of the neo-western, smalltown stories, and country music’s enduring power.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and for more recs, click 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
🎸 Brad Hoshaw @ The Underdog, 9p, $10, Info
🎸 Jazz Night with Adam Wakefield @ Dee's Lounge, 9p, $5, Info
🎸 Honky Tonk Tuesday @ Eastside Bowl, 8p, $10, Info
+ two-step lessons @ 7p, The Cowpokes @ 8p
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
The Pamphleteer
The Pamphleteer
The Pamphleteer
The Pamphleteer
Today's newsletter is brought to you by Megan Podsiedlik (Nashville), Jerod Hollyfield (Crowd Corner), Camelia Brennan (Local Noise), and Davis Hunt (everything else).