Whistle Stop
🚂 Choo choo Train · Perpetual Pandemic · Street Robots · One from the Heart · Film rundown · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
I’m thinking of the Trailer Park Boys scene where rockstar Sebastian Bach goes to the model train convention. And as luck would have it, on Saturday, the Nashville Steam Preservation Society is holding an open house to show off their restoration of a 1942 steam locomotive. I’ve been over there to look at the train before. Worth a visit.
Onward.
🖋️ Edited by Megan Podsiedlik.
🦠 Perpetual Pandemic After a reporter teed up a question by stating that the “Covid pandemic is over” during this morning’s media roundtable, Mayor O’Connell quickly corrected the assertion. “First of all, I would say it's hard to declare the pandemic over,” he said. “I mean, we are still seeing not only hospitalizations, but also deaths related to Covid. The general, evidence-based public health guidance says that people should be getting vaccinated for Covid.”
The mayor was joined by Metro’s Legal Director Wally Dietz and the Medical Services Director for Metro’s Department of Public Health, Dr. Joanna Shaw-Kaikai. The three discussed Nashville’s legal action against the current administration related to the premature termination of certain federal grants. According to Shaw-Kaikai, the cuts to medical funding are linked to money allocated in response to Covid.
🚧 East Bank Mayor Freddie O’Connell has appointed Ben York as the first CEO of the East Bank Development Authority, tapping the longtime Metro engineer to lead Nashville’s transformative riverfront redevelopment. York named urban planner Anna Grider, a key figure behind the Imagine East Bank visioning process, as COO. Both step into their new roles on March 31.
🤖 Street Robots Self-driving cars are being tested in neighborhoods like Germantown, Berry Hill, and Sylvan Park. Waymo, an autonomous vehicle company connected with Google, has sent cars across Davidson County to collect data. For now, humans are still behind the wheel. According to Fox17, live drivers are cruising around Music City to help train AI navigational systems.
“Our specialists are driving the cars to familiarize ourselves with the city,” Waymo Communications Director Sandy Karp told the outlet. “That experience helps us inform both the real-world and simulated environments where our technology is constantly improving.”
🏠 Planning Study Released The Metro Planning Department released preliminary recommendations this morning for zoning reforms aimed at addressing Nashville housing affordability. The study suggests introducing new design-based zoning districts to support low-rise, moderate-density residential developments, including "missing middle" housing types like triplexes, quadplexes, and courtyard apartments in targeted areas. The study also recommends allowing taller buildings with single stairways to lower construction costs and proposes leveraging a new state law to incentivize developers to include affordable units in their projects. Discussions on these recommendations are set to continue into the summer as the city seeks effective strategies to increase affordable housing options.
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DEVELOPMENT
- Boyle Investment Co. pays $19.5 million for Cool Springs office building (NBJ)
- Broadwest penthouses sell for collective $14.8M (Post)
- Birkenstock opens in 12South (Post)
✹ ONE FROM THE HEART
From Jerod Hollyfield
There’s no crying at film festivals. Since the rise of Sundance in the 1980s, the right type of indie film has defined itself by its fringeness–the last holdover of Gen X irony that’s managed to survive in a cultural zeitgeist. Bawling openly is for people who watch The Notebook. But, when Bob Trevino Likes It screened at the Nashville Film Festival last September, the sound of sniffles was louder than the end credits music. From fast-fashion clad coastal visitors to local retirees supporting the arts, the movie did something many think the medium no longer can.
I’ve spent the six months since I saw Bob Trevino Likes It thinking about the movie. Even though I had yet to experience the gross-out glory of The Substance or the aesthetic heights of Anora and The Brutalist, the unassuming images of Tracie Laymon’s directorial debut won’t leave my head: John Leguizamo’s bereaved wife obsessing over her latest scrapbook, Barbie Ferreira reading a text from a boyfriend he never intended to send. Clearly, I’m not a self-conscious woman who grew up in a Louisville trailer park with an absent narcissistic dad played by the weirdest alien from 90s sitcom 3rd Rock from The Sun; nor am I a put-upon construction manager who dreams of buying a prosumer telescope. But these characters and the half-empty diners, hardware stores, and working-class homes they occupy feel so lived in, so human that it's hard to resist fully immersing oneself in this world.
Loosely based on an experience Lamon had as twentysomething, the movie focuses on Ferreira’s Lily Trevino, an isolated Gen Zer as listless as she is hapless. Underemployed as a live-in caregiver for a wheelchair-bound woman the same age (Lolo Spencer), Lily has shut the world out. Her support system consists of her grifter of a dad (French Stewart) who severs ties with her for pushing back on his deadbeat ways. During a desperate attempt at reconciliation, she accidentally Facebook friends the wrong Bob Trevino, a mistake that ultimately allows both her and her newfound father figure to reach their true potential and fill the decades long voids that have left them as mere shells of themselves.
✹ WEEKLY FILM RUNDOWN: March 29-April 4
The latest releases and special screenings hitting Music City this week. For a complete list of upcoming title, check out of 2025 Film Guide
A Working Man (Dir. David Ayer) Jason Statham reteams with Training Day scribe Ayer after last year’s glorious The Beekeeper for the tale of an ex-black ops soldier who trades in his quiet life as a construction foreman for the vigilante life when his boss’s daughter falls prey to human traffickers. Sure to be the biggest blast of the spring!
Bob Trevino Likes It (Dir. Tracie Lamon) Barbie Ferreira plays a Gen Z loner who strikes up a friendship with a construction manager (John Leguizamo) after she accidentally Facebook friends him instead of her estranged father. The result is one of the most affecting and heartfelt times we’ve ever had at the movies–no hyperbole. Read our review and interview with Lamon here. Now playing at AMC Thoroughbred 20 and Regal Green Hills 16.
Death of a Unicorn (Dir. Alex Scharman) Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega play a father and daughter who accidentally turn a unicorn into road kill and fight to protect its essence from an evil industrialist (Richard E. Grant) in A24’s absurdist comedy. Now playing in theaters.
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
📜 Muses Educational Series: Melpomene- Muse of Tragedy @ The Parthenon, 6p, Info
+ a film writing workshop workshop tracing the importance of the Orpheus myth in film with Jerod Hollyfield
🎸 Pom Pom Squad @ The Blue Room, 7p, $26, Info
🎻 John Williams and Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony @ Schermerhorn Symphony Center, 7:30p, $29+, Info
🎸 Maddie Medley @ The Basement, 7p, $12.85, Info
🪕 Tin Pan South Songwriters Festival @ Multiple Venues, $15+, Info
🪕 The Cowpokes @ Acme Feed & Seed, 12p, Free, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🎸 Kelley’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
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