Trip to Hot Chicken

Three weeks ago, when my fiancee and I were in Nashville, we drove to the city's outskirts to eat at Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, inspired by the liner notes of one of my favorite records. We arrived to find it closed on Sundays, a disappointing turn of events, especially considering we cajoled two much-less-interested relatives in driving us there. At least I compensated with spicy catfish and fried chicken for my two meals later that day.

Downtown Nashville is a strange combination, though not that atypical for an American city: There's the tourist stretch, this time with lots of country-music bars and country-music clothes (I certainly made sure to buy a cowboy shirt, my first non-faux, non-used one), the convention center and hockey arena that interrupt the city's fabric, the poorly sited football stadium, an underused riverfront park, and a Central Business District totally underused on weekends, with unfortunate architecture, namely the AT&T tower shaped like a circa 1994 cell phone. There's a clear and interesting tension between the city's desire to preserve its prewar architecture, for the sake of maintaining its identity as a charismatic Southern music hub, and opening parcels to the large floor plates needed for the contemporary professional services that generate the most tax revenue. Not that I didn't enjoy walking around, especially to the Southern Festival of Books.

The best part of the weekend, aside from the wedding that brought me to town, was a trip to the Family Wash, a restaurant and bar in a residential neighborhood that was zonked-out in all the right ways. The decor was a grab bag, the country music was from outer space, and the beer was relatively inexpensive. It all made me sad I couldn't be there on a Tuesday for the $10 deal for shepherd's pie and a pint. The place may be better than any in Cambridge. In one of my courses this semester, one of the main themes is how cities typically crash ashore while chasing grand schemes when the talent they need to produce incremental, organic, worthwhile, exciting growth is already living there, right in front of their eyes. The Family Wash might be further proof of that.

Thanks to Yo La Tengo for the post's title. I can hear the opening strains of "Return to Hot Chicken" now: "Bum bum ba da da ba, da bum da." (It's meant to be played on guitar.)