Cafes I Have Known: Tennessee Edition

When I land in a new town, the first things I look for are a great cafe and a great used bookstore. 

Here are two of my picks to take the guesswork out of cafe hopping on your next visit to Nashville or Knoxville.

Visiting the Ryman Auditorium in Tennessee was a dream come true. 

Frothy Monkey - Nashville

A pleasant bike ride from downtown, the Frothy Monkey is the go-to hangout for Belmont University students and organic food connoisseurs from the nearby Hillsboro and Melrose neighborhoods.

I chanced there when I was couch surfing around the block, near Dolly Parton’s motor coach livery.

I achieved total brain freeze from the strong iced coffee and achieved total aesthetic piety from their locally sourced salads.

My songwriter hosts were giddy to receive a bag of FM’s espresso roast as a parting gift.

Yours Truly preparing for another day of scaring the natives.

Best feature: a variety of micro-areas within the two adjoined ranch-style structures allows for sunny, shady, booth, and bistro style table hopping. 

Old City Java – Knoxville

Old City Java's Direct Trade coffee is widely regarded as the best coffee in Knox. They are located in a nostalgic part of town near the railroad tracks. 

The wow-inducing environment includes reclaimed windows and doors for wall paneling, exposed brick bearing walls, and an inverted bay window façade.

They don’t even have to try.

This is probably the reason their “coming-soon” website is so laughably bad. On the home page, the designer takes name credit for its non-existent proprietary content with a copyright date that has been auto-updating since 2010.

 

Is that an angel in my cup or is Knoxville just glad to see me?

Over several visits, I had the satisfying hummus plate.  When I got stuck in my work on the Great American Novel,  the painted ceiling, inspired by Van Gogh’s “Stary Night, ” kick-started my daydreaming again. 

Nashville Voluntourism Adventure

Lisa Davis Purcell, the Director of External Affairs for HandsOn Nashville

When Nashville flooded earlier this year, many people put aside their summer plans to visit America’s country music capital. Faced with a similar decision, I chose to spend a portion of my time in central Tennessee volunteering.

My opportunity was arranged by HandsOn Nashville, part of the HandsOn Network of resource centers which match nonprofit organizations with community needs and local volunteers.

“I love the diversity of non profit service. We partner with over 400 service and nonprofit agencies.” said Director of External Affairs, Lisa Davis Purcell, “From hunger to homelessness to animal welfare.”

some of the materials donated to HandsOn Nashville after the spring flood

Hands On likes to note that they are responsible for connecting ten percent of all Nashville area volunteers, creating 23 million dollars of economic impact every year.

The possibilities for me to contribute were organized on an electronic calendar at the HandsOn Nashville website.

The day I was in town, two food pantries needed distribution help. One flood relief building project needed assistance loading a truck.

I registered online and when I clicked on the appointment time, a dialogue box opened offering to email a volunteer leader who would be supervising on location.

Many people don’t realize how dialed in HandsOn was when the flood came. They simply activated their flood response plan!

“We have memorandums of understanding with the city if there are emergencies,“ Lisa said. “When there is an emergency, our boss is there at the city’s emergency command center.”

There are a number of such roadmaps available which create timetables for such expected volunteer response activities as sandbagging and as unexpected ones as securing prophylactic medicines for survivors.

Josh and Kim giving the camera some Volunteer 'tude

For my part, I reported to Betsy at a storage site in an up-and-coming Nashville neighborhood called The Gulch. Kim and Josh were already loading up boxes of joint compound.

The supplies needed to be moved to a second storage area. There were towers of rolling trays, rubber gloves, nails, screws, and plenty of hammers too.

It took a while to get the hand of manipulating the dolly, a task at which Kim was expert. Josh and I ferried supplies to her and she found space for them inside the trailer.

Lisa had observed that Ford Motor, Nike, and others provided material support during the flood. During a break in moving some of the building supplies Lowes donated, Josh and I stopped to appreciate the contributions of Budweiser to the flood relief effort by drinking some of their name-brand potable drinking water.

The King of Potable Waters? Yours Truly and Josh find out.

Who else pitched in notably? Ke$ha donated a concert. Taylor Swift made a direct donation. “Nashville is the buckle of the Bible belt, and a lot of our volunteers are from faith-based organizations.” Presbyterians, The Mormon Church and Scientologists made up some of the core of faith-based response.

Looking at that list of contributors, some who have very publicly used their wealth to challenge the gay community, I thought it was cool that through HandsOn we could all equally receive some non-politicized face time.

LGBT folks like myself can get so involved in our own cause we fail to call attention to the need for broader community-mindedness. Also, We can be reluctant to contribute if we feel we can’t be ourselves and blend in at the same time. I certainly would stick out among a crowd of Mormon relief workers.

The good news: when you are driving a truck or hoisting a ladder and putting your body on the line, very few people assess your affectional preference.

Southern US Bus Adventure

A queue inside the Nashville Greyhound bus station

The five stops on my Southen United States journey were all served by airports. At least two of the destinations were connected by rail.

I chose to ride the bus.

Why? Inexpensive, no security checkpoints, no overpriced restaurants. I got to track my own luggage without so much as a metal detector. I got bathroom breaks, an open seat next to me and I got a view of the land.

If I had flown, I would have been obliged to drive two hours to St. Louis airport, arrive 90 minutes early, fly one hour to a second location, change planes, fly another hour and a half to Nashville, collect my bags, and wait for ground transit to take me 20 minutes into town. A total of eight hours.

By bus, Columbia, Missouri to Nashvlle, Tennessee took ten hours door-to-door. That included a two hour transfer in St. Louis.

Country music stars have, for decades, chartered coaches. Some of it is superstition: Major stars like Patsy Klein and Buddy Holly died on puddle jumpers that served their tour’s minor destinations. Some of it is economic: conveying their entourage by bus permits an act to give a bigger show in more venues.

Music fans following bands recognize these realities. They save wear-and-tear on their vehicles or even the inconvenience of obtaining a vehicle.

In Knoxville, I met a Swiss student who was looking for music venues. For about the price of a round trip cross-country plane ticket, he could use a 1 month bus pass to take in Nashville, Memphis, Chicago, Washington D.C. and New York. At our lodging, he met up with a cadre Widespread Panic enthusiasts.

The bus has it’s own culture. Folks are unhurried and respectful. Very few people consider traveling on a bus as a luxury, though for many of them it is.

Yours Truly with the pillow case of fame

On the first leg of my Nashville journey, I sat at the very back of the bus with a woman and her nephew.

She was on her cell phone. He was playing with a WWF action figure and kept losing parts of its costume on the floor. She would pick them up and say, “Don’t lose the cowboy hat! I paid $25 for your wrestling man.” Then he would drop them again and laugh. And she would stop her conversation, cell phone pressed to shoulder, and pick the tiny clothes up again.

As we were disembarking, I pulled my lunch bag from under the seat in front of me and it burst. A half-empty soda can had rolled to the back of the bus and spilled on the contents. “Nobody using this,” my neighbor said, handing me a blue pillow case with blue spirals on it.

It wasn’t until I got into the terminal that I noticed how many other people were carrying belongings in pillowcases. It was far more common than people carrying a matching backpack and suitcase combo. I felt more at ease with this small, unintended assimilation.

New Adventures

I’m on the road again!

If you are near one of the following locations, please get in touch with me deltamagnet@yahoo.com so we can get our social network on.

- Columbia, Missouri

- St. Louis, Missouri

- Nashville, Tennessee

- Knoxville, Tennessee

- Asheville, North Carolina

- Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

- Denver, Colorado

- Boulder, Colorado

- Greeley, Colorado

And be sure to friend me up on Facebook if you have not done so already.