Welcome to Nashville, Where We're Just Realizing There's a Pandemic

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Welcome to Nashville, Where We’re Just Realizing There’s a Pandemic
After weeks of tourists flocking to the bars on Broadway, the city is finally taking action. But is it enough?

By JOSEPH HUDAK


(Rolling Stone) Last weekend, in a new building with sweeping views of Nashville’s skyline in a gentrifying neighborhood in East Nashville, organizers advertised a party on social media dubbed “The V.I.P. Viewing of the Fashion House.” Masks were scarce. Hookahs were plentiful. And bodies by the hundreds packed and writhed in tight. Judging by videos posted to Instagram the next day, Nashville looked like it had opened its own Hedonism resort.

One out-of-town attendee who goes by DaddysJuiced appeared in a video that showed him on his knees, his face burrowed in the ass of a woman. Framed in one of the home’s massive windows, DaddysJuiced did his thing while being gawked at by a long line of people waiting to get inside on the street below.

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We should have seen it coming. For nearly 10 years, Nashville has cultivated its image as Las Vegas East (its nickname is NashVegas, after all), a city that advertises itself as a tourist-friendly destination to drink to excess and get rowdy, then validates it with an unbalanced focus on Broadway tourism. Romanticized as ground zero for rising country singers who play for tips in overhyped cover bars like Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge and Kid Rock’s Badass Honky Tonk and Rock & Roll Steakhouse, the district on weekends pre-pandemic was typically tense and crowded. The threat of a sucker punch feels imminent. Party buses, wagons pulled by tractors, and mobile hot tubs creep by with drunk tourists crammed inside. It’s a sad hell that not even Kristofferson could envision in a song.

Up until this weekend, little of this had changed during the pandemic. Nashville, while publicly trying to combat a raging virus, remained addicted to tourism. In early July, just a few days after the city abruptly canceled its Fourth of July fireworks spectacle because of a surge in COVID-19 cases, the city’s Twitter account asked, “What’s your first stop in Nashville?” Most replies referenced various bars and landmarks; a few tweeted “hospital” or “COVID test.” It wasn’t an overt call to visit, but nonetheless, the tourists came. .............(more)

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/nashville-broadway-bars-party-pandemic-masks-1041693/