N ashville Revisited
Sidewalk Tour, Skate Travel Journals
February 2010
to Surface Motion Skate Tour
Sidewalk Tour 2010
Southwest & Plains
February 2010
Feb 17
Trying to Leave: Santa Crz CA
Feb 18
Poor Sdwks, Nc Views: Phnx AZ
Feb 19
Hullucntry Entry: Amrllo TX
Feb 19 10 AM
Alongside Textures: AZ, NM
Feb 20
Sidwalk Pics on 66: Tulsa OK
Feb 20 1 PM
Red Barrel Downtn: Tulsa OK
Feb 21
Rainy Sidewalk Day: Tulsa OK
South
February 22-25 2010
Feb 22
Skipping to Memphis: Memphs TN
Feb 23
Waiting for Morning: Memphs TN
Feb 23 2 PM
Vance St Revisited: Memphs TN
Feb 24
Finding the Funeral Hm: Memphs TN
Feb 24
Encounters on Beale: Memphs TN
Feb 25
Leaving Memphis: Memphs TN
Feb 25 4 PM
Familiar Aves in Nashville: Nshvill TN
Feb 26
Germantn, Farmers Mkt: Nshvill TN
Feb 26
Decoding at Rippy's: Nshvill TN
Feb 27
Last Sidewalk Mileage: Nshvill TN
Feb 27
Through Otherville: Xville TN
Feb 28
Looking like the east: Roanoke VA
NY to Detroit
March 12-16 2010
Mar 12
Leaving NY: New York NY
Mar 13 6:30 AM
Akron Revisited: Akron OH
Mar 13 9:30 AM
Odd Shapes nr Toledo: Sandusky OH
Mar 14
Sets and Other Hats: Detroit MI
Mar 15
Woodward Ave tour: Detroit MI
Detroit to West
March 17-20 2010
Mar 17
Leaving Detroit: Detrt MI
Mar 18 6 AM
Skate Revisit St. Louis: St L MO
Mar 18 1 PM
Brief Revisit Kansas City: KC MO
Mar 18 4 PM
Kansas Still: Salina KS
Mar 19 12 AM
Unreachable Salt Lake: Denver CO
Mar 19 8 AM
Force Majeure: Denver CO
Mar 19 2 PM
Red Dirt Under White: Pueblo CO
Mar 20 8 AM
Calif Via South Rte: Indio CA
Mar 20 9:30 AM
Homeward Hassle: San Bernadino CA
Mar 20 3:30 PM
New Color Scheme: Coalinga CA
Sidewalk Tour 2009
Tour Inventory 2009
Backpacks
Clothes
Gear
Boards
Phone/PDA
Mobile blogging
Northwest: June 2009
South: Mar-Apr 2009
East: March 2009
Bridge Skate Training
Oct 08-Mar 09
February 25 - 28, 2010: Return to Nashville sidewalks and music venues
Nashville, Tennessee.
Thursday, February 25, 2010 - Familiar Avenues in Nashville
Signs, neon and wooden, seen on Broadway, Nashville.
2.25 I looked out the window of the bus and tried to pick out signs of tornado damage. I didn't see any but there were lots of broken trees that were probably ice storm damaged. There were all sorts of trucks on the other side of the highway and I practiced pan shots and tried to get whole trucks in the frame, fast shutter speed and other effects.
On my first visit to Nashville, I mostly photographed and wrote about bridge footpaths, banks, parking lots, and other skate- centric locations. This time I meant to bring the music scene into my sidewalk tour journal, to add a little variety.
Nashville. Nice bright but cold day. Walked over the Woodland bridge into East Nashville where some budget motels are and took in the familiar walk. I found I couldn't skate, felt vertigo from the bridge and the heavy pack swaying.
4 PM. Came down to Broadway and went to Rippy's. The same house guitar player, Lyle, was playing as a year ago only this time on acoustic. He played Good Time Charlie, Honky Tonk Blues, Sundown. Then I heard a lyric I recognized, sounded like "Harper Valley people say" and some nostalgia hit me. I had heard a soulful guy Terry sing it at the Fog Bank in Capitola, California.
Also went to Second Fiddle and heard Brandi's quartet, I asked another request from my karaoke scene, a song called In Color. They said they barely knew it but they did a great job. The bass player sang it and Brandi the singer kind of laid out.
Friday, February 26, 2010 - Germantown and farmers market
2.26 I started the morning's sidewalk wandering on N and S 1st Street, which runs along the Cumberland River. It is kind of an industrial area and there were various lots with fun vehicles, trucks, and construction equipment spare parts.
Looking toward downtown from all terrain vehicle lot.
I peered through a cyclone fence and saw an interesting collection of truck parts with the electric plant and motel in the background.
Shovels, power plant, and motel framed by fence.
Axel porthole and spare shovels.
Next I walked and skated over the Jefferson bridge which starts at Spring St near the motel. There was a cool little garage that I could have spent a half hour photgraphing but I only gave it a couple of shots.
I brought the map and saw I was close to the farmers market. There were signs pointing to downtown that pointed away from the hill which I thought was downtown. I dont get it. There must be another downtown Nashville. A bit farther was a sign that said "historic Germantown". I was curious and diverged right. There were indeed some historic looking large red buildings. Of more importance to my expedition was the classic brick cobbled sidewalk in front of the old red house. I clattered down it and had a new texture to add to my sight feeting.
Cobblestone sidewalk descends toward downtown.
At the farmers market there were some nice smooth winding walkways leading to a giant airy roofed market. The market was wrapping up but there were still lots of trinkets for sale. I saw a nice collection of pottery and the guy let me shoot some pictures. The shots of the pots were ok but the potraits of the guy were blurred. It show you that auto mode isn't always so great, the shutter speed was too slow.
Pottery vendor at Nashville farmers market.
I got shots of another knick knack vendor in loud clothing and a hood. He stayed very still and by sheer luck the portraits came out ok.
Handbag and scarf vendor at farmers market.
Friday, February 26, 2010 - Decoding lyrics at Rippy's
Back to Rippy's. Really like the house duo Lyle and Tom, and tonight they had a young, very energetic bass player, Paul.
Lyle, Paul, and Ron play country music at Rippy's.
Paul Pace solos in a blur of notes.
Finally figured out the song that Terry sings. When I went up to Lyle to get a request, I sang a few bars of my interpretation of it which was "Harper Valley people say." He laughed but thought about it and tried a verse that came out "All the Federales say." I was overjoyed and said, "that's it." That's lyrics for you, sometimes it takes traveling a couple thousand miles to unravel the mystery of what they're about. It's a prison song or on the lam song by Merle Haggard with Willy Nelson. Lyle and Tom also played Gentle On My Mind again. Bass player is able to play super double time, like in this hopped up Johnny Cash song.
A woman at the bar asked my help in fixing her camera. It was stuck on self time mode. It took me a while but I figured out how to reset it. I also took a few low light pics with it in manual mode that came out fairly nice. I exposed the band a long time and white balanced by shooting a paper napkin at the bar.
I left Rippy's and took a couple of night shots of Broadway. A maintenance pickup came by to set up street work signs and kind of blocked my shot. So I shot the truck and the sign guy and it came out great. There was a sign motif in the shot. The neon signs from a row of honky tonks glowed in the background, while the simple wood street signs sat plainly in the back of the pickup.
Sign maintenance truck passes by Rippy's
After Rippy's, crossed the street to Roberts to see hot young guitarist JD Simo. Sort of a virtuoso of southern styles. The band was playing lots of Johnny Cash.
It seems like the kind of guitarist who works his way up into the top of the rotation at some of these venues like Roberts is a kind of flexible, all around master of many styles. The styles kind of fit into the rock and roll and country genre, but it still requires a heck of a lot of technique. Last year the guy I saw was Chris Casselo, who could play anything, and this year it's JD Simo.
Watched JD fiddle with his guitar jack and cords and talk to other musicians near the stage. The break was taking a long time. I was done for the eve.
Saturday, February 27, 2010 - Last mileage on Nashville sidewalks
2.27 At the TA Country Pride restaurant, my favorite place for breakfast west of the Cumberland, I learned my friend the waitress Michelle had been carjacked. That's why she wasn't there. I said to Pam her replacement that skateboarding isn't so dangerous after all, look at how unsafe it is to drive.
I looked back at the restaurant and curbs and little ramps where I'd skated last year on my first visit to Nashville. In the background was the Stadium Inn, the decrepid hotel I had avoided in the rain while bushwhacking my way into the motel area the day I arrived.
Country Pride restaurant and lot.
On the way over the Woodland bridge off S 1st Street for the last time I looked down through the trees and brush. I could see a tent by the Cumberland, actually quite a nice one that looked like a green and white beach ball. Perhaps this was a temporary site put up by some campers, but the accumulated trash made me think it was more of a permanent homeless encampment. There were several sites visible along the river.
Encampments by the Cumberland River.
Tent encampment on the river bank.
Note 7.2010: Just a couple months after this visit the river flooded. This surely was not the place to be at that time, right on the bank. The low area on the banks of the Cumberland, which must have included 1st St N and S, were vulnerable to flooding. The motel where I stayed suffered some damage as well.
I skated down the big parking lot on 9th instead of taking the sidewalk which was having construction done.
Discovered an odd fact about Nashville, maybe someday I'll figure out the why behind it. I had a simple errand to run, mailing a couple of post cards. Now, I remember there was a post office up on the hill somewhere in downtown Nashville. I mailed some stuff last year, but I couldn't quite remember where from. Yesterday, Friday, I asked a lady, who seemed to be from Nashville, where the post office was and she told me it was down on Broadway. I should have asked again, someone else, because I knew it was up around 6th or something. I went down to Broadway and couldn't find it, then it got too late. Finally I remembered that the post office is in the arcade, maybe a block from where I asked the local lady for directions. Now on Saturday I went by the arcade and that PO was closed. So I went down to Broadway way over by the Frist Museum and found the post office, and great, it was open. But amazingly, absurdly they dont sell stamps on Saturday. Why would you not sell stamps on Saturday, in a US Post Office? Maybe it's some bible belt law, or maybe it's too dangerous to handle cash at certain times in Nashville, or maybe PO workers aren't bonded to take cash on Saturday. In any case this post office doesn't do anything on Saturday except open up for a few hours. So now I gotta leave the area and I don't get to mail my post cards with a nice Nashville postmark. My folks are going to have to get a New York postmark. It may not sound like much, but it makes a difference to me, that a post card is a souvenir of one place and the post office there, and not a sloppy combination of two destinations.
I walked down past the Frist Museum. I saw it had a nice parking lot with curved access roads and speed bumps. It was challenging to skate it with the heavy pack, and more so because cars kept coming up it. But it was the last thing I was going to skate on this sidewalk tour of the south so I tried to squeeze some fun out of it. I wound down the top, traversing, swung around the speed bump, clattered off some speed on a cobble section, then carved all the way down the bottom section down to the lot in front of the Union Station hotel, a hotel made from an old train depot.
Curved road and spheres by the Frist.
Skate route runs out by the Union Hotel.
That was it and I walked back up the hill. I skated one last sidewalk past the nice wintery bare tree next to the Frist lot. The rest of the way to the bus station was rough and gravel strewn, so I walked.
Saturday, February 27, 2010 - Passing through Otherville
On the bus. Figured out from reading the Nancy newspaper funnies of all things that Feb 26 is Johnny Cash's birthday. That explains why there were so many "man in black" covers and references at Rippy's and Roberts last night.
We passed through a couple of other 'villes outside of Nashville. Cookeville, Crossville, Knoxville, Greeneville and the pattern breaker, Johnson City. There were a number of nice automotive, agricultural, and mechanical sights from the bus, worthy of taking a few shots as they popped up.
In Cookeville or Crossville I saw what appeared to be a sprawling racetrack and barn. There were seats and a stadium and some sort of housing for animals, although I couldn't quite tell if it was a racetrack for dogs or horses. It didn't look like a car raceway.
Note 7.23.2010: this was not a racetrack but the Putnam County Fairgrounds, in Cookeville TN, which I determined first by comparing my schedule with the time stamp of the photo, then from Google maps and the orientation of my shots near the Greyhound station.
The grey East Tennessee skies lit the last bit of characteristic south and plains red dirt I was to see for a while.
Stockyard in Cookeville, TN.
Corner of Putnam County Fairgrounds, Cookeville, TN.
Sunday, February 28, 2010 - Starting to look like the east
2.28 1 AM Roanoke VA. Fairly thick dusting of snow visible in east Tennessee and Virginia. This city looked pretty nice from the bus at night. Attractive store fronts, lots of activity, people walking around, maybe young people bar hopping. Music and pool playing, late night eateries.
10 AM past Baltimore. A young guy had approached me in the Nashville station and asked me about my longboard. I sat behind him and his girlfriend for much of the trip and they were pretty amusing. The guy was a very pale white guy, with a southern accent, and very into hip hop. He had a close shaved head, baseball cap, ipod buds, a tattoo here and there, and heavy sports championship or school rings on most of his fingers. While he listened to his rap music, he danced in his seat by bouncing up and down in double time to the music, more like a slam dancer than a hip hop dancer, and positioning his ringed digits in gang sign configurations. His girlfriend bounced along with his dancing occasionally. The guy seemed a little annoying, but I couldn't deny he had a certain style. He had enough charm to convince a young woman to ride all the way with him on a bus from Nashville to New York, so he must have had a hold on her. The girlfriend's interest in hiphop Nashville guy had caused her some trouble. She kept answering calls from an old boyfriend and repeatedly told him to stop calling, she was sick of him and had moved on. She was with a new boyfriend now.
1 PM Newark, NJ, heading toward New York. This is the most well heated bus I've ever been on. I'm parched, drank up all my water, and am in my short sleeve t shirt. Was able to sleep, ate cough drops to fight off dry mouth.
