Archive for July, 2009
Metro, schmetro…
If Metro Council member Mike Jameson really wants to stir up controversy, he should file a bill to consolidate Nashville’s dozens of street names to reduce confusion. No one’s going to stop saying “Metro,” but they’ll spew plenty of four-letter words if they can no longer refer to a single street as White Bridge Road, Woodmont Boulevard, Thompson Lane and Briley Parkway.
Tags: briley parkway, metro council, metro governm, metro government, mike jameson, nashville, politics, thompson lane, white bridge road, woodmont boulevard
Does Sully equal success?
The Preds would have finished in fifth place (101 points) in the Western Conference and faced the Chicago Blackhawks in the playoffs last year, if they’d fared as well all season as they played once Steve Sullivan returned from injury. Nashville’s record down the stretch translates into 45 wins, 26 losses and 11 overtime losses over the course of 82 games.
Since the Blackhawks ultimately wound up in the Conference finals, we’ll never know whether the Preds might have ended their winless streak in the NHL’s first playoff round. We also don’t know whether the Preds’ late season success and offseason departures will translate into good results in next season’s standings.
Tags: chicago blackhawks, hockey, nashville, nashville predators, nhl, steve sullivan
A less kooky Metro Council
Hopefully this development means that we won’t be debating which day Halloween should be celebrated in 2010:
Fortunately for gay and lesbian Metro employees — and progress generally — these characters no longer have access to the green and red buttons that decide public policy impacting the lives of Nashvillians. That’s not to say the Council is entirely without wingnuts, but as [the City Paper] recently noted, several key votes since the body was elected in 2007 thankfully suggest the group has shifted to the left.
Tags: civil rights, discrimination, metro council, nashville, politics, tennessee, the city paper
At least ONLY guns in bars passed
Now that the British Broadcasting Corporation is covering Tennessee’s obsession with liberating the populace from oppressive gun laws, I keep reminding myself that it could have been worse: English Only could have passed. I sure am proud of our state legislature.
Meanwhile, Big Gay Al is on the case, making sure that we “untrustworthy Tennesseans” know that “drinking while carrying a firearm is a bad idea.” (Surely there are more pressing issues in Michigan these days than weighing in on Tennessee gun laws.)
Related: Nashville Scene
Tags: bbc, british broadcasting corporation, gun laws, guns in bars, guns in restaurants, nashville, second amendment, tennessee, tennessee general assembly
May Town Center: What would Atlanta do?
If you’ve spent much time in Middle Tennessee, you know that little strikes fear into the hearts of Nashvillians like the thought of our fair city mushrooming into Atlanta. Jay Turner, managing director of Marketstreet Enterprises, sounds this familiar refrain in this week’s New York Times Magazine feature on the Gulch neighborhood:
“Nashville was really going in the direction of the hole-in-the-doughnut syndrome, if not already there. We wanted to help make sure it didn’t become like Atlanta.”
Ultimately, he’s right. We’re just beginning to realize that our horizontal sprawl might function better with more vertical use of existing space. We’ve passed one litmus test with last month’s defeat of the May Town Center proposal, but already it’s reared its head again with a do-over vote possibly coming next week. Maybe it really is time to keep reusing already blighted space and build a town center on the state fairgrounds site. That would be a very non-Atlanta thing to do.
Tags: atlanta, development, growth, jay turner, may town center, nashville, nashville business journal, new york times, tennessee, the gulch, the tennessean, tony giarratana
Thanks for cutting out the middleman, TPAC
Good call and good riddance: Nashville’s Tennessee Performing Arts Center will no longer use Ticketmaster for customer ticket purchases. I know I’m not alone in feeling like Ticketmaster has gouged event attendees with high and unnecessary fees for decades.
In an era when technology is shaking the music and media industries to their cores, it seems like poetic justice that a maligned monopoly such as Ticketmaster may also be taking it on the chin. I personally avoid Ticketmaster fees at nearly all costs, but this will make the effort a little bit easier. Thanks again, TPAC.
Related:
Ticketmaster Pays $50,000 Fine, Closes More Than 100 Deceptive Sites
Oops Ticketmaster Did It Again… And Got CAUGHT!
Tags: nashville, technology, tennessee, ticketmaster, tpac
