Speaking of Summer Lights, Kentucky artist Van Cordle captured a flyover by the Man of Steel during the festival in 1988, or at least that’s what his oil painting featuring the city’s skyline puts on display. Cordle is selling his full-size work for $150 on eBay, so check it out if you consider Music City and Krypton’s native son a match made in heaven. Since the painting was created in 1988, Nashville’s iconic Batman Building is nowhere to be seen. Take that, Caped Crusader.

For more than 15 years, Nashvillians packed downtown in late May to listen to all kinds of musical acts perform during the city’s annual Summer Lights festival. I have fond memories from several of the annual events, and it was a sad day when the festival signed off for good. Summer Lights showcased the diversity of local talent and displayed Nashville at its best. The Tennessean’s Beverly Keel, then writing for Entertainment Weekly, described the festival near the end in 1997:

For a full view of Nashville, from the eclectic music that swings outside its country boundaries to food that leaves Southern-fried far behind, prepare for Fan Fair by heading to Summer Lights. The downtown street festival, which runs May 29-June 1, has nine stages that feature 250 acts, ranging from blues, hip-hop, classical, and gospel to Celtic, Hispanic, African, and a panoply of other forms of music. Nibble on Cajun food while listening to opera, or down a funnel cake to the sounds of big band. Of course, there’s still plenty of country music. This year’s headliners include Lorrie Morgan, Tracy Lawrence, and Mark Chestnutt. For Nashville natives, Summer Lights is the official start of summer, and they look forward to strolling down the several-block area around the War Memorial Plaza (last year it attracted more than 150,000 people). Locals like to boast that Nashville is Music City USA, not just Country Music City, and at least for one weekend a year, they’re right.

Nashville Scene film critic Jim Ridley, reviewing the 1997 slate of performers, made the case that the final festival had saved the best for last, though no one knew it was the end at the time:

There were many years when the music at the city’s largest annual festival seemed of tertiary importance to lemonade booths and funnel-cake stands. In recent years, however, it has steadily gotten better. Even if Summer Lights appears destined never to have the big-name rock ’n’ roll, funk, or blues acts that similar festivals in Memphis and Birmingham attract, festival programmer Kari Estrin has nonetheless assembled a remarkable cross-sampling of local, regional, and international talent. Besides, we’d rather see the Hackberry Ramblers, Othar Turner, or Joy Lynn White than some lame major-label headliner going through the motions.

As Ridley observed, Summer Lights wasn’t a cookie-cutter assortment of national acts, as some might argue that Memphis in May or Birmingham’s City Stages can be at times. (The short-lived Nashville River Stages that followed Nashville’s event was much more along those lines.) Summer Lights was an eclectic event that was distinctly Nashville, and I think we’re missing it, even at a time when the city has grown signficantly and improved tremendously in its absence.

Ridley’s article was ironically titled, “Summer Lights Gets Back on Track,” but then columnist (and future, but now former, editor) Liz Garrigan spread the word months later that the writing was on the wall for the festival’s fate.

Is Nashville in need of a Summer Lights’ revival? I certainly think so, but it would likely require an economic upswing and a better budgetary bottom line for the city for it to happen. In the meantime, it will have to remain a blast from the past alongside Dancin’ in the District and the Italian Street Festival as beloved local events that are long gone. Here’s hoping all of you rise again some day.

Legendary comic Steve Martin, interviewed in a recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine, recounts a major breakthrough in his development as a performer that happened to take place on the Vanderbilt campus:

Because I was generally unknown, I was free to gamble with material, and there were a few evenings when crucial mutations affected my developing act. At Vanderbilt University in Nashville, I played for approximately 100 students in a classroom with a stage at one end. The show went fine. However, when it was over, something odd happened. The audience didn’t leave. The stage had no wings, no place for me to go, but I still had to pack up my props. I indicated that the show had ended, but they just sat there, even after I said flatly, “It’s over.” They thought this was all part of the act, and I couldn’t convince them otherwise. Then I realized there were no exits from the stage and that the only way out was to go through the audience.

So I kept talking. I passed among them, ad-libbing comments along the way. I walked out into the hallway, but they followed me there too. A reluctant pied piper, I went outside onto the campus, and they stayed right behind me. I came across a drained swimming pool. I asked the audience to get into it—”Everybody into the pool!”—and they did. Then I said I was going to swim across the top of them, and the crowd knew exactly what to do: I was passed hand over hand as I did the crawl. That night I went to bed feeling I had entered new comic territory. My show was becoming something else, something free and unpredictable, and the doing of it thrilled me, because each new performance brought my view of comedy into sharper focus.
Martin doesn’t mention the year of this performance, but I’m guessing it must have been the early 70s. I would love to be able to witness what that show must have been like firsthand.

Note to Vanderbilt fans: I really am talking about Steve Martin, not Commodores football coach Bobby Johnson. (Scroll down to the fourth row of photos if you follow that link.)

The Days Inn Vanderbilt (map) has earned a dubious distinction as one of TripAdvisor’s top 10 dirtiest hotels in the United States. I personally have never darkened the door at this Days Inn, but doing so has never really seemed like a great idea, either. Here are some representative reviews from the site:

It was a pretty bad motel, but it was clean enough (no bugs and i didn’t get sick) and people were nice. good location and cheap. if you want a nice place, you’ll have to pay more…

Don’t make the same mistake we did! This motel is an accident waiting to happen. Do not even think of booking for the rate, last minute, etc. You will regret it. When we asked about the shape of the place we were told that “we should have known what we were getting into when we drove up to the property” and “afterall its in the west end”……all this by the desk clerk! Football fans beware - go somewhere else!

NASTY, RUN DOWN AND NEEDS TO HAVE A WRECKING BALL USED ON IT; NO AIR IN TINY ELEVATOR OR HALLWAY, WORST ROOM I’VE EVER STAYED IN!!!!! I asked for a rollaway, the lady at the desk told me (at 7:10) that I should’ve asked before 7 because there was no one on duty except her and she couldn’t leave the desk. I have a large vehicle that will not fit in a parking garage so I had to park behind the hotel and I was afraid the it would be stolen or vandalized but it wasn’t. That was the only pleasant experience at this hotel…

1) The rooms smell horrible! Very musty like an old abandoned building.
2) Dirty, sticky carpets.
3) Mold. I can’t be absolutely sure but I believe it to be black mold (see photo above). I have pictures to prove this! I just wish that I had found this on our first day instead of our last.
4) Unfriendly, rude staff.
5) Very narrow halls with huge open windows. It would be very easy for someone to fall out of them.
6) CREEPY, not very well lit parking garage.
7) Holes in blankets and towels

I visit TripAdvisor from time to time when planning trips. It tends to attract polarized comments from travelers with either very negative or very positive experiences, but it’s hard to ignore some of the specifics spelled out in the reviews. Considering that there are thousands of hotels across the country, it’s no small feat to land on this list.

As expected, the Commodores have indeed cracked the AP men’s college basketball Top 25. Vanderbilt is #23 in that poll and #25 in the ESPN-USA Today poll.

The most entertaining part of this news is the comment thread on The Tennessean story about the ranking. Sure, the battles between the ‘Dores and the Vols are (sometimes)  intense on the basketball court and the football field, but the gloves really come off when Web-savvy fans debate which school is more pathetic for issuing commemorative DVDs of its accomplishments. As The Office’s Jim Halpert might say, there are no winners to this argument, but oh yeah, “There are losers.”

The Vanderbilt men’s basketball team is quietly working its way into the Top 25.  The Commodores improved to 7-0 by defeating Georgia Tech this afternoon. This is a welcome development following a bittersweet football season, one in which Vandy showed significant improvement in its play but left several victories on the field. Coming only a few days after the consistently strong Vandy women downed #10 Duke, it’s been a good week on West End.

Life has a way of reminding us that final scores and other distractions ultimately aren’t all that important. The Nance family and everyone involved in this tragedy have my utmost sympathy today. I honestly can’t imagine what they and those close to them must be feeling right now.

Vanderbilt may need seven wins, not six, to earn its first bowl invitation since Ronald Reagan’s first term as president in 1982. Perhaps putting the cart before the horse (judging from the Dores’ tough remaining schedule), fans and alumni have created a Web site to show that plenty of supporters want to see the Black and Gold play in December or January. Their apparent purpose is to make the point that Vandy will bring plenty of fans to witness the rare spectacle of postseason football play. The Dores have been to a grand total of three bowl games during their history. Here’s hoping the Dores make their case on the field by winning seven–or, God help us–even more during November to make this debate a moot point.

Nashville’s 100 Oaks Mall is about to experience yet another overhaul, but this one is likely to forever change the immediate surrounding area. I like what I’m hearing about this project because it preserves what is working well on the property (major merchants such as CompUSA, Michael’s and the Hollywood 27 theaters) and makes good use of what is not working at all (the all-but-abandoned interior space of the mall).

This blend of medical and retail offerings on the same property seems like a natural fit, and it appears to be an emerging trend elsewhere, too. Note the increasing presence of walk-in clinics at pharmacy chains and other locations.

Another great element to this plan is the possibility for a pedestrian bridge across Thompson Lane to improve access to the growing Berry Hill merchants’ district. I believe that this area of town is in position for a major boom over the next several years: It has (fairly) convenient interstate access in a central part of the city, and it’s gaining high quality medical operations that will likely bring increasing demand for retail with them.

What’s in it for Vanderbilt? A visible, convenient and accessible location and relocation of several high patient-traffic services away from the highly congested campus on 21st Avenue. When completed, this site will be the largest Vanderbilt clinic outside the main campus and the most significant addition, according to hospital officials, since the hospital was constructed in 1980.

I admire City Paper sports writer Brett Hait’s boldness in predicting a bowl for Vanderbilt football for the first time in 25 years this season, and I sure hope he’s right:

 Is this the year Vanderbilt’s bowl drought comes an end? Allow me to speak for [Coach Bobby] Johnson for a moment. Yes, this is the year. The  Commodores haven’t been bowling since 1982, but the stars are aligned for that run of futility to come to an end…

When was the last time Vanderbilt entered a season with this much [talent and experience]? Seventeen starters return, and several were on the coaches’ Preseason All-SEC team this summer. Talent without experience sometimes falls short. Experience without talent doesn’t mean much, either. For a change, VU has both. 

Hait lists nine other reasons why the Commodores will be playing after their regular season ends in November. He makes a sound argument, but will “Vanderbilt” and “bowl-eligible” sound right in December? The buzz around this year’s team is as high as it has been since Jay Cutler’s departure or even during Cutler’s sophomore year, the last time pundits prognosticated postseason play for the ‘Dores, but the schedule is awfully tough in a crowded SEC East.

I really can’t fault Tennesseans for not wanting to spend more money on public education, as a new Vanderbilt study indicates:

The study showed that Tennesseans are concerned about their public education system and do not rate it highly or have confidence it is on the right track. But respondents said they are not eager to spend more money on the system, even though they say they would like teachers to be better paid.

Don’t get me wrong–it’s not that I don’t want to see public education improved. I do. I also think a major portion of the local budget should be dedicated to education in order to help allieviate crime and poverty.

I have two disclaimers to make: I never attended public school, and I have no idea what is wrong with our schools. It seems like a very complex problem with plenty of politics and competing agendas. (See my previous post regarding Nancy Pelosi and replace the political references with educational ones.)

Only increasing the budget isn’t enough. Is there a diagnosis and proposed strategic solution for improving our schools? Has there been an independent audit to look at how existing funds are spent?

This news from the Tennessean is a sad addition to an already sad story. I hope that there will be justice eventually for the Doster family, and I also hope that the suspect in question is deserving of having charges dropped. I honestly don’t know.