And Now I Love Honky Tonks

A few weeks ago, Tarrah and I took a trip with another friend to Nashville.  I had never been, but the other two had.  It’s always been on my list of places to visit and ironically, I have traveled extensively through Tennessee, I just never made it to Nashville.  I’m not a huge country fan, but I can appreciate it, and come on, fried chicken is one of my favorite things.

My favorite part of the Nashville experience was Broadway.  A street filled with bars, aka honky tonks, playing live music morning, noon and night is my kind of place.  There was even live music being played in the airport when I landed at 9:30 a.m.

Broadway reminded me a lot of Vegas.  It’s a street filled with bars, neon lights and a bunch of drunk people.  While talking to two other women who were also on a girl’s weekend, they pointed out that it was almost worse than Vegas because Nashville is much more condensed.  True dat.

The great thing about visiting a honky tonk is that you don’t have to be a country music fan.  Yes, they play country music, but they also played a lot of cover songs from a lot of different bands.  Basically, if you leave money in their tip jar, you can request whatever song you like.

Honky Tonks

Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge is one of the more popular bars, and while we were there, I thought I was going to die.  It was so super crowded, and I don’t typically do well in crowds.  But I hung tight and eventually we settled into a spot where I didn’t feel like I was going to get trampled.  Until a girl and her boyfriend walked by and she said, “This is so unsafe.  What if something happens?”  I squelched the rising panic by drinking more beer.

Tootsie’s has three levels, with a band playing on each one.  My favorite honky tonk was Nudie’s, with Layla’s being a close second.  One thing we noticed was that they don’t serve draft beer, everything is out of a bottle.  Not so great for the environment, and not so great for the bar backs.  A bartender told us the bars are so old it’s not cost effective to put in tap lines and for the volume of beer they sell, it’s more efficient to pops caps off bottles than wait for a tap to fill a glass.

Our first night in town, we strictly hung out on Broadway.  This was the night of the longest World Series game ever, with a Boston Red Sox fan in our midst, we watched the game starting at dinner, and finishing three honky tonks later at 2:00 a.m.

The second night, we ventured out to East Nashville, but ended our night on Broadway where we endured being stalked by a strange Italian guy, spilled beers, and some pretty drunk peeps.  Good people watching.

I loved Nashville and had a super fun weekend with super fun ladies who like to drink beer and listen to live music.  Yay for Nashville, yay for honky tonks, and yay for Broadway!

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