WORDS Brent Rosen
I’m doing some people watching at Pinewood Social Club in Nashville. It’s in an old warehouse on the Cumberland River, and at 11:00 a.m. there are almost no open seats at any table, around the bar, or in the lounge furniture filling the restaurant’s nooks and crannies. They serve coffee, drinks, food, cocktails and wine all day long. The back half of the building is a boutique bowling alley and outside, overlooking the river, are a pool and hot tub. I watch a bachelorette party walk by headed to the pool, a doofus in a cowboy hat screaming something about Clemson Football, and a table of middle-aged people haggling over who gets the crispiest pieces of bacon from their breakfast side order. Approximately 150 people are in here, diverse in age and race, all enjoying the same place, possibly for the same reasons. And it’s making me contemplative.
What brought all of these people here? Love of food and drink plays some role, but Nashville, from the West End around Vanderbilt to up-and-came East Nashville, boasts dozens of places with similar menus serving similar food. The space itself probably plays some role, all white walls, exposed light bulbs, velveteen furniture and exposed architectural elements, but again, the warehouse style is hardly new. A crowd gathers near the door, at least 20 people waiting to for seats, some in beards, some in hats, some pretty women laughing at each other’s jokes.
A second High Life arrives. The new La Jolla comes to mind. I like it much more than the old La Jolla. The menu feels more inspired, the use of the Big Green Egg more novel, the location less cavernous, more intimate. The service remains the same. When I go to the new La Jolla, it feels like a different world from the old La Jolla. A world where people are laughing, talking loudly, ruddy from food and drink.
I think of True’s brunch. The bar full of service industry people ready to spend Saturday night’s money, a dining room where the church crowd drinks iced tea at tables next to young professionals grinding through mimosas in yesterday’s blue jeans, where the ratio of black to white feels representative rather than oblivious. People actually wait for tables on Sunday morning, filling the small lobby, overflowing the bar.
Two older couples wander by, one of the gentlemen brandishing an impeccable Rollie Fingers mustache. A few paces behind are three dudes in jeans, boat shoes, and University of Georgia polos, looking furtively for either beer or that bachelorette party — hard to tell. Another couple strolls toward the the bocce ball courts, drinks in plastic go-cups. It’s 11:38 and Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech have not yet made it through their first quarter of play.
Several hardcore bros arrive. Backwards hats, long shorts, aggressively athletic footwear in a place where the only athletic activity takes place in rented shoes. There is backslapping, shots are ordered. It is not yet halftime in the early slate of college football games. I remember when I was 24, fuller of hair and stronger of liver, a time when shots at 12:07 p.m. meant “good times” rather than alcoholism. Two skinny girls wander by, their body art set to “marvelous.” My server and I make eye contact, a subtle nod, another High Life.
Since 2000, Nashville has grown by 25%. That means one of every four people in this bar did not exist 14 years ago. That’s a weird thing to think about. The guy in the gym shorts and loafers, the curly-headed lady who just caught me staring, the server in the spectator shoes with the on-brand teal-colored laces, the distinguished looking older gentleman in the selvage shirt — one of them was drawn not only to this restaurant, but at some point to Nashville itself. Why?
Fun. That may seem like a simple answer, but it’s true. Pinewood Social is fun. Nashville is fun. The new La Jolla is more fun than the old La Jolla. Brunch at True is more fun than brunch anywhere else. People want to go places, to live places, that are fun. There is a lesson here for Montgomery: if you want to attract people to your business, people to your city — make it fun. Sit at Pinewood Social long enough and you realize it isn’t in the restaurant business, the bar business, or the bowling business, but the fun business.
Some movement. The entire shared-workspace table at the front of Pinewood gets up to leave — a group of 20 disappears into the rest of their day. A party of four, three parties of two and and a single guy on a date with his laptop replace the former crowd. The table introduces itself to the rest of the table, and business as usual resumes at Pinewood Social.