This is an excerpt from the NashVillager newsletter, your human-powered daily guide to Nashville. Click here to subscribe.
I love reading the Nashville subreddit.
Not all readers of this newsletter use Reddit. Some might not really know what it is, like my mom. She reads this newsletter every day, but she has no interest in Reddit.
(Mom, Reddit is a social site where people post links, start conversations, ask for advice — often in topic-focused pages, called subreddits. It has an endearing conversational tone. It probably also has some back alleys you might want to avoid.)
Someone recently asked for recommendations for good places in Nashville to cry in your car. I guess they’d just been through a tough breakup.
The responses were all so thoughtful and sincere. And there were multiple recommendations for Nashville cemetery parking lots. (They are usually empty — and you won’t seem out of place crying there. Brilliant.)
There’s also just practical things, like links to voting locations and the expected requests for help identifying spiders.
Why am I talking about Reddit?
A couple of days ago, SilentWalrus92 posted a photo of what appears to be a pristine admission ticket to the Opryland theme park!
That got me thinking: There are a lot of transplants in Nashville. Not everyone knows that we were once home to one of the world’s greatest theme parks of all time. It was the perfectly-sized, beautifully landscaped, something-for-everyone favorite destination of my youth.
It had a glorious log ride with a giant splash at the end (the Flume Zoom), a whitewater rafting ride (Grizzly River Rampage), and two big roller coasters: the Wabash Cannonball and the Rock n’ Roller Coaster (originally named the Timber Topper). The Wabash Cannonball got more attention because it went upside down, but the Rock n’ Roller Coaster was longer and had a thrilling corkscrew. It also had shows and employed a lot of local musicians. I could go on and on about this.
Anyway, it was torn down to build a mall — one that I’m sure you’ve heard of. But why?
Well, Jason Moon Wilkins explained it all in this story from 2018. It’s worth revisiting.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM