Fall Weather, Tailgating, Lack Of Hipsters
This morning when I said I was going for a run, I was happy to hear “I’ll come with you!”. That “run” turned into a walk, but I had company, Rob. Today is a home game for the Titians and while that means 100% nothing to me on any given day, today it meant a lot. My route is to walk out of my apartment, over the bridge, around the Titians Stadium and back home again. It’s an easy route with hills, flat spots and generally quiet. Not on home game days. On homes game days, where the game starts at noon, people are already grilling at 8:00 in the morning. So our walk was accompanied by the smell of grills firing up, what seemed like the entire force of Metro Police Officers, and an inexplicable amount of people playing corn hole (a game I will NEVER understand) while drinking beer. Did I mention it was 8:00 IN THE MORNING? These people are crazy!
The closer to the stadium we got, the more I realized, there is nothing that I feel that strongly about, not the way a football fan feel about their home team or for the game in general. As I walked I got an up front view, one I would have NEVER gotten before, of the tailgating process. There was a Jack Daniels tent set up with a full service bar, a large bar, like one you see in a restaurant. There were corporate sponsored tents, there were mom and pop tents, and there were local restaurants setting up tents. There were people already drinking beer, as if it was orange juice and eating hot dogs as if they were toast. I wondered to myself and out loud to Rob, where do these people find the whatever it is they have in them to feel this strongly about something and why don’t have that about anything? I feel strongly about my children, I would risk life and limb for them, I would do the same for Rob and maybe a handful of friends, but the football fan is a completely different animal. I certainly admire their dedication, but mostly I just don’t understand their dedication and I think I’m ok with that.
The other thing I noticed on my cultural tour of the tailgating process, was the distinct lack of the hipster population. Not one fedora, cup of coffee, tight jeans, no cardigans or plaid shirt to be found. There were pick up trucks pulling trailers, but not scooters. There were men and women dressed in a sea of blue (because it was the Titians and Cowboys, there was more blue than usual), but no plaid anything. I felt comforted to know there was no hipsters, that they were all rolling out of their “cool” little houses in East something or other, and walking or scootering to the local coffee place to mock the world at its uncoolness.
The lack of hipsters on this fall morning, made me think about the hipsters and how I had hoped they were a fad. The true hipsters of the 50’s & 60’s, the beatniks, in their dark coffee houses in SoHo, they would just shake their heads at today’s hipsters. This morning I felt like the hipster was extinct and I was surprised at how happy that made me, I was again jolted into the reality that perhaps Nashville is just too cool of a city for me, if I couldn’t tolerate the hipster, football, or tailgating.