Nashville Trip Report (May 9th, 2011 — Canucks at Predators edition)

Well, I still intend on more general recapping, but as this is obviously fresh in my mind, I thought that people might enjoy reading it. My friend Drew (a fellow native Washingtonian) and I, in somewhat bandwagon-like fashion, have been enjoying the Canucks’ playoff run. Bandwagon probably isn’t the term since Vancouver has always been my team of choice, but my interest in hockey waxes and wanes. I always have thought that it’s a great sport, and when I have a team doing well (such as this year, or the Olympics last year), I really enjoy it…but I don’t always pay close attention to it. Drew and I were at the bar for game 7 of Canucks-Blackhawks in the first round, in a bar full of obnoxious Chicago fans…that description is kind of a redundancy, as I don’t know of many non-obnoxious Chicago fans to be in existence. I truly love the city of Chicago, but I detest their sports fans. They might be my least favorite sports city in America now as a result. Watching Vancouver score the OT goal to shut this entire bar up was such a sweet moment, and we immediately started planning for the possibility of going to a game in the upcoming series against Nashville. For one, I’d never been to a hockey game in my life. For two, I’m always looking for an excuse to head to Nashville since it’s one of my favorite cities in existence. Games three and four coincided with our finals schedule, so we just pre-ordered game six tickets and crossed our fingers that there would actually be a game six. This led us to some rather unfaithful thoughts during game five when the Canucks were trying to close things out, since we were really looking forward to our road trip.

Drew and I take off down the road to Nashville a bit before noon. The drive from here to Nashville is fairly lengthy and somewhat boring, but I threw together a playlist before taking off that we both enjoyed; he is decidedly not a country fan, so I largely left any and all country off the playlist with the exception of the Zac Brown Band. There’s simply no excuse for not liking them unless you haven’t heard them, and there’s becoming less and less excuse to have not heard them as time goes by either. (Link)

First thing we do is beeline to the first Jack in the Box, since we both think it’s the greatest fast food in existence and Nashville (and other equidistant cities like St. Louis) is as close as we live to one. I see when going home that it’s proliferating more and more back in Washington. When we stopped for gas in Kentucky, we were both hungry but refused to satiate our appetites because we wanted to build anticipation for the impending Ultimate Cheeseburger. This was great as always. We then head to our hotel; we didn’t book a nice one, since our entire use of it was going to be to stop off, leave our stuff, and then immediately cab it downtown. We would return really late just to pass out and then get up and leave in the morning, so basically we just chose it based on being an affordable one in a convenient location that was a quick cab ride away from the stadium. When we walked in to check in, sporting our Canucks gear already, there was some crazy-looking old dude sitting out front who glared at us and mumbled “Canucks…” I just walked past him. I thought to myself, “Sir, I’d love to talk trash with you, but you frighten me.” There was a number of shady-looking people hanging around here. As I’m waiting for my turn to check in, my friend leans in and asks me if I locked my car. I was worried that I didn’t know the answer. Perhaps I should have paid a bit more for our hotel room.

The stadium is right at the end of Music Row, so while we tell the cabbie to take us to the stadium, we mention that we’re going to have a few drinks before the game and he drops us across the street from the arena in front of some of the bars. This is about 4:30 local time, and the game starts at 7 there so we’ve got some time to kill. We disembark and head into the first one that attracts us to grab our first beer. We sit down next to two guys in the bright yellow shirts that I’ve seen populating all of Bridgestone Arena during the playoffs. I dig it when sports crowds manage to unify in one color like that, but yellow is sort of an eyesore on TV. Anyway, as we saddle up next to them, the bartender smiles and makes a comment to them, “Better not say anything about Canada…” They look over to see us, and then greet us. One of them says, “We’re actually Canadian.” I laugh and say, “And we’re American. Guess we’re all a bunch of traitors.” (Note: I’m amazed at how much flack I take from my friends for rooting for a Canadian team. Obviously this element doesn’t exist nearly as much in Washington since the Canucks are the closest thing to a home team there.) We chat with them for a bit, but the live singer here sucks so we move on after one beer. At the next one we actually let the bartender talk us into ordering a couple of Molson Canadians. I liked the idea, even though I know I don’t really like this beer. We soldier up and put them away. More chatting with Nashville people. These really are some of the nicest and friendliest people you’ll ever meet…even when wearing enemy colors, it’s incredibly difficult to have a nasty exchange with them. I commented to my friend that picking a fight with one of them would be as hard as that guy in Fight Club trying to randomly pick a fistfight with a priest. For our part, we’re both really easy to get along with in these scenarios too, so hopefully we did our part to give Canuck fans a good name in Nashville (I know that Canuck fans aren’t the most well-liked group generally in the hockey world). One random saw us, was already drunk, and said, “Hey! **** the Canucks.” I just smirk at him and tell my friend that it’s almost a relief to run into one actual enemy fan around here. We head into our third bar, where we end up settling in until gametime. The band here was excellent; played a lot of country, but their countrified covers of non-country songs were great too. Their twangy take on Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” was great; their country version of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” was pretty funny, even if not actually all that good. (Confession: I like that song as sung by Lady Gaga.)

We head into the stadium and find our seats. We were stationed in the 300 level, directly above the goal where ultimately each of the three goals was scored. It would have been a great view, but one guy in front of us was really quick to stand up the second something got interesting and at times it obscured my view when I wasn’t quick enough to jump to my feet behind him. Honestly, I wish people just stood up all game long here or at least more consistently; I love standing at sporting events and concerts. Sitting feels lame, especially in the playoffs, and I prefer to confine that to timeouts/intermissions. Anyway, we stood up for the intros and the national anthems. We proudly sang along with “O Canada,” playing up the fake role of being Canadians. Charlie Daniels was there to sing the American anthem; he looks downright odd without any kind of hat on, but anyway it was cool to see him sing something live. This being my first game, I really enjoyed taking in the view and seeing the wider angle of all of the action as it developed. The Canucks scored really early to take the lead, to which my friend and I obviously stood up and cheered. We quickly realized that we were VERY alone in this stadium. I couldn’t hear any other pop from the crowd when this happened. Usually there’s a bit more of a visiting presence than that at basically any game. Our only encounter with Canucks fans the entire outing was a couple of them shouting out to us from across the street before the game. Anyway, after leading 1-0, we got on the power play on a penalty that angered the live crowd; we never saw a good angle on replay, so it was tough to tell whether it was a genuine bad call or just something that a live crowd gets idiotically riled up about for no good reason. This became relevant because we scored quickly into this power play to grab an early 2-0 lead. Friend and I stand up and cheer again; a guy behind us says, “****, these guys are happy about this? That’s a cheap goal after a call like that.” I rolled my eyes; yes you idiot, I’m sure you’d be crying in the bathtub over it if your team scored on a power play after a penalty that we never even saw much of an angle on. For our part, we mind our manners in visiting stadiums; we stand up and cheer when our team does well, otherwise we shut up. I figure that’s how visiting fans should act. Given the low-scoring nature of this series and the basic impotence of the Nashville offense, it basically felt pretty strongly for the entire game that a 2-0 lead would probably be insurmountable…and it was, as we skated to the 2-1 win. Definitely a good time.

After the game, we head down the street to a brewery I’d eaten at a couple of months ago to grab a post-victory meal. After this we head into the karaoke bar up the way. We settle in with more drinks as people do songs…I was planning to sing one too, though I got a bit shy when like the first 6+ people that went up were really good. I resolutely told my friend that I was NOT going to go sign up for a song until someone sucked. This made him laugh a couple of songs later when, on cue, I jumped up and headed to the booth to sign up. My turn eventually came and I hit the stage. Before my song started, I said, “Hope you’ll forgive me for the shirt. We can all be friends again now, right?” I was afraid upon saying it that this could come off as arrogant bragging, but my friend assured me that it didn’t and that everyone out at their tables took it in good humor. When I sing, I have an okay voice but a severely limited range (yes, if you’ve heard me sing along in the car, I probably sounded brutal…again, limited range, and even worse when I’m trying to match the key being sung in on a recorded track) so I generally try to stick with songs that have a low register. I did “Summertime Blues” since it stays low and since I can replicate the super low speaking voice on moments like I’d like to help you son, but you’re too young to vote. I requested the Alan Jackson version just because people were mostly doing country here; also it basically doesn’t deviate much at all from the original except that the instruments playing the song are country. Anyway, I did pretty well and the crowd seemed to like it. Drew, too scared to do a song himself, gave me props. We had a couple more drinks, I did one more song (Brooks & Dunn’s “My Next Broken Heart” — Link of Brad Paisley singing it at a tribute show), and we moved along. We tried one place, which was pretty lame, and headed into another. On my way into the next one, a girl stopped me to say something. It was loud and I had to do the “what?” thing twice. Eventually I understood her; she said, “Hey, I heard you singing. You were really good!” I’m very hit-or-miss on singing, and probably more miss than hit, so I appreciated the compliment and thanked her. We took in some more good live music at this place, and after that just kind of called it a night since the city was losing steam around this time (1:30 a.m. or so) on a Monday night. We cabbed it back and passed out on our concrete mattress, ending a very enjoyable outing.

Advertisement