Living Outside the "Box"

This morning, I'm having a latte and muffin at Box, Bob Bernstein's (of Bongo Java fame) bakery and coffee shop on 10th Avenue that opened today.  There's a nice mix of sixties music playing (California Dreaming)

For years, I joked about living in the 'hood.  And when Jude and I bought our house on Elliott Avenue  in 2002, in many ways it was the 'hood.  Waverly-Belmont (where we lived) and 12South was on the sketchy side.  The houses were older with many in need of repair.

There was nothing on 10th Avenue except and old school building that had closed in the eighties and was being used as  teacher resource center for Metro Nashville teachers.  There was a smallish, older, decrepit cinder block building - on the site where I sit right now - that for a time housed a hat store, of all things.  Mostly, the building sat vacant.  I ran up and down 10th Avenue hundreds of times as it part of almost every route I had to and from our house on Elliott Avenue.  I strolled J.P., later Joe, on 10th Avenue on many a Saturday or Sunday afternoon as they napped in the City Elite.

Once, more than a decade ago, as I was running down 10th Avenue (bandanna on my head) I saw a man mowing his grass with my lawnmower!  It was taken apart and unchained from the back porch of my house and stolen while we were having a privacy fence installed.  And there it was a few days later.  I though better of stopping and trying to reclaim it, instead chalking the theft up to living in the 'hood.  It made for a good story, of course, one I told often.

12th Avenue wasn't much better.  The only real restaurant was "Mirror," run by Michael and Colleen, whom we met through our friends, Hal and Kim.  Mafiozza's finally opened, as did Frothy Monkey (coffee) and Rumor's Wine Bar.  Suddenly, it was off to the races.

When J.P. and I headed out to stroll the neighborhood - as we so often did after he was born - we rarely ran into any other parents strolling their child.  Truly, we had the neighborhoods almost to ourselves - Waverley-Belmont, 12South and Belmont.  And, as you know if you've read this blog for any length of time, we strolled through every square inch of the neighborhood.  We were urban pioneers in a sense.

Fast forward 14-15 years and I find myself living in the hottest part of town, whatever that means.   We've moved from Elliott Avenue to Linden Avenue.  12South is replete with restaurants, boutiques and coffee shops.  There are condominium developments springing up like patches of weeds, seemingly overnight, on 10th Avenue, 12th Avenue and Belmont Boulevard.  From our house, we can walk to more than 25 restaurants - good ones, too.  I also can (and often do) walk to the Belcourt Cinema which, of course, has been renovated.

Everywhere I look, there are houses being demolished with new, larger ones rebuilt in their place.  Renovation projects are taking place on every corner.  Sadly, developers are cramming two houses, sometimes duplexes, on a single lot.  Tall skinny houses, like shoeboxes set on their end.  Ugly.

Waverly-Belmont Elementary School reopened - after extensive renovations and additions - in the same place it was located on 10th Avenue.  And now, "Box" is open right next door.  Retail has come to 10th Avenue.  Crazy and completely unexpectedly.  Who would have thought it would happen 15 years ago, when we moved into the 'hood?

I miss some of "the old" - my house and neighbors on Elliott Avenue, for sure.  Mirror and, especially, the patio at Rumor's Wine Bar.  I miss the slower pace and less traffic.  Truthfully, I miss the feeling of being in on something early, of being on the cutting edge of a new idea.  I miss being different, being unique, in terms of where we have chosen to live and raise out boys.  I even miss the excitement tinged with the element of danger that comes with living in a developing area, as opposed to an area that's been developed.

Above all, I think, I miss living outside the box.