First of all, Happy New Year! 2013 is here and we couldn’t be more excited. To start out the New Year, we wanted to make sure you knew about one of our favorite reads in town.
We recently had coffee with two bright, enterprising young women who are part of a new Nashville publication, a self-described culture magazine for our fair city called Native. This monthly publication is definitely something you’ll want to pick up off the newsstand the next time you’re at Dose, Frothy Monkey, Whole Foods, Barnes and Noble Vanderbilt, Bar 308, Barista Parlor or M. L. Rose (and many other places as well!). It’s full of great photography and articles on all the cool things being created right here in Nashville. We love our digital world at StyleBlueprint, yes, but we can’t imagine life without paper magazines –or books either– so when we discovered that Native was speaking our same “we love local” language, we knew you’d want to know about it, too!
Click on image to see current issue of Native
Launched in July of 2012 by a coterie of young, super talented creatives, Native is all about making Nashville “awesomer,” as they say on their Facebook page. Here’s what Native‘s editor-in-chief Dave Pittman says about Native’s mission (from the inaugural issue): “We’re here to document and share all the amazing things that are being poured, played, filmed, painted, shown, designed, cooked, ridden, sewn, or otherwise created here in Nashville. We do this because we love it. We love Nashville, and we love culture.”
Not a society magazine, when you flip through Native, you’ll find stories on people and places off the beaten path, like Santa’s Pub, a trailer-turned-karaoke-dive bar on Bransford that has garnered a cult-like following since its opening in 2011. (Incidentally, “Santa,” the owner, is like a biker gang version of St. Nick, complete with a smoker’s hack and gnarly beard. Pretty sure I wouldn’t want to find myself on his naughty list.)
Managing Editor Claire Gibson and Head of Sales and Public Relations Katrina Hartwig clued us in on another cool fact about the magazine: native, in their understanding of the word, applies to anyone who loves this city, whether you’re born here or a transplant, which makes perfect sense, as neither one is “native” to Nashville, in the traditional sense of the word. They point out that it doesn’t take long for people to become part of this community, which is one of the reasons Nashville is a great place to live. As neither Elizabeth, Liza or I were born or grew up in Nashville, we couldn’t agree more! In Dave Pittmans’ own words, “We decided to call the magazine “Native,” because Nashville is the kind of city where anyone can become one.”
If you haven’t picked up a copy yet (which, by the way, is FREE), you’ll want to. And be sure to share a copy with a friend so we can support this new publication highlighting cool and unusual things about Nashville.
Visit Native’s website, https://natv.is, or Facebook page, www.facebook.com/NativeNashville, to learn more.
