My Nashville Pilgrimage — Intro

Created on Sunday, 10 October 2010 05:00

Published on Sunday, 10 October 2010 11:58

Written by Randy Garbin

Let the record show that I, Randy Garbin, publisher of Roadside Magazine and Road​sideOnline​.com, two of the finest documents of the American back roads ever conceived, harbor no great admiration for the travelogue. Quite frankly, most of them bore me.

Why? Because the vast majority that I’ve ever had the pleasure to review lather on about the building, the scenery, and the food. I can see great buildings and eat good food anywhere. I can go to Fairmount Park in Philadelphia and see the forest primeval.

I look for the story — the narrative that documents the culture, and that cannot exist without talking to the people. And so, I will attempt to do that during my trip to Nashville, Tennessee. This trip, which will take me down the Route 11 corridor down the western side of Virginia and onto Route 70 into Tennesee will with any luck introduce me to the whole flavor of the region which I will explore.

Though Roadside may seem to some as a celebration of yesterday, I contend that what we’ve always covered merely acknowledged that we’ve lost our way in our quest for so-​called progress. We’ve left behind great ideas that still have great relevance to our modern society. In that effort to spread that message, I’ve always used the latest tools in publishing technology. Roadside Magazine which owes its very existence to the Macintosh computer, became one of the first publications to wholeheartedly adopt the Internet as a means of dissemination.

This trip to Nashville will also attempt to push the envelope. I hope to publish photos and video in near real-​time to our site as a first-​draft document of the week-​long trip. be

Using the services of Flickr​.com, I’ve created a photoset called Nashville, and as I shoot images from the trip, I will select on-​the-​fly the images that I hope to upload almost as soon as I take them. I have embedded this slide show from this Flickr set on the Road​sideOnline​.com site, and it will update with the latest images right after I upload them.

I could do this instantaneously, but because I opted not pay AT&T’s exhorbitant fees to tether my laptop to my iphone, I’ll simply have to wait until I reach another publicly available wifi hotspot.

I hope you enjoy the trip with me, and I hope you can send me feedback and maybe tips for things you think deserve “Roadside-​Approved” status.

First stop on this trip will be the Triangle Diner in Winchester, Virginia. I’m pretty sure they haven’t finished their restoration just yet, but I promise some excellent photos nonetheless.