Bubble Trouble

So you just arrived in Nashville—shower caddy and up-to-date Facebook profile complete with hilariously irreverent "interests" in tow—and it seems, like, totally awesome. There's a Panera Bread near campus, a Starbucks right next door and some area called Demon-something Street with plenty of super-cool, happening bars filled with nubile, well-lubricated peers. It's a practical playground of tantalizing distractions.

OK, reality check. We're here to tell you that all that might seem like a fantasy land now, but in a couple years you'll be bored—even if you don't really realize it. There's a big bad world out there beyond the warm, safe embrace of the familiar cradle between Belmont and West End. First let's start with why you should go, and then we can move onto some tips for assimilation.

Food
Vanderbilt is like a grape that rolls under the couch, and chain restaurants are the little pieces of dust and cat hair—they stick right to it, creating something less than appetizing. Five Guys, Qdoba, Burger King, Taco Bell, TGI Fridays, Starbucks, the list goes on and on—kind of like your roommate's phone calls to her high school boyfriend. (It'll never last.) Hopefully, you didn't travel far from home to eat the same processed drivel that you ate in high school (except for Fourth Meal—we make a specific exception for Fourth Meal, especially in a town with a tragic dearth of late-night eating options).

Why settle for a pizza from Papa John's when you could be munching on the wood-oven-fired crust of a City House pie, bursting with the earthiness of melty anchovies (they're the bacon of the sea), fresh mozzarella and crushed red pepper? Why choke down the yellow ooze most places call nacho cheese when you could be inhaling freshly fried chips topped with black beans and creamy white queso at East Nashville's Alley Cat (while enjoying a frosty local brew of course)? Why disappoint a date with a trip to P.F. Chang's—where you also went for your 15th birthday party—when you could be impressing them with your worldliness by introducing them to the spicy, bubbling pleasures of So Gong Dong Tofu House's revelatory silken tofu soup?

We've just covered the fact that you will eat better if you expand your horizons, but you can also eat cheaper, leaving more of mommy and daddy's money for booze and flat-front khakis. A trio of tacos at La Hacienda comes in at under $4 and a gut-busting bowl of fresh vermicelli with charbroiled meat and tangy vinegar sauce will cost you less than $6 at Miss Saigon out on Charlotte Pike. (And make sure to stock up on authentic, imported ramen at K & S World Market next door—it will change your life.)

Culture/Night Life
You will no doubt become familiar with The Belcourt—our local gem of an independent theater—as you traipse by it on the way to grabbing some chicken tenders at McDougal's. But if you're lucky, you might also learn to take advantage of this local landmark by catching midnight movies (everything from The Jerk to Dazed and Confused to the now-legendary screening of R. Kelly's epic "Trapped in the Closet") and taking in excellent, intimate concerts by acts both national (M. Ward, Josh Ritter, Nels Cline) and local (Brooke Waggoner, American Bang).

Other local attractions that can help improve your campus Q Score by giving you something to actually talk about at parties—the whole Natural Light vs. Busch debate gets old fast—include the wonderful gardens out at Cheekwood, superb touring exhibitions at The Frist (a showcase of Rodin sculpture opens this fall) and the First Saturday Art Crawl, an evening showcase of downtown galleries that features every college student's favorite thing—free booze.

There are also some great bars around town offering a much more diverse clientele than those on Demonbreun, in Hillsboro Village and downtown. If you're brave, head right across West End to dive bar paragon Springwater or spend a night bar hopping in East Nashville—you might even nab a date with a local indie rock luminary still working toward that elusive big break.

Assimilation
Now that we've convinced you to do it—to leave the comfortable confines of the campus bubble and explore the very best this eclectic town has to offer—we have a few more tips. When you're in college, it's easy to feel like you own the world: You're young, you're drunk and you don't have to go to work tomorrow. (Thanks, Sparknotes!) But in some ways, you're still a visitor here, a temporary interloper who can occasionally rub locals the wrong way. So we will offer a couple helpful tips.

1. You must own one outfit that's not pink—that goes for guys and gals. We know we're stereotyping here, but there seems to be no dearth of pastels, khaki, pearls and little horses over in that region of town. It helps if you don't look like an alien from Planet Preppy.