Buy Local: From East Nashville to 12South, Nashvillians are finding new reasons to spend close to home

"Paint I can't touch 'em on," Varallo says. "They've got what you call 'loss leaders,' and I don't have enough room. I've got five aisles in here." But to hear his customers tell it, saving a few bucks isn't their only concern.

"My view on it is, this place has been through rough times when East Nashville wasn't booming the way it is now, and they stuck with it," says Mike Huffaker, a budget analyst who stopped in to check out Cumberland's display case of pocket knives. "We're sticking with them now."

The Internet, which dealt a crippling blow to entertainment retailers such as Media Play and Tower, has proved to be a useful organizing tool for supporters of independent local businesses. One Facebook page, Be Local, Buy Local Nashville, exhorts its 482 members to "spend our dollars supporting our Nashville neighbors instead of chain stores and restaurants."

"A lot of products we sell are things people could get cheaper off the Internet," says Elise Tyler, co-owner of the Halcyon Bike Shop in 12South, which repairs and sells used bikes, teaches a pro-bono bicycle-repair workshop with the Oasis Center and carries a widening array of Nashville-made music and products. "Our customers will research parts online, then come into our store and buy them or special-order them, knowing they're going to be paying more. They just want to help us out."

Halcyon Bike Shop is one of 13 Nashville businesses listed on the website for the 3/50 Project, an Internet meme that surfaced in the national media over the summer. Started by Minneapolis resident Cinda Baxter, the project encourages people to spend $50 of their monthly budget among three brick and mortar businesses in their hometown—on the assumption that if half the working U.S. population followed suit, the results would pump more than $42.6 billion in revenue into local economies.

But Tyler, 25, a native Nashvillian who opened her (first) business during the financial frostbite of last fall's plunge toward recession, believes that the benefits of buying local go beyond keeping dollars close to home. It preserves the things that keep Nashville unique—the historic hardware store, the heirloom tomatoes and beans specific to local soil, the music made and enjoyed every night in Nashville studios, clubs and honky-tonks.

"When I was a kid, there seemed to be this romanticism of giant retailers," Tyler says, chuckling. "Cool Springs—it was so fancy! So modern! Now a lot of West End is just one giant corporate street, and I think it's encouraged people to pay attention. Nashville is a small-town city, but the thing I've learned since opening the shop is that the variety of Nashvillians is unbelievable. Local businesses are fundamental to that."