On-street parking and the massive influx of La La Land-seeking latte lovers have made it pretty much impossible to drive from Hillsboro Village, where I live, to the Melrose Publix, where I want to go five times a week. Unless 12South denizens agree to either convert the neighborhood to exclusively one-way streets or parking only on one side of the street, it’s impossible for two midsize cars to pass each other while traveling east/west in 12South without risking the loss of a side mirror.
So your choices are either jousting straight at each other until someone chickens out, or instead, doing what polite drivers have learned to do. These kind souls engage in a sort of friendly game of “Frogger,” politely ducking perpendicularly between parked cars for an instant to make room for an oncoming traveler, or stopping to wave someone else forward from 100 feet away.
I know the urban planners of the then-Waverly-Belmont neighborhood couldn’t have anticipated these difficulties when they ran the streetcar line down 12th. It was an eminently walkable neighborhood back then, and no one would have predicted that cross streets needed to be at least 35 feet wide to accommodate two Tesla Cybertruck phallic extensions parked on different sides of the street while two more attempt to travel in opposite directions down the same road. The sort of rigmarole required to travel the side streets would be unheard of in most neighborhoods. But in 12South, it’s the only way to pick up your damned Pub Sub before it gets cold!
—Chris Chamberlain
Contributor, Nashville Scene
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