The Music City Loop — a two-way, 9.5-mile airport-to-downtown underground tunnel for Teslas — is happening whether we like it or not. Digging has already started on the controversial project, which was the brainchild of Elon Musk’s Boring Company, a handful of Tennessee GOP leaders, four groundhogs and zero geologists.
Critics of the tunnel say the privately funded project is rife with corruption, citing lack of transparency and a complete disregard for its environmental impact. Supporters of the tunnel — people who, historically, have always known what it means to be cool — say the project is “very cool!”
Details are scarce. Long-term effects are unknown. Benefits to Nashvillians? Nonexistent. The best we can do is dream up future uses for the tunnel when the dazzle (i.e., money) wears off.
Here are some ideas.
1. An underground speakeasy that’s actually underground. It serves Prohibition-era cocktails and hosts exclusive vinyl listening parties. Patrons enter by lifting a “secret” manhole cover and plummeting 30 feet into the “vibey” space.
Local officials say Music City Loop proposal from Elon Musk’s The Boring Company has moved too quickly with too little information
2. Much-needed public transportation solution for the people* of Nashville. (*People who live inside BNA.)
3. Lazy river!
4. The Tunnel: An immersive entertainment venue. It’s like The Sphere in Las Vegas but with more moonshine-related dinner theater and less oxygen.
5. Much-needed public transportation solution for the people** of Nashville. (**Cave crickets, crayfish, Tennessee woodrats and tricolor cave bats.)
6. Residential real estate concept: 1,000 tall-and-skinny houses built high, laid flat and shoved into the tunnel like loaves of bread. Starting at $1.5 million.
7. World’s longest two-lane bowling alley!
8. Commercial real estate concept: “Sub-Gulch.” Not to be confused with North Gulch, South Gulch or the Gulch. It’s Sub-Gulch. It’s different. It’s a way of life. It has a Party Fowl. And bats.
9. Much-needed public transportation solution for the Fraggles of Fraggle Rock.
10. Filming location for 9-1-1: Nashville (Season 3, Episode 1): Kane Brown’s rowdy performance at The Tunnel triggers a rare earthquake-fire-tornado across the city.
11. Subterranean gerrymandering.
12. Venue for Swan Ball 2027, benefiting the Cave Cricket Foundation (litigation pending).
13. A private space for Proud Boys to march as much as they’d like without anyone ever knowing or caring or showing them the exit.
14. A private space for Tennessee’s GOP to hold private meetings about “very cool” tunnel projects. No Justin Joneses allowed.
15. Filming location for 9-1-1: Nashville (Season 10, Episode 1): The children of Sub-Gulch have developed rickets from lack of sunlight. The only person who can save them is Nashville’s newest, most handsome 911 operator … Kane Brown.
16. Lazy river! Did I already say that?
Julia Bensfield Luce is a regular contributor to McSweeney’s and author of her own humor Substack, The Dummiss. Julia, her husband and her friends are the self-proclaimed geniuses behind SkyMall Product Review, one of the stupidest blogs of the mid-Aughts (according to NPR’s Marketplace).
