Vision Zero Crime
🌃 Cities choose to allow crime · Ford pumps the brakes · Free parking · Cookin' in the courts · Weapons review · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone. Tolerating crime is a choice… Ford pumps the brakes on Oval City… Free parking downtown? Only if you’re special… And there’s a new horror movie out called Weapons that looks pretty interesting.
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With Trump federalizing the Washington D.C. police department and pledging to crack down on crime, it’s a good time to remind everyone that the level of acceptable violent crime is zero. You may not like what Trump is doing, but it is within his powers as the nation’s chief executive.
As I’ve mentioned before, the efforts of El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to protect his citizens from gang violence showed the entire world that tolerating criminal activity is a choice. Bukele took El Salvador from the world’s most dangerous country to the safest in under a decade simply by locking up the people committing the crimes.
Our perspective on public safety in the United States is so warped that we are now asked to accept some level of criminal activity as a vague cost of freedom or justice or some other ideological totem. In other words, we choose to let crime proliferate with short sentences for offenders, loose bail policies, and understaffed police departments.
Whether you are a direct victim of a crime or not, it affects us all in some way. City resources pour in to address it, taking resources away from other concerns; parts of town plagued by crime fall into ruin; and families are torn asunder.
Fortunately, crime is a very simple problem to address: you lock up the people who repeatedly commit the crimes, as Nashville has done over the past two years.
The problem, of course, is that every advance in the right direction on crime reduction results in a chorus of shrieks about how now we don’t need to worry about it anymore. Either that, or some Orwellian dismissal of very real public safety concerns as we’re seeing in D.C. right now.
But the rational response should be to continue doing the same things that reduce crime and do more of them. Reduce it as close to zero as you possibly can. Liberate the parts of the city overcome by the thrall of the criminal. Solve the issue once and for all so we can move on to bigger and brighter things. American cities sag under the weight of the criminal problem and downplay it at their own peril. DAVIS HUNT
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🪫 Ford Pumps The Brakes On EV Production Last week, Ford Motor Company confirmed that it’s delaying the production of two next-generation electric vehicles until 2028. This includes delaying the rollout of the electric pickup trucks that will be produced at BlueOval City facilities in Stanton, Tennessee. Though the production has been postponed, the campus in West Tennessee will begin producing prototypes in 2027.
Meanwhile, Ford just announced that it will invest $2 billion to convert an auto manufacturing plant in Louisville, Kentucky. According to Ford President and CEO Jim Farley, the investment will help the company launch a mid-sized EV pickup truck by 2027. It’s worth noting that Tennessee invested $1 billion to attract Ford to the Volunteer State in 2021, and this is the second time Ford has delayed production in Tennessee. For now, the Volunteer State will have to continue waiting on the thousands of new jobs promised by the company.
🅿️ Free Parking For Downtown Musicians Several downtown Metropolis parking lots will be free for local musicians who play at venues in the city. The initiative, known as Park & Play, appears to be an extension of Metropolis’ Musicians Discount Program, which is dedicated to lowering parking costs for Broadway musicians. “Nashville's musicians are the heartbeat of our city, and Metropolis is here to keep that rhythm flowing strong,” reads the company’s website.
In sharp contrast to this widely supported initiative, the tech-forward parking company has received considerable pushback over the years. Metropolis has racked up bad reviews, complaints, and lawsuits since rapidly expanding its AI-powered parking operation downtown. Claims that their signs are deceptive, their user technology requirements are discriminatory, and that their prices and parking ticket fees are exploitative and exorbitant have plagued the company for years.
⚖️ What’s Cooking In The Courts Yesterday, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the final appeal against Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s Choose How You Move referendum, officially upholding the $3.1 billion transit plan. Though 65 percent of Davidson County voters approved O’Connell’s new transit sales tax, the Committee to Stop an Unfair Tax quickly took legal action against Metro following the vote last November.
In the initial suit, the group claimed that O’Connell’s plan would misuse state IMPROVE Act funding and that the ballot language and information campaign connected to the referendum were misleading to the public. Since then, the case has been dismissed all the way up the food chain.
In other courtroom drama, State Senator Ken Yager (R-Kingston) walked away with just a slap on the wrist after pleading no contest to DUI charges related to an incident in Georgia. Last December, the Tennessee lawmaker was booked by Georgia state troopers after fleeing the scene of a car accident. According to the Banner, when Yager was caught, he was visibly intoxicated, covered in urine, and blew a .14 on a breathalyzer.
DEVELOPMENT
- Hospitality vet plans local grocery store, cafe for Germantown (NBJ)
- Little Hats Italian Market in Germantown expands, offers pizza (NBJ)
- On-site work underway on west side townhome project (Post)
- Berry Hill recording studio building sells for $1.8M (Post)
✹ REVIEW: WEAPONS (2025)
August long ago gained the moniker of Hollywood’s dumping ground, a reputation that has only worsened in the age of franchise IP. But the surprise $42 million opening of Zach Cregger’s gory horror whodunnit Weapons last week demonstrates that the summer movie season still has some life left.
The follow-up to Cregger’s 2002 sleeper hit, Barbarian, the film charts the aftermath of how the sudden disappearance of 17 children who collectively walked out of their homes at 2:17 am reverberates through a small American town. Structured as five vignettes from the perspectives of the characters at the center of the tragedy, it offers a Rashomon Gothic take on a culture usually reserved for the Hallmark movie.
Unlike typical summer horror offerings, Weapons boasts a cast of formidable actors, including Josh Brolin as a dad in mourning, Doctor Strange’s Benedict Wong as an emphatic principal, and Ozark’s Julia Garner as the semi-alcoholic teacher in charge of the class who went missing. By grounding the film in such detailed character work, Cregger humanizes the horror and makes it all the more effective.
However, while Weapons serves as a well-crafted respite from the horror formula, what keeps it from reaching the eschalons of instant classics like Hereditary and Us is its cursory attention to “flyover” America and its dominant beliefs. For all his impressive character work and echoes of COVID era education commentary, Cregger never bothers to provide his setting with any real identity—a lifelong city dweller’s imagining of what Trump County life is like.
Such also extends to the film’s central mystical threat which the director unleashes into a world bereft of religious belief, a bedrock that separates horror classics like The Exorcist and The Conjuring from their imitators.
Regardless, Weapons is the rare studio horror entry that seems to be trying. All flaws aside, it still towers above its recent competition.
Weapons is now playing in theaters.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
✨ Spirit Ritual: Space Age Jazz Happy Hour @ The Eighth Room, 6p, Info
🎧 The Weeknd @ Nissan Stadium, 7p, $51+, Info
🎸 The Fray - How To Save A Life: The 20th Anniversary Tour @ Ryman Auditorium, 7p, $163+, Info
🎸 Honky Tonk Tuesday @ Eastside Bowl, 8p, $10, Info
+ two-step lessons @ 7p, The Cowpokes @ 8p
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
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Today's newsletter is brought to you by Megan Podsiedlik (Nashville), Jerod Hollyfield (Crowd Corner), Camelia Brennan (Local Noise), and Davis Hunt (everything else).