Kate Bigam Kaput

Review of Honky Tonk Central

Walking into Honky Tonk Central, all I could think...

Walking into Honky Tonk Central, all I could think was, "This is my worst nightmare." If you're not a major fan of crowds & country music, this might not be the bar for you. As my friends & I (a bachelorette party) wove our way through the first-floor throngs of people, we passed deeply accented folks wearing cowboy hats & flannel shirts, all fist-pumping to a live rendition of a VERY country song I'd never heard before. It was like a slow-motion scene from a movie, looking into all these people's eyes & seeing how much joy they felt at being there while I felt *completely the opposite.* Oh my God, it was gonna be a bad night.

But this is a four-star review, see? Which means things changed. This bar has multiple floors, & when we got to the second floor, we found things to be a lot more chill, much more our style. Did I mention that we're all Northerners? Country isn't quite our jam (why did we come to Nashville? Beats me), so we were thrilled to find that the live music on the second floor was more rock with a country twist - Tom Petty, Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, The Eagles. The kind of music you know in your soul. We claimed a corner of the room - which wasn't nearly as busy as downstairs - where we piled our coats & got to dancing. We had a great time, & we got fairly hammered because this bar is surprisingly inexpensive.

The people-watching is great, too. The second floor was filled with all kinds of characters, & the atmosphere in the bar was friendly & low-key enough that we struck up conversations & danced with some of them. Lots of interesting folks & good tunes. But beyond all that, it was a great space for dancing & not giving a damn who else was around, the way a bachelorette party & a good vacation ought to be.

The only negative is that the top floors close earlier than the first floor, so we were all sent back downstairs at some point. My friends & I still had a bucket of beers, so we settled into that terrible downstairs crowd to finish off our drinks before heading home. While we were watching the live band, one of my friends was robbed - like, someone just pickpocketed her wallet right out of her purse. She felt it, but thought it was because the place was so busy. By the time she realized what had happened, the perpetrator was long gone. As she sobbed & I made my way to a bouncer to tell them what had happened, some guy overheard me saying what had just happened, & he passed her wallet over to me. He'd found it on the floor, minus $150 cash but with all cards & her IDs still inside. It was the best-case scenario after being robbed, to be sure, but it was a low point of our visit.

In other words: When you find yourself at Honky Tonk Central, grab a bucket of beer, head up to the second floor, prepare to dance, & don't forget to bring a very, very secure purse.