Let’s get right to it, Nashville has a reputation — and that reputation comes with bargain-bin cowboy hats and neon-pink boots. For every legendary corner of Music City, there is a bachelor/ette party stumbling close behind. What is a gaggle of “woo-girls” or “hell-yeah-guys” celebrating the impending nuptials of their bestie to do? Why, rent a crudely modified school bus and crawl through downtown — obviously.
So Lower Broadway after dark looks less like a thoroughfare and more like a neon-lit conga line on wheels. These “transportainment” rigs are a major part of modern Music City, and the lingering spirits of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams must love hearing Katy Perry cranked to 11 as they inch past the Ryman Auditorium. After all, some of these rolling Franken-buses have lost their original roofs, gained LED lights, and — memorably in one instance, sprouted a functional hot tub ensuring the patrons weren’t the only things getting sloshed.
With Nashville making more traffic stops per capita than the national average, the whole scene raises the question: Are these things actually legal? The short answer is a heavily-asterisked “yes.” The long answer is a master class in regulatory whack-a-mole, public outcry, and the sheer, unadulterated chaos that defines modern Nashville.
From School Bus To Booze Cruise: The Anatomy Of A Nashville Party Machine
If you can dream it, and it has wheels, someone in Nashville has probably turned it into a party bus. The baseline model for many of these operations is the humble school bus — its roof unceremoniously chopped off like these other custom drop-top mods. The iconic school bus yellow is usually covered up and the interior gutted to make room for benches and dancing. But why stop at school buses? The selection includes an entire menagerie of vehicular oddities…