My friends and I travel to Nashville to see independent and art films (and spend our dining dollars there) because local theaters won’t give a single screen to anything that isn’t mainstream and/or targeting the “youth” market.

We travel to Green Hills or Opryland theaters to view the global simulcast of Live from Lincoln Center performances (at $22 a head; there will be 11 operas broadcast Live in HD in 08-09) because local theaters said they “weren’t interested” in this programs which are perpetually sold out/SRO in Nashville. How hard would be to devote one of the smaller Great Escape theater screens for 11 Saturday afternoons a year? Dinner in Nashville and the show run $40-$50 a head that could be spent here if local theaters would smarten up and realize that there IS a demand for such things.

I buy my organic dry goods at a favorite store in Vermont twice a year at a super price and ship them home because there is no whole food or co-op market here. (I’ve been looking for four years and the most you get is a token organics aisle at Krogers). It’s good, but not enough.

I’d love to see a quality fashion outlet store(s) in town, perhaps a working gallery/arts complex with studios and an incubator arts programs in one of the city’s large old buildings.

I’d love to see Franklin Street become a pedestrian walkway with a sidewalk cafe or two and weekly concerts there or in Public Square.

I’d just about kill for a genuine Clarksville shoe store with attractive shoes designed for real feet and salespeople who know how to fit you to a good shoe. I found one such store — in Paris, Tennessee. On the way there my friend and I dined in Paris because you don’t drive all that way for just a pair of shoes.

Fortunately, my friends and I are not shy about stating our preferences: some stores, like Kroger’s, do listen (they now stock Remoulade Sauce after our repeated requests).

Franklin Street is my favorite street, in part because of its unique shops and quality merchandise. I love shopping there. But it is not enough to sustain the “downtown” as a destination.

Many of us feel that while the city may listen to the desires of its residents, it is going to do as it darn well pleases regardless of that public opinion. True destination development takes a lot of meticulous planning, careful design, and an integration of the scenic and the commercial; it must be user friendly. That takes 10-20 years of development.

In the mean time, in a “mean” economy, that’s a tough sell. And I’ll keep buying cards at Hodgepodge and poking around the other shops,just because I like them; I like “old main streets” — Franklin Street is one of those.