Honolulu Weekly

Hank Williams floats easy through the smoke and past the red, white and blues hanging everywhere. There’s a big guy at the bar with a high-and-tight, paying for two Bud Lights and four shots of Jaeger. ‘Tab?’ asks the bartender. She wears a white cowboy hat, hip-hugging jeans and a gauzy white shirt. The guy leaning over to the bar says, ‘Mine’s the American flag card, sis, and I’m fixin’ to get full as a tick on the liquor, so keep her safe, willya?’ Then he turns, swaying, and disappears with half his order into the gloomy recesses of the bar. There’s a pool tournament going on back there and they’re playin’ for higher stakes so to speak, so there’s a crowd. Who are these people hunched over the tables? Two thirds are wearing cowboy hats and all are drinking beer from the brown and red bottle. This is Nashville, but it sure ’nuff ain’t in Tennessee.

This Nashville is a Kuhio Avenue basement bar, just a jaywalk stumble from DejaVu and a predictable stone’s throw from a Starbucks. It’s Waikiki’s portal to the mainland. But this is not the strip-mall, scary kine, crowded angry mainland; no, this is the mainland where the locals hang out: the jack-and-coke-drinkin’ mainland, the amber-waves-of-grain mainland, the pastureland mainland.

If you enter the realm of the mainland paniolo, wear your best bib and tucker, as they say: a pair of tight Levis with a big belt buckle, leather heels and a pink gingham halter top. For the guys? A George Strait hat, steamed and formed, a checkered shirt over a Hanes T-shirt tucked into your ridin’ jeans and a pair of sturdy boots. It’s not like they’ll throw you out if you show up in slippers and board shorts, though. These are good people. Take Marjorie. She’s the black-jack dealer. She’s definitely got her hat right: a solid cream-colored cowgirl hat. She can turn out a three-deck hand real fast and will make sure you win if you tip good. But she just spent the day on a boat and she’s got the sunburn to prove it–she has the ultimate aloha-yippee-ti-yay fusion. Blackjack is set up Sunday through Thursday around 9pm. There’s no money at stake at these tables so you can cheat all you like. Marjorie looks at the card she’s about to throw, turns up her eyebrow if it’s a good one and says, ‘I wouldn’t’ if it’s bad.

After too many beers and much lowbrow cheating it’s time to bum a cigarette and it comes up a Winston. Winston is way more Marlboro even than the Marlboro man. This place is so mainland and everyone’s having fun. It’s a real hog-killin’ time at the Nashville, where out on the street, if you listen real good, you can hear the soft thud of a small south swell.

Nashville Waikiki
1860 Ala Moana Blvd. 926-7911

Getting in: Just bring I.D.
Dress code: For women, tight jeans and hats; for men, tight jeans and hats
Soundtrack: Hank Williams, Kenny Chesney and, yes, George Strait
Sightings: Homesick haoles doing the Texas two-step
Signature drink: Southern Comfort straight up, Budweiser