Is that who I think it is?
The beauty of being in a city like Nashville is that you never know who you’ll run into when you’re least expecting it. Friday night, four of my friends and I went out into the city to go dancing and ran into someone unexpected. We had just finished our retreat with Victory for the night and Amber had won free entrance into McFadden’s club downtown. We changed our clothes and grabbed a taxi to 2nd avenue where we were met with the plethora of Nashville’s famous Honky-Tonks and touristy cowboy-boot shops. Upon entering the club, they tried to apply a cover charge of $30 to everyone who wasn’t 21 or older. However, after much negotiating, Amber got us all in for free.
We headed over to the dance floor but took a round-about way because some bigger guys looked like they were about to start a fight and we wanted nothing to do with that. True, it meant that we had to crawl under a table—but where’s the strangeness in that? Once on the other side of the table, we started bopping to the rap music (not my typical jam, but hey, it was free). Not two minutes later, a six-foot-something large bouncer comes up to us and exclaims in a voice as deep as night: “you can’t be here”. Looking around, we recognized we were in a VIP-roped off area without realizing it. We quickly crossed the barrier and went back to dancing, without giving it a second thought.
It was only then that I glanced up at the DJ booth which looked WAY too crowded in my opinion and I saw him. I tapped my friend Hayley and asked: “is that—?“ “Yep,” she answered, “that’s Justin Bieber.” He was in town that night doing a show at the Bridgestone Arena, but we had never expected to see him at the club. Soon after our moment of recognition, J. Biebs hopped down off the stage and began dancing on the other side of the rope. We were a good six feet away from him, separated by several imposing-looking bouncers. They even escorted some people out of the club for trying to take pictures of Justin in his tank top and sunglasses.
We just kept dancing and enjoying ourselves until we decided it was time to head home for bed. We needed to be up relatively early the next morning so we didn’t want to be out too late. And that was when we started the jokes about how we’d “partied with Justin Bieber”, even though we were separated by a velvet rope. Now I can officially cross “see celebrity during random outing” off of my college-in-Nashville checklist. And it totally justified me to my two roommates who had seen Hayden Panettiere at Fido in Hillsboro without me. It just goes to show you that you never know who you’ll run into in downtown Nashville!
…Until next time!