Neighborhood · August 2026 · East Nashville
A Tomato Takeover in East Nashville
Tomato Art Fest takes Five Points today, and it's the most visible version of something this neighborhood does most weekends at a much smaller scale.
Tomato Art Fest is going on in Five Points until seven tonight, which means Woodland is closed and there are homemade floats and a very high percentage of adults dressed as produce.
It started in 2004 when Meg and Bret MacFadyen, who ran the Art and Invention Gallery on Woodland, put together a small art show about tomatoes with a slogan about uniting fruits and vegetables. Twenty-three years later it's still free, still a little unhinged, and still one of the most reliably good weekends on this side of the river.
If you've been meaning to spend real time over here, today's a good excuse. But the festival isn't why people move to East Nashville. It's just the loudest version of something that happens on a normal Saturday too.
The regular-weekend version
Start here
Five Points
Park once and walk the rest. Coffee into lunch into browsing into an early dinner without ever moving the car.
The reset button
Shelby Park and Shelby Bottoms
Around 300 acres along the Cumberland, with connected greenway and natural area stretching well past a thousand. Most people we know use it the lazy way, which is a slow paved loop with a coffee and no intention of covering it all.
After dark, walkable
Lowbar, Ernie's, Attaboy
Lowbar and Ernie's Boondock are a block apart on Woodland, Ernie's tucked into the basement under Up-Down, so you can move between them without giving it much thought. Attaboy is around the corner on McFerrin and works differently. No menu, no reservations, an unmarked door you wave at a camera to get through, and a bartender who builds you something once you tell them what you like.
After dark, up Gallatin
Strega, The Fox, Tiger Bar, Skinny Dennis
Strega has a courtyard, a pool table, and pizza by the slice, which runs a dollar during aperitivo hour on weeknights from four to seven and three dollars the rest of the time. The Fox and Tiger Bar sit essentially next door to each other further up, one a serious cocktail room and the other done up like a circus, and both have entrances that take a minute to find. Tiger only opens Thursday through Saturday. Skinny Dennis has live music most nights and a honky-tonk feel you don't have to go downtown for.
After dark, worth the drive
Cherries
Over on Dickerson, dark and moody inside with one of the better patios on this side of town. Worth the short drive when you want a cocktail somebody actually built.
Live music
The Basement East and The 5 Spot
The Beast books national acts and local showcases both. The 5 Spot is the neighborhood version, small and unpretentious, and you will occasionally watch someone extremely good play to forty people on a Tuesday.
No list required
Gallatin Avenue
Where the vintage shopping lives. It rewards the kind of afternoon where you didn't come in with a plan.
And the calendar keeps going
Today is the big one, but it isn't the only one. None of these require a ticket or much of a plan.
Why we build over here
East Nashville is what it is because artists and cooks and musicians and teachers have lived next door to each other here for a long time. Building attainable homes near that is the most useful thing a homebuilder can actually do about it. A neighborhood keeps its character when the people who give it character can own something in it.
We have three communities on the East Side and two more just north in Madison, and they're genuinely different from each other in layout, price, and how much yard you're signing up for. Worth walking a couple in the same afternoon if you're comparing.
If you're going today
Four things worth knowing
It's cashless this year, so bring a card.
Park farther out than seems necessary and walk in. You'll be in a better mood than the people circling.
Wear red. By mid-morning you'll feel like you missed a memo.
Go look at the art, which is the actual origin of the whole thing and the part most people walk past on their way to the food.
Come see what we're building over here.
East Nashville communities
