The Nashville air was filled with country music and the extremely segregated feel of the city made me uncomfortable. Cowboy hats were adorned by the patrons of the Coyote Ugly saloon and line-dancing is still more popular than ass-grinding, both which I’m clueless how to do. The gem that I stumbled upon was the Hatch Show Print, a printer from the 1870’s specializing in woodblock printing. The beauty of it was that the old machines since that time were still in use to make the posters. They showed me around in the back area to look at the wall to ceiling woodblocks that they use.

It was my first time in the city and I met a couple of artists at Hatch Show that were nice enough to take me around town that night. They picked me up in a beetle buggie with an exposed smokey engine in the back. Inside were a couple of their punk friends who looked more Portland than Nashville. We spent too long at the sushi restaurant where we got free ice cream because they said it was my birthday and we missed the plan to go see a Drag King show at a mall. They knew about a Drag Queen show at some lesbian bar and so we headed there.

The drive was a little long and the cityscape started to disappear and only the forest was on either side of the highway. The fear part of my brain asked “what the hell are you doing? This might not be safe.” By the time I politely told that part of the brain to “fuck off. This is awesome.” we got off a random exit where the only building other than the bar was a Waffle House. We go in and it’s a crowded night. My first pint of beer came in a glass shaped like a pair of legs and a butt. The place was filled with the Nashville lesbian scene, large, flanneled, and built like a lumberjack. The five of us sat down at lounge area and told stories from our pasts and watched the drag queens and a drag king perform their hearts out. The entire night ended with some dancing, where we owned the dance floor til the lights came on, and a walk to Waffle House for some late night snacks. My unplanned hosts that took me under their wing drove me back to my hotel and we bid farewell, and like many people we come across in our lives, we never saw each other again.

I really shouldn’t be driving around an unknown city with complete strangers. That’s what they say. I don’t recommend hanging out with strangers to kids, ofcourse, but as adults we do have an opportunity to experience new stories if we allow ourselves. Being in an open state-of-mind as soon as we step out of the house, allows us to accept those serendipitous opportunities for mini-adventures. These experiences are shared over a pint of beer for the following years and that is the proof of a great experience. As designers we work hard about how to design the experience itself. What needs to happen though, before any designed experience is exposed to a user, is prepping the state of mind. I had to be open to riding around with strangers, I had to be open to a lesbian bar in the middle of nowhere, I had to want to go to a Waffle House at 3AM. Serendipity showed me the potential for the experience but as a participant, I had to be in the right state of mind. We should prep the users before a design is presented. The design preset may be the most important signifier of a design’s success.