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When Corina Garcia followed her job at Nissan from Southern California to Middle Tennessee in July, her friends were horrified.
"Are you crazy?" they asked her. "What are you going to do, date cowboys?"
Garcia isn't alone, though. Thousands of newcomers move to Nashville every year, drawn by jobs or the low cost of living or the climate or the chance to write the next hit song. Many of them leave behind puzzled friends and relations who can't understand how anyone could give up the social scene in New York or Seattle or Los Angeles.
Nashville is in the middle of a singles boom. More than half the adults in Davidson County are unmarried — compared with the national singles average of 41 percent. The city's future health and vibrancy will depend to a large extent on its staying power with these newcomers.
For Garcia, at least, Nashville is living up to the recently bestowed title of best city in the nation for relocating singles.
"The guys here are super down-to-earth. They just seem a lot more wholesome, not as showy as the guys in California," she said. "I was the epitome of the California girl, everything from the way I dressed to what I ate and the kinds of clubs I went to, and I can tell you, the type of people you meet here, the clubs you have here, they're just as good as you have in Hollywood."
Nashville, Garcia said, is the kind of place where people smile at you in line at the grocery store, strangers strike up conversations just to be friendly, and you can go out for a pizza without everyone spending the entire meal counting carbs.
"It's an excellent place to meet lots of different people," she said. "I just love it here."
Movers rate the shakers
The moving companies Worldwide EERC and Primacy Relocation gave Nashville the title of best destination for singles last fall — after rating 100 large cities on everything from the price of rental apartments to the quality of nightlife to the number of coffee shops per capita. Nashville blew Austin, Texas; Atlanta and New York City out of the water.
"Young professionals be-tween the ages of 25 and 39 years of age are the most mobile demographic. These people typically pick places they want to live and then find work there," said Nancy Eisenbrandt, senior vice president of work force development for the Nashville Chamber of Commerce.
College students, transplanted professionals and local singles are driving the region's economy and entertainment options these days.
Feb. 6: date to remember
On the off chance you've missed the crowds of singles hanging out in the coffee shops, reeling merrily between the honky-tonks on lower Broadway and scouring the town in search of decent Thai takeout, they'll be out in force on Feb. 6.
Nashville will be part of what organizers hope will be the world's largest mass speed dating event.
Thousands of singles in more than 100 cities will whiz through a series of six-minute dates, simultaneously.
Which begs the question: Is this what it takes to make a connection in Nashville these days?
Sally Mulè runs Active Singles, a service that brings singles together as a group for activities from horseback riding to evenings at the theater.
"It's not a dating service. We just do fun things together," said Mulè, who nevertheless can count 14 marriages among her clients in the past 10 years. She and her late husband started the service after moving from Connecticut.
"When we moved here, I was absolutely blown away by how much there was to do in this city," she said. "But a lot of people weren't really taking advantage of those opportunities."
Newcomer likes vibrance
Bari Watson didn't know a soul in town when she moved from Alabama a year and a half ago. But Watson, director of marketing for Belmont University's athletic department, quickly found that her workplace was full of people happy to show her around town.
"I really took to Nashville, right from the beginning. It just seemed like a vibrant place," said Watson, who joined civic groups and found activities through the university as well.
Newly engaged, she is happy enough with the city to persuade her fiancé to move here from Seattle.
Garcia, equally happy with Nashville, is also spreading the word.
Her parents were so impressed with the city that her father is thinking of retiring here in a few years, she said.
That is good news for Nashville. Because it's one thing to attract newcomers to town. Persuading them to stay and put down roots is another.
Ajay Chawan moved here from Chicago in 2003, started his first business, Heartland Health Solutions, and met his wife-to-be, who is of Finnish descent. But that doesn't mean they're in Nashville to stay.
"We're both happy here right now. But I'm a little concerned about what it's going to be like to raise a family in the South."
Nashville is a diverse, vi-brant city, but Chawan, an Indian-American, says he draws stares when he drives out to small towns in rural counties. And most of his friends from graduate school still don't understand what he's doing in Nashville.
"The question I get asked a lot is, 'Why are you there?' " he said. "The core group of friends I had in grad school, they're all in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and now London. I'm the only one in Nashville."
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