Funky yet old school, the spirit of the city is all around us
Signs tend to be subtle. And Subarus typically don’t break down. But on one chilly night in January, my sweetheart and I sat marooned in St. Elmo waiting for a tow truck. We’d been pseudo house hunting when her clutch stuck to the floorboard and the stick-shift locked into second gear.
With no job prospects and not a soul we knew in this city, it was as if we stood on the edge of the surrounding bluffs contemplating a leap of faith—to uproot our lives in Baltimore and move to Chattanooga based on little more than instinct. Then someone knocked on the car window.
A young, dark-haired woman had come out of her house to check on us. We explained our situation and chatted about the neighborhood.
“I’d invite y’all in but I’m on my way out,” she said. “You know what? I’ll be right back.”
She went back inside the house and returned with her phone number and a survival kit of two SweetWater IPAs and mini bags of Cheeze-Its.
“Y’all need anything, give me a call.”
That was the night I conceptualized, dare I say created, a word which this woman personified: chattitude.
That was two years ago. If the woman from St. Elmo is reading this, I’d like to say, ‘preciate ya. I’d also like to officially lay claim to a word that captures the soul of the city.
In Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “August: Osage County”, Beverly Weston quotes T.S. Eliot, “Life is very long...he’s given credit for it because he bothered to write it down. He’s not the first person to say it...certainly not the first person to think it. Feel it. But he wrote the words on a sheet of paper and signed it...so if you say it, you have to say his name after it.”
I am not so delusional as to think I actually invented a word. But I would like to “T.S. Eliot” it and attempt to articulate its meaning. I’ve even added it to my dictionary so the computer knows that chattitude is, in fact, spelled correctly.
Chattitude is a state of mind that projects an intuitively friendly, laid-back spirit that flows like the Tennessee River through the heart of town. It’s old-school Southern charm imbued with generous dollops of funky urban electricity.
It’s steeped in eclectic, wild frontier inclinations of reinvention. Respectful of imperfection, it is weighted in authenticity like worn leather. It’s a little weird, a little crazy—but doesn’t care.
Quite often I’ll use the word as a tool of encouragement, a way of saying everything is okay. In moments of stress, duress, or when life in general is overwhelming, I offer this advice. “Find your chattitude.”
A month after our car broke down we signed the dotted line on a 19th century Victorian in North Chatt. I began dropping chattitude in conversations and was surprised to find that both born-and-raised Chattanoogans and rambling spirits drawn here had never heard the word before. I mean, this is a city that loves to play on its name—Chatta-Cakes, Taconooga, etc.
“People have been using ‘chatt’ and ‘noog’ in different ways trying to pin down this thing. There’s this great dialectic dynamic that’s happening here and has been,” says Chris Babb, a New Yorker who moved to the area in 2004. In addition to being among the cheesemongers at the Bleu Fox Cheese Shop, Chris is also a tarot card reader and Kung Fu instructor. And subscriber to chattitude.
“Chattanooga was ‘Nooga-strong’ or Nooga-this. It’s like a catchphrase,” Chris says. “Chattanoogans have always been very proud. Now Chattanooga is getting amazing. We’re finally getting the stuff we didn’t have. That’s a cultural thing that should happen. I mean Chattanooga was a nexus point and should carry on that tradition. It’s a historical responsibility. It’s part of our genes.”
Trademarking chattitude has crossed my mind. But way beyond my budget. And that just doesn’t feel right. Friends have suggested making t-shirts but that too seems to go against the very nature of the word. I ran the t-shirt idea by my neighbor, Mandi Abercrombie. Mandi is also the general manager of Aretha Frankenstein’s—a restaurant that unapologetically oozes chattitude.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe if you did ‘em with Sharpies. You know, DIY.”
Aretha Frankenstein’s is a microcosm of chattitude. On Sundays a diverse cross-section of patrons will wait (usually without complaint) over an hour for a seat and a stack of Aretha’s legendary pancakes.
“Our clientele is so vast,” Mandi says. “We’ve got the after-church crowd, families, softball teams, girls from GPS, real estate agents, and we’ve got the musicians and gutter punks traveling through with their tied-up crusty dogs.”
My first Sunday morning visit to Aretha’s provided one of the many illustrations of chattitude the tiny cafe embodies. A 16 oz. PBR is cheaper than a cup of coffee. And for the morning regulars who gather on the wraparound porch, both go hand-in-hand starting at 7 a.m.
“It’s one of the only places in town that you can get a beer that early,” Mandi says. “We started doing a lot of stuff for third shift nurses and emergency workers. It’s one place they can go for beer and food and can also sit and decompress.”
But they aren’t alone.
“Then we have people that come in every day and it’s their thing. They start the day with coffee and a beer—on their days off at least.”
She adds, “Our crew of regulars can sometimes look like a biker gang—a motley crew that would kind of scare you to approach them. But they are the friendliest, best people in the world that will help you any time you need it.”
Mandi points out another aspect of chattitude: “I like how you said it,” she adds. “It’s a little rough around the edges. A little bit crazy—but I don’t care. Not straight-jacket crazy, but fun crazy.”
She sees that spirit play out. “There’s also an empathy vibe. I definitely feel like people are more authentic. There’s a realness. You’ll have somebody tell you their ugly business when you first meet them, but not in a bad way. More like, this is me, take it or leave it. I love that about people, especially at Aretha’s. All of us are crazy and we let it all hang out. But we don’t hold that against each other.”
Our realtor, a native Chattanoogan, didn’t question or find it odd that we broke down here and decided to stay.
“I think chattitude does apply and it’s strange to hear it, mostly because growing up here there was not that,” says Lindsey Yerbey, Affiliate Broker at Weichert Realtors-Yerbey Realty. “Growing up, me and my friends always figured we would leave Chattanooga. We’d move away and it wouldn’t be a big deal because it’s not the greatest place on earth. A lot of us have come back because we realized how cool this city is and how much it has to offer.”
Not only did Lindsey help us find our home, she is the first person I introduced chattitude to and she gets major chattitude points for being a killer hula-hooper.
“There is that feeling of something you can’t quite put your finger on but it’s just—it’s family oriented, it’s comfortable like a big, warm blanket. You just can’t get it anywhere else really.”
As people from here move back and transplants move in, there’s a common desire to hold onto the chattitude.
“That feeling and personality is what I hope we don’t lose with all the people moving here. I hope people join in on this chattitude, that they don’t change it. We have a wide variety of people coming here. People coming for industry are a totally different personality from all the millennials that are moving downtown,” Lindsey says of the booming market. “I hope we all mesh together.”
Brandon Estrada, Account Executive for Presagia, moved here from California in 2001 and has witnessed firsthand transplants melding and embracing the chattitude. He and I met on one of those days all the neighbors end up on someone’s porch.
“You have a lot of different groups of people who are merging together here that make it a whole different attitude than the rest of the South,” Brandon says. “I have friends from Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, and they’ve all migrated here. They’ve all lost their Northern attitude and mentality and adapted to calming down. They say this place has made them have better attitudes—they feel more peaceful here.”
He adds, “Even myself, when I go back to California I get very agitated. Then I come home. The minute you touch down and land in Chattanooga you’re like, ‘Ahhh’. And it smells different here too. It smells fresh. It’s a place I call home.”
Chattitude abounds in this city, in subtle signs, in the little things. Kids frolicking in the fountains by the Aquarium or in Coolidge Park. Strolling couples attempting to mambo on Frazier Avenue. Neighbors dropping by with freshly made iced tea to sit on the porch and tell stories. Pausing to gaze at the same sun that rose on the river and now hangs suspended, almost held hostage by Lookout and Signal Mountains, holding on and squeezing every ounce of light.
I don’t know what my legacy will be. I hope someone will say he loved and was loyal. And he found chattitude.
Jason Tinney is the author of "Ripple Meets the Deep" and co-author of the play, "Fifty Miles Away". He takes great pleasure in porch sitting, sweet tea, and perfecting a state of chattitude.