It starts with the local brewpub. Always with the goddamn local brewpub, located in some renovated craftsman schoolhouse or 1920s fire station with the locally sourced Czechoslovakian-style hops and the brewmaster with the certification from the Golden Barley Council or whatever governing body oversees alcoholic hipsterdom.

Whenever some self-appointed hometown convention and visitors’ bureau rep (and sometimes it’s an actual CVB rep) takes you to that cool little place in the downtown renaissance district where they actually make their own beer—So cool! Nobody does that, right?—you know you’re in trouble. Or, more precisely, you know you’re in that bastion of municipal mediocrity: the newly anointed “It” City.

Now, you may dislike or disregard places like Poughkeepsie or Plano or Palm Whatever. But there are few more insufferable banalities in modern urban life than a town recently deemed cool. Greg Brown name-checked Santa Fe and Sedona in his 1994 song “Boomtown,” an acid slap down of the phenomenon. It didn’t help: In the years since, cities “where people used to live their lives [and now] the restless come and go” have proliferated like fungus in a damp basement.

Most recently, it’s been Nashville’s turn. Last month, The New York Times laid out the usual liberal criteria for why sophisticates should embrace a city the kale-and-karaoke cognoscenti previously snickered at for its association with mullets and Rascal Flatts. “Flush with young new residents and alive with immigrants, tourists and music, the city made its way to the top of all kinds of lists in 2012,” the Times gushed. “Critics admire its growing food scene. GQ magazine declared it simply ‘Nowville.’ ”

Artisanal ice cream, gluten-free pizza, burrito trucks run by real Mexicans, jalapeño-infused margaritas, celebrity graffiti sprayers, and First Thursday art walks in revitalized industrial zones promoted by farsighted civic planners armed with government tax schemes—these are the totems of It City. I’m certain Nashville has plenty of them to brag about. But, then again, so do Asheville, Austin, Baltimore, Boulder, Burlington, Las Vegas, Madison, Portland, Raleigh-Durham, San Diego, Santa Monica, Savannah, Seattle, Taos, Tucson, the Twin Cities, and a klatch of other cities that have ascended the heights of those “most livable,” “coolest,” and “best” lists.