We’re really quite enamoured with Asheville this time around. I think we’ve never had the chance before – always rushing through – always here right AFTER the big event. We still have yet to see how the Big Show goes – performing tonight at the prestigious Isis Music Hall – but the couple of days we’ve spent visiting friends and art galleries and open mics and BBQ joints have been absolutely beautiful. Nestled in the mountains, I guess my only lament is that we haven’t gone for a wandering that involved any climbing up stuff, sliding down other stuff or looking up into the skies for other stuff.
Looking outside the view we’ve got from Kristen’s Dad’s First Cousin’s Rowhouse, it’s beginning to get a little bit hazy and any dream of stargazing tonight is probably going to be thwarted. Asheville suffers from plenty of the same blights of other towns and looking outside I see a cellphone tower and an RV park and highways and byways and houses before I’m able to focus on the surrounding geography of woods and mountains, but there’s something pretty great about the arts and music scene (or at least the parts of it that we’ve gotten exposed to in our longest-ever but shorter-than-desired visit).
I’ve chatted with a couple of people who compare the town to Austin, TX – and I can sort of see the similarities – but it’s not till I’m talking to a percussionist who moved here from there that I get at least one person’s first-person perspective… Loving the arts and music scene in Austin until things got snapped up by corporate interests and Living there simply got too expensive. A couple of things aligned to bring him to this North Carolina town and he’s been in Love with it ever since.
It feels like it’s been a while since we’ve seen the sunshine – so seeing the setting sun outside the Grey Eagle in Asheville, NC was sort of an EVENT. Catching the last rays of sun on Monday, 3/11.
Most of the people we meet seem to have a story like that : I quit my corporate job in Chicago when I had a business trip to Asheville and fell in Love with it… I’m leaving my home in New Hampshire because I fell in Love with Asheville… I’m leaving my WIFE in Connecticut because I fell in Love with Asheville (dude, this doesn’t make you look good)… people coming to school here, people touring here, people getting jobs here – but mostly people say “and then I fell in Love with Asheville”.
Monday found us at the Grey Eagle for tacos and open mic night. The host was another Rob so betwixt that and the place’s reputation we figured we were in decent company. A good list – ilyAIMY’s in the house, but so is rob and Heather and Kristen, just in case “ilyAIMY” can’t be pronounced. The Grey Eagle has a cool courtyard… … and some interesting urban ruins up the hill. Apparently this is something of a sore spot for the locals…
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard such a concentrated consensus about a city… and though a couple of angry drivers make me suspicious that not all is beauty and good friendship here, and though we’ve spent most of our time making our way up and down suspiciously generic six lane roads covered in strip malls and fast food joints – I maintain a suspicion I could fall in Love with this town too.
