If you go Biltmore a grand house Bluegrass in N.C. More on the SouthAsheville's pace and accents are mellow, magnetic
By Tom Haines, Globe Staff, 03/31/02
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If you go Biltmore a grand house Bluegrass in N.C. More on the South |
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It can be even trickier when the book, a wonderful collage of photos, graphics, interviews, anecdotes, and information, attempts to capture the cultural collisions in this booming mountain town. So it makes sense, perhaps, that Tommy Kerr, the book's author and architect, poured a little moonshine in his water bottle before heading in to read for the crowd at Malaprop's Bookstore and Cafe, a place seemingly beamed in from Berkeley.
"I told them the bottle had moonshine in it, and they just laughed," Kerr, 48, said recently over a cup of pressed tea at Gold Hill Espresso & Fine Teas, across the street from Malaprop's. "My friends in the front row said, `Oh, Tommy, you're so funny.' After a few minutes I just had to say, `Look, I'm not reading so well, so I'll just tell you a few stories.' "
People must have liked the stories, or at least the book, called "The Underground Asheville Guidebook." They definitely like Tommy.
"Hey there, Butch, how's it going," Kerr called as he walked out of Gold Hill and turned onto Haywood Street.
Butch, a big guy carrying a box down the stairs of a UPS truck threw a big smile: "Hey, Tommy!"
It was, Kerr would say later, a quintessential Asheville day. Sunshine. Two women holding hands. A pickup truck passing with a "We Still Pray" bumper sticker. Dreadlocked teens hanging in Pack Square. Hot dogs for sale near Karmasonics Music and Video. The whir of floor sanders in a high-ceilinged loft.
Asheville, an isolated city that wallowed in the wake of the Great Depression far longer than most, is now the center of just about everything. Outside magazine readers ranked it as one of the best places in the country to enjoy the outdoors, easy enough to do with the French Broad River rushing by town and the Blue Ridge Mountains all around. An article in Rolling Stone a couple years back dubbed it "America's new freak capital," an honor that followed the "hippies, neohippies, punks, witches, pagans, the homeless and lost, the homeless and found, fairies, dykes, braggarts, dreadlocked bliss ninnies, thieves, crystal worshipers, free-Leonard Peltiers, free-Mumias, potheads, anarchists, performance artists and so on."
And that's not the half of it. Don't forget the doctors and bankers and architects from Chicago and Atlanta and Charlotte, not to mention that metropolis of Spartanburg-Greenville, S.C., who have moved to the Blue Ridge to join the search for a more blissful, affordable life.
The result is an island of everything in the sea of banjos and Baptists that stretches into Buncombe County. Consider the results when a Citizen-Times columnist ran a contest for the city's new, unofficial slogan. The winner, an indication of Asheville's thriving gay community: "Ten Thousand Lesbians Can't be Wrong."
For a traveler, this eclectic mix of music, food, and thinking makes for a great base camp when touring western North Carolina. There's Brahms at the Asheville Civic Center, rock at Stella Blue, bluegrass at Jack of the Wood. You can munch trendy tapas at Zambra, or Asian noodles on Pack Square. Take your pick of tattoo parlors. Walk down Broadway as it turns to Biltmore Avenue and check out top-of-the-line road bikes at Hearns Cycling or BioWheels. Cross the street and pick up a 1998 Sancerre at the Asheville Wine Market. Stand on the corner of Walnut and Rankin streets and chat with a woman named Rinn about the seeking she and others are doing down at the Zendek Farm commune, an hour southeast of town.
During the summer, linger amid the laid-back, family atmosphere at Shindig on the Green, an outdoor series of mountain music most Saturdays in July and August. Or, check out the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, one of the nation's oldest, at Diana Wortham Theatre, on Aug. 1-3.
The fresh air, which drew tuberculosis sufferers more than a century ago, is nastier now, thanks to coal plants over the mountains in Tennessee and increased traffic around Asheville. But on clear days you can enjoy the legacy left by earlier transplants, including the mammoth 107-year-old Biltmore Estate of George Vanderbilt. The estate's craftsmen hung around town, contributing to an architectural mix that is one of reborn Asheville's biggest assets. Kerr led me up Haywood to the Basilica of St. Lawrence, an awesome piece of masonry, the handiwork of Rafael Guastavino, a Spanish architect who had worked on New York's Grand Central Station and Carnegie Hall before making his way south. Guastavino, who died shortly before the building was completed, is buried in a crypt beneath the basilica.
We headed back down Haywood, turned east along Walnut Street, and crossed Asheville's antique shop district. A woman heading out of a pawnshop with a used mandolin stopped. "Hey, Tommy," she said.
They chatted about the unseasonably warm weather, about Kerr's business making concrete countertops. Kerr took the mandolin and picked a bit.
A few minutes later, up by the BB&T Bank skyscraper, the only glass building to dominate the city skyline, Kerr paused. "If you're in a hurry in Asheville, you better take the back alley or you won't get there," he said, "because you've got to stop and say, `Hey, how's your mom?' or play a couple of songs on the mandolin."
We looked across Pack Square at the city building, with its whimsical Art Deco top, and the county building, an impressive testament to rigidity.
"You know as well as I do that if you go out of Asheville a few steps you're in a whole different kettle of fish," Kerr said. "That tension can be unsettling sometimes. But it can create an energy, a mix, that keeps things creative."
Andrew Jones, an MIT grad and former Cambridge resident, moved here four years ago with his wife to enjoy the cultural boom amid the rural calm.
"I'm down here. My parents are going to retire and I say, `Why don't you guys move down here,' " Jones told me over a pint of beer and Irish stew at the Jack of the Wood. "They sell their house. Now my grandmother sells her place in Santa Barbara and she's moving down here with everybody else. Next week, Grandma!"
But Jones, an environmental consultant, knows that on a grander scale the Asheville pilgrimage is causing problems. New homes are sprouting up on the hilltops out near Leicester. Strip malls stretch miles south toward Hendersonville. Housing prices, still low by big-city standards, are rising fast. Jones recently wrote an editorial encouraging optimistic Asheville citizens to leave some problems in the city, lest it be swarmed by 21st-century nomads.
"Just trying to close the door behind us," he said with a laugh.
Near the end of our sunny stroll, Kerr and I stopped in the center of town. Kerr looked up at the S.H. Kress & Co. building, recently refinished brick and tile, wonderful soft blue and rose.
"You only see that kind of stuff in Florence," he said.
We walked a few more steps and found ourselves in front of The Mediterranean, a "cool place," said Kerr, that's been serving short-order cooking for 25 years.
The booths were full: Two businessmen in starched oxfords sat in one, a guy in a hard-hat in another; and former mayoral candidate Mickey Mahaffey, with his bushy gray beard and plans to shake up Asheville's ruling elite, lunched with a friend at a third.
We took a seat at the counter, across from the deep-fat fryer and the pie boxes, and Kerr and I each ordered sweet tea and southern fried chicken, at $4.75 a plate.
"What are you having with that?" the waitress asked.
"Mashed potatoes with gravy, corn, and buttered spinach," I said.
"I knew you were going to say that," she said.
Why?
" Nobody skips the buttered spinach."
"Well, how often can you get good buttered spinach?" I said.
"You know," she said, "you sure can get some here."