Best Local News Story of the Year

Super Wal-Mart Voted In

After a failed attempt two years ago, a new proposal was successfully submitted this summer to site a Super Wal-Mart (a combination discount/grocery store) on the old Sayles-Biltmore Bleacheries site on the Swannanoa. This time, only Council member Brian Peterson voted to nix the big guys. A Super Wal-Mart at Sayles will dramatically increase traffic in the area, declared some angry locals. Others maintained that the site could be put to better use as a public park or green space. Guess those folks figure they can do without the store's acres of holiday decorations (available Labor Day through New Year's). -- MM

Best East Asheville Landmark

VA Hospital

A dearth of obvious candidates (no Vance Monument looms here to beckon weary travelers home) prompted some pretty creative choices in the Best East Asheville Landmark category. Such hot spots as "wild cherry tree on Cisco," "Gashes Creek church and cemetery" and "McQuinn's Garage" smacked of neighborhood pride. But the majority of readers, clearly less familiar with the area, opted for the imposing VA Hospital in Oteen (both the current structure and the former one, which still stands nearby, collected votes). The Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway came in a craftily close second. -- MM

Best Place to Panhandle

Downtown

Since we didn't require job descriptions from our voters, there was no way to tell whether any bona fide panhandlers actually answered this question. So we can only surmise that most voters translated the new category as "place most likely to see" the aforementioned spare-change-challenged folks -- and that, indeed, is downtown. This year, the young people who gave their all trying to elevate hanging out in front of Malaprop's to an art form -- yes, we know they don't all panhandle -- got their 15 minutes when Xpress told their story. Not that panhandlers seem to need a story these days -- you're not likely to hear a hard-luck tale (true or otherwise) from anyone under 40. Guess that went out with boxcar-riding. -- MM

Best Watchdog Group

Mountain Xpress

The paper is doing its job and doing it well, declared a majority of voters -- responding, no doubt, to some of the harder-hitting news stories Xpress broke during the past year. These included the revelation of Sheriff Medford's Texas-sized posse of deputies, the ever-relevant kids-vs.-downtown-merchants debate, and the by-now-infamous Woodfin debacle -- a scandal that landed in the outrageously popular, nationally syndicated column News of the Weird. Now that's progress. -- MM

Best Neighborhood

Montford

Still gracious after all these years, historic Montford is where O. Henry is spending his post-retirement (you'll find the short-story writer's grave in Riverside Cemetery); where the lately honored Zelda Fitzgerald left earth in a bona fide blaze of glory (she was institutionalized in Highland Hospital (on Zillicoa Street) when the building burned in 1948); and where, today, you can count on finding more bed and breakfasts per block than there are cappuccinos in an aspiring poet. And though some cry "gentrification" when confronted with the neighborhood's ever-rising rents, many of those misanthropes have been seduced back by the new kid on the block: a shop named Sweet Heaven that doles out the richest homemade ice cream in the world. Hey, everybody has their price. -- MM

Best Local Scandal/Squabble

Woodfin

True to its domineering nature, Wal-Mart (see Best Local News Story of the Year) tried its best to grab this category too. Close but no cigar. Even this much-maligned corporation couldn't compete with the Jerry Springer Show-worthy Woodfin pecadillo in the race for Best Scandal/Squabble. That town's police chief, Pete Bradley, was fired in February after SBI reports surfaced claiming that the bisexual Bradley liked to attend adult "diaper parties." The, er, messy smear campaign was rooted in events begun two years earlier. As a DMV enforcement officer, Bradley had cooperated with SBI officials in reporting alleged misconduct by people connected with the DMV. Woodfin Mayor Homer Honeycutt (Bradley's boss) was later tape-recorded bragging to a police officer: "I fix more tickets than you probably write. You write 'em, I fix 'em. That's just the way life is." Before his interviews with the SBI, Bradley had received an anonymous letter warning him that if he "'[dug] up skeletons on the DMV,' some skeletons of his own might be made public," according to a March 6 Xpress report. Last February, those skeletons did, indeed, come to light, and Bradley was fired (the lone alderman who opposed the move was soon the object of another smear campaign). The one bright spot, dubious though it may be, was where the sordid tale ended up (see "Best Watchdog Group"). -- MM

Best Thing Asheville Needs

Better Public Transportation

Apparently, the new tourist trolleys don't count. Pulling ahead of cleaner air by a bumper, better public transportation stood exposed in the headlights as what readers felt Asheville most sorely lacks. Buses that run only on the hour are one commonly cited complaint. Other residents have frequently lamented the lack of nighttime service -- a much-needed amenity in a town powered chiefly by service-industry employees, who often toil into the wee hours. Pedestrians who've narrowly missed being mowed down on Haywood Street were probably condemning certain overly aggressive bus drivers when they named "better public transportation" as their No. 1 gripe. Then again, maybe the drivers put the pedal to the metal to make up for the city's meager fleet. -- MM

Best Category We Missed

Best Manicurist, Best Chef, Best Mullet

In what has to be the freakiest occurrence this side of the Jim Rose Circus, best manicurist, best chef and best mullet tied for the category we should be most sorry we left off the ballot. Well, "mullet" was actually split between "best mullet" and "best place to spot a mullet," but I included it here anyway, because after 20-odd years, dammit, mullets deserve their moment in the sun (see "Most Bizarre Local Trend"). The remaining choices were impressively disparate -- voters chimed in with everything from "best friend" to "best place to watch an accident." Who says Asheville isn't diverse? -- MM

Best Reason to Stay in Asheville

Mountains

Galleries flourish and galleries fade, clubs open for a few months and then fall silent ... but the mountains certainly aren't packing off to more-lucrative climes anytime soon, which is probably why WNC's peaks (including both the Smokies and the Blue Ridge) were voted the best reason to hang around the Asheville area. Did you know that the Southern Appalachians are thought to be the world's oldest mountains? Enough of factoids, here's a pet peeve: outdoorsy jocks who scoff that you won't find "real" mountains till you get to the Rockies. If that's true, why does most Colorado-style bluegrass sound so soulless? -- MM

Best Reason to Leave Asheville

Pollution

Beating out "low pay" for the second straight year, increasing pollution was dubbed the number-one reason to head for the hills. Oh, wait ... we're already in the hills! And that's at least part of the problem: The nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park -- which straddles the North Carolina/Tennessee line within a day's drive of a hefty chunk of the nation's population -- is the country's most-visited national park. And in the summer months, that amounts to a mega-cloud of car exhaust. Maybe the Smokies will follow the lead of Zion National Park, which recently banned all vehicles except its own propane-fueled buses within its boundaries -- but don't hold your breath. Or, rather, do. -- MM

Most Bizarre Local Trend

Dreadlocks

Dreadlocks -- they're not just for Rainbow Gatherings anymore. More and more, less "typical" people seem to be sporting this portion of the hippie uniform. It's not unusual, for example, to see the girl who serves you lunch at your favorite local cafe coifed in dreads. Some voters had a particular problem with the proliferation of white kids in dreads, given the hairstyle's Rasta roots. One voiced aesthetic concerns, dismissing "dreads that look like snarls." (Interestingly, the much-defamed mullet hairdo -- which can hardly be called a trend, given its nearly vintage status -- also scored a healthy number of votes.) -- MM

Best Downtown Sculpture

Girl at Water Fountain

Those pugnacious new turkeys at Pack Square got my vote -- but the sculpture of the young girl dipping her head for a drink of fountain water is admittedly the most postcard-worthy stop on Asheville's Urban Trail. Inexplicably, two readers opted to designate her the "puking girl" -- hey, whatever turns you on. And one wit (apparently having concluded that city-sanctioned art is just too bourgeois) instead cast his/her vote for the downtown drunks who decorate our benches and sidewalks. Scoring a much-more-respectable second were the mountain-music dancers frozen in perpetual stomp outside the Civic Center. -- MM

Best Reason to Vote in the Next City Election

Civic Duty

Readers exercised their freedom of speech in expressing the best reason to take part in Asheville's next election: This year, earnest rhetoric way outpaced concern about any specific city issue. "Civic duty" was couched in a plethora of ways, including "because you can," "exercise your rights" and the post-9/11-tinged "freedom," which garnered more votes than any other word or phrase expressing this sentiment. An almost-equal number of readers adopted the gavel-pounding mode, admonishing Ashevilleans to "Get rid of the old, bring in [the] new," "Get rid of old, rich white guys," "Get good people in office," and simply, "Get the bastards out!" -- MM

Best Way to Beat the Smog

Ride Bikes

Commendably, most readers interpreted this category to mean the best way to avoid adding to WNC's smog problem, rather than the best way to escape it (i.e., by hopping in the car and driving somewhere -- right!). Offering more dignity than mopeds and more autonomy than the city bus, bikes were voted the No. 1 alternative to fuel-belching cars, trucks and SUVs. My own beloved, $15 flea-market bike was swiped off a friend's porch a few years back. And since the thief could hardly have had resale in mind, I hope s/he, too, is cruising the downtown streets with an eye toward curbing our area's worsening air pollution. But don't imagine for a minute that I'm not still out there looking for you. -- MM