As one of the few here who grew up in Asheville, can you tell us about 99 vs 2009? What wasbetter then and why? Whats better now?
I remember enjoying the fact that almost everybody knew each other. And all the run down storefronts you could hang out at in front of and play music.
I took a while to answer this because I was (and still am, to a degree) trying to separate what Asheville was like back then with the rose-tinted and warm feelings of my early 20s.
In ‘99 Asheville felt a lot poorer. I don’t know if that is the right word, but there wasn’t as much money freely flowing through town. People had their thing and did it, but still mingled with people that wasn’t necessarily yuppies or hippies or anarcho punks. Vincent’s Ear was hopping but so was the Emerald Lounge (or was it Natural Mystic back then?). The Bier Garden was the bar I hung out in, and they had drum circles every Thursday. It was still a jock hellhole, but it also had an open mind about most stuff.
Sure there wasn’t the string of quaint shops populating every corner, but the shops that were here catered to locals and there wasn’t a seemingly never ending stream of touristy boutiques that opened and closed every three months.
The town seemed to have more characters and the chaos that happened when they all bumped into each other was always entertaining. There were cool bums and crazy dudes from the Christian Coffeehouse right beside Vincent’s who always seemed to be wanting to fight or talk to you about Mumia. I even miss the “Free Mumia” stickers and spray paint on every surface.
In a lot of ways, the town seemed less divided back then. We had separate lives, we did our things, but we still partied together.
All of the cliches and bumper sticker-ready slogans that people attribute to Asheville were probably born in the mid-to-late-nineties/early aughts and died with Vincent’s in 2003/2004.
I guess that’s where some of the bitterness I have about Asheville comes into being. It went from a sleepy little redneck town with a few cool bubbles and then money came in, corrupted it and it turned into a brand name instead of a collection of cool people. People came to town thinking that they understood the how and why of it because they read about it in a magazine/website and then immediately started changing it. I think I said this a while back, but it’s true: they came here for City Bakery, and then after six months realized that they missed Atlanta Bread Company. They came here for the PBR sippin’ punk rock/jam band culture and then realized six months later that they’d rather have the Avett Brothers, Acoustic Syndicate and Beer City USA. The whole town feels forced in a way. It feels disposable and contrived compared to what it was.
I don’t know if that answered your question at all, but there it is.
