FOR ASHEVILLE

Four years ago I came to Asheville mostly full of steroids and alcohol and spent a few days wandering around there, staying in hotels, drinking, visiting arcades and writing. Truth be told I only have very hazy memories of what I did on that first trip.

I remember I had breakfast at Louise’s Kitchen in Black Mountain and drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway amid just this crazy array of golds and reds and oranges. You didn’t get that in Florida. On my way out of town I got to go to Summit Coffee by the river and read with a coffee and a muffin. There was just something about the place. I made an offhand comment to a friend on Facebook somewhere that maybe I’d just move to Asheville, and then six months later I did.

All of it was purely a lark. I didn’t know anyone there. I spent that first summer in 2021 hanging by the river and finding all the good dive bars and driving to random nature retreats to hike or swim. The comedy scene was still coming back from Covid. It was all fledgling. Struggling to come back. The world seemed brand new and wide open again.

I’d found it this real nice, arty vibe – the West Asheville, the river arts district, it was a really good fresh breath of air for me after Orlando, which had become so over-grown and crowded that I barely recognized it anymore. I’d say Asheville had a hippie vibe and the locals would sort of disagree, since they had all this touristy stuff there and almost any city government anywhere ends up just trying to illegalize the homeless, which is as anti-hippie as you can get. Bunch of corporate nonsense every city you can name, really. But the energy and the people there – I got into it. I found people there and the community was one I could really fit into, unlike in Florida where it seemed like everything was just pushing me out.

I’ve since moved around a little for work, since the nature of my job as a reporter necessitates moving around. I’ve become accustomed to setting up camp in small towns and writing about them. But I was still near Asheville. The region in general had become a home. I grew to like the whole mountainous area and the peculiar unique vibe of the western NC area. It was all pretty cool.

Then Hurricane Helene happened about two months ago now, and I’d not really been living in town, so it was pretty shocking after a few days without internet that I started to see the extent of the damage. Worse than Katrina – I could hardly believe it. There’s a whole lot that could be written about the climate change and about the institutional failures. The deaths – it’s unfathomable, really. I can’t even really fully conceptualize it. I did some driving around the region recently. It’s really brutal and awful to see, and it’ll take so long for this region to come back to anything like it used to be. Watching it all unfold has been a whirlwind and I haven’t really known how to talk about the full scope, and maybe it’s difficult to do that.

We did lose some wonderful places I had great memories in. Great times. The Root Bar in Swannanoa was a classic dive bar. A weirdo place with some vinyls hung on the walls and a pool table and cheap beer and liquor, and outside people played a made-up ball game in a sand pit. But then again, all ball games are made up, so who’s to say? Inside we did comedy every Sunday night. It was about the ultimate example of a classic open mic, with a handful of drunks listening and if you could get them to chuckle then you knew you were maybe onto something. Or maybe they were just laughing among themselves coincidentally when you finished your punchline. You never knew. It was a room that tested the mettle of a comic – if you started to crumble up there, if you couldn’t handle the silence of saying those jokes to a room three-quarters empty, then you had more work to do. It was a ‘fuck around’ room and it was also kinda the ultimate comedy experience since a lot of a room like this is down to learning to vibe with it, to improvise a little. A canned, stiff act can easily fall flat there. Then it’s a long, lonely drive home sitting with your open mic set. So you learn to give and take with the room.

Getaway River Bar was this great tiki bar by the river. Literally right there. I’d get drinks and go sit by the river and read. They used to do mics there. I’d get up there and just let out the id. I would let loose. Sometimes comedy comes out of the improvisation and when you get into a corner. There were several nights early on in my time in Asheville when the comics would just hang outside by the river. Those were great fucking nights. I was still getting to know everyone and those nights were really great to help that along.

Finally there’s Grail Moviehouse, which was this great indie movie theater right on the river – it had the right vibe of an artsy indie theater and I have fond memories of seeing all kinds of things there. Movies I couldn’t have seen anywhere else in the area, sometimes. The place was always packed out and that was always proof to me that theaters are still cool. Maybe not everybody is just scrolling and ordering takeout at home after all and maybe community will go on. I did some wonderful comedy shows there. They’re the real deal.

I’d originally thought that would seem more trivial. But a big part of a town is the whole community of it, the places where things happen. It’s going on four years since I moved here full-time and these places were great but also just small parts. There have been so many people I found here and some varying scenes for what I like – left-wing politics, comedy, writing. I’ve run comedy shows, I’ve marched for some social causes. It’s a full life. If you can find a good place to settle down then you give it a shot.

And now this horrific stuff has happened and I’m pretty much just in it for the long haul now. I haven’t really been able to do as much as I’d like to help out with the recovery, but I think we can come back from it all. We lost so much more than some great venues, but I do see the community doing its thing. I went down there a few days after the worst of the storm was done. Everything was fucked and there was no water, and in West Asheville there was signs everywhere telling people where to go, where to get food and internet and showers. Food trucks everywhere. Supplies everywhere. It was a community really coming together and they fucking nailed it, and I hope I’m around for some more of it in the coming years.