Job statistics don’t tell the whole story for local economy

On Nov. 21, Gov. Pat McCrory’s office released a statement saying that all of the jobs North Carolina lost during the Great Recession — some 62,000 positions — had been gained back. Not long after, local unemployment numbers started coming in, showing that Asheville had the lowest unemployment numbers among the North Carolina metro areas at […]

2014’s greatest hits: The year’s most-viewed stories at Mountainx.­com

While not quite as attention-getting as the impending end of the world would’ve been, the “tube-ocalypse” sucked in a drove of zombie-hungry readers this year: The most-viewed story on Mountainx.com in 2014 was “Asheville Tries for Tubing World Record with ‘Zombie Float.’” Here’s a look at the the top-10 most-viewed stories.

Smart bets: Freeway Revival

Recently topping the ReverbNation Americana charts for Asheville, Americana/country-blues collective The Freeway Revival writes songs about the Appalachian mountains but spends a lot of time touring outside Western North Carolina. Upcoming dates take the group to the Carolina coast, upstate New York and into the Midwest; last spring the band traveled to L.A. to record […]

Asheville cooking instructor celebrates ‘made-from-scratch’ life

A recent story in Our State magazine by Durham, N.C., writer Christina Cooke focuses on the efforts of Asheville cooking instructor Barbara Swell to celebrate and preserve old-time recipes and cooking methods. Cooke also highlights Swell’s belief in the importance of gathering around a table and eating together without distraction. When she was a girl, Barbara […]

Contaminat­ed CTS site gets national attention with AP story

It’s a “nightmare scenario” for residents living near or on land associated with the former CTS site south of Asheville on Mills Gap Road, according to a Dec. 29 Associated Press story that ran in the Charlotte Observer (“An Old Plant, tainted Land, and Worried Homeowners”). The story takes particular aim at the developers who purchased the more […]

Is Asheville no longer a ‘weirdo’ city?

In a piece originally titled “Remembering Max and Rosie’s,” Katie Herzog, social editor at Grist, takes a look back at Asheville’s changing cultural landscape over the last 10-ish years. The commentary, originally written for Charlotte’s NPR station in October, shows both Herzog’s nostalgia of Asheville’s “weirdo” population from a different time and her sadness that it has evolved […]

Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler December 31-January 6: January Is Upon Us

In Theaters. It was as inevitable as Dick Clark’s shrinking posthumous billing on New Year’s Rocking Eve that January would arrive bearing slim tidings mixed with the nuggets of expanding Oscar-bait releases that have yet too penetrate the provinces. Well, this week we get none of the latter (next week promises to be better) and […]

Smart bets: Brian Mashburn art exhibit

Portentous and meticulously crafted urban landscapes typify painter Brian Mashburn‘s body of work, which often juxtaposes a calm observer — perhaps iconic of nature or purity — among background rubble. The artist, who has lived and worked in Asheville for more than a decade and garnered increasing national and international attention over the past two […]