LiveWire Asheville opens online gateway for area performing arts

After two years spent researching, developing and designing the project, a consortium of artists, venues and supporters last week launched LiveWireAsheville.com, which is intended to be a one-stop shop for info about Asheville-area performing arts. One of its main goals? To create a brand for Asheville's performing arts, and help better market the local arts […]

Mission Hospital to begin search for new CEO

The president and CEO of Mission Hospital and Mission Health System, Western North Carolina's key health center and the region's largest employer, resigned recently amid tensions between hospital administrators and some staff members and physicians. Joe Damore notified the hospital's Board of Directors on Oct. 27 that he would resign effective Jan. 31, 2010. The […]

These are the good old days

Everything about Woody Pines (from his feather-festooned fedora and his vintage resonator guitar to the grainy pictured of boxcars on his Web site and deep cut covers of long-forgotten blues musicians) harkens to another era. One of juke joints, clapboard shacks and coal smoke on the wind. Pines, whose early performances borrowed from vaudeville and […]

Sound Track

Open Windows, an eclectic rock-indie quartet, finished its debut album, Lanterns, in Orlando, Fla. and was looking to relocate to a city where the band could move forward in its endeavors. Since arriving in Asheville a few months ago, a chance vacancy at the Root Bar yielded a surprise first show, a relationship with the […]

Take a surprise trolley stop or two

Set against an industrial landscape, where the historic buildings are every bit as fascinating as the artists who work in them, the studios of the River District artists will be open this weekend for the twice-yearly stroll. To make it extra easy on guests, a free trolley service has been added this year. Melissa Morrissey […]

Asheville Transgende­r Remembranc­e Weekend

The Transgender Day of Remembrance is an international event to remember those who have been killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. Although not every person memorialized during the Day of Remembrance self-identifies as transgender — that is, as a transsexual, cross-dresser or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of violence caused by bias […]

Outdoors

A group of restless t'weens and teens clowning around at Jean Webb Park on Riverside Drive usually means that something not-so-productive is about to happen. The isolated park — located in the shadow of the Haywood Road bridge — has a shady reputation. But this group of 19 Asheville Middle School students are members of […]

Pitrolo and Williams are cleaning up Buncombe’s air and politics

Melanie Pitrolo's courageous lawsuit and Margaret Williams' excellent investigative reporting ["Pollution, Politics and Gender," Oct. 28] open an unusually clear window on the murky back-room world of two power-brokers who have held local politics in a tight, secretive grip for many years: CIBO — the local business lobby that's more conservative than the Chamber of […]

Hats off to the Pumpkin Pedallers

I would like to say "hats off" — or rather, "helmets off" to the large group of bike riders — 100 or so — that rode up Beaucatcher Mountain on Halloween Eve. They were delightful. And they were very well organized, polite, friendly, courteous and very appropriate for the Hallow Eve. I truly enjoyed watching […]

It’s time for Asheville to adopt a pro-cyclist stance

After being an avid bicyclist in Asheville for, well, almost four years now, I haven't seen any change in either motorists' attitudes towards cyclists or an altered political view of the situation (except for Gordon Smith, who has advocated for bicyclists). Concerning the potentially economically and environmentally advantageous qualities, let alone personal benefits, of simply […]

America must confront its own fundamenta­lism

Most Americans are appalled at how primitively fundamentalist some Middle Easterners are. Yes, some are extremely primitive. But by far the greater causes of terrorism are the primitive and fundamentalist aspects of America and Western Civilization. After all, historically, it's Western Civilization's brutal intolerance that forced the Jews to create a country in the Middle […]

Say and eat what you want

In reply to Scott Smith's letter on vegetarians ["Vegetarians Are Too Pushy About Their Lifestyle," Nov. 4]: Dear Scott, I am sorry that you are so offended by vegetarians. No doubt this is a free country, and you can say and eat pretty much whatever you want. But lifestyle does come with a price. Despite […]