Year: 2009
Showing 1093-1113 of 2958 results
Book Report: Emily’s Ghost
Author Denise Giardina, often considered an Appalachian writer, crosses the Atlantic to recreate the life of 19th century Wuthering Heights novelist Emily Brontë. (Worth noting: today, July 30, is Emily’s birthday.)
Leopard print heels
Xpress wants your opinion (columns, that is)
Got something to say, dear readers? Xpress is putting out an open call for well-written commentary pieces on relevant local issues.
Dam Removal Begins on North Toe River in Mitchell County
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reports that demolition of a North Toe River dam downstream from Spruce Pine is under way. Agency staff say its removal “will make the river safer for paddlers and open up miles of upstream habitat to fish and other aquatic life.” Here’s the latest update from the agency.
This weekend on a shoestring
Bele Chere is behind us now, but the weekend unfolds ahead comes jam-packed with enough musical, outdoor, art, literary and general good summery fun to seem like we’re right back in festival mode.
Here comes the chain again
There's something afoot at the corner of Haywood and College streets, and it's not just the massive renovation under way at the former CVS pharmacy site. After all, there are similar projects scattered around downtown Asheville. A new look: The former CVS location at the corner of Haywood and College streets (above) will get an […]
Showing Pritchard Park some birthday love
Trina Mullen, an organizer with the volunteer group Friends of Pritchard Park, says the downtown-Asheville park could use a little TLC. "Not a lot of love has come Pritchard's way from the community in the past few years," she says. "We'd like to change that." Proud of Pritchard: The Friends of Pritchard Park group has […]
Sheriff’s deputy accused in road rage incident
A local woman claims an off-duty Buncombe County sheriff's deputy threatened her during a road-rage incident, sparking an internal-affairs investigation. Clyde resident Julie Brown also sharply criticized the conduct of the Asheville Police Department, which responded to her 911 call. Brown says she was driving home from work July 9 when a jeep cut her […]
Facing state cuts, WNCW launches fundraising drive
Proposed state budget cuts will probably slash about $200,000 from WNCW's budget for the coming year, leaving the station facing staff cuts. The popular local public-radio station is launching a major fund drive to try to make up some of the loss. "This is going to be a really painful blow. The station has never […]
Woodfin annexation opponents turn out in force
Declaring that they're ready for a fight, about 400 opponents of a massive annexation proposed by the town of Woodfin packed the Woodfin Elementary gym for a July 21 public hearing. The residents of the 3.5-square-mile slice of Erwin Hills and Leicester say they'll see higher taxes but few or no benefits if forced to […]
Council committee to URTV: Right your own ship
In a July 20 letter to URTV Director Pat Garlinghouse and Board Chair Jerry Young, Asheville City Council's Boards and Commissions Committee spelled out a 14-point breakdown of the problems dogging the public-access TV station. The letter cited concerns ranging from transparency issues and "internal turmoil" to the involvement of individuals with criminal backgrounds and […]
Spanglish for beginners
According to bassist (and Grupo Fantasma founding member) Greg Gonzalez, "We have so many influences, when you come to see us it's a gumbo of sound." An apt metaphor for this pepper pot of a Latin jazz-funk fusion outfit currently boasting 10 members. Gonzales adds that the group's collective experience —and most of a decade […]
The Green Scene
Move over, kudzu: Oriental bittersweet and a grab bag of other non-native, invasive plants may actually pose more of a threat to our Southern forests. Like kudzu, Oriental bittersweet can rapidly overwhelm native plants by covering and choking them. But unlike kudzu, which tends to be limited to sunny, open areas along roadways, Oriental bittersweet […]
Brave new world music
When vocalist and composer Mariam Matossian made the move from her hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia to Greenville, S.C., she didn't figure on meeting any fellow Armenian musicians. In fact, for her first year in Greenville, when Matossian performed it was mostly at venues thousands of miles away with her Canadian backing band. Vocalist Mariam […]
Junker’s Blues
When you're a junker, it's hard to avoid magical thinking. Success is so dependent on serendipity you start to believe it's not just random. It was, for instance, easy to feel things were "meant to be" when I found, via that magical portal of Facebook, that my friend Rabuck was heading to the Biltmore Square […]
Artillery
Flood Gallery is one of the only galleries in Asheville exhibiting work by out-of-town contemporary conceptual artists. Given its out-of-the-way location, the shows are all too often under attended, but the gallery is at least attempting to introduce new aesthetics and ideas to the artistic discourse of Asheville. "Skink," by Mike Calway-Fagen, was at one […]
Spork
Big news and big excitement for local playwright, actor, teacher and Xpress contributor John Crutchfield: His play, Songs of Robert, has been accepted into the New York International Fringe Festival. The mid-August festival spans 16 days, 200 venues and draws about 75,000 people. It's Crutchfield's first foray there, and a chance to show his work […]
Soundtrack
From the opening notes, fuzzy and aggressive through Stella Blue's downstairs sound system, Wooden Toothe plants its feet firmly in the fuzzy-and-aggressive territory between country and punk. Yet this is no country-punk outfit. The quartet, fronted by sprightly bass player Pierce Harmon, nods to both Uncle Tupelo and the Sex Pistols with neither a twang […]
Shooting the chef
Sandlin Gaither wanted to point his camera at loud, foul-mouthed, rowdy, besotted subjects, which is pretty much how he ended up shooting chefs. Street vendors, Bangkok, Thailand Photos by Sandlin Gaither "God, they almost look like pirates," local photog Gaither says of the back-of-the-house workers who've become an ongoing project for him. "They have tattoos, […]
Outdoors: The Practical Fly
About five years ago, I was doing a renovation job at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. During the four months I was there, a passionate debate was playing out in the local paper via articles, editorials and letters to the editor. Let it go: On a guided tour with Altamont Anglers, Tom Baynes caught this […]