Decades at Xpress opened doors to community

Editor’s note: August marked Xpress’ 30-year anniversary. Throughout September we’ll be celebrating the milestone with articles, photo spreads and reflections from current and former staff members. Thank you for reading Xpress, and please consider becoming a member. 

By Patty Levesque

I moved to Asheville from Connecticut with my family in 1989. At that time, some areas of downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods were a little questionable, and we often avoided them. Slowly, though, I became familiar with places I did want to venture out to. One of the first things I did was join the French Broad Food Co-op, which was located in the Chesterfield Mill. Here, I met some of my first Asheville friends. Also, I picked up a local monthly paper called Green Line, which gave me the news I wanted.

While I was busy raising my three daughters, I worked part time for a local home business for a few years. Then, in 1994, Mountain Xpress launched as a weekly paper, and as the second issue was being printed, I was hired as the office manager. I was so glad to be part of this progressive paper, which kept me coming downtown daily for 20 years.  I met many people doing important things for and in Asheville. I knew so much more about what was happening, and luckily, the growth and improvements happening downtown were making it a fun, safe, and comfortable place to work.

I was learning the payroll and billing system on a DOS computer with a dot matrix printer, thanks to the help of the bookkeeper and the computer wiz. While the rest of the staff had their weekly deadlines for publishing the paper, mine were monthly. I set up files for all of the employees and printed paychecks once a month. Billing for advertisers was also done monthly. Bookkeeping took on quarterly and annual goals and often required late nights of hard work to meet deadlines. Jeff Fobes, our publisher, helped a lot by going through some of this with me to get things done when they were due. He knew most of what was going on in each department.

The advertising department didn’t have computers when I started. The staff used an index card file and a telephone to reach the advertisers. Eventually, we all graduated to iMacs, but that department had only one to share initially. Then, two, and eventually, all the advertising representatives had their own computer. I was thankful for the ease the iMac brought to my own work, and I learned how to do spreadsheets, which are so helpful.

Since our offices were usually shared with others, I was able to enjoy my various office mates: Frank Rabey, Nelda Holder, Peter Gregutt and Lisa Watters over the years. Occasionally our initial landlord, Elwood Miles, came by to check on how things were going.

Sometimes, we would be visited by some of our local advertisers and heroes, including Julian Price, who was wonderful to meet, and Joe Eckert from nearby Laughing Seed/Jack of the Wood. Thanks to Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress movie critic for years, we had the privilege of attending several movie premieres at Carmike Theatre. During some of the good old Asheville film festivals when Leni Sitnick was Asheville mayor, with input from John Cram and Neal Reed from the Fine Arts Theatre, all of whom I came to know, I had the privilege of sitting behind Ron Howard and his family in the Diana Wortham Theatre. I even had a conversation with his mother in the bathroom! When Ken Russell was honored at the festival the following year, I saw Tommy at the Diana Wortham Theatre and attended events at the then-Blue Ridge Motion Pictures Studio (which now houses Highland Brewing). Andie McDowell lived in Asheville back then, and I occasionally saw her around town.

Many staff people came and went, and I enjoyed working with several who stayed on for years. Some remain good friends to this day. I got to know many more people in and around Asheville by working downtown in the Miles Building, which became my second home for many years. As the number of files grew, we had a designated storage room, which I kept organized. I also had a wonderful office assistant (Lisa W.) who helped with filing and answering the phones. She also did some excellent writing for the newspaper, and we have remained good friends to this day. We were in charge of planning staff parties at various spots like the old Chocolate Lounge, the Sky Bar, Creekside Bar, Burial Beer and our West Asheville warehouse. We also had some fun in-office parties, along with a few out-of-office, all-staff meetings and team-building events at the Battery Park Roof Garden, the N.C. Arboretum, etc. We also enjoyed going out to lunch at some of our favorite local spots, a few of which are still around: Grove Corner Market, Pie in the Sky, Ali Baba, Chorizo, Early Girl, Woolworth Walk, Laughing Seed and Flying Frog.

For years, on the last weekend in July, the streets around our offices would be closed while vendors set up for the Bele Chere festival. The sounds and smells would permeate the building. We had our Mountain Xpress booth on the corner of Battery Park and Haywood for years. We often had a booth at the LEAF Festival in May and October. We frequently received comp tickets from our advertisers to concerts, the Southeastern Women’s Herbal Conference, and other events. In 1996, we also had the opportunity to see, on the street below, the production of some scenes from our office windows for the movie My Fellow Americans, which starred James Garner, Jack Lemon, and Dan Ackroyd.

One year, some of our staff participated in the 48-hour Asheville Film Festival, producing the short film Penultimate Penalty, filmed in the Miles Building, the Fine Arts Theatre and the streets of downtown.

Lisa, Jeff, and I had ongoing contests to see who could most closely guess the total amount of the day’s deposit based on the number of envelopes that arrived in the mail. Each person’s guess had to beat out the others’ three days in a row to win. The previous winner would provide a silly (or occasionally very nice) prize to be presented to the new winner, many of which were proudly displayed on our desks. When advertisers got behind in their payments, we had to make calls, send letters and occasionally go to court with our lawyer.

I had a great experience working at Mountain Xpress and am grateful for all I learned and was given during that time. Amid all the growth and changes, Asheville wouldn’t be the same without Mountain Xpress.