The author, ready to roll. You wake up one Saturday morning knowing that you are going for a mountain-bike ride. It’s a glorious, sparkly day. The air is thick with budding roses, spicy ramps and the hum of bees in tunnels of rhododendron and laurel. You’re headed to Laurel Mountain. The climb up Fire Road […]
Author: Webmaster
Showing 6973-6993 of 9872 results
Letters to the editor
Bicyclists should stop being selfish This is in response to the May 10 letter, “Bicycles Deserve Some Respect.” I have much more respect for the bicycles than I do the people that ride them. … The bicyclists will get my respect when they stop bicycling on roads in inconvenient areas. I think it is great […]
Mulch madness
When I first began converting my lawn into gardens for fruit, vegetables and herbs, a neighbor told me about a free resource that rocked my world: the city of Asheville’s leaf-mulch pile. The massive, steaming mound at the corner of Broadway and Catawba quickly became a much-loved part of my life. I dumped wheelbarrow loads […]
Remembering Daniel
Editor’s note: Daniel DeLaVergne died March 8 after being hit by a train in a tunnel near Ridgecrest while scouting a location for a video. It was standing room only at the Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company on March 10; they couldn’t let anyone else in because of the fire code. The crowd had gathered […]
Goal!
I know a lot about sports movies because Ken Hanke always makes me review them. I know every cliche in the genre and can predict to the minute the arrivals of plot twists that will challenge the heroic underdog. I can recite word-for-word the dialogue of the no-nonsense coach, the critical parent, the bad-player-who-turns-out-to-be-good, and […]
Hoot
In Hoot, three likable, sun-kissed Florida teenagers — who don’t swear, take drugs, have sex or drive gasoline-powered automobiles — become budding eco-terrorists in order to save fluffy little owls who live in burrows in the ground. These creatures aren’t endangered as a species, but the individual birds sure will be endangered by plans to […]
Neil Young: Heart of Gold
Neil Young is no longer young. He’s 60 years old and plagued by the effects of both illnesses from childhood and decades of drugs, alcohol and general hard living. He’s jowly, and what hair he has left is wispy and sticks out from underneath his cowboy hat like unruly cow tails. Yes, he’s as gorgeous […]
The primary sacrifice
“Pretty,” Liza Gottlieb, mixed-media. The local Mother’s Day exhibit organized by Meg Winnecour is a many-faceted exploration of this genre. It’s a loaded topic, fraught with hope, despair, joy, fear, expectation, and guilt — mothers who weren’t always there when needed, children disobedient when young and neglectful later on. And with Roe v. Wade in […]
Gallery gossip
• It seems every restaurant in town is hanging local artists’ work. This is good for business, good for artists, and good for the public. And here’s a branch of that trend that could prove fruitful: Too many visits to medical facilities are made worse by seeing the same old mechanically reproduced prints of scenes […]
Earful
Skeletons in the jukebox “Skeletons” provides a forum for local musicians, artists, record-store owners, etc., to erase cool points by expressing their unseemly affection for an unhip album from their past. Warrant, Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich by Miles Swartz of Davenport “I was living in the golden era of the Sony Walkman and mixed […]
Cartoons
LEAF boosts Bayou musicians
Living the Asheville/NOLA connection: Mardi Gras Indian drummer (and LEAF performer) Imhotep moved here post-Katrina. Ever in the fray, Lake Eden Arts Festival will honors New Orleans’ tentatively-boiling-again gumbo with a novel Neville family adventure. Three prominent members of the Crescent City’s crown musical family will perform this weekend. They’ll help celebrate South Louisiana music, […]
LEAF’s work in New Orleans
Zulu Connection The Neville family and the local healing-arts festival are developing a new connection: LEAF volunteers helped rebuild the Katrina-destroyed house of Ivan’s cousin Charmaine, and are in a program with Tipitina’s Foundation that helped Ivan and others replace a total of $74,000 in instruments lost in the storm. “For several days, we pulled […]
LEAF facts & acts
The Lake Eden Arts Festival, featuring roots and world music, contra dancing and healing-arts workshops, happens every May and October at Camp Rockmont, the former site of avant-garde Black Mountain College. Spring LEAF 2006 unfolds Friday, May 12 through Sunday, May 14. Weekend passes include camping, and are $110/adults, $88/youth. Tickets at the gate are […]
Higher ground
The author on the summit of Roan Mountain Have you been to Hospital Rock, Walnut Bottom or the Ellicott Rock Wilderness? If you’re wondering how to hike to these places, stay tuned and I’ll get you there. Here in the Southern Appalachians, we’re blessed with the highest mountains in the East, outstanding waterfalls, and thousands […]
Letters to the editor
Eliminate subsidy, not Civic Center In the May 2 edition of the Mountain Xpress, Hal Millard [paraphrased] me as saying that I thought that the city should dump the Civic Center [“Red Ink Blues“]. This is a misrepresentation of what I said. Council had reviewed the city’s budget outlook for the coming fiscal year. In […]
Getting ‘em on the bus
When Burlington, Vt., implemented a one-year, fare-free promotional period, ridership increased 56 percent — and it remained 25 percent higher after fares were reinstated. The recent article “How Green Is Asheville?” (March 15 Xpress) gave a good overview of sustainability initiatives. As a follow-up, here are some specific ideas for how Asheville can create a […]
Letters to the editor
Where have all the flowers gone? On April 12 — a spectacular spring day when the beautiful flowering crab-apple trees around Pack Square were in full bloom — the Pack Square Conservancy cut them down. This was the same area of the city park where citizens successfully fought to stop the Grove Park Inn from […]
Fair play
Private citizens should not have to call up the CEO of a company and plead with him or her to please soften their building’s design because city staff failed to enforce the law. During the past few months, I’ve had an amazing crash course in urban planning, public policy and the unparalleled benefit of bulk […]
Stick It
As a shameless medley of Flashdance, Rocky, Busby Berkeley routines and hip-hop videos, Stick It is a glorious, over-the-top girl-power fantasy. It’s also a thrilling insider look at the obsessive world of elite gymnastics, where the training is so grueling it makes the Navy Seal regimen look like a workout for wusses. Haley Graham is […]
Crossing back over
Amazing grace: Move over, Dylan. The Blind Boys of Alabama have stayed true to their message longer than most Baby Boomers have been alive. For more than 60 years now, the Blind Boys of Alabama have been shouting out the Good News of the Christian message. However, ever since their crossover move of 2001, they’ve […]