Like it or not, declares Rick Morris, Vincent’s Ear isn’t closing. Morris, the Lexington Avenue venue’s self-described “spiritual owner,” has wearied of recent rumors heralding his scrappy club’s impending demise in the wake of the neighboring Asheville Community Resource Center eviction. Detractors of “funky Lexington” be damned; Vincent’s remains good news for Asheville, where an […]
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Instrument frets? Fret not!
Guitars show up on Randy Hughes’ doorstep almost daily. Sometimes, a whole crowd of them is out there. They arrive in FedEx or UPS shipping boxes, with notes mentioning mysterious buzzings, sprung frets, buckling necks, high actions. Others show up in the arms of concerned owners, often with unexpected stories in tow. Hughes, 45, WNC’s […]
Cartoons
God will provide
A lot of people here in the South believe Sunday is the Lord’s Day: a time for relaxing, being with family and giving thanks. And on a typical Sunday night in winter, Asheville is frigid and still. Not too many folks in town, and by midnight, it seems as though the world’s asleep. All the […]
The revolution will be harmonized
“The first time [I] see the black people and the white people dancing together, and laughing, in my mind, I think: It might be like this in heaven.” — Albert Mazibuko Albert Mazibuko remembers clearly the day back in the ’70s when he sensed, for the first time in his life, that apartheid might not […]
Happy woman’s blues
It’s not yet 10 in the morning in Adrienne Young’s adopted home of Nashville, and already she’s discussed the teachings of Carl Jung with a friend. “We were talking about archetypes and all this stuff,” Young said in a recent phone interview, “and how all of these energies are present, including the ultimate song, which […]
Little sparrow
“I’m very prejudiced, but I think Fair and Tender Ladies is Lee Smith’s masterpiece.” — Actress Quinn Hawkesworth “I am a girl 12 years old very pretty I have very long hair and eight brothers and sisters and my Mother and my Father, he is ill. We live on a farm on the Sugar Fork […]
Sticking to your skin
“You have to embrace the ugly and the harsh and celebrate it, and realize it has a purpose in the grand scheme of things. You don’t rail against it blindly and with rage. You have to take tactical measures to bring about the light.” That’s Indigo Girl Emily Saliers in a recent phone interview from […]
Cartoons
The calm before the storm?
“Why should I pay a quarter, say, for my shower, when the Grove Park Inn pays only a dime for someone staying in a $200-a-night room?” — Water Authority member Brian Peterson “Why should I pay a quarter, say, for my shower when the Grove Park Inn pays only a dime for someone staying in […]
Asheville City Council
“From what I’ve heard tonight, everybody can do better than we can.” — Planning and Development Director Scott Shuford One by one, the seven members of the Asheville City Council leaned into their microphones and spoke their piece. The issue before them was clear: Whether to approve a multimillion-dollar redevelopment plan for The Block — […]
Letters to the editor
A little common sense at the gas pumps, please So here is the situation: You’re standing at the gas pumps minding your own business and pumping fuel into your vehicle, and up drives this thoughtless person, jumping out of his vehicle to pump fuel. So far so good, but … his car is still running […]
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
Prefacing Havana Nights with Dirty Dancing must have been some marketing guru’s idea to make the movie attractive to the teens, who have discovered the 1987 original with Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze and turned it into a popular, oldie-but-goody video. Maybe that’s also why the 51-year-old, still-sexy Patrick Swayze was cast in a small, […]
Against the Ropes
An odd thing happens while you’re watching Against the Ropes: It’s entertaining enough for you to think, hey, this isn’t as bad as everyone says it is. The film is a competent effort for a first-time feature director (actor Charles S. Dutton), including some suitably grimy location shots from my beloved hometown of Cleveland, Ohio; […]
Playing the hero
“I was raised during an era of black power — ‘I’m black and I’m proud!’ … In Jackie’s younger years, he could have ended up with a rope around his neck if he’d [said] that.” — Actor Edgar L. Davis “We don’t serve niggers here,” the waitress snaps. “That’s OK,” Jackie Robinson says with a […]
The love of left field
Jackie Robinson’s promotion to the Brooklyn Dodgers was major news. The banner headline in the April 11, 1947, edition of the Asheville Citizen read: “Dodgers sign first Negro player in majors.” The wire story that followed reported that “most baseball men agree that the lithe Negro not only will stay up, but probably become a […]
Tainted love
The navel-gazing exercise in shock has long been the province of the angry-white-male artist: Think sheep-pickling Brit Damien Hirst. Matthew Barney’s work, on the other hand, wants to be looked at and loved. Barney, 37, grew up in Boise, Idaho, where he was a star quarterback for his high-school football team. At Yale, though, he […]
Something to talk about
He’s branded his current spoken-word tour Shock & Awe My Ass — but at a recent show, the volatile Henry Rollins radiated a mixed message. True to form, Rollins predicted a dubiously motivated U.S. invasion of Pakistan and railed against many of the usual suspects: opponents of gay marriage/abortion/women’s rights; Ted Kennedy (“a f••ing coward […]
Cartoons
Letters to the editor
Demand that City Council pass resolution against eight I-26 lanes Eight lanes are still the only option being studied by the Department of Transportation for our superhighway through Asheville, but nothing could be less super. The fact is, the DOT [now] has a much-more-evolved traffic-predicting computer model, which was incomplete when eight lanes were selected […]
With liberty and justice for some
You may have read about the Asheville Community Resource Center in Mountain Xpress. Or perhaps you simply know it as that place with the big, painted doors where all those weird kids hang out. That seems to be its overriding image at the moment. You see, the ACRC (and the local business owner who held […]