Chris Gray Faust recently visited Asheville for a girlfriend getaway, blogging about it for USA Today Travel. Faust seems rather oddly intent on focusing on the style of the residents over offering much useful detail about the city itself. Observe:
“Whereas the people in Charlotte were remarkably well-groomed, Asheville residents dress more like you’d see in a hipster neighborhood in a large northern city – only with the requisite Southern charm.”
At least we’re charming, if not a little scruffy and prone to getting into the drink, apparently:
“The city has more breweries per capita than any other, a fact that make its scruffy residents very proud (and the tourist nickname Beer City USA). On the sunny March day we visited, in the middle of college basketball playoffs, pubs were packed and plenty of beer was going down.”
The writer then proceeds to go on the Brews Cruise, getting a little too tipsy — as apparently did others on the tour, who also managed to fall under Faust’s scrutiny:
“By our third brewery, the Lobster Trap, I was starting to get tipsy. We hadn’t checked into the hotel yet, so we bailed on the tour a little early. People were definitely showing their drink; we hoped that none of them were driving in the next hour or so.”
They have some nice things to say about Cúrate’s Katie Button (mostly):
“Chef Katie Button had originally planned on getting a PhD in neuroscience from the NIH in Bethesda. Instead, she dropped out and got a job at Minibar, Jose Andres’s hot restaurant in Washington DC … Katie Button is a semifinalist in this year’s Rising Chef category of the James Beard awards. If you want to catch her before she’s famous, go to Cúrate and get the tasting menu.” (note: Katie Button was not a semi-finalist for the JBAs, but was indeed nominated. Sadly, it’s not the same thing, but congrats to Button, all the same).
The ladies also enjoyed their hotel at the Princess Anne Bed and Breakfast. So much so that they ended their tour a little early:
“Asheville has some great bars and lounges, but we were exhausted from our day so we didn’t go out.”
I wonder how the North Carolina Governor’s Conference on Tourism, who sponsored the trip, feels about that decision.
Sounds accurate to me.