One of Asheville’s most beloved open mics was held at Beanstreets, a coffee shop at the corner of Broadway and College Street (now the home to Green Sage Café). Local music teacher Sonia Brooks writes on her website, “For two straight years, every Thursday night, I went to open [mic] night at Bean Streets. … The first year, I would become so terrified I would forget the words or the chords to the song and simply sit down in the middle of my act, especially if someone came in who I knew.” The downtown staple opened in 1993 and, during the ’90s and early 2000s, its weekly open mic was a major form of entertainment in a city that, at the time, had only a handful of music venues. It was also testing ground for artists such as singer-songwriters Juliana Finch and Stephan Evans and poets Pasckie Pascua and Matthew Mulder. Beanstreets shuttered in 2005 but is immortalized in an oil painting by Jeff Pittman the pages of the YA novel What I Came to Tell You by local author Tommy Hays. — A.M.
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