What’d you see (or perhaps miss) on the MountainX.com Forums this week? Let’s take a look.
It’s shaping up to be a tough season for downtown-Asheville businesses, and the city’s economic future has proven to be a popular point of discussion on the forum this week. The abrupt, but supposedly temporary, closing of Old Europe — which had been in business since 1994 — had many people wondering if the downtown mainstay was ever coming back. Along the same lines, a thread asking about the odds of survival for various kinds of downtown businesses has proven to be a hot topic.
Moving on to more cheery subjects, forum regular Seeker posted a link to the CONTENTdm gallery of historical images of Asheville, immediately capturing the interest of many on the forums. From the trolleys and streetcars of the 1920s to images from the first Bele Chere, forum users found all kinds of fascinating treasures.
National topics also had their fair share of discussion this week. Party divisions over the proposed $800-ish billion stimulus package helped fan the flames in a thread called Will the GOP’s roadblocking be their undoing? Along the same lines, seeming rifts in the Republican party caused poster The (PFKaP) to ask Will there be a “new” Republican party in the next few years? Meanwhile, the embarrassing tax issues haunting a number of President Obama’s recent appointees prompted decidedly conservative forum poster travelah to aks How about all those tax cheats?
In the Arts & Entertainment subforum, one of this week’s bigger topics has been How important is “art” for the economy and culture? In a more light-hearted vein, the Asheville Fashion Predictions for 2009 aims to gauge where the ever-quirky clothing trends will end up this year. Other interesting topics include “the most WTF movies” forum users have seen, reactions and examinations of this week’s cover story about roots and indie music, and the ongoing discussion of Words and phrases that really bug us.
While there have been few blockbuster threads in the Community subforum this week, a number of interesting discussion seeds have been planted in recent days. Take, for instance, the thread that asks about Your Grand Gardening Plans for Spring. Or this thread about getting tax returns — now quite dormant — which may heat up as April 15 approaches.
Don’t see a discussion about that burning topic you’d like to talk about? Why not start your own? All registered members of MountainX.com have forum accounts, and if you aren’t a member, joining is easy — just click here.
— Steve Shanafelt, forums administrator
The forums are more active than ever.
“The forums are more active than ever. ”
As if that implies anything significant.