I'm late with the Drinking Liberally announcement this week. Work, Democracy for America training, tennis, friends, and sleep have all conspired to keep my from my keyboard.
Come kick off Bele Chere 2006 with Drinking Liberally, that weekly gathering of liberals, progressives, greens, anarchists, communitarians, and lesbian ethicists, meets again at the Asheville Brewing Company on Coxe Avenue to moan/cheer the arrival of another Bele Chere and to dissect the body politic. We're there from 7-10 pm every Thursday night, quaffing excellent microbrews on the vast patio. Join us!
For those of you whom have never taken a city bus before, here is a list of items you should bring:
1) A satchel
An automobile is not only a form of transportation, it's also a mobile storage unit. Once you commit yourself to public transit, you'll need a way to carry around day-to-day items.
This observation may sound obvious to women, but we men are used to storing everything in our wallets or in the car. In most cases, we feel awkward about carrying something that looks suspiciously like a like a large purse.
So ladies, if you want to encourage your partner to take public transit, compliment him on his large satchel.
2) iPod and/or some way to listen to music:
Public transit is less of a hassle than driving, but bus engines are noisy and music helps take the edge off.
Furthermore, the noises encourage other passengers to speak loudly to each other, and it's easy to overhear private conversations. Eavesdropping is only fun the first few times, afterwards you stop caring about the personal dramas of the average grocery clerk.
3) An umbrella, to be kept in the satchel:
If waiting in the rain for a bus makes you grumpy, be sure to have the song Bus Stop loaded into your ipod.
3) A monthly pass:
Without the monthly pass, taking public transit is not cheaper than driving. At $1.00 per trip, an errand will cost at least $2.00, if not much more.
As of this post, monthly passes are $30 for unlimited rides.*
5) Bus schedules:
Be sure to grab a few day and evening schedules from the front of any bus. You are going to read, and re-read, these so much that they will start to get frayed.
6) A watch:
You are going to need a watch. 'nuff said.
7) Patience:
Be patient! Especially at first. Most Americans are so used to the perceived convience of private automobiles, that we've forgotten how to share a public resource like transportation.
Expect a period of transition.
You will miss the bus a lot at first. You will mis-read the schedule, and expect a bus to pick you up on the wrong side of the road. You will forget to renew your monthly pass and not have any change on you. The bus will (rarely) be late.
Despite these problems, as you start to get used to the system public transit gets easier the more you take it. I promise.
In the long term, you will come to wonder why you depended so much on your car as the primary mode of transportation.
For the explanation behind the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.
To see all posts for the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.
d’licious debut: magazine release party!
Saturday, August 5, 2006 from 7:00pm– until
Haywood Park Hotel Ballroom, 1 Battery Park Ave., Asheville, NC 28801
Contact: Cody Stokes at cody@dliciousmag.com
On Saturday August 5th D'licious Magazine will debut its premier issue as Asheville’s one and only food and beverage magazine. Come experience a taste of Asheville’s cuisine, entertainment, breweries and wineries from 7:00pm until after midnight at the Haywood Park Ballroom underneath the Haywood Park Hotel in the heart of downtown Asheville.
Participating will be: Belly of Buddha Catering, the Flying Frog Cafe, the Frog Bar and Deli, Biltmore Estate Stable Café, Thai Basil, Hannah Flannigans, Skully’s Signature Dine & Drink, Digable Pizza, Greenlife Grocery, Sweet Monkey Bakery & Catering, Clingman Ave. Coffee and Catering, Zuma Too: Chef Oso’s Culinary Passport, Haywood Road Market, Sclafani Distributors, the Biltmore Estate Winery, Hanover Park Winery, the French Broad Brewing Company, Highlands Brewery and the Pisgah Brewery.
Additional sponsors will be: The Westville Pub, Kabloom, 96.5 WOXL, and the Art of Microbrewing by Stephen Patrick Boland and Kevin Marino.
Entertainment for the evening will be: David Stevenson, Cabo Verde, Free Planet Radio and Jen and the Juice.
Tickets can be purchased at the following locations: The Haywood Park Hotel, The French Broad Brewery, Greenlife, Hannah Flannigans, Clingman Ave. Coffee and Catering, Skully’s Signature Dine & Drink, The Haywood Road Market, Orbit DVD and Diggin Art.
Come and support D'licious Magazine for its debut in Asheville.
Tickets are $25 in advance and $35 at the door. Hors’ Doeuvres and beverages will be included in the ticket price.
Dad's grand-dad was a train conductor out of Asheville and rode the route from Asheville to China Grove and back. I, however, am from Atlanta and the rest of the band is from pensacola and virginia. So I have grown up with Asheville stories buzzing around in my head and a few trips to the mountains a year kind of thing.
Over 11 musical structures, the album maps the bloodlines of American music, combining folk, electric blues, jazz, and experimental manipulation - documenting a hybrid form that is uniquely American, indeed, uniquely Rosemont.
I would say, "Imagine Bob Dylan, John Cage, George Gershwin, and Jeff Mangum driving through the desert at night in an el Camino powered by voodoo." ... I think we fall broadly into Americana, which is a pretty loosely defined genre to begin with. I want Rosemont to be musical collage artists, taking what we like from what we like, and leaving the rest.
Kyle and Lissy Rosemont weave elements blues, folk, lounge jazz, pop-rock, bluegrass, and alt-country into a musical tapestry they themselves describe as "digital Americana."
Their sonic quilt is patterned from Kyle's gravelly croon, which is nicely balanced by Lissy's more delicate vocals, and the whole beautiful mess of patchwork is tied together with little atmospheric electonic bits.
There is a tombstone on the South side of Haywood Road. The odd thing about this grave is that it’s not in a cemetery; rather, it stands between one of the most heavily trafficked streets in Asheville and an ATM.
This is the last resting place of the Asheville Trolley System. RIP: 1889 – 1934. It was put up to commemorate the old utility that had been such an important part of so many peoples lives.
As if it isn't ironic enough that a monument to public transit would be placed next to a drive-thru ATM; behind the tombstone there is a small puddle of oil left behind from someones leaking car. It’s almost as if an automobile had just finished urinating on it’s predecessors grave.
Despite living in West Asheville for four years, I had never noticed this landmark. Like most residents in my community, I’ve zipped by it for years without giving this grey slab a second thought. However, when you take public transit, you have a bit more time to notice and appreciate public works and monuments.
The tombstone inspired me to go to the library and look up the old trolley routes.
Since the names and locations of many roads have changed since the trolley system was closed in September of 1934, I’ve over-laid the old routes on top of modern up-to-date maps. In this way, you can better imagine where the trolleys used to run.
There was a lot of guesswork involved, and I wanted these maps to be as close to actually existing streets as possible. The primary resource I used was the book: Trolleys in the Land of the Sky by David Bailey, Joseph Canfield and Harold Cox.
I hope to have downtown and South Asheville done and posted here by this time tomorrow. ON EDIT: 07/21/2006 @ 21:00 EST - Okay the 3rd, and final map is now posted.
Enjoy.
For the explanation behind the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.
To see all posts for the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.
The buzz around Asheville is anticipation for a high quality magazine that captures the essence of the areas "cuisine, entertainment, lifestyle." For those familiar Asheville, you may feel barraged by all the "free" magazines that seem to come from everywhere. This will not be a free magazine. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, the magazine has the potential to be Asheville's Bon Appétit and The New Yorker rolled into one magazine.
George W. Bush, in a closed-door signing, whipped out the first veto of his five and a half year Presidential tenure. The Bush that lives in my head commented, "This veto will protect hundreds of frozen blastocysts from thawnation and fiddlin'. I'm agin' murderin' clumps of cells smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. Don't matter to me that they're just going to toss the damned things into a trashcan, better to protect those little frozen young'uns than try to cure Parkinson disease, Cancer, Old Timer's, and whatever the hell else kind of sicknesses the poor people get. And besides, my frothy evangelical, anti-science base will eat this veto up with a biscuit!"
Drinking Liberally, that weekly gathering of left-leaning former fetuses, comes together again tonight to dissect the political scuttlebutt surrounding President Bush's War on Science. We meet every Thursday for casual conversation and alcoholic delights at the Asheville Brewing Company on Coxe Avenue in downtown Asheville from 7-10pm. Everyone's welcome, so come see who you've been missing!
When: Performances are Thursday to Sunday, July 20-23, starting at 8 p.m. and 2 p.m. on Sundays.
Where: 35Below Theatre is at 35 Walnut St., below the Asheville Community Theatre.
Tickets: $10 per person, $5 for students with identification, on sale at The Reader's Corner, Malaprop's Bookstore & Café and the Asheville Community Theatre box office.
Today is the 17th day of the Brainshrub Bus Project. At this point, I have a few suggestions that Asheville Public Transit (APT), and other bus systems, might find helpful. I hope they don't take these ideas as a critisism of them.
I've been impressed with the professionalism of APT and the system only gets easier to navigate the more often it's used.
1) The location that APT places most notices is useless unless you were born with telescopic vision.
Currently, when APT wants to inform riders of news or changes to the schedule, they do so on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper taped to the partition behind the driver.
This is what it looks like from about 8 feet away:
Can you make the text out? Neither can most people from beyond the second seat.
It would behoove APT to print announcements on large placards, with bigs fonts, then place them in the ad-space above the seats. Like this:
Not only would more people see the notices, but it will give us something to read.
2) The bus station needs bike racks on the main platform.
While there are two bike racks in back of the terminal building along Coxe Avenue, they can't be seen by their owners because the building blocks line-of-sight. This creates an ideal situation for would-be bike thieves.
It's also inconvenient to lock a bike behind the building, then go back when the bus arrives.
Currently, bike owners have no other alternative but to bring their rides onto the platform and lock them to the benches - thus inconveniencing other passengers.
4) Play Mozart at the main terminal.
Nothing adds an air of class and calm to a place like Mozart.
5) A fare should be good for one round trip if the bus is headed away from the central terminal.
I hope I can explain this suggestion clearly.
Let's say a working mom who gets off her shift in West Asheville at 5pm. She lives in East Asheville, and is therefore going to need to take a transfer at the main terminal.
There is a bus she can pick up at 5:15pm; however, it is west-bound and headed in the wrong direction. This same bus will arrive on the opposite site of the street in half an hour.
If our hypothetical worker climbed onto the 5:15pm west-bound bus, and just rode it full-circle until it became east-bound back to the station, she will be charged twice: Once when she got on the bus, and again when the bus heads back to the terminal.
I was surprised to find this out the hard way. Why should anyone have to wait 30 minutes at a bus stop when they could make the same trip in an air-conditioned vehicle?
For the explanation behind the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.
To see all posts for the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.
ASHEVILLE - A new Asheville theater company will stage its debut production Friday with a series of four one-act plays written by local residents.
Two local college students with a passion for writing and theater started the company because they want to see more local plays produced.
Devin Walsh, the 26-year-old president of Metabolism Productions, is a student at UNC Asheville. Chall Gray, 21, attends Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. The two met at a local Toastmasters meeting and recognized in each other similar literary ambitions.
"We figured that if our plays weren't being produced, there were a lot of other people whose work wasn't being produced," Gray said. "We want to fill that niche."
Gray and Walsh describe the plays in "Dizzy" as a verbose, quirky, and funny quartet. "Love, From A to Z" by Gray is "a surreal love story of a couple learning the ABC's of love, literally." "Rochester & Pennyboil" by Walsh explores "how far two ambitious playwrights will go to achieve ultimate fame." "Recalling Paradise" by Jaye Bartell and a work by UNCA professor David Hopes round out the program.
Interestingly, three of the four playwrights have day jobs selling books. Bartell works at Malaprop's, Gray at The Reader's Corner and Walsh at UNCA's bookstore.
Before trying to break into the theater scene, Walsh started a literary magazine called Metabolism at UNCA. The third issue is due out this week, with a run of 3,000 copies, half of which will be distributed on campus and half around Asheville.
"The name 'Metabolism' works because your metabolism takes everything you put in your body and converts it into energy," Walsh said. "We don't differentiate between Cap'n Crunch and carrots. We just want to put local, creative work out there."
The 25 people involved in the productions are all volunteers, though Walsh and Gray ultimately hope to produce paid, professional productions. They're already planning their next production of one-act plays written and performed entirely by women.
"We think we're just the two men to make that happen," Walsh said.
"We're pretty ambitious," Walsh said. "I want the magazine and the production company to survive for a long time. And if there's a possibility for us to expand into other arenas, such as publishing or film, we will."
What: "Dizzy," a series of one-act plays by Metabolism ProductionsWhen: Performances are Friday to Sunday and July 20-23 starting at 8 p.m. and 2 p.m. on Sundays.
Where: 35Below Theatre is at 35 Walnut St., below the Asheville Community Theatre.
Tickets: $10 per person, $5 for students with identification, on sale at The Reader's Corner, Malaprop's Bookstore & Café and the Asheville Community Theatre box office.
On Monday afternoon I saw a slender woman struggle onto our bus carrying so many groceries, that the weight from the plastic bags wrapped on her wrists made her hands turn purple. She barely fit through the door.
She squeezed down the narrow aisle to the back of the bus, only pausing to catch her breath once we started moving again. When the vehicle stopped to pick up more passengers, unsecured cans and bottles started rolling forward.
I myself caught a jar of Ragu extra-chunky tomato sauce with my foot before it was able escape out the side door.
After everything was re-collected, I got permission to take a picture of the scene. I won't use her name, but she's a parent with several children.
You are looking at a weeks worth of food.
On one hand, this mess is her own fault. She should have taken a cab, or, gotten a friend to pick her up at the store. It's probably against regulations to lug this much baggage onto a city bus; but if you were the driver, could you say no to a mother bringing food home to her children?
This woman, without knowing it, was acting as a canary for the rest of us who are still privileged enough to be able to afford driving. Look carefully at the picture again. Does she seem familiar?
She is you without your car.
Is her load any more than what you bring to your family? How would you get needed groceries home if there was a fuel shortage or you could no longer afford to fill your vehicle's tank?
The problem for many people who are new to taking the bus isn't scheduling or comfort - it's the logistics of living in a city that is designed for cars rather than people. As good as a public transit might be, it's still an ordeal to do grocery shopping with it. Buses are ideal for commuting, and, if you plan it right, running errands that don't require hauling loads.
No one in an urban setting should have to walk more than a few blocks to get food. In a well-planned city, this woman could have rented a grocery-cart with rugged wheels; then simply pushed her groceries home.
In the short-term, public transit officials can help by playing a leading role in organizing shopping-trip car-pools and lobbying the city for better zoning. Shopping without a personal vehicle does not need to be an ordeal, even if you do live in the sprawl.
There is a way you can help build such a transit system: Simply take the bus once a month.
That's it.
If everyone who cared about building better public transit took the bus once a month, it would boost numbers enough so that city planners could get more funding to improve the system. Not just for buses and trains, but for logistics systems and advertising to make car-pooling convenient and popular.
It's so easy, it's ridiculous.
Or, when the next fuel crisis arises, would you rather join the woman in the picture above: stuck in a transit system that can't meet her needs?
Notes:
I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like.
It's got a basket, a bell that rings
And things to make it look good.
I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.
I've got a clan of gingerbread men.
Here a man, there a man, lots of gingerbread men.
Take a couple if you wish. They're on the dish.
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.
I know a room full of musical tunes.
Some rhyme, some ching, most of them are clockwork.
Let's go into the other room and make them work.
I would like to state, for the record: The new location of the local Drinking Liberally meetings is awesome!
Now I admit, when the decision was made to switch from the bar "Jack of the Wood" to "Asheville Brewing Company", I was nervous.
I had grown accustomed to being treated rudely by the staff for not drinking until I ran up a $300 tab like the tourists do. I had grown accustomed to cramped little tables and over-priced food.
Well boy-howdy, was I wrong!
There is no down-side to the Asheville Brewing Company! The staff is polite and attentive, the beer is good, there is plenty of room on the patio to mingle, they have a "ladder golf" game, they have live entertainment that doesn't down out conversation, Wi-Fi access, an X-box to play video games, and a HDTV WHERE THEY LET US CHANGE CHANNELS TO WATCH CSPAN!
Let me repeat that last part:
A HDTV where they let us change channels to watch CSPAN!
Do you have any idea how rare that is outside of Washington DC? What more could a political wonk want?
Heck, the place is even right next to the bus terminal. With the new late-night bus-routes, you can drink all you want and still get home safely!
This week, the two guys who normally organize Drinking Liberally are out on vacation. So I'm going to promote this weeks gathering.
Come to Drinking Liberally at the Asheville Brewing Company at 77 Coxe Avenue in downtown Asheville on Thursday. We'll be there from 7 to at least 10pm. Lots of fun for everyone.
Did I mention they let you watch CPAN on the HDTV?
Four new routes now allow people to leave the main Asheville terminal as late as 10pm, and, in some cases, as late as 12:30am. On Saturday night, I rode two of these late routes to see how they worked out in order to report on them for you.
I started across town from the furthest point in East Asheville, to my home at the far end of West Asheville. I would take the #29 to the main terminal, then transfer onto the #41.
The #29 was on time at 09:10pm in front of a hotel near exit 55 on I-40. This route ferries students from Warren Wilson college to Asheville, so I wasn't surprised to be one of the older people on the bus. It's been a long time since I've shared a vehicle with a bunch of college students - they sounded like a pack of excited puppies.
Did I use to sound like that when I was younger?
Due to some minor delays loading up at one of the bus-stops, the#29 looked like it was going to be a few minutes late to the main terminal. I asked the driver if this meant I would miss the #41 to get home.
The driver (politely) told told me that in the future, if I had to catch another bus at the station to let him know in advance so he could have it wait up. He then radioed my predicament to the other driver, and I was able to hop on #41 on Patton Road rather than the station.
The second bus had a completely different vibe from the first. Where #29 was filled with young pups on their way out drinking, #42 was occupied by working folks going home. I asked a few of them about their experiences with the new late-routes.
Two typical responses:
"Ever since I left my abusive boyfriend six months ago, I've had to walk home across the French Broad River alone to get home from my shift," said a 30-something McDonalds employee.
"This is the first time I was able to work a whole shift without begging for a ride home," said a young man who looked startlingly like local artist CJ Randel.
It's startling to realize that a simple extension of a public utility could have such a profound effect on people. This is something I'm going to have to explore more during this project.
At 09:57pm I asked the driver to let me off on the corner of Patton and Haywood roads. From there, it only took me three minutes to bike to my house.
By 10:01pm I was home.
The lessons:
No problem. It was a good opportunity to see how long it would take to bike from my home to WPVM. (The answer: From where I live in West Asheville, just under 40 minutes.)
Every politician in America will be attacking their opponents in growing strains of nationalism and patriotism, and the Mighty Wurlitzer of pundits and editors drunk on cocktail weenies and self-aggrandizement will amplify only the voices they deem relevant. By November you won't recognize the candidates anymore. Catch phrases, sound bitelets, and stagecraft are already accelerating past any whisper of policy arguments. Identities are created and destroyed in these sweltering months from primary to general. Cut and Run, Retreat and Defeat, Obstructionist, Party of No - the labels are thrown like adhesive confetti to see what'll stick. Is Charles Taylor an unethical failure or an embattled power player? Is Heath Shuler a conservative Democrat or a carpetbagging impostor? The whispers are growing, and by October you won't be able to hear your own thoughts over the rhetorical cacophony.
How can an informed citizenry maintain perspective through the media maelstrom to come? First, we're Drinking Liberally.
Drinking Liberally, that weekly gathering of media-savvy lefties, on-the-ball believers, and idealistic transformationalists, will face the facts of a media driven electoral theater of the absurd. Get your facts straight now, Liberal Drinkers, because facts will be as quaint as the Geneva Convention before voting time comes. The network of right-wing publications, think-tanks, and broadcast outlets that regurgitate the day's RNC talking points is cranking up the wind machine, planning for a Katrina style bushwhacking of all things liberal.I dare you to go without your car for a whole month.
